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Ask HN: What mistakes should one avoid as a new freelancer?
If you could go back in time and start all over again, what would you do differently ? What are the hard lessons that you learned throughout your career as a freelancer ?
- DigitalSea 9y agoDon't charge too low for the sake of getting a freelance project. I recall my first project was a travel site, I quoted way less than I should have ($700) and I thought it was fantastic. I only charged so low to compete with overseas freelancers. Once you take away tax and the fact the project took me 3 months, not so great after all.
- kirubakaran 9y agoI'm actually writing about this exact thing: https://kirubakaran.com/blog/consulting-outline/ https://kirubakaran.com/blog/consulting-outline/ But to answer your question: It seems obvious that you trade the low variance pay of a salaried job for higher variance but generally higher expected value of consulting pay + other lifestyle benefits. But it is hard to actually internalize this. That is, you're happy when your pipeline is full and you're making a lot of money. But you can't work at this pace for ever. So, when there are natural lulls and you aren't making any money for a bit, instead of being miserable, you should know that it is a part of how it is and be thankful for the break and catch up on all the sci-fi books you've been meaning to read. It took me a while to not stress too much about these lulls and instead make the best of it.