Freelancing offers great flexibility, but some freelancers have difficulty structuring their time. If you’re a freelancer who doesn’t structure your time, you might not be making the best use of your day. Do you feel like you’re constantly spinning your wheels throughout the day and never getting anything done? Have too much work and not enough time, or vice versa? Keep these simple tips in mind to structure your time and make more money freelancing:

Set aside a portion of every day to look for new clients.

The biggest challenge on every freelancer’s page is staying busy. You’ve got to build time into every single day to look for new work. Even if you’re in the middle of a huge project and won’t need work again for weeks, you should start putting feelers out early. Bid on a job a few months down the line. Make preliminary contact with a client about a project in the future. Do something every single day to find new work, even if it’s just to peruse your favorite freelance bulletin board or touch base with former clients about a need for ongoing work.

Depending on my workload, I set aside one or two hours every day for the vital task of finding new work. I also write a fair number of magazine queries, so these two hours include writing and sending out query letters. As you establish relationships with clients and editors, you won’t need to spend as much time looking for new work, but it’s still something you should do every day.

Writing is a numbers game: set a goal for projects and queries for week.

I view writing as a numbers game. If you bid on enough projects or send out enough queries, chances are good that you’ll get something eventually. As your portfolio grows and you can site more and more impressive publication credits, you’ll have to send out fewer queries or project bids. This is an area where putting in a lot of work in the beginning can make your life exponentially easier down the road. I try to send out a minimum of two query letters per day, for a total of ten per week. When I know I’m going to have a busy week, I try to work on the query letters on the weekend so I’m prepared and don’t have to spend as much time on it during the weekdays. On very busy weeks, I may only get 3-5 query letters or project bids out, but if I shoot for ten, I find that I get enough work to keep me going.

Make yourself work for at least six hours per day.

The six-hour goal isn’t always necessary or even practical for a freelancer, especially when you combine it with an hour or two spent seeking work, but it’s a good goal to strive for in order to ensure you’re doing enough work. If you don’t have an assignment or project outstanding, research something new that you can write about. This makes your life easier when it’s time to write queries or articles about unfamiliar subjects, and learning new things is great inspiration for new article ideas. If you don’t have work and simply can’t think of anything to research, work on improving your portfolio. Brush up those rusty pieces, or draft sample documents you can shop to clients. The work will make you money eventually, and it’s a good use of otherwise unproductive downtime.

Spend at least three hours per week on marketing.

You could be the best freelancer in the world, and it wouldn’t matter if people didn’t know who you are. Spend at least three hours per week on marketing. This could be in the form of submitting articles to article directories, working to improve your website, drafting blog posts for popular sites, networking with other writers or doing anything to generally get your name out there. Depending on your niche, you may want to use this time to set up interviews with local PR firms that may need occasional freelancers, contact local software or IT companies if you’re a tech writer looking for freelance gigs, or query former clients about sales copy performance so you can show the results to potential clients. Three hours per week marketing goes hand-in-hand with seeking work daily, but marketing effectively and regularly can help bring clients through your door even when you’re not looking.

Devote two hours per week to administrative tasks.

Business administration is an important role for the average freelancer, so build time into your schedule to perform administrative duties. Use this time to file contracts and pay stubs, invoice clients and follow up regarding outstanding invoices. A little organization goes a long way, and doing these administrative tasks regularly means you don’t have to waste precious minutes or hours of work time to find an important document or follow up on outstanding invoices. Building regular time into your schedule for these administrative tasks lets you focus on the important business of picking up business and writing the rest of the time, so do yourself a favor and structure this into your schedule to make yourself a more efficient freelancer.

How structure makes you more money.

If you make the effort to structure your time, you’ll be on top of your writing game. By spending five to ten hours per week looking for work, even when you’ve already got projects, you can ensure you never have downtime when there simply isn’t enough work to keep you busy. If you market effectively for approximately three hours per week, you’ll have clients coming to you, even when you’re not looking for them. When you know you’ve got a built-in time to follow up regarding outstanding invoices and filing, you won’t find yourself switching back and forth from task to task and spinning your wheels ineffectively. By structuring your time, you’ll make yourself a more efficient freelancer, and you’ll be able to focus on your bread and butter: finding and completing work.

My grandpa has a saying that I always hated, but now I feel compelled to trot it out: “Do as I say, not as I do.” He often said this when I caught him doing something he told me not to do, and it drove me crazy. Unfortunately, now I find myself saying it to you, in response to my own negligence about maintaining an active web presence.

The truth is: your business benefits immensely when you maintain an active Web presence. There are some businesses with demographics that don’t really use the Web, but those are few and far between – and the rest of us rely on the Web to research a business we’re thinking about hiring or frequenting. With that in mind, here are five reasons your business depends on you maintaining an active Web presence:

1. Your Web presence tells clients what you do, and establishes you as an authority.

In the world of Web 2.0, many clients immediately go to the Web when they’re researching potential providers. They look for information about who you are, what you do and how much you have to say for yourself. If your website is a basic barebones overview of your company, containing little more than contact information, clients have very little on which to judge you. If you’ve got a content-rich, frequently updated website, your clients know you’re serious about your industry and are more likely to respect your skill as a business.

2. Lack of recent updates may tell your clients you’re not doing much.

One of the worst things you can see on a business website is a section for news updates that hasn’t been updated in months, or even years, or a blog with no posts for months at a time. (Don’t look at me, here – you’re doing as I say, remember?) By including these sections but not updating them, you tell clients you don’t have much to say, and your business doesn’t do much that’s noteworthy.

If you’re not going to have frequent news updates, don’t include a news section. If you can’t keep up with a blog, don’t maintain one, or hire someone else to do it for you. You don’t want clients to think that your business isn’t very active, and if clients don’t see updates for years, they may even think you’ve gone out of business!

3. Frequent updates, especially containing valuable information, keep clients coming back.

If you’ve got a website, you want clients to keep coming back. The more frequently a client visits your website, the better your chance that the client will consider your business when they need your services. Time to trot out another old saying: “Out of sight, out of mind.” If you’re not right in front of your client regularly, they might not remember you when they need you.

At the very least, update your website regularly to keep clients coming back. Add new products and services, update your policies, write a seasonal greeting or offer special deals – do whatever you can do to keep your clients coming back. A blog or adding articles to your website is a great way to ensure clients come back again and again; especially if it pertains to a specific niche, and clients get valuable information about your field that they might have trouble finding elsewhere.

4. You get more word of mouth from an active website.

Remember that value-added information I mentioned above? Not only is that a good way to keep potential clients coming back; adding useful information or deals is also a good way to get clients to tell their friends about you. How often have you seen a sale and told a friend about it, or had a conversation with a friend where you mentioned something relevant that you saw or read a few days ago? Keep your clients coming back regularly, and eventually a time will come when they send a friend in need.

5. Your Web presence is your chance to convince clients to use your business.

Too many business owners don’t recognize Web space for what it is: a virtually free space for marketing. If you have a well-designed website with plenty of useful information, you can use that website to market your products or services to potential clients.

It doesn’t have to be a generic “Here we are, and this is what we do.” Get creative. Tell your clients how great their lives would be if they use your products. Show them how successful they’d be if they only did this one thing, which just happens to be a service you provide. Get creative with your Web space, and don’t miss the opportunity to use it for free marketing.