10 ms·

My First Year of Freelancing

155 points by starbist 8y ago

themodelplumber 8y ago
That's a pretty great first year as a freelancer, maybe even an amazing first year. I'm in my 17th year and am tempted to think that if I started out like that, I'd be retired by now ;-) My first year was like: "Client bought me a computer! That was amazing. Man these eMachines boxes are a steal. Got some software from school, too, and a former employer gave me Photoshop 4.5 on a CD. [Update a month later] Oh, I get it. People give you free stuff hoping not to have to pay you later."
- zedder 8y ago
  No such thing as a free lunch I guess.
mtolan 8y ago
It's strange that this person didn't also describe the lessons they'd learned about Content Marketing, but I guess it doesn't work if you point that out.
- gk1 8y ago
  From looking at their submission history, it seems this is the first "hit" they had, so content marketing probably hasn't helped much... until now. FWIW my own pipeline of consulting clients relies solely on introductions and blogging ("content marketing" but much less formal). I continue to encourage new freelancers/consultants to write and share their knowledge more often.
  - lostctown 8y ago
    I'm a bit cynical because I know good marketers maintain rep on many accounts on several key social network/forum sites. It's easy to do. Just queue up some actually interesting informative posts and the do a little automation to spread them out over time.
    - philfrasty 8y ago
      Hint: it's not easy to do
      - lostctown 8y ago
        Easy wasn't the right word. Straightforward would have been better. I understand there is a great deal of effort that goes in to it.
    - gk1 8y ago
      By "write and share" I meant writing substantive and informative content such as essays and guides. I did not mean social media posts, which I think is what you're referring to.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  Look at their footer > Silvestar is a fearless web developer and consultant, JAMstack enthusiast and Wordpress coder currently available for hire. This person may have accidentally reinvented content marketing but they aren’t implementing a known good strategy. They are a web developer, a coder, available for hire. They say they’re a consultant, which is nice but they don’t understand the difference between a consultant and a contractor. A consultant is way more expensive. If this person has a marketing position or a niche I don’t know what it is. I’m completely convinced they’re a good web developer but they don’t have a market position more differentiated than “I build websites”.
  - starbist 8y ago
    Actually, this "Consultant" part is released today. I could consult a client, and charge my hours, but I wouldn't mind if someone else implements the proposed solution. :-)
    - barry-cotter 8y ago
      Great. I wish you every success but if I might offer some suggestions you need to figure out what expensive problem you are solving and sell that solution. Persuade people you can save them a lot of money or make them a lot of money and sell based on the value you can provide for them. Not a coder for hire. Sell based on value, not capacities.
aantix 8y ago
A developer for Toptal tops out at $3,200 a week? $80 an hour is peanuts in software engineering and they certainly aren't attracting the entire "top 3%" of "experts in the field" with such a low, max rate. https://www.toptal.com/faq#how-much-does-toptal-cost https://www.toptal.com/faq#how-much-does-toptal-cost
- TomMarius 8y ago
  I think the plus sign specifically means that it can be more?
  - aantix 8y ago
    Fair point. Let's hope. Price is a signal and they're diluting their brand with such low rates.
- mantas 8y ago
  $80/h is peanuts only in SV. It's totally viable for "top 3%" of eastern european of "experts in the field".
  - cheez 8y ago
    Chances are TopTal takes a 30% cut
    - COil 8y ago
      30%? That would be huge.
  - jcadam 8y ago
    $80/h would be great for a full-time employee in most of the US (outside of SV of course - a safe place to sleep doesn't have to start at $4k/month). For a freelancer it would suck. I'd be a nervous wreck every time I found myself between clients. Which is why I'm not a freelancer. If I could get $100+/hour, I probably would be :)
  - 8y ago
gk1 8y ago
Hey Silvestar, I just emailed you about possible work. Something tells me you'll have a good second year! :)
- starbist 8y ago
  I surely hope so. :)
Uberphallus 8y ago
Warning: rant, sample of 1 My first year freelancing was my last (for now). The only client I landed, following the guidelines stated on the link (cover letter, etc), was for a very niche job (IoT/FPGA related). I undersold myself as it was my very first gig on Website. The client ended up hiring me and another guy from Country. They explained what they had, what they wanted, and I explained the problems with their architecture and possible solutions. The other guy was like, yes, all can be done, yes, great idea, sure, it's easy, yes, of course, nothing is wrong, it's so smart. I was constantly dropping quotations from RFCs, IEEE, FCC and recommending hardware choices for backing it up with documentation, but they consistently followed the other guy's advice, to the point of deploying extravagant and unnecessary hardware: think of a workstation plugged to a Zynq, plugged to 3 Arduinos, and a Stratix 10 in the middle with a plethora of custom circuits and transceivers attached kind of mess, just because the guy only could find libs and IPs that ran precisely on those devices to do the puzzle that he himself sold to the client. I suspect this was not out of pure incompetence, but an evolutionary way to make one seem expert and make the project take longer to cash in more money. And all of this was ON REMOTE. We literally had to ask the remote office to verify connections, and status LEDs on the devices, and obviously debugging out of business hours was an absolute PITA. The other guy was insanely productive, in a meaningless kind of way. Everything was documented but badly, some stuff had CAD, some hand drawn; the designs had some corner cases well thought and commented, while basic things completely overlooked. Half of the code was copied from OpenCores, Arduino examples, etc, and the other half didn't make any sense. The only way I could describe him is as a bored engineer on the 5th day of a meth binge. One day I just snapped during an argument, calling their project "Internet of Spaghetti", and called it quits. Then the client contested all the hours I filed, and Website took their side, I assume because they had high rating and I had just started. Then I went back to corporate, it's boring but I don't have to deal with such bullshit.
- maximp 8y ago
  >The only way I could describe him is as a bored engineer on the 5th day of a meth binge. what an image
- paulpauper 8y ago
  Yeah a corporate job may be 'soul draining' but at least they are legally req. to pay you. This sudden interest and push to freelancing and gigs seems like a way to inure people to the loss of this ironclad right to get paid.
paulpauper 8y ago
For citizens of developed countries, freelancing seems like too much work for little pay. for coding and web work you're computing with foreigners who can do the job at a much lower price. Bidding process creates a race to the bottom
- nickjj 8y ago
  As someone who does freelance in a developed country, competition from foreigners isn't too big of a deal. The main problem is, with the way businesses are ran in the US, it's REALLY expensive being self employed. You pay a massive amount in taxes and you don't get any social security matching from an employer or health, dental, etc. benefits. Basically, you need to make a LOT more pre-tax to come out to the point where you're living the same type of lifestyle as someone who has a full time position.
  - spking 8y ago
    Seconded. You learn the hard way to immediately carve 30% of your income to a savings account that you don't touch that goes straight to quarterly tax payments.
    - nickjj 8y ago
      > You learn the hard way to immediately carve 30% of your income to a savings account that you don't touch that goes straight to quarterly tax payments. Yes, and if you avoid paying quarterly taxes or underpay by accident (because you made more than you thought you would have), you get hit with a huge penalty. Also it's really brutal that certain things have no effect on your "small business tax" of about 13%. For example, let's say you make 100k and you had 50k in medical bills for an emergency. For most people, this is easy. About 90% of that can be written off your income tax. So you'll get taxed at 65k income instead of 100k. If you run your own business, you'll get that same income tax write off (65k effective income), however you'll need to pay an extra 13% on 100k not 65k. You're on the hook for the full "small business tax" on your total income in this case. It's complete bs because most medical emergencies (regardless of cost) are things that render you unable to work or do anything. Insurance doesn't even help either because there's a million loop holes to allow insurance companies to deny you coverage on certain things.
anarchitect 8y ago
I'm in my first month freelancing. The last time I wasn't in a full-time job was when I was running a small web design company in the 90s (it still exists and is run by @prawn). Finding work was not difficult – I was lucky enough to book all of my capacity from day one. The biggest challenge I've had so far is managing my time across clients, and adjusting to not having a team.
- eurticket 8y ago
  account suspended @prawn
- GFischer 8y ago
  How did you get your customers, through your network? Do you do mostly frontend or something else?
  - anarchitect 8y ago
    I do E-commerce consultancy, CRO and Facebook advertising (still figuring how much to specialise). I was fairly fortunate to bring by previous employer on as first client, the rest of the leads have come through my personal network. The nice thing about prioritising lifestyle over growth is I don't need many clients.
acconrad 8y ago
8 months into my first year of freelancing in the UI space: * Closing in on $250k revenue * 2 major clients, 4 smaller, short-term engagements * 100% utilization rate (no downtime between clients) * Successfully raised rates with all client projects (avg: 19% / engagement) * Closed via a sales funnel of: 5 new prospect outreach / day, 2 proposal follow-ups / day, 1 existing (or prior) client referral / month What worked: * Networking aggressively (see sales funnel) * Setting up a 3-prong presence of blog + personal site + consulting site * Pruning and refining available code/assets for portfolio * Pricing / week & value-based, fixed-cost pricing * 100% money-back guarantee (no one has asked for it) * Having an accountant What did not work: * Thorough proposal / contract documentation. I figured having detailed, in-depth scope of work showing I had knowledge of their industry, problems, etc, would help close deals. The teams that closed the fastest already knew they wanted to work with me, but the ones that weren't sold couldn't even be sold with excellent SOWs and proposal documentation. * Having a lawyer. For a one-man consulting shop, you really don't need one. Most standard SOW/Contract/IP documents are easy enough to generate/find yourself. * Toptal / Upwork / any of those race-to-the-bottom sites. There's great arbitrage if you're international like OP. But I'm in the US, and it's not worth the effort for US rates. * Meetups. I just didn't invest time in them (yet). I think the next leap in rates will come from becoming more "well known" through blogging and speaking engagements, which this is a key area to invest in. * All this "double your rate" business. Sure, I imagine this works if you're used to pulling in $50/hr, and I imagine Brennan Dunn and the sort are marketing themselves at more commoditized development. But trust me, people ran away when I doubled my rates. I had to find a sweet spot and build up my rates slowly per client rather than just assume I was wildly undervalued.
- ioddly 8y ago
  > Successfully raised rates with all client projects (avg: 19% / engagement) Interesting, does that mean you raised rates during the project or as you switched to a new one? Well done, that's a very impressive first year.
  - acconrad 8y ago
    With each new engagement, my rates went up by, on average, 19%. Thanks!
CrankyBear 8y ago
This is an interesting discussion... but it really has nothing to do with the article. Which, really doesn't say much of anything unlike the note from acconrad, which gives real details.

155 points by starbist 8y ago

That's a pretty great first year as a freelancer, maybe even an amazing first year. I'm in my 17th year and am tempted to think that if I started out like that, I'd be retired by now ;-) My first year was like: "Client bought me a computer! That was amazing. Man these eMachines boxes are a steal. Got some software from school, too, and a former employer gave me Photoshop 4.5 on a CD. [Update a month later] Oh, I get it. People give you free stuff hoping not to have to pay you later."

zedder 8y ago
No such thing as a free lunch I guess.

mtolan 8y ago

It's strange that this person didn't also describe the lessons they'd learned about Content Marketing, but I guess it doesn't work if you point that out.

gk1 8y ago
From looking at their submission history, it seems this is the first "hit" they had, so content marketing probably hasn't helped much... until now. FWIW my own pipeline of consulting clients relies solely on introductions and blogging ("content marketing" but much less formal). I continue to encourage new freelancers/consultants to write and share their knowledge more often.
- lostctown 8y ago
  I'm a bit cynical because I know good marketers maintain rep on many accounts on several key social network/forum sites. It's easy to do. Just queue up some actually interesting informative posts and the do a little automation to spread them out over time.
  - philfrasty 8y ago
    Hint: it's not easy to do
    - lostctown 8y ago
      Easy wasn't the right word. Straightforward would have been better. I understand there is a great deal of effort that goes in to it.
  - gk1 8y ago
    By "write and share" I meant writing substantive and informative content such as essays and guides. I did not mean social media posts, which I think is what you're referring to.
barry-cotter 8y ago
Look at their footer > Silvestar is a fearless web developer and consultant, JAMstack enthusiast and Wordpress coder currently available for hire. This person may have accidentally reinvented content marketing but they aren’t implementing a known good strategy. They are a web developer, a coder, available for hire. They say they’re a consultant, which is nice but they don’t understand the difference between a consultant and a contractor. A consultant is way more expensive. If this person has a marketing position or a niche I don’t know what it is. I’m completely convinced they’re a good web developer but they don’t have a market position more differentiated than “I build websites”.
- starbist 8y ago
  Actually, this "Consultant" part is released today. I could consult a client, and charge my hours, but I wouldn't mind if someone else implements the proposed solution. :-)
  - barry-cotter 8y ago
    Great. I wish you every success but if I might offer some suggestions you need to figure out what expensive problem you are solving and sell that solution. Persuade people you can save them a lot of money or make them a lot of money and sell based on the value you can provide for them. Not a coder for hire. Sell based on value, not capacities.

aantix 8y ago

A developer for Toptal tops out at $3,200 a week? $80 an hour is peanuts in software engineering and they certainly aren't attracting the entire "top 3%" of "experts in the field" with such a low, max rate. https://www.toptal.com/faq#how-much-does-toptal-cost https://www.toptal.com/faq#how-much-does-toptal-cost

TomMarius 8y ago
I think the plus sign specifically means that it can be more?
- aantix 8y ago
  Fair point. Let's hope. Price is a signal and they're diluting their brand with such low rates.
mantas 8y ago
$80/h is peanuts only in SV. It's totally viable for "top 3%" of eastern european of "experts in the field".
- cheez 8y ago
  Chances are TopTal takes a 30% cut
  - COil 8y ago
    30%? That would be huge.
- jcadam 8y ago
  $80/h would be great for a full-time employee in most of the US (outside of SV of course - a safe place to sleep doesn't have to start at $4k/month). For a freelancer it would suck. I'd be a nervous wreck every time I found myself between clients. Which is why I'm not a freelancer. If I could get $100+/hour, I probably would be :)
- 8y ago

gk1 8y ago

Hey Silvestar, I just emailed you about possible work. Something tells me you'll have a good second year! :)

starbist 8y ago
I surely hope so. :)

Uberphallus 8y ago

Warning: rant, sample of 1 My first year freelancing was my last (for now). The only client I landed, following the guidelines stated on the link (cover letter, etc), was for a very niche job (IoT/FPGA related). I undersold myself as it was my very first gig on Website. The client ended up hiring me and another guy from Country. They explained what they had, what they wanted, and I explained the problems with their architecture and possible solutions. The other guy was like, yes, all can be done, yes, great idea, sure, it's easy, yes, of course, nothing is wrong, it's so smart. I was constantly dropping quotations from RFCs, IEEE, FCC and recommending hardware choices for backing it up with documentation, but they consistently followed the other guy's advice, to the point of deploying extravagant and unnecessary hardware: think of a workstation plugged to a Zynq, plugged to 3 Arduinos, and a Stratix 10 in the middle with a plethora of custom circuits and transceivers attached kind of mess, just because the guy only could find libs and IPs that ran precisely on those devices to do the puzzle that he himself sold to the client. I suspect this was not out of pure incompetence, but an evolutionary way to make one seem expert and make the project take longer to cash in more money. And all of this was ON REMOTE. We literally had to ask the remote office to verify connections, and status LEDs on the devices, and obviously debugging out of business hours was an absolute PITA. The other guy was insanely productive, in a meaningless kind of way. Everything was documented but badly, some stuff had CAD, some hand drawn; the designs had some corner cases well thought and commented, while basic things completely overlooked. Half of the code was copied from OpenCores, Arduino examples, etc, and the other half didn't make any sense. The only way I could describe him is as a bored engineer on the 5th day of a meth binge. One day I just snapped during an argument, calling their project "Internet of Spaghetti", and called it quits. Then the client contested all the hours I filed, and Website took their side, I assume because they had high rating and I had just started. Then I went back to corporate, it's boring but I don't have to deal with such bullshit.

maximp 8y ago
>The only way I could describe him is as a bored engineer on the 5th day of a meth binge. what an image
paulpauper 8y ago
Yeah a corporate job may be 'soul draining' but at least they are legally req. to pay you. This sudden interest and push to freelancing and gigs seems like a way to inure people to the loss of this ironclad right to get paid.

paulpauper 8y ago

For citizens of developed countries, freelancing seems like too much work for little pay. for coding and web work you're computing with foreigners who can do the job at a much lower price. Bidding process creates a race to the bottom

nickjj 8y ago
As someone who does freelance in a developed country, competition from foreigners isn't too big of a deal. The main problem is, with the way businesses are ran in the US, it's REALLY expensive being self employed. You pay a massive amount in taxes and you don't get any social security matching from an employer or health, dental, etc. benefits. Basically, you need to make a LOT more pre-tax to come out to the point where you're living the same type of lifestyle as someone who has a full time position.
- spking 8y ago
  Seconded. You learn the hard way to immediately carve 30% of your income to a savings account that you don't touch that goes straight to quarterly tax payments.
  - nickjj 8y ago
    > You learn the hard way to immediately carve 30% of your income to a savings account that you don't touch that goes straight to quarterly tax payments. Yes, and if you avoid paying quarterly taxes or underpay by accident (because you made more than you thought you would have), you get hit with a huge penalty. Also it's really brutal that certain things have no effect on your "small business tax" of about 13%. For example, let's say you make 100k and you had 50k in medical bills for an emergency. For most people, this is easy. About 90% of that can be written off your income tax. So you'll get taxed at 65k income instead of 100k. If you run your own business, you'll get that same income tax write off (65k effective income), however you'll need to pay an extra 13% on 100k not 65k. You're on the hook for the full "small business tax" on your total income in this case. It's complete bs because most medical emergencies (regardless of cost) are things that render you unable to work or do anything. Insurance doesn't even help either because there's a million loop holes to allow insurance companies to deny you coverage on certain things.

anarchitect 8y ago

I'm in my first month freelancing. The last time I wasn't in a full-time job was when I was running a small web design company in the 90s (it still exists and is run by @prawn). Finding work was not difficult – I was lucky enough to book all of my capacity from day one. The biggest challenge I've had so far is managing my time across clients, and adjusting to not having a team.

eurticket 8y ago
account suspended @prawn
GFischer 8y ago
How did you get your customers, through your network? Do you do mostly frontend or something else?
- anarchitect 8y ago
  I do E-commerce consultancy, CRO and Facebook advertising (still figuring how much to specialise). I was fairly fortunate to bring by previous employer on as first client, the rest of the leads have come through my personal network. The nice thing about prioritising lifestyle over growth is I don't need many clients.

acconrad 8y ago

8 months into my first year of freelancing in the UI space: * Closing in on $250k revenue * 2 major clients, 4 smaller, short-term engagements * 100% utilization rate (no downtime between clients) * Successfully raised rates with all client projects (avg: 19% / engagement) * Closed via a sales funnel of: 5 new prospect outreach / day, 2 proposal follow-ups / day, 1 existing (or prior) client referral / month What worked: * Networking aggressively (see sales funnel) * Setting up a 3-prong presence of blog + personal site + consulting site * Pruning and refining available code/assets for portfolio * Pricing / week & value-based, fixed-cost pricing * 100% money-back guarantee (no one has asked for it) * Having an accountant What did not work: * Thorough proposal / contract documentation. I figured having detailed, in-depth scope of work showing I had knowledge of their industry, problems, etc, would help close deals. The teams that closed the fastest already knew they wanted to work with me, but the ones that weren't sold couldn't even be sold with excellent SOWs and proposal documentation. * Having a lawyer. For a one-man consulting shop, you really don't need one. Most standard SOW/Contract/IP documents are easy enough to generate/find yourself. * Toptal / Upwork / any of those race-to-the-bottom sites. There's great arbitrage if you're international like OP. But I'm in the US, and it's not worth the effort for US rates. * Meetups. I just didn't invest time in them (yet). I think the next leap in rates will come from becoming more "well known" through blogging and speaking engagements, which this is a key area to invest in. * All this "double your rate" business. Sure, I imagine this works if you're used to pulling in $50/hr, and I imagine Brennan Dunn and the sort are marketing themselves at more commoditized development. But trust me, people ran away when I doubled my rates. I had to find a sweet spot and build up my rates slowly per client rather than just assume I was wildly undervalued.

ioddly 8y ago
> Successfully raised rates with all client projects (avg: 19% / engagement) Interesting, does that mean you raised rates during the project or as you switched to a new one? Well done, that's a very impressive first year.
- acconrad 8y ago
  With each new engagement, my rates went up by, on average, 19%. Thanks!

CrankyBear 8y ago

This is an interesting discussion... but it really has nothing to do with the article. Which, really doesn't say much of anything unlike the note from acconrad, which gives real details.