If you’ve worked as a freelance blogger for any length of time, then chances are good you’ve experienced the following scenario:

Client meets blogger.

Client falls in absolutely, positively, head-over-heels in love with blogger, and sends tons of work their way.

Client decides blogger is so awesome that they want them for other, “related” tasks. You know, a little social media management here, some slight image sourcing there, and – oh, heck, why not? – a few Facebook ads for that upcoming book launch.

Soon enough, blogger finds themselves losing autonomy, performing non-blogging tasks they don’t enjoy and getting paid way less for mere crumbs where before they had the whole pie. Even worse, blogger does this at the expense of getting new, better work. Goodness gracious, what happened?

The short answer: fear. Especially when new to the biz, freelance bloggers often suffer from the concern that they will never be able to find enough work. Like a vulture wheeling overhead, this anxiety seems ever-present, threatening serenity and nudging us toward poor choices. But consistent work isn’t the biggest problem we face as bloggers: It’s maintaining our autonomy and resisting the urge to compromise our standards out of fear.

So what can you do about it? Here are a few steps (and one non-step) to take if you want to avoid falling into this trap and helm your own ship for life.

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By now, you’ve probably heard the concept that “investing in yourself is always a good idea.” And what that advice is usually referring to is paying for training, coaching, and other “learn and grow” info products.

I really hate this advice.

It’s not that I don’t agree; in many cases, I do agree. I’ve spent a lot of money over the years — even when money was exceedingly tight — “investing in myself” to get the training I needed to do better than I’d been doing previously.

It’s true that you can lose your stuff but you can’t lose your education. (Losing your mind, however, is something we’ll get to in a bit.)

There are definitely times when getting yet another course, watching yet another webinar, taking yet another 5-day or 2-week or 30-day challenge via email, joining yet another mastermind, and the like, are anything BUT a true investment in yourself.

Want to invest in yourself? Great. But don’t get it twisted: sometimes what you actually need to do to “invest in yourself” is put your head down and just do the actual work in front of you.

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Why did you become a freelance blogger?

That’s not a hypothetical question, I want to see the reason in the comments below.

Why am I asking? Because most freelancers lose sight of why they shunned the 9-5 to chase the freelance dream.

They start out full of promise. They want to live life on their terms, build their own empire, and get paid to do what they love, write.

If we boil that down, I’d say bloggers like you place a higher importance on happiness and personal growth than simple financial gain.

And that’s amazing.

But it rarely lasts. The dreams that drove you to leave your 9-5 soon escape your grasp. And with them go your positivity, happiness, and dreams of personal growth.

You see, most freelancers I speak to end up miserable, overworked messes. They’re terrified of falling from feast into famine and end up stuck.

Stuck doing work they hate for clients they despise. Stuck being overworked, under appreciated, and wishing they had more time to explore how they can improve themselves and their business.

But their fear of losing income prevents them from doing this. And that’s no way to live.

What most freelancers fail to understand is that holding on to clients because they pay is not how to run a successful business. You are the commodity and the value of your business.

When you’re unhappy, that value drops. You owe it to yourself and your business to drop bad clients. Sure, you’ll lose some income in the short term, but you’ll be a happier, more productive you which will help with long term growth.

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Recently, I had the unfortunate experience of royally screwing up a relationship with a freelance blogging client–in a Defcon 5, nuclear kind of way. I hesitated so long to write the apology email that it was too little, too late, and I lost any relationship that could have been salvaged (as well as my writing fee.) Not being the type to sit there and cry (for very long,) I wrote myself a template to make writing difficult emails easier, so that I’ll be prepared with an apology should I ever need one again.

So, here’s what happened: I was working on a project with a buddy of mine to write some blog posts and web copy. The buddy and I had worked together before with no hitches, and the buddy had known the client for years, so it was important to keep her happy. That’s… not what I did.

You see, I was frustrated with the project because the client was doing a lot of ‘midnight editing’ and requesting fixes for copy she had already signed off on. One day, in frustration, I replied to only my buddy out of the email thread where all three of us had been talking. I told him that I wasn’t willing to do any more revisions just for the sake of revisions.

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