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Finding clients is basically the hardest part. Not going to lie: Most of my clients come from my network and their referrals. Most of my freelancer friends’ cl

Finding clients is basically the hardest part. Not going to lie: Most of my clients come from my network and their referrals. Most of my freelancer friends’ clients come from their network and their network referring clients to them. While it is possible to find clients organically through advertising, it’s much easier if you can build a network to pull from. You can start by simply contacting people you know and asking if their companies need any help. Let them know you’re available. Then, when they ask, be available and solve their problems ASAP. It’s actually quite a challenge to hold down a full-time job and to freelance at the same time. You might be lucky enough to find clients who don’t care much about how long it takes and are fine to communicate asynchronously through e-mail at your convenience. However, most clients will want to get on video calls throughout the day and will expect the work to be done quickly. Realistically, it will start competing with your day job at some point. You should decide now how you’re going to handle that. Whatever you do, don’t use your work computer for any freelancing tasks. Neither party may ever find out, but if you get into a situation where it matters then it’s terrible to have intermingled the two. Finally: Don’t underestimate how good a stable, big company job is right now. Freelancing isn’t really the easy money that some people make it out to be, especially if you’re not actually free during the day because you have a job. If you’re looking for something different, consider just getting a different job.

leros 5y ago
Is it mostly finding your own clients? I did a bit of asking around last year and I found several opportunities where companies have small average quality engineering teams who need someone to lead an effort in something like a product manager and engineering architect role. Those sounded interesting, though I did not follow up. My main fear is pay. Ideally, I'd like to be able to make at least $300/hr. I have no idea if that's realistic. Maybe not at first?
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > I did a bit of asking around last year and I found several opportunities where companies have small average quality engineering teams who need someone to lead an effort in something like a product manager and engineering architect role. Interesting. It’s not exactly common for companies to want contractors to be in leadership roles. Leadership roles generally warrant full-time employees who can be more invested in the company. Unless this was a company that tried to treat everyone as contractors while expecting them to behave as full-time employees. That’s not true contracting/freelancing. That’s just companies abusing labor laws.
  - leros 5y ago
    Those companies were willing to hire me. Hopefully this doesn't arrogant, but those companies can't hire someone of my caliber. They're mediocre companies that can only hire average/mediocre people. I wouldn't want to join a company like that full time, but I could see it being fun to hop in and help them out with a big project. For example one company was a media company that you've probably heard of. For their next growth phase, they have two separate legacy PHP systems that they need to integrate and they need to modernize their front end. Their development team isn't capable of doing that project. They've been spinning their wheels for a few years. I thought it might be fun to go in to that company, understand their systems, architect the new solution, lead/coach their team through building it. I could also help them set up automated build systems, introduce React and coach them through learning that. Maybe help them hire some more modern developers as well. That kind of thing. I've got a lot of experience doing complex architecture and also training up junior developers, so it sounds like projects like that could play to my strengths.
    - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
      > Hopefully this doesn't arrogant, but those companies can't hire someone of my caliber. Well obviously if they can’t pay market rates, and you didn’t even think it was worth asking, then it’s not exactly a great example of a consulting client. I’m not sure what these hypothetical contracts that you didn’t even pursue because you don’t think the companies could have afforded add to the conversation, though. It doesn’t sound like these clients were typical or even remotely competent.
    - akerl_ 5y ago
      I’m not sure why you think a company that wanted to hire you for a leadership role would pay you as a free-lancer to do that role. Generally consultant and full-time hiring pipelines and roles are fully separate, for a variety of reasons. Also, just in case it wasn’t obvious, this comment does read as extremely arrogant. A company wanted to hire you, you didn’t want to work there because they’re “average/mediocre”, so you’ve decided w/o engaging with them that it might be fun to pop in and just solve all their problems for them. As parallel comments have pointed out, networking is crucial to contracting, because it’s the primary way that clients connect with you and decide to work with you. If your mindset is that you’re a rockstar saving crappy companies from their mediocrity, you’ll quickly find yourself with a poisoned well.
- jollybean 5y ago
  $300/hr is the same as $600K/year. As a manager, who are you going to pay that kind of rate to? Why would someone hire a contractor at that rate, when they could hire the top tier Google Engineers? $200-300/hr rates are usually for 'expertise' style inputs - it's where you have industry leading or arcane knowledge in your field, and you bill for your insight, which might just be a few hours. A lawyer who specializes in IP, and is intimately familiar with the Texas IP legal circuit and all the judges, would bill some 'very high rate' per hour, but probably only for limited number of hours. If you have a full time job, and want to do some 'evening consulting' - you could bill $300/hr if you prepare a training package and are training a team on how to do something, i.e. a 4-hour course for $1200. That kind of thing. Or if you really have some super DevOps knowledge, you're 'The K8 Man' and they call you because they are stuck on a problem, and you always have a solution - you can bill them $300/hr. But being a bit more senior than their regular devs and helping them out doing regular work, then it's going to be tough to get a huge billing rate.
  - cushychicken 5y ago
    >$300/hr is the same as $600K/year. ...at 100% utilization, yes. I've never personally met an independent contractor who books more than a thousand hours a year.
    - jollybean 5y ago
      It's the equivalent from the 'buyers' perspective - that's the benchmark burn rate if they were to hire the person for a 'man year'. Contractors come in all shapes and forms some may book more, some less, though yes, from the contractors perspective, $150/hour is more like $150K/year.
  - ushakov 5y ago
    hey, could you check my website (in my profile) and estimate my hourly rate?
    - cosmodisk 5y ago
      €50?
Lucasoato 5y ago
> Don’t underestimate how good a stable, big company job is right now. This. Also don't underestimate how hard it is to get the money from a client if they decide not to pay you, even if you did a good job.
- ushakov 5y ago
  find better clients, ask for money first and never share the source code before you got paid
- nickjj 5y ago
  > This. Also don't underestimate how hard it is to get the money from a client if they decide not to pay you, even if you did a good job. It's not too bad in my opinion. I've been freelancing for close to 20 years on my own with no 3rd party platforms. I've had assorted clients from around the world. I've only been legit ripped off once out of issuing hundreds of invoices and working with a bunch of individuals and businesses. The amount I got cheated out of was 2 hours of work where the client requested work, agreed to pay but didn't pay. Other than that one time it's been smooth sailing where mostly everyone pays on time without issues. I've only had a handful of cases where someone forgot to pay within 30 days and a single follow up email resulted in them apologizing and paying. In some cases they even gave an unrequested tip because they genuinely felt sorry for missing the first email. These were all cases of people being busy and forgetting by accident. I'm also very lax with how I request payments too. I send out an invoice at the start of every month because it's more convenient for everyone involved. Sometimes with new clients this means doing let's say 5 hours of work on the 3rd of the month but not invoicing them until the following month.
  - hackerfromthefu 5y ago
    Both your examples mention single digits hours, ie very small amount of money. The problems tend to happen if there's larger amounts of money involved. So it's important as a contractor not to enable a situation where they owe you a lot of money, especially if you have no leverage.
cushychicken 5y ago
This comment is a nice reminder of how good my current clients are - especially regarding their comfort with asynchronous communications. Finally: Don’t underestimate how good a stable, big company job is right now. Freelancing isn’t really the easy money that some people make it out to be, especially if you’re not actually free during the day because you have a job. I am acutely aware of how much more money I could be making if I chose to work at a big company at the moment. Much better benefits, too. I've ended up taking the perspective that consulting is a route where I can trade earning more money for having more control over my time. My current clients don't care that I dedicate half of my working hours to building and marketing the job site I'm working on. I get their deliverables done on time, on budget, and (importantly) right the first time. That's something they've had a hard time finding, and it shows in their willingness to accept my (relatively high) hourly rate.
- 10x-dev 5y ago
  Aside from non-compete and generally unenforceable "ownership of work during your own time" clauses in my employment contract, I'd say I have quite a bit of control over my time. Nobody cares what I do throughout the day as long as I deliver my stuff on time.
  - gitfan86 5y ago
    As an employee I continued to run into people assuming I should be available from 9-5 and that I should take a similar number of vacation days as the rest of the team. It seems like there was always some resentment toward the guy who leaves the office at 2:00 and take 30 days of vacation as an employee regardless of his salary or productivity. But as a contractor they don't care.
zoomablemind 5y ago
> ...Whatever you do, don’t use your work computer for any freelancing tasks. Depending on terms of your full-time employment, it may even preclude a contracting work in the same field if it overlaps the main work. It may also claim ownership of any IP created while employed.
treelovinhippie 5y ago
gilmore606 5y ago
> Don’t underestimate how good a stable, big company job is right now. This, but also don't underestimate the personal satisfaction of "eating what you kill". I feel far less alienated from my labor than I did as an FTE. When I get a tough new task, I get excited thinking of those hours piling up. My reward is directly tied to my efforts and success in a way it never was before, and that has improved my quality of life tremendously.
- koolba 5y ago
  > This, but also don't underestimate the personal satisfaction of "eating what you kill". I love that expression and mere words cannot describe the sense of satisfaction one gets when the sale is made and the checks are cashed. It’s not for everybody. Honestly, it’s not for most either. But if you do pull it off, the feeling is fantastic.
  - aconsult1 5y ago
    I second this. The fulfillment of doing work as a contractor and being the owner of my future is invaluable. I have been working for 15+ years as consultant and contractor for a SP500 company and I have several friends that are FTE there. Over the years I realized I'm much more motivated and overall happier with the work I do than they are - at the same company and in similar positions. I'm also much more productive because my only measure of success is the quality of the output of my work. If it isn't good, then my contract will not get renewed. So I have to produce something of value 100% of the time which keeps me in check at all times. In their case there's politics, promotions, new roles, new bosses, performance reviews and so on. The saying "eating what you kill" really resonates. Thanks for that.
    - throwawayvibes 5y ago
      I'm the exact opposite. I enjoy the cushy FTE positions in European companies where I can automate my work away to the point where 1-2 hours of actual effort is all I need to put in. I don't find any satisfaction in doing a good job for a company not my own, and spend my focus and energy doing my hobbies, socialising, living my life in bliss. Most workaholics I knew my life were miserable people who hated their life and didn't sleep enough.
softwaredoug 5y ago
“Organic” marketing can also just mean writing content genuinely helpful to your immediate network, thus making you the go to person for a given problem area.
rahulrangaraj 5y ago
> Finding clients is basically the hardest part. Agree with this. To help freelancers get clients, I manually curate freelance jobs from more than 40+ job boards and freelance sites. [1] Most of these companies in this list are most likely to hire freelance developers/marketers/writers. It's still in beta, feel free to reach out/dm me if you would like to access. [2] [1] -> https://twitter.com/RahulrangarajR/status/1480219051578122240 https://twitter.com/RahulrangarajR/status/148021905157812224... [2] -> https://twitter.com/RahulrangarajR https://twitter.com/RahulrangarajR

leros 5y ago

Is it mostly finding your own clients? I did a bit of asking around last year and I found several opportunities where companies have small average quality engineering teams who need someone to lead an effort in something like a product manager and engineering architect role. Those sounded interesting, though I did not follow up. My main fear is pay. Ideally, I'd like to be able to make at least $300/hr. I have no idea if that's realistic. Maybe not at first?

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> I did a bit of asking around last year and I found several opportunities where companies have small average quality engineering teams who need someone to lead an effort in something like a product manager and engineering architect role. Interesting. It’s not exactly common for companies to want contractors to be in leadership roles. Leadership roles generally warrant full-time employees who can be more invested in the company. Unless this was a company that tried to treat everyone as contractors while expecting them to behave as full-time employees. That’s not true contracting/freelancing. That’s just companies abusing labor laws.
- leros 5y ago
  Those companies were willing to hire me. Hopefully this doesn't arrogant, but those companies can't hire someone of my caliber. They're mediocre companies that can only hire average/mediocre people. I wouldn't want to join a company like that full time, but I could see it being fun to hop in and help them out with a big project. For example one company was a media company that you've probably heard of. For their next growth phase, they have two separate legacy PHP systems that they need to integrate and they need to modernize their front end. Their development team isn't capable of doing that project. They've been spinning their wheels for a few years. I thought it might be fun to go in to that company, understand their systems, architect the new solution, lead/coach their team through building it. I could also help them set up automated build systems, introduce React and coach them through learning that. Maybe help them hire some more modern developers as well. That kind of thing. I've got a lot of experience doing complex architecture and also training up junior developers, so it sounds like projects like that could play to my strengths.
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    > Hopefully this doesn't arrogant, but those companies can't hire someone of my caliber. Well obviously if they can’t pay market rates, and you didn’t even think it was worth asking, then it’s not exactly a great example of a consulting client. I’m not sure what these hypothetical contracts that you didn’t even pursue because you don’t think the companies could have afforded add to the conversation, though. It doesn’t sound like these clients were typical or even remotely competent.
  - akerl_ 5y ago
    I’m not sure why you think a company that wanted to hire you for a leadership role would pay you as a free-lancer to do that role. Generally consultant and full-time hiring pipelines and roles are fully separate, for a variety of reasons. Also, just in case it wasn’t obvious, this comment does read as extremely arrogant. A company wanted to hire you, you didn’t want to work there because they’re “average/mediocre”, so you’ve decided w/o engaging with them that it might be fun to pop in and just solve all their problems for them. As parallel comments have pointed out, networking is crucial to contracting, because it’s the primary way that clients connect with you and decide to work with you. If your mindset is that you’re a rockstar saving crappy companies from their mediocrity, you’ll quickly find yourself with a poisoned well.
jollybean 5y ago
$300/hr is the same as $600K/year. As a manager, who are you going to pay that kind of rate to? Why would someone hire a contractor at that rate, when they could hire the top tier Google Engineers? $200-300/hr rates are usually for 'expertise' style inputs - it's where you have industry leading or arcane knowledge in your field, and you bill for your insight, which might just be a few hours. A lawyer who specializes in IP, and is intimately familiar with the Texas IP legal circuit and all the judges, would bill some 'very high rate' per hour, but probably only for limited number of hours. If you have a full time job, and want to do some 'evening consulting' - you could bill $300/hr if you prepare a training package and are training a team on how to do something, i.e. a 4-hour course for $1200. That kind of thing. Or if you really have some super DevOps knowledge, you're 'The K8 Man' and they call you because they are stuck on a problem, and you always have a solution - you can bill them $300/hr. But being a bit more senior than their regular devs and helping them out doing regular work, then it's going to be tough to get a huge billing rate.
- cushychicken 5y ago
  >$300/hr is the same as $600K/year. ...at 100% utilization, yes. I've never personally met an independent contractor who books more than a thousand hours a year.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    It's the equivalent from the 'buyers' perspective - that's the benchmark burn rate if they were to hire the person for a 'man year'. Contractors come in all shapes and forms some may book more, some less, though yes, from the contractors perspective, $150/hour is more like $150K/year.
- ushakov 5y ago
  hey, could you check my website (in my profile) and estimate my hourly rate?
  - cosmodisk 5y ago
    €50?

Lucasoato 5y ago

> Don’t underestimate how good a stable, big company job is right now. This. Also don't underestimate how hard it is to get the money from a client if they decide not to pay you, even if you did a good job.

ushakov 5y ago
find better clients, ask for money first and never share the source code before you got paid
nickjj 5y ago
> This. Also don't underestimate how hard it is to get the money from a client if they decide not to pay you, even if you did a good job. It's not too bad in my opinion. I've been freelancing for close to 20 years on my own with no 3rd party platforms. I've had assorted clients from around the world. I've only been legit ripped off once out of issuing hundreds of invoices and working with a bunch of individuals and businesses. The amount I got cheated out of was 2 hours of work where the client requested work, agreed to pay but didn't pay. Other than that one time it's been smooth sailing where mostly everyone pays on time without issues. I've only had a handful of cases where someone forgot to pay within 30 days and a single follow up email resulted in them apologizing and paying. In some cases they even gave an unrequested tip because they genuinely felt sorry for missing the first email. These were all cases of people being busy and forgetting by accident. I'm also very lax with how I request payments too. I send out an invoice at the start of every month because it's more convenient for everyone involved. Sometimes with new clients this means doing let's say 5 hours of work on the 3rd of the month but not invoicing them until the following month.
- hackerfromthefu 5y ago
  Both your examples mention single digits hours, ie very small amount of money. The problems tend to happen if there's larger amounts of money involved. So it's important as a contractor not to enable a situation where they owe you a lot of money, especially if you have no leverage.

cushychicken 5y ago

This comment is a nice reminder of how good my current clients are - especially regarding their comfort with asynchronous communications. Finally: Don’t underestimate how good a stable, big company job is right now. Freelancing isn’t really the easy money that some people make it out to be, especially if you’re not actually free during the day because you have a job. I am acutely aware of how much more money I could be making if I chose to work at a big company at the moment. Much better benefits, too. I've ended up taking the perspective that consulting is a route where I can trade earning more money for having more control over my time. My current clients don't care that I dedicate half of my working hours to building and marketing the job site I'm working on. I get their deliverables done on time, on budget, and (importantly) right the first time. That's something they've had a hard time finding, and it shows in their willingness to accept my (relatively high) hourly rate.

10x-dev 5y ago
Aside from non-compete and generally unenforceable "ownership of work during your own time" clauses in my employment contract, I'd say I have quite a bit of control over my time. Nobody cares what I do throughout the day as long as I deliver my stuff on time.
- gitfan86 5y ago
  As an employee I continued to run into people assuming I should be available from 9-5 and that I should take a similar number of vacation days as the rest of the team. It seems like there was always some resentment toward the guy who leaves the office at 2:00 and take 30 days of vacation as an employee regardless of his salary or productivity. But as a contractor they don't care.

zoomablemind 5y ago

> ...Whatever you do, don’t use your work computer for any freelancing tasks. Depending on terms of your full-time employment, it may even preclude a contracting work in the same field if it overlaps the main work. It may also claim ownership of any IP created while employed.

treelovinhippie 5y ago

gilmore606 5y ago

> Don’t underestimate how good a stable, big company job is right now. This, but also don't underestimate the personal satisfaction of "eating what you kill". I feel far less alienated from my labor than I did as an FTE. When I get a tough new task, I get excited thinking of those hours piling up. My reward is directly tied to my efforts and success in a way it never was before, and that has improved my quality of life tremendously.

koolba 5y ago
> This, but also don't underestimate the personal satisfaction of "eating what you kill". I love that expression and mere words cannot describe the sense of satisfaction one gets when the sale is made and the checks are cashed. It’s not for everybody. Honestly, it’s not for most either. But if you do pull it off, the feeling is fantastic.
- aconsult1 5y ago
  I second this. The fulfillment of doing work as a contractor and being the owner of my future is invaluable. I have been working for 15+ years as consultant and contractor for a SP500 company and I have several friends that are FTE there. Over the years I realized I'm much more motivated and overall happier with the work I do than they are - at the same company and in similar positions. I'm also much more productive because my only measure of success is the quality of the output of my work. If it isn't good, then my contract will not get renewed. So I have to produce something of value 100% of the time which keeps me in check at all times. In their case there's politics, promotions, new roles, new bosses, performance reviews and so on. The saying "eating what you kill" really resonates. Thanks for that.
  - throwawayvibes 5y ago
    I'm the exact opposite. I enjoy the cushy FTE positions in European companies where I can automate my work away to the point where 1-2 hours of actual effort is all I need to put in. I don't find any satisfaction in doing a good job for a company not my own, and spend my focus and energy doing my hobbies, socialising, living my life in bliss. Most workaholics I knew my life were miserable people who hated their life and didn't sleep enough.

softwaredoug 5y ago

“Organic” marketing can also just mean writing content genuinely helpful to your immediate network, thus making you the go to person for a given problem area.

rahulrangaraj 5y ago

> Finding clients is basically the hardest part. Agree with this. To help freelancers get clients, I manually curate freelance jobs from more than 40+ job boards and freelance sites. [1] Most of these companies in this list are most likely to hire freelance developers/marketers/writers. It's still in beta, feel free to reach out/dm me if you would like to access. [2] [1] -> https://twitter.com/RahulrangarajR/status/1480219051578122240 https://twitter.com/RahulrangarajR/status/148021905157812224... [2] -> https://twitter.com/RahulrangarajR https://twitter.com/RahulrangarajR