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Around the middle of 2014 I found myself working in an industry I loved and a job I hated. My boss was a well intentioned idiot, the pay was somewhere between lousy and barely adequate, and the work was a monotonous chore punctuated by the infrequent interesting project. It was abundantly clear I had no future with the company, but the idea of starting over at another company doing the exact same thing with a different set of coworkers and clients sounded worse than staying in my current position. So I quit, and in mid June I formed an S-Corp and started my new career as a freelance web designer and front-end developer. Nearly three years later, I'm still going strong. Since then I've seen more and more posts from people asking about freelancing. Most of the posts are variations on the same basic question, "how do I freelance?" It's a vague question to be sure, but I completely understand where it comes from. I asked the same question of several colleagues when I was thinking about making the jump. In many ways freelancing is similar to having a normal job, but in other ways it is dramatically different. It's hard to imagine what it looks like from the outside for exactly that reason – going from being someone's employee to being both your own employee and your own boss is weird. However if you can figure it out and if you can handle the lifestyle it can be incredibly rewarding from both a quality of life and monetary perspective. But how the hell do you start? Well, you can start down the glorious, hazardous path to a career in the so-called "gig economy" by asking us about freelancing! As I said earlier I'm a web designer and front-end developer so I can speak about the web industry specifically and freelancing in general. I know for a fact there are tons of other freelancers who post here, so if that's you please feel free to jump in and answer questions. Assuming there's a good level of interest, I'll update this OP with resources and tools as they're posted. Let's get the most basic questions out of the way first: How much should I charge? The short answer to this is to charge an amount per hour that will allow you to make your desired salary per year after business expenses. There are a plethora of tools out there that can help you figure out a number, from the exceedingly complex to the hilariously simple. Both are useful in their own way. Once you know your hourly rate you can choose to either work on an hourly basis with clients or you can define a scope of work by estimating the number of hours you think the project will take you and proposing a set price. These two ways of working are generally referred to as "hourly" or "scoped" work. Retainers are a whole no'ther (wonderful and terrible) ballgame. Different industries have different ways of doing things of course. I've found that almost all new freelancers undervalue themselves, and it's very easy to do. Let's say you do some rough math and decide your freelance rate should be about $10 more than what you're currently paid – that sounds like a huge increase! But it's not. As a freelancer you'll find yourself responsible for a lot of new expenses: tools, corporate taxes, health insurance (don't get me started), bookkeeping fees, office supplies... the list goes on and on. That extra $10/hr will disappear far quicker than you'd think. What's more, remember that as a freelancer you will most likely not be able to bill 40 hours every week. Sure, some weeks you'll bill more, but just as often you'll bill less. Also you'll need to manage your business on top of doing your existing job, so you're going to spend a lot of time doing work that A) you have no experience doing and therefore B) you may be bad at, and ultimately C) is unbillable. Here's roughly how I calculated my freelance rate when I started, taken from an old post I made in CC: kedo posted:Here's Kedo's Ghettorigged Freelance Formula: Finally, at the end of the day your rate is also dependent on what people will pay you. I started out with a rate that allowed me to make roughly the same adequate to lousy salary I was making in my last job, but based on client feedback I quickly learned that I could charge way more. So I did. I lost a few of my cheaper clients but I gained a few more moneyed clients to offset the loss and now I'm making a huge amount more than I was previously. Learn from my mistakes and don't undervalue yourself! As an aside, right now I do about 40% of my work as scoped projects, 10% as hourly, and 50% on retainer. There are pros and cons to each way of doing business, but I find it helpful to think of it like investing. The best thing you can do to ensure you don't lose money in the stock market is to diversify your portfolio. Thus I have diversified in the ways I charge people. I'm happy to dive into this further if people are curious. Are there good freelancing websites where I can find work? The answer to this question may vary by industry. As far as web design/dev goes: do you live in a country with a low cost of living, or are you someone who thinks getting paid near the US minimum wage is great? Then yes. Otherwise the answer is a resounding no. Freelancing sites are a race to the bottom price-wise. You'll find there's a massive number of talented people living in Brasil or Ukraine or wherever who churn out work for prices you simply cannot match because your cost of living is much higher. Freelance sites attract people with low budgets, so it's unlikely you'll find juicy, high dollar gigs there. If you're a designer and know of a great site, please let me know. I'd love to be wrong about this. If freelancing sites aren't useful, how can I find work? One word: networking! Buying services isn't like buying a product – you're buying a person's time, not some physical object that either does or does not meet a set list of quantifiable specifications. It's difficult to just hop online and find the right person to do a job. It's far easier and safer to ask someone you know for a recommendation. Thus, your best source of work will come from the people you know who are willing to send you referrals. When you start freelancing, tell every single person you can think of (I mean this literally, and I mean the original definition of literally!) that you're available and looking for work. If you're talented at what you do and your rolodex isn't too thin, you'll get enough work to keep you busy. Best case scenario, once you've completed a few projects successfully you'll have a few more people singing your praises and referring people to you. This is the main reason why I never recommend people start freelancing right out of school. If you don't know anyone in your industry, you'll have an incredibly hard time finding work. I started freelancing 7 years into my career and it was easy to get work because I had a huge contact list. On the other hand a friend of mine tried freelancing right after he graduated and he barely scraped by with a small number of crappy clients. He eventually quit and became a realtor.  If I want to start freelancing tomorrow, what's the absolute bare minimum I need to do/know? This assumes you're in the US because that's what I know.
That's about all I have right now. Ask me anything! PS. If you're a freelancer and you'd like to answer questions, please feel free! If you'd like, I can put your username and industry in the OP so poeple can ask you industry-specific questions as well. PPS. It goes without saying that nothing anyone posts in this thread should be construed as legal advice. e: I've forgotten to pick a post icon for 100% of the new posts I've made on these here Something Awful Dot Com forums. Would a kindly mod please change it to Jobs? kedo fucked around with this message at 05:34 on May 1, 2017 |
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Apr 29, 2017 22:34
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Yay! I've been freelancing for maybe 8 years as a web designer and developer myself - it's been interesting but has had a lot of challenges. There's a lot of advice out there that glorifies the lifestyle of grinding away nonstop and rising to any challenge like a boss because that's just what motivated self-starters do - I wish I learned earlier that there's nothing glamorous about that. Freelancing is a just another way of being employed, and part of any employment situation is making sure that you're working within your scope, not being exploited, and being paid fairly for your output. I might be projecting a little here, but I do see plenty of situations in /r/freelancing and other places where someone's killing themselves after over-promising or being too agreeable just to get a contract. Another thing is maintaining your skill set can be tricky if all of your time is being taken up grinding out the usual projects. Right now I'm kinda left in the dust because I missed the boat on JS frameworks and I'm just catching up now, I was too busy getting new contracts and maintaining old ones. At my other long time part-time gig for a large organization I can tell HR or leadership that I'm interested in making moves, and they'll either funnel me into a mentor situation or have me take on more tasks until I'm ready to join a team that's moving forward as the industry progresses. Freelancing you won't have that comfort - you have to adapt on your own time, and a lot of that's going to be unpaid. I have plenty more to say but I'm already sounding grouchy :P I actually love it and it's a lot of fun if you're the type of person who likes the challenge. quote:HAVE A CONTRACT! Yeah this too x1000, it doesn't matter if your first gigs are working for a friend or whatever. Just follow Kedo's advice and get the boilerplate if it seems like too much hassle. You'll thank yourself later when a dispute inevitably arises.
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Apr 29, 2017 23:13
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