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Freelance – Love / Hate
28.11.11
I saw a tweet today about how working freelance is the Holy Grail. This is how I feel about it.
I’ve been freelance now for over a year. I love it and hate it at the same time. I’ve been lucky in that I have worked on some big projects so the need to be actively searching for work wasn’t so great. It’s only really the last couple of months I have needed to start planning ahead and getting work in for myself as these larger projects draw to a close.
It’s certainly not easy, at least it’s something I am finding to be the case.
I may be unlucky. Work is put off until the new year or the client went elsewhere. It’s just very frustrating. But I guess that is a pitfall of freelance.
I’ve made an effort to get to know Web agencies. Certainly cannot harm to be talking to like minded people and if some work comes my way, even better. I’ve also been looking at freelance job sites. Now a job is a job, there are designers/developers out there just starting up and we know money is tight but I saw this advert posted www.freelancers.net/project/20429.
£80 for a full HTML site? Really?
Now as I said earlier, a job is a job but it’s a trend I am seeing more and more of. You provide us with the moon on a stick and we’ll pay you a tenth of what it’s probably worth.
For me, there is a lack of a proper Freelance job site. There are loads out there but majority of them seem to be low end budgets for a lot of work. However one site that I have seen go live quite recently was needhq.com/ It’s simple and once it gets busier, I see it being a great resource for freelancers looking for work and companies looking for freelancers.
I always thought freelance would be fun. I’d be able to work when I wanted. It’s true, it is fun and my working day can vary but by God is it hard when you are up against it.
It comes down to cash at the end of the day. We work to pay bills and live. When money isn’t coming in, its both worrying, stressful and can make you angry, especially if you’ve done the work and not seen the dough.
I’m sure, infact I’m certain I’m not alone in this.
Ideally I want to carry on freelancing. I’ve learnt so much working with the people I have worked with. I do enjoy it. I’ve built up a great network of friends and want it to grow. But the job should come with a health warning.
5 thoughts on “Freelance – Love / Hate”
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I know what you mean. The thing about freelance is that if it’s not one extreme (less money, not enough work) it’s the other extreme of enough money but too much time working and not enough life! I think there’s a lot of work going around it’s just not evenly distributed.
That Need site looks like a brilliant idea, and we definitely need these kinds of sites to help build networks based on reputation. The problem is that there are too many freelancers and companies going around who are happy to be unreliable and rip people off. I’m hoping that your skills and reliability pay off for you, I’ll definitely keep an eye open for good freelance jobs and pass your name on to anyone looking for a front ender
Thanks Laura for the reply and the eye open.
You are right about the extremes. Would be nice to find a happy medium.
Hello mate – I thought I would stick me ore in and talk about my experience.
I have only been freelancing on a full-time basis for six months and I have only managed to find two decent projects, you know….enough to pay the mortgage. Anyway, things are starting to pick up ever since I joined freelance switch(which you already know) and I have established a good working relationship with a couple of US web companies doing just design work.
But it has been really hard! I was very close to jacking it all in and going back to a permanent role. But I am sure things will pick up as I get more established.
One thing I have been doing is writing tutorials for the web designer mag and more recently the web design tuts plus blog. I have also partnered up with a developer and we are almost ready to start selling on themeforest. So there is two ideas for ya fella?
Speak laters dude!
Cheers for the links Neil. Glad to hear things are picking up. I’d like to find a developer girlfriend. I’d be made then.
In a few years of freelancing I’ve found every year things do slow right down before Christmas, and take a while to reboot in January. If I was smarter I’d tell you I planned ahead for this, but who ever really does that?
Need looks promising, perhaps like a UK version of https://tinyproj.com which posts jobs with some actual sane pricing involved. There’s often interesting looking work on http://uk.authenticjobs.com.
Venture too far into the majority of job boards though and it’s no wonder talented people despair at the demands versus price you see. Taking work on there for peanuts only hurts the industry and forces prices down for everyone.
Getting even one or two ‘good’ clients who appreciate your worth, and hanging on to them for dear life is what has kept me going, but they are hard to find. Hopefully more sensible job board services will emerge as more people get burnt by getting exactly what they pay for on eLance – crap work.