Are you avoiding other freelancers because you don’t want them to “steal” your clients? You’re making a huge mistake!

Other freelancers are not the enemy. Other freelancers are, in fact, your new best friends.

There are a few reasons why you should build relationships with other freelancers:

Freelancing is tough.

Your friends and family and old colleagues from your 9—5 job won’t understand your new lifestyle. It can be a lonely business and it can be frustrating to have to deal with all of the obstacles that come up when you are totally on your own.

However, when you have other freelancers with whom you can connect, share ideas, and simply commiserate on the challenges that are unique to freelancing, you’ll be able to do an even better job freelancing.

You need to be able to have others to whom you can go who understand your line of work so that you can help each other out, brainstorm, and constantly improve at the world of freelancing.

Every freelancer is different and offers unique services.

Even if you meet another freelance editor who happens to specialize in young adult novels like you do, for example, keep in mind that there are many different types of editing—if they offer developmental editing services and you offer stylistic editing services, then you could even start offering packages together!

It’s highly unlikely that you will both be in direct competition with one another and offer the exact same service to a niche market. There’s room for everyone.

You won’t be able to accept every job that comes along.

If it just so happens that you and another freelancer both offer the exact same service to the exact same target market, you can always use each other as referrals when work gets crazy.

For example, if you are going on holiday for a month and someone wants you to edit their book, you could recommend they go to the other freelancer—and they can do the same for you when they are too busy to accept new clients.

Being able to refer one another will help you both manage busy and slow times, and your clients will appreciate that you aren’t just putting their project on the backburner until you can get around to it.

There you have it: other freelancers are NOT the enemy. Help work toward building a stronger freelancing community by celebrating your freelancing friendships!

Discover more myths & facts about freelancing in the free version of the Set Yourself Up For Freelancing Success e-course.