Lessons Learned From Your First Freelance Project

Two days after delivering the final handoff for your barter project, the excitement is still buzzing, but so is the overwhelm. Your client is ecstatic about their new website. They promised referrals and a glowing testimonial for your portfolio.

You finally take a deep breath and sit with everything that’s just happened.

It was a small, low-stakes project, yet it felt full of pressure. Delayed responses, tiny scope changes, and unexpected requests stretched your timeline and tested your communication skills.

Looking back, you realize that every quick addition did more than extend the hours. It nudged the entire project schedule for both you and the client. You hadn’t paused to address those changes in the moment. Now that you see it clearly, even the smallest add-on should have been a signal to stop and talk — a simple conversation confirming that any additions, big or small, would shift the timeline and potentially the deliverables. Only after alignment should you have even considered whether an extra fee made sense — something you didn’t do this time. Instead, you completed the additional work without reassessing the scope, and now you can see how those small “quick fixes” quietly expanded the timeline and your workload. Tracking your time, structuring your conversations, and leading the client instead of reacting — these are lessons you're carrying into every future project.

As you reflect, you start thinking about the type of work you actually enjoy. Full website builds are rewarding, but the bigger they get, the more they drain you. The barter project gave you a taste of that. For now, smaller projects — a landing page, a redesign, a feature update — feel like the right balance. Enough to challenge you, not enough to overwhelm you.

So you grab a notebook and start writing down what you want to pursue next.
Projects that play to your strengths.
Projects that stretch your skills just the right amount.
Projects that fit within a scope you can confidently own.

Being clear about what you can and want to deliver will help you attract clients who align with your process and the work that excites you.

Then you think about the parts of the project where you felt confident — and the parts where you didn’t. Interviewing users for personas was tough. You leaned on the people you already knew, and while they were easy to reach, they weren’t always the right match for your target audience.

That’s when you remember the “Who Do You Interview When You Don’t Know Anyone?” guide, and the notes from “When to Pay for Participants & How to Find Them.” You realize that proper user research — finding the right participants, compensating when appropriate, and planning your questions — isn’t optional. It’s essential if you want accurate insights and smoother projects. A larger, fully paid client won’t offer the same forgiveness a bartered one did.

This project also showed you exactly where your gaps are. You don’t have a network yet, but now you know the kinds of people you’ll eventually need — a developer for technical pieces, a designer with strengths in your weaker areas, and a mentor for guidance when you’re unsure. For now, it’s just a list of roles to look for, not names. But even that clarity helps you shape the kind of projects you want to pursue next: smaller, manageable work that gives you space to grow while you slowly build those connections.

By the end of this reflection, it becomes clear: freelancing isn’t just about completing work. It’s about understanding your strengths, acknowledging your limits, and designing a process that supports both. With every project — even a bartered one — you learn not just how to deliver value, but how to grow into the designer you want to become, on your own terms.

And now, with your next project type defined and a better sense of what you need to improve, you’re ready to take the lessons from this first experience and carry them into opportunities that move your business forward intentionally — not by chance.


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