
Lessons from Freelancing - frouge
http://joelklettke.com/freelancing-2-years-230000-and-9-big-lessons-later/
======
edw519
Funny how this made it to #1 on Hacker News only to get bashed. It falls into
the class:

    
    
      1. I did something.
      2. I want to share my experience with you.
      3. This is about what I DID, not what I THINK.
      4. Take from this what you want.
      5. Hope it helps.
    

I'm a programmer, not a writer, so this advice isn't a perfect fit for me, but
it's pretty damn close.

If one good idea from a 5 minute read is gold, then this post is platinum.
Excellent advice, even more valuable because it comes from hard earned
experience.

Thanks Joel for the bulletin board material. Keep it coming.

~~~
justinzollars
HN community also bashed Dropbox when it was new.

~~~
pyre
... and Slashdot bashed the iPod.

~~~
drivers99
CmdrTaco / Rob Malda criticized it famously, but it appears the comments were
pretty supportive.[1]

[1] [http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-
ip...](http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ipod)

------
BozeWolf
Im sorry to say: this is a piece of rubbish. Lots of open doors.. and lots of
bold statements. Im sure this only made it to HN because the headline contains
a large figure. And thats what the author intended to do.

"Yes, you can work in your underwear, wake up at 11:00pm and drink beer all
day if you want to.

But you shouldn’t."

YES YOU SHOULD. But not every day and only at the right moments. It depends on
what you think of what is important. What is worth more to you. Your undies,
or a pay check.

Trust your gut feeling and do networking. And if your gut feeling sucks and
you think you are bad at networking... know how to deal with it or stop
freelancing. You cannot apply a 'guide' like this to yourself. There are many
many examples of successful (=happy?) people who do not apply this guide to
their selves. Like me. I'm quite successful and happy! And do work in my
underwear sometimes. And like to go kitesurfing in the middle of the week (and
work my ass off in the weekend if necessary). I can make more money if I want
to, but I dont. I prefer having fun, broaden my mind and sure do enjoy the
freedom of being a freelancer!

~~~
joelklettke
Author here - new to HackerNews, so forgive me if I stink of "n00b".

You are absolutely right in that your freelance experience might differ from
mine - and I did try to say at the end of the piece that money is just one
factor. If you can operate well on a job and work in your underwear (and not
feel like a sub-human after 3 days), power to you - DO IT!

There's room for disagreement and I'm not trying to run anyone else's
freelance life - just share what's worked for me.

These are MY lessons. They're not meant to be absolutes for anybody. I
couldn't have dreamed this would wind up on Hacker News - I wrote it for my
(small) community and I'm thrilled to see it get traction, but I didn't try to
game any system and get on here.

~~~
pauljarvis
Welcome to HN - where the trolls are loud and proud...

~~~
TrevorJ
I don't necessarily think this is accurate. I've observed a strong and useful
pattern here where posts are deconstructed in the comments in a logical
fashion which I believe is, and should be seen as constructive.

Even if you come down strongly on one side or the other of a topic, it's a
good discipline to look for logical weaknesses, edge cases and other potential
holes in any given argument.

HN is great for this because for any given post you can typically find well
thought out rebuttals which may or may not sway your opinion, but will in many
cases be instructive in the very least.

Of course, the other option is to simply attack the commenter directly and
fail to learn anything at all.

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thisisit
One thing which really stood out for me was about focus. Trying too many
things at once - write a blog, freelancing, create a source might pull you in
so many directions that achieving the first dream might become difficult.

What really does interest me though is - talk about subcontractors. This is
one aspect I have been struggling on a bit. how does one find good
subcontractors or outsource work properly.

~~~
maratd
> how does one find good subcontractors or outsource work properly.

If you do that, you're not a freelancer ... you're an agency. Different
conversation.

~~~
thisisit
yea maybe but then if you look at his work, he does talk about sub-
contracting, so does that make him an agency of sorts? Then where does
freelancing come in. Just trying to understand that part.

~~~
joelklettke
Happy to clear this up:

I did subcontract a very small portion of work, which I did eliminate from the
number I crunched. On the whole, it contributed less than $10,000 to the
total, and as I mentioned, the time I invested trying to make it work actually
made it such that I more or less came out even, but not at a profit.

Right now, I'm handling all the work I'm sent personally. I do plan to scale
up in the future, at which point, I don't think it would be fair to call
myself "freelance" any more.

------
robertlagrant
Here's my lesson: you can think it's "eek out" and still make that much money
as a writer these days. Advertising is hilarious!

~~~
ppod
Also, random bold, underline and italics all over the place.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Hey - it's copywriting.

 _EXPECT CAPITAL LETTERS!_

I think it makes some good points, especially about marketing. (See also EL
James, who is now a multi-millionaire because of a very clever marketing
campaign, and certainly not because of her literary ability.)

I also think the fact that it's all about marketing and not ability is kind of
sad. And the fact that it's hard hard hard to make $$$$ doing cool artistic
work that isn't about selling stupid shit for someone else is even sadder.

But still. There we are.

------
mmcconnell1618
Freelancing is a job just like any other except that you're wearing more hats
so you have the opportunity to be compensated at higher rates. In a corporate
job you're giving up potential income because other team players are doing the
marketing, accounting, networking.

If you really want to wake up every day at 11pm and drink beer all day you
have to separate income from hours worked. A really successful freelancer
might be able to increase project/hourly rates to the point where they don't
need to work that often but residual/passive income is a better long term
strategy. Create technology and license it, create copyrighted materials and
publish, write a song and collect royalties, purchase income generating real
estate and find someone to manage it.

------
serve_yay
Hmm, I had thought the upside of freelancing was to make more money, at the
expense of doing all the stuff listed here. The same amount of money plus all
that is not really an appealing prospect. Though I suppose you could argue
it's a better position overall because your name is "in the market" so to
speak. But for me I would feel dumb if I busted my ass a lot harder than I do
now just to make the same money.

~~~
ghaff
YMMV of course but, no, by and large freelancers (freelance writers at any
rate) don't generally make more money than those who have more or less
equivalent jobs at companies. They're either freelancers because that's
increasingly the way markets are organized (good full-time paid gigs are
relatively hard to come by) or they just like being their own boss.

~~~
serve_yay
Sure, definitely understandable. Just seems like so much extra work on top of
your work-work, though.

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tptacek
"Barely eek out a living" is my favorite malapropism of 2015. "Eek! A living!"

Also: someone did get a home run from a bunt, in MLB no less.

~~~
papercrane
Technically nobody in the MLB has ever gotten a home run on a bunt. Steven
Souza Jr rounded the bases on a bunt, but that was a bunt single, then
advanced three bases on two errors.

[http://www.baseball-
reference.com/boxes/WAS/WAS201506170.sht...](http://www.baseball-
reference.com/boxes/WAS/WAS201506170.shtml)

~~~
thoman23
I'm shocked that the Phillies were not involved.

------
keithy
Lots of great insights in this article! I especially liked the part where he
advises us to treat freelancing as a business.

~~~
k-mcgrady
Surprised anyone freelancing would need that advice in the first place...

~~~
thibaut_barrere
Data point: most freelancers I've been coaching during the last years do /not/
realize they are running a real business. It usually takes a life changing
event (birth, or a big tax issue) for them to change their way of doing it, if
this changes at all.

~~~
ghaff
Based on various people I've known, that's a great if surprising point. It's
actually pretty easy for many to just sort of drift along on the edge for a
long time and essentially pretend that everything is good--until it's not.
Maybe the client that's 50% of their business up and leaves for whatever
reason or, as you say, something happens in their life that makes no savings
and no real plan suddenly untenable.

------
mparramon
For some more down-to earth lessons from freelancing, check my post on the
topic:

[http://www.developingandrails.com/2015/06/freelancing-
with-f...](http://www.developingandrails.com/2015/06/freelancing-with-
fiverr.html)

~~~
kirk21
Interesting, some similar lessons like here:
[https://medium.com/@RecurVoice/how-i-
made-100k-freelancing-a...](https://medium.com/@RecurVoice/how-i-
made-100k-freelancing-and-absolutely-loved-it-ebbf8791707a)

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gorachel007
I enjoyed this post, and it's not like we can say "you made that up" or
"you're just trying to get fake Internet points" because it's been tried and
tested. Joel's telling us exactly what he did and his awesome results. Thanks
for sharing!

~~~
joelklettke
Cheers and thank you, Rachel :)

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chillingeffect
Nicely written and inspiring. I like how it shares his failures and how he
recovered from them, putting the needle back on the record. I also like it how
it defines success to the individual with only comparing to other people for
inspiration but not validation.

~~~
joelklettke
Thank you very much for the kind words. There are more failures I could have
mentioned - failures to properly qualify clients, failures in overbooking,
failures in trying to scale up, failures in time management..

But at the risk of running a cliche, if I'm not failing, I'm not learning. And
that's all this post is - sharing what I've learned.

Appreciate your kind response :)

------
kirk21
Prefer these lessons: How I made 100k freelancing and absolutely loved it

[https://medium.com/@RecurVoice/how-i-
made-100k-freelancing-a...](https://medium.com/@RecurVoice/how-i-
made-100k-freelancing-and-absolutely-loved-it-ebbf8791707a)

