In this series of blog posts at Chinwag Jobs, we present Secret Diary of a Freelancer, brought to you as part of Xchangeteam’s Freelancer of the Year 2008 awards.

Welcome to my secret diary. It’s secret because I want to be candid and give you the inside track on what my life is like as a freelance gun for hire. It’s warts an’ all but hopefully inspiring in the main, highlighting the highs and the lows of my profession. We freelancers are the future: hear it here first.

It’s the economy, stupid

Our digital marketing freelancer is fairly sure she’s keeping her head while all around are losing theirs

Well, for the tiny minority of us not caught up in BrandRossGate it’s the economy and changing business circumstances that are claiming undivided attention.

Don’t be surprised to hear the downturn has become a constant in all the campaigns I am now putting together. I am marketing ‘credit-crunch-friendly’ this and ‘credit-crunch-proof’ that; ‘how to not break the bank’ pieces and ‘how to breathe easier doing this while tightening your financial belt,’ flow from my laptop with gay abandon.

Gallows (creative) humour, you may say, as without doubt clients and budgets are where it’s really at in all this. The Great Depression Mark II is being wheeled out as an excuse to justify all manner of different saving/cut back schemes. However, despite this increased financial control, I am still being approached with offers of work, and good and lucrative work at that. None of my existing clients are cutting my budget – rather, upping it! So what does that say?

I think that freelance resource when budgets get sticky is probably an increasingly attractive solution for UK Plc. We are flexible, easy to hire and fire and ’scalable’ (doddle to hire two if one not enough). What’s more, we freelancers are a wellspring of creativity – and although creativity sounds like the first thing that would go when things get tougher, it’s seemingly the reverse. The requirement, even if the creative problem is ‘how to do more with less?‘, is greater.

All this is welcome good news for us hired guns!

In the midst of all this, it turns out I’ve been nominated for Freelancer of the Year. And no, dear reader – I didn’t nominate myself! A big thank you to my dear client who did, though!! Spread the love I say. I’ve never entered for any professional award before – not for the likes of me, I had always thought… But that’s a daft attitude, as one won’t win lotteries one doesn’t enter. So now I am ready to take the plunge and get my proper dues.

Word from the sponsor – so should we all, between finding yet another ‘bucking the credit crunch’ angle that is…