Are you dabbling for dollars?

I am a recovering dabbler. This affliction tends to strike creative types – especially authors, consultants and graphic artists who do this work “on the side” while holding down guaranteed paying jobs, or the self-employed who happily accept any assignment that pays – or promises to!

Luckily for me I worked out my affliction while I was still employed. So like most recovering evangelists I feel qualified to diagnose these symptoms in others:

• willing to work for nothing, or lower than standard rates, as a way to get foot in door
• easily talked in to the argument from potential client that the offered crappy 1980s rate is in the fact the 2000s standard market rate
• keeps one foot in aforementioned door, and other foot in safe, but soul-sucking door of corporate or other form of employment
• afraid to focus on one specific market or specialty in fear that it won’t be enough
• may also manifest in a contrarian symptom – will stick to one specific specialty or niche even if it not’s paying off

Here’s the deal – as counterintuitive as it can be to turn work down or refuse to follow the norm in your market, the only way to raise yourself above the market is to be different. Especially today, there is no reason to settle for the old way of consulting or freelancing. There is a HUGE world out there. Hint: we have the Internet now!

I live near Winnipeg, Manitoba in Canada. It is affectionately (the kind of affection in dysfunctional families) called the Wholesale City. In other words, people want everything cheap. This is not good for artists, writers or consultants. But I have managed to charge top rate and above, and get it, even in the first year of my business – by standing for something, getting known as an expert beyond your geographic boundaries, setting up my business differently than others in my market, and not being afraid to branch out and offer other (complementary) services.

Hey, if I can do it, you can too (people from Winnipeg also have inferiority complexes about living in Winnipeg).