

4 Things I Learned the Hard Way While Freelancing - gedrap
http://blog.gedrap.me/blog/2014/05/19/4-things-i-learned-the-hard-way-while-freelancing/

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icambron
> P.S. Everyone is telling you to charge the double you are charging now. Yes,
> do it. Just do it. You have no idea how underpaid you are (and will cry once
> you realise).

This is really, really good advice. Seriously, _you are not charging enough_.
If you aren't being told "no, that's too much" by a hefty fraction of your
potential clients, you are almost certainly leaving money on the table. Up
your price until you're being told no by most people. You _want_ people to
think twice about whether they can afford you.

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rrradical
To me this would make sense if I had a large network of potential clients, but
since I'm just starting out, I find it hard to be that picky. I'm planning on
raising my price as I build up a body of work. Is that a sound plan?

~~~
icambron
Yes, you need a pipeline to pull this off, but maybe not as big of one as you
think. Some advice:

* Be OK being idle sometimes. If you double your prices and get 2/3 the work, you're way ahead. And that time isn't wasted; use it to network, to have fun side projects, to learn new stuff, to relax on the beach.

* Take bigger jobs so you can spend less time hunting.

* Prefer referenceable clients to a big portfolio. If a prospective client can call a past client and get a rave review, that's gold. Unfortunately, that means you may have to be more picky about who you take on, which works against your price bottom line.

* Move up the value chain as hard as you can. Learn everything you need to do that. Your goal is to move from "what do I code next, boss?", to being that coder, but also an architect, a project manager, a trusted advisor, an expert on product building, a UX designer, etc. Assuming you're junior, that stuff takes time to learn, so don't fake-it-til-you-make-it and it's OK to start off as a coder-for-hire. My point is just that's where you want to expand to, as opposed to adding incrementally to your portfolio. If you're senior, well, that's what makes you awesome, so position yourself accordingly.

* Other, more senior, contractors are really good lead-gen. Work with them on one project and prove your worth, and they'll fill your pipeline for you, either by passing along work they can't take on or by bringing you into larger jobs. Your network isn't just your clients.

* If it's possible, consider moving to somewhere more target-rich. Edit: now that I've looked you up, I see you're also in Cambridge; they're may be better places to find work, but I don't know them. I should disclaim, though, that I know next to nothing about the games business.

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rrradical
Thanks, this is helpful. My background is in games, but I have a wider array
of skills; I guess I just need to learn to position them as a service I can
provide to solve a company's problems.

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jseliger
This isn't a list of N things
([http://paulgraham.com/nthings.html](http://paulgraham.com/nthings.html)),
but I wrote about another essential, underestimated aspect of consulting:
understanding when you've been hired and what potential clients will do to
take advantage of perceived weakness:
[http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/how-i-learned-
about...](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/how-i-learned-about-
assertiveness-and-reality-from-being-a-consultant) .

~~~
gedrap
Good points! I noticed similar trend, mainly with non-paying (or paying super-
late clients). At the very beginning, I tried to be very understanding and
find excuses for them (shit happens, you know). But I got screwed over for
being so naive and decided to be stricter next time something similar happens
(I was thinking about 2 weeks and no money - no work from then). But I got
better at recognising potential trouble-clients and luckily, haven't had to do
that :)

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kunstmord
I worked as a free-lance programmer 'on retainer' for a big project (I'd do
work for them once a month or so). It's never too early to discuss what will
happen when you want to quit. I didn't do that, and after being more and more
bored with the work, less and less excited about the pay and the whole
project, I still spent more time working for them than would have been deemed
reasonable, because there was no way to cleanly break off this work
relationship according to a predefined set of rules. It worked out OK in the
end, but knowing that you can stop your free-lance work anytime you want
(assuming you don't owe anything and the client doesn't owe you anything) and
pursue other projects makes it a lot less stressful in some cases.

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noir_lord
I love the pomodoro technique mostly because it reminds me to remove external
distractions, so much so that I built my own tool for it.

[http://i.imgur.com/BxeyJF8.png](http://i.imgur.com/BxeyJF8.png) (as lots of
them don't let you alter periods of time, sound notifications etc) with a
simple task list (I was improving my JS skills so I wrote the clock timer as a
jquery plugin and the interface with knockout.js, a useful little exercise).

Itch scratching but I use it every day :)

~~~
gedrap
Personally I use this Android app
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.phlam.andr...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.phlam.android.clockworktomato)

Planning to built a Pomodoro clock using Arduino... Some day :) I know there
is a bunch of them available but hey nothing is more fun than using a device
built by yourself.

~~~
noir_lord
I've used that and it's really well written, issues I had though where I work
with headphones in (even at home) so I often didn't hear the tablet/phone
where I can chuck mine on a virtualdesktop off screen and just listen for the
notification noise (it also does desktop notifications on chrome).

An arduino one with a nice dot lcd and some kind of logging would be a kickass
little project though, I might steal that as an idea :D

