To ask about your freelance journey?

[WackyRacers]

It’s something I am very seriously considering. I have two secondary school kids. Mortgage will be paid off soon. Partner supportive of plan and earns enough to carry the load for as long as needed.

Clients would either be big corporates or small tech firms. Would offer a mix of consulting and training. Possible fractional work/retainers.

I have a network and reputation in the space.

Please tell me your experiences? I’m craving freedom, more interesting work and a rest from office politics. I don’t mind a drop in income and I know they’ll be bad bits and loads of admin.

@PegDope I’m sorry that sounds rough. I was a totally single parent for 6 years so I get the responsibility for everything’ drain.

I never switch off from current job anyway :-(

@Cerialkiller My sector is specialized consulting, with the client base being HR or HRtech companies.

So feels really different to creative freelancers whose work is more project bound.

@WackyRacers what impact does AI or will it have on your sector because that is key. All of the other issues are balanced out by positivists and as long as you go in with your eyes open about them perfectly manageable

but AI is the one factor that is massively hitting I think freelance work across sectors where companies are tightening budgets etc

how can it be so low for the work you are doing?
i m charging 250/hr on a consultation basis package. I have 20yrs expertise

edited to say I am an interior architect

I would also advise being aware of your hourly rate, even if you don't charge that way. If you don't you will end up effectively working for free
Work out how much you will be getting in pure profit once you have taken out tax and any other costs
A regular client asked me to do something last week and when I told them what I would charge they said they had someone cheaper - I said they should use that person.
Its very tempting, especially when you start out to think that working cheaply or eeven for free will lead to other business but it rarely does
I don't move my rates AT ALL but I am well established
Its really important to know your value
Also beware of people meeting you to discuss a job and picking your brains and then never actually using you, I have a policy of one 30 minute meeting and then people pay for my time - I get the agreement for this in writing as well

I have been set-employed for quite a while but usually I also keep a part-time job as an employee to make sure I have regular income coming in.

However I hated my last part-time role and left it after 3 years when I raised a grievance against my manager and they paid me off...

I much preferred the freedom of being self-employed and not having to deal with constant pointless meetings and office politics.

I also have a long term health condition and I find it much easier to manage it if I can set my own hours and work from home most of the time.

If your mortgage is almost paid off and your husband can help them I would definitely give freelancing a try.

I'm essetially a subcontractor, not a consultant. I would never do any work for anyone if I charged 250 an hour! Im struggling to imagine any CAD monkey (what i am) making that even for the big London companies.

I also do a lot of work as part of the design process so i need to be priced to fit within the design fees for the landscaping company. They may charge a client £650 for a design (usually we work on projects in the 30-50k range) and more then half of that will go to me.

The design industry is not well paid generally. There are companies in Bali who do what I do and can undercut me. If it makes you feel better, Im making twice the hourly rate i made working for someone else, without the hassel of a commute or fixed hours. Plus i love my job!

I do occasionally do private design work but there are plenty of designers around and not enough technical/building staff so I fill the niche that needs filling.

If you need some 3D visuals let me know!

@Tiswa part of my expertise is AI implementation so a positive one! 😃

i m charging 250/hr on a consultation basis package

How many hours do you bill per month? Per annum?

This indicates the fundamental difference between types of freelance work. In my world, the freelancer does not set the rate. The company does. You decide whether or not to accept it.

Pros: the freedom to work your own hours and not be caught up in company bureaucracy. (Though the reality is that you often feel the need to say yes to every job offered as you don’t know when the next work will come along.) The control you have over the work you do. Being able to work from home or from other places, saving on commuting costs.
Cons: No holiday pay, no sick pay, no pension contributions, no regularity of payment.

I have been freelance for almost twenty years and though I don’t regret it, at times it has been very stressful. As I get older I miss the security of a salaried job and all the accompanying benefits. I would also say that many industries have suffered downturns recently so make sure the work is there before you take the plunge.

Good luck!

I agree with all this. It is lonely. There is loads of unpaid work. I recently deleted about 100 emails from a well known company that 'employed' me twice, and demanded I attend endless meetings but then paid me nothing because in the end they decided not to go ahead with those projects. They were all salaried as they sat around in those meetings, droning on. But I was not, as I was yet to be formally engaged by them. And because they were a not-for-profit, they had a fixed fee system. Complete time wasters.

Now I factor some of that unpaid work into my hourly or daily rates and only work for one reliable not-for-profit as I can't afford the unpaid time-wasting.

Your rates should be at very least 50% more than daily salaried rates. Double, if you can command this - or more. This covers lack of employer pension contribution, sick pay, holiday pay and all those unpaid hours where you chat with prospective clients or reply to endless emails about the project. I have a sliding scale of lower charge for small companies or very reliable returning clients, and higher fees for big companies or projects that make my heart sink.

If you want you can factor a cost in to actively reflect this. E.g. Project Management or Admin fee to include up to 3 hours of email and phone communication and 6 hours of Zoom calls or F2F meetings. After that, there will be a further admin charge. This stops people feeling they can call you any time night or day on a fixed fee. be very clear on how many hours your initial project fee covers. Some people think you should be on call for the next two years for a basic one-off fee.

Your best clients are existing ones and word of mouth referrals. I don't advertise. I rely on word of mouth and repeat work. This means I get clients I can rely on.

Find your USP. I noticed in my profession loads of freelancers take ages to complete a simple project. Their timelines are glacial. So I make it a selling point that I have only one client at a time and they get my undivided attention. I book a project in sometimes months in advance and then turn it around within a week - two max if it is bigger. That is easy to do in my line of work (so I have no idea why no one else seems to do it) but it may not be in yours.

This is good advice too. I offer a 15 minute free consultation meeting at the start. It often over runs to 30 mins. If it overruns to an hour, I usually incharge for that within the billable hours of the job.

Don't work cheaply but price realistically. I have a friend who is trying to get into what I do. She is experienced but she is very slow at getting back to clients and then charges almost double what I do. Unsurprisingly, she doesn't have many clients and she does spend unpaid hours touting for them. I'd rather charge less and get lots of work, bringing in a weekly amount that I am happy with.

Can you please DM me your email address.

Your rates should be at very least 50% more than daily salaried rates. Double, if you can command this - or more.

This would be laughable in my industry. You would get no work. Freelancers earn less than salaried employees.

Yes, this is very true. I used to be a journalist (I’m not now). Freelance rates in journalism are pitifully low and if you ask for more you’re usually told there is no more budget. Consultancy at massive hourly rates isn’t really a thing in journalism, neither is billing by hour. What I do now, I set my rates, but I adjust them depending on whether I’m working for a nonprofit or a large corporate. I still get pushback and negotiation a fair amount of the time.

Ive PMed you. The system blocked the first messages with the details so sorry for the flurry of notifications!

Same in design, its woefully underpaid anyway unless you own the company or are a famous designer. I used to work for the best known landscaper in my (weathy) area and worked for £15 an hour. I have a design degree and over 10 years of techinical experience in similar roles. They acted like they were doing me a favour emplying me. I was the only candidate!

I worked for years freelance in the creative industry, got a salaried job a year or so ago and I will never let it go. I loved the freedom of freelance and being able to choose only the projects I wanted, but the constant worry about everything else unrelated to the core job (accounting, marketing, networking, insurance etc) was a total drag, I felt stressed 24/7, having to worry about my own sick pay, holidays etc.
there’s some projects I hate doing for work now, but the being able to leave all my worries at my desk, no stress about any paperwork stuff and the benefits that come with the job, I don’t miss full time freelance at all, I pick up a job here and there now, but I couldn’t go back to full time. Sorry that’s such a downer of a post but it can be very stressful

It's just terminology. Freelance, self employed, consultancy - call it what you like, we're all subcontracting. I'm also a specialist HR Consultant.

So a low day rate in my sector would be £600 a day, rising to £1500-2000, although those jobs would be few and far between. So I’d need about 10 days work a month on average to get close to current salary. So I’m thinking basically half paid work, half marketing, email, admin, etc

I know that rate is realistic from knowing orher freelancers in the industry, it’s just getting the work in that worries me.

Isolation doesn’t bother me too much. I have loads of industry friends to call for a chat/peer networking.

It’s just knowing if I’d be successful or not!

You wont know until you try. The hardest is the first step to take.
it took me 20yrs to set up my limited company after a professional career, breakdown and cancer, a move and a lot of procrastinating 😆.
I earn less now as I re invest everything in my company to build a healthy one and to grow it, but i wouldnt go back. It makes me so happy to be my own boss, to do things on my own terms.
and it works. I have a trusted team of suppliers and my clients are happy.

i would say go for it. We only have one life!

@WackyRacers how easy would it be to go back if you didn’t like it?

@Tiswa to my current salary - hard as I’m overpaid! But to an ok salary - probably not too hard. Depends on economy but I’ve never struggled to land roles.

Went freelance when I was made redundant in 2018, and it's been all positive although, as others have said, you'll need to be your own admin/PR/payroll/IT departments and you won't get paid for any of that. What I missed the most initially was having an IT person available, but since Covid all tech is 'dummy'-friendly so that need is gone. But I never enjoyed working in an office and especially never enjoyed getting up at 5 to commute, so while wfh was an immediate improvement for me, it might not be for a more sociable person. I knew someone many years ago who wfh before it was a thing; he stuck it out for maybe six months and then was just too lonely, so he quit his job and bought a pub.