My Four Biggest Mistakes as a Freelance Writer

Nobody's perfect. While I really feel I've grown as a writer and businessperson in the past two years, I made plenty of mistakes along the way--and some of them I'm still making. Here are four of my big freelancing no-no's--either ones that took me a long time to overcome, or ones I"m still working on.

Not carrying business cards around everywhere. I feel like lately, whenever I meet someone new and start talking about what I do, I invariably hear that the person I'm speaking to needs some help in the writing department. And do I ever have a business card? No. Writing my website address on a bar napkin is hardly a great way to make an impression. Like the person I just met is going to bring their scribbled-on bar napkin to the boss the next morning and say "Guess who I just met at Paddy's Shuck n' Jive last night! Our web copy problems are solved!"

Moral of the story? Need to get business cards. Need to carry them around.

Not putting my blog under my own domain name right away. I didn't put my blog under my own doman name because, well...I didn't know it was that important. Now I know otherwise. I also figure it will be a hassle to switch domain names at this point, and I'm going to have to reap the consequences of the cyber-choice I made later. If I had simply pointed this blog to my domain I wouldn't have to squander all the link love I've gotten since starting the blog, or worry about my subscribers, once I switch over.

Not being nearly as aggressive as I should be with marketing. I market when I notice work drying up. If I had a coherent marketing plan, work would be much more stable--fewer of the highs and lows of freelancing. Or at least that's what I assume.

Under-charging. We all make this mistake when we start out. While many freelancers start at the number they'd like to charge and then raise it, I started at that number and then lowered it.

So come on, confess: what are your biggest freelancing mistakes?