In a lot of ways, the value in a business plan isn’t so much having it, but actually writing it. It gives you a chance to sit down and actually work through the numbers for freelancing. Not sure quite how to price your services? As you write even a basic business plan, you have to take a few minutes to figure out what your costs are. If you aren’t covering your costs, what’s the point of being in business?

Because many freelancers come from creative backgrounds, the act of writing a business plan can seem a little daunting. It’s easy to imagine some thousand page document that requires you to be able to predict exactly how many clients will find in the next year, as well as make all sorts of arcane operations decisions that don’t really seem to apply to freelance writers. It’s true that you may not need as in-depth a document as other types of businesses. But a freelancer can still benefit by figuring out the details of how he or she will operate and getting it down on paper:

via Freelancers: Do You Need a Business Plan? – FreelanceSwitch.