What do you love about being a freelancer? About owning your own business?
- by LittleFox
There’s a (shrinking) world of possibilities out there. Explore it.
If you’ve tried selling your services (or, really, selling anything) internationally lately, you’ve probably noticed that there’s an amazing variety of ways to make money long-distance. Freelancers and businesses, designers and online sellers, writers and translators, and countless others—it seems like there’s a way (or a thousand) that any of them can make a living online. And there are lots of reasons people enjoy selling their work to clients overseas.
Don’t be left screaming “show me the money” to your clients
So you want to work internationally. The problem is that paying and getting paid in international currencies isn’t simple and if you are a true creative you’re already overwhelmed by the mention of international currencies. Breath… we’ll take this part slow.
Down to business: what matters when working internationally?

Who has time to sit around for days on end waiting for a payment to be sent and received by different banks in different countries? We get anxious when it takes Google more than 3 seconds to load a page…but we wait days to get paid? No.
Globally, 37 percent of businesses report being the victims of some type of economic crime, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers International (PwC). Make sure any financial company you work with is a regulated and licensed business. There is no worse feeling than someone playing around in your money drawer and stealing all your cash. Except if they take your chocolate too. That’s just unforgivable.
Today, it’s just you working from home in your pjs. Tomorrow, it might be you and your partner still working at home in your pjs. But next year, you may very well have a team of 50 around the world, all looking at you to ensure they get paid on time and for minimal cost.
If you are like me, you have a hard time remembering the names of entire countries let alone the currency they work in. But forget currency–exchange rates vary from one country and currency to another. God forbid you work with various countries and currencies, you’ve got a part-time job on your hand (that doesn’t pay).
Simplify, simplify, simplify! You may be an international payment expert but your clients aren’t. In fact, many times clients want to make payments to a local bank account in local currency. If you want to hang with the big guys, you’ll either need to open international banks in each country you want to work with (um, no) or find a payment solution that solves this problem for you.
Wouldn’t it be nice if everybody knew what an amazing designer you are? The reality is that building your business takes work. Getting your name out there, making sure prospective clients find you, and letting them know you’re worth every penny they’ll pay you is its own battle.