Today we’ve got a guest post from Josh Boyd, a freelance copywriter, who wants to share his tips for saving money as a freelancer so you can enjoy more of the good stuff!

Hurray! You’ve thrown off the shackles of full-time employment and are now reaping the benefits of being able to work in bed while eating Sugar Puffs. You relish in the ability to do your top quality work in your garishly bright pyjamas, while you pity the poor souls going to the office from your window. How foolish they seem now. Unfortunately, this feeling of happiness and sense of superiority will likely be brief and misleading. A few months have passed since you walked out of your old job laughing and mocking your ex-coworkers and the Sugar Puffs have now turned to Morrisons own brand corn flakes (the ones that don’t even come with a cardboard box). You’re also on the powdered milk too. Turns out the work hasn’t come as thick and fast as you’d hoped and all your friends with proper jobs have started to complain about your raggedy clothes. Time to start saving some money, you short-sighted fool.

So, chances are you’re going to want to claim some tax back for those corn flakes as some kind of business expense. Unfortunately, you have pretty much no idea what you’re doing and so you got an accountant. This will have been bleeding you dry and has left you in the sorry cereal state you’re in. There is a much better alternative to this. You should try online accounting instead. It simplifies the whole process massively meaning that even your malnutritioned brain will be able to use it and keep track of everything. You’ll also have much easier access to your accounts and what’s going on too. So, find your trousers with the least holes in, get down to your accountant, fire them and then get online.

You might have decided that your genius deserved it’s own .co.uk website. You guffawed as you saw other freelancers use blogs as their websites. “Unprofessional!” you scoffed as you bought way more bandwidth that you really needed. Time to scale back. Move all your stuff to Tumblr instead. It is completely free and very customisable. You can make a great site with Tumblr, plus you can use it to link up with people who might be interested in your work. If people like your stuff, it’s also very easy to share it with other people who too might appreciate your incredible skills. Plus Tumblr is, like, cool and stuff. Don’t be a square, daddio (and if you’re that fussed about having your own URL, just buy one and have it re-direct to your Tumblr).

Marketing yourself can be a difficult task, especially when you start out. For some reason, people just aren’t drawn to your impeccable work through unprecedented word of mouth spread. The few jobs you have done so far has, as of yet, failed to cause panic among prospective clients to hire you. There are a few ways to get free publicity. One of the best is to find a blog dedicated to your field and attempt to get an article posted on there which outlines some thoughts from your incredible mind. You’ll be unlikely to get paid for this, but suck it up and enjoy the chance for more people to discover you.

Decrease your outgoings enough and you’ll be back on the Sugar Puffs within no time. One day, with enough work, you might even reach Lucky Charms levels.