How to set up your office and become a better freelance

The world of freelance copywriting is bound to be a highly competitive one, which means that you need to give yourself every single advantage that you possibly can. Your home office is where you will be completing a great deal of your work, which means that you need to set it up to be as productive an environment as possible. Obviously, everyone works in different ways, but here are a few general top tips that can prove to help you out.

Set Aside a Space in Your Home

First of all, you need to have the right space in your home. Ideally, it is going to have a closing door so you can work undisturbed, but if this is not possible, you could do with picking a quiet corner that is not going to have too much passing traffic from the other members of the household. While some people like to use different spaces around the house, if you keep the same home office environment, this will encourage you to work whenever you are there.

Make Sure to Have a Good Internet Connection

When you don’t have a good enough internet connection to allow you to do your job, this is bound to have a negative impact on your freelance copywriting business. To begin with, if you are constantly having to reconnect, this is going to waste time. For this reason, it is certainly worth looking into fibre internet from Frontier. Also, if the internet is faster, this is going to reduce the number of stoppages and slowdowns, not to mention all the time waiting to speak to customer service about the issue.

Establish Your Office Hours

When you are working for yourself, it can be all too easy to fall into a pattern of poor discipline in terms of your office hours. No matter whether you are an early bird or a night owl, it is certainly worth establishing some regular office hours as this is going to make it much easier for your clients to know when they are able to get in contact with you. At the same time, it will also train your body to know when it is time to work and when you can relax. Otherwise, the two elements can end up crossing over one another, which means that you are never really able to switch off in the way that you would want to.

Invest in High-Quality Furniture

There is no doubt that the quality of the furniture is going to have a big impact on how well you are able to work in your home office. This certainly starts off with the desk and the chair. For a lot of people, it is bound to be much better if the different elements are ergonomic. This way, you can adjust them as you see fit, which will help prevent back and neck problems. These can have a negative impact on your ability to work. Ultimately, there are some parts of an office that are not worth being too cheap about, and the furniture should certainly come under this umbrella.

Decorate the Space

The productivity of your home office can also be impacted by how it is decorated. To start off with, it is certainly going to be worth thinking about the colour scheme, as well as any little motivating features that can provide a welcome distraction without entirely taking you out of the headspace of work. Ultimately, this is always going to be a very personal choice, so you need to experiment with different elements until you find out what best works for you.

Stock Up on Stationery

While most people work entirely online in the modern world, there are many copywriters who also like to do things the old-fashioned way. Taking notes and brainstorming on paper can help to unlock all sorts of creative elements that otherwise would not work in the online world. Essentially, you want to have all the tools that are going to help you in your craft – whether pens, pencils, highlighters or anything else that you can think of.

Try to Soundproof

While some people do not mind working with a lot of background noise around them, there are plenty more who would find anything like this highly distracting. Therefore, you certainly need to make sure that you are soundproofing the area as much as possible. If you have a closing door, this is obviously going to be much easier to do. Otherwise, you are going to have to rely on the full range of DIY solutions that are readily available to you.

Continue Reading: Easy stretches to boost work efficiency in your home office

Put Together Your Portfolio

Sometimes, you are going to lose heart and faith in your abilities and you are going to have to do everything that you can to restore this. One way of doing this is going to be putting together your portfolio, which is nice if you can have it in an offline version that you can easily show to people. At the same time, another nice touch is going to be creating your own site that displays your portfolio as this is going to provide an excellent item that you can send off to clients as and when you need it.

While having a great office environment is not going to be the only factor that influences your abilities as a freelance copywriter, if you take the time to make it right, this can certainly have a positive impact that helps to kickstart and boost your career. To begin with, you are certainly going to need to have an environment at home from which you can build and create the type of individual space that will help with your productivity levels. Also, your office can easily change and adapt over time as you start to find new ways of working. Ultimately, it all comes down to what is best for you and how to improve your own lot.

 

About the Author

James Daniels is a freelance writer, business enthusiast, a bit of a tech buff, and an overall geek. He is also an avid reader, who can while away hours reading and knowing about the latest gadgets and tech, whilst offering views and opinions on these topics.