48
How does freelancing work these days?
(lemm.ee)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
48 points (96.2% liked)
No Stupid Questions
36194 readers
833 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Just my experience, but I freelance about 20 hrs/wk for the last 5 years. I'm a programmer and I set up a profile on a freelancing platform and basically at this point, when my hours are running low, I start responding to requests for interview from prospective employers.
I'm not particularly niche, or cheap, though probably a little under market rate in the US, but I have not had much trouble getting jobs. Don't lower your rate to match what other freelancers are advertising! I don't get every job I interview for, but I just keep interviewing until I get one.
The best jobs have been "we have something working but it has bugs and needs a new feature". If they are happy, it can turn into a few hours a week or more as there is always more to do. The code is bad and most of the skill is putting up with it and working conservatively (because there's no spec or unit tests), and not cursing at actual sentient beings.
I have interviewed with agencies, but honestly it's just another layer between you and the client and they are taking a cut and messing up communication. None of them have mentioned benefits, lol.
I'm paid hourly. In the beginning, I did a couple one-price jobs and demos, but if you are confident and clear about what you can do for the client in their current predicament you probably don't need to do that. Those gigs didn't lead to anything directly but maybe they did add to my hours-worked stats in the platform.
The key is responsiveness as I think the difficulty from the employers side is finding someone who will stick around and actually follow through. I have been overconfident and then had to drop things, it happens. At this point I'm comfortable ignoring jobs that would be too much of a reach. But in the beginning you might need to take some chances on being able to learn what you need.
The downside is I kind of long for a team where someone knows more than me sometimes. That's not bragging, I don't know much, and it's a problem with trying to level up my own skills.
I get zero benefits! And have to file my own payroll taxes! Such fun. I'm fortunate to have a partner in life with a more traditional job. I'm not sure if part time would ever give benefits though, and this work is super flexible (only one client ever has wanted regular meetings or hours), so I don't feel too dumb. In the US.
What's the freelancing platform, if you don't mind my asking? I do freelance digital marketing, content creation type stuff and that sounds ideal for when I have the odd quiet spell (like right now, as it happens!)
Upwork. Yeah I think it's perfect for filling in. If i had to earn a whole living on it I think it would be too stressful for me.
Thanks, will definitely check that out. Although no doubt as soon as I do I'll be swamped with regular client work! :-)
I love that you wrote "not cursing at actual sentient beings" . I love that.