One of the biggest mistakes was not charging enough early on, which lead to taking on work from questionable clients.
I think it was easy for me to fall into that trap because I started really young (pretty much right out of high school). I had no mentors or anyone to talk to, and this was in the late 90s so there weren't thousands of blog posts and Youtube videos on this topic.
Your rates make a big difference and it's not just related to your income, it's also heavily tied into the type of clients you'll be working with. On average after many hundreds of gigs at varying price rates I find the more you charge, the more easy going your clients are. They tend to trust you to do your job instead of trying to micro-manage everything with unrealistic expectations. Of course this comes with more responsibility, but that's a trade off I'll make every time.
One of the biggest mistakes was not charging enough early on, which lead to taking on work from questionable clients.
I think it was easy for me to fall into that trap because I started really young (pretty much right out of high school). I had no mentors or anyone to talk to, and this was in the late 90s so there weren't thousands of blog posts and Youtube videos on this topic.
Your rates make a big difference and it's not just related to your income, it's also heavily tied into the type of clients you'll be working with. On average after many hundreds of gigs at varying price rates I find the more you charge, the more easy going your clients are. They tend to trust you to do your job instead of trying to micro-manage everything with unrealistic expectations. Of course this comes with more responsibility, but that's a trade off I'll make every time.