{"id":1320,"date":"2015-06-24T00:47:49","date_gmt":"2015-06-24T05:47:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/?p=1320"},"modified":"2015-06-24T01:05:42","modified_gmt":"2015-06-24T06:05:42","slug":"random-thoughts-on-freelancing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/?p=1320","title":{"rendered":"Random Thoughts on Freelancing"},"content":{"rendered":"

This has been a pretty good year for me for freelancing: I’ve had a fair number of clients on the investor education business<\/a> side, as well as some editing jobs, including editing a novel-length fiction for another author — my first work of fiction (I normally work in non-fiction\/science\/health care\/personal finance). I’ve had on my to-do list for a while to revamp my various websites because I’m doing just an absolutely atrocious job of advertising myself1<\/sup>, when I realized that I’m busy enough<\/em> and there is no need for that — I have almost as much work as I can handle just coming in from my terrible advertising and excellent word-of-mouth. This is my second-best year ever for freelancing, and though the year is only half over I’m on track to quadruple the average of the last three years. The only better year involved a single intensive project versus a bunch of smaller jobs. <\/p>\n

But despite doing fairly well on a few different freelance projects, I am nowhere near the point where I would feel comfortable quitting my job and going full-time freelance<\/a>. And I don’t think I will ever get to that point: I like <\/em>having a steady job with benefits (and I like working in the not-for-profit sector even if I could make more freelancing or in for-profit). And with that realization in mind, I think it’s maybe time to slow down — another big reason I keep trying to not get myself worked up to creating a course for beginners to investing\/planning\/etc. <\/p>\n

I’ve also had freelancing on my mind because I’ve been stuck trying to complete an interview for a really great person who does not deserve to have me sitting on her deadline for the past few months. The question that’s been holding up the works is fairly simple: “What advice would you give PhD students today [about preparing for non-academic jobs]?” And I wrote a pretty decent few paragraphs on expanding and honing your transferable skills by freelancing on stuff. And then I second-guessed that: how realistic is that advice, how good is it? Will risking burnout in grad school (or complications if they go over the typical 10-hour-per-week cap on external work) actually help grad students as advice? How repeatable would my freelancing experiences be? I mean, I think I’m pretty good at what I do, and I’m well-rounded so there are lots of things under that umbrella, which leads to a number of things I can do on a part-time basis. But would most grad students be able to devote so little time to rounding up business that it made part-time freelancing worthwhile?<\/p>\n

This was kind of driven home for me by a few recent posts by Robb over at B&E, including this one on multiple income streams<\/a> where he ends with this bit: “You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be surprised how quickly you can accomplish your goals when you can earn an extra $1,000 or more per month.” Well yes, a ~20% raise for the average person would accomplish goals faster. But how realistic is $1k\/mo in freelance income? IMHO, not at all. Look, my best year ever didn’t even hit half <\/em>of that on average. Yes, I made a fair bit more than that in my busiest two months — but I could not have kept up that pace for a full year, I would have burned out — let alone being able to keep scaring up that kind of work. <\/p>\n

He’s partly helped by not having<\/a> the soul-destroying commute that I do: saving 10 hours a week could free up a lot of consulting time. He’s partly helped by his wife: add a working spouse (as is the case for many<\/a>) and he’d have to do more housework and have less free time to work side projects. He also has a really steady 9-5 job, whereas I have trouble scheduling work far in advance because I don’t know when the shit will hit the fan (but then I get lieu days<\/a> to freelance after it does). But he’s so far up in the stratosphere of freelance writing (where people come to him for jobs, and where he pulls in an average family’s full salary in blog income) that I’m afraid he may be losing perspective — most people are not <\/em>in the position to make that level of side income2<\/sup>, and that’s assuming that they have marketable skills that are amenable to part-time side income in the first place. <\/p>\n

A thousand dollars a month doesn’t sound too hard, on the surface: if you bill at $60\/hr (but actually earn closer to $30\/hr after under-bidding on projects and doing development work and fiddling with your website and Linkedin profile), then you only need to work about 17 billable hours each month. That’s like four hours a week; even after it ends up doubling with all the unpaid work that surrounds freelancing, you’re still only out one of your weekend days each week. Of course, $60\/hr is for pretty specialized work, which is kind of hard to find and may require like graduate degrees or something. Freelance writing pays more like $0.50\/word if you’re lucky, maybe $0.10\/word if you’re not. No problem, you’re thinking, you might be able to hammer out 1,000 words in about two hours if you’re a fast writer. Two of those a month and you’d hit that $1k target with two weeks off to yourself. Of course, only people who are already famous can hammer out a 2-hour blog post and get paid $500 for it — most3<\/sup> freelance writers and most assignments will require that you do research, and interview experts, and go back and forth with your editor to polish it, which can bring your hourly rate way down. Plus you’ll have to draft and send like 20 proposals to editors for each assignment you actually land, which is hours out of your life you don’t get paid for at all. A few sites<\/a> peg basic copyediting at about $30\/hr — but go to the self-publishing sites and you’ll see authors claim they don’t pay over $20\/hr (along with ads from hungry part-time editors willing to low-ball). <\/p>\n

So with business development, you’re probably talking 8-10 hours per week to hit that expectation if you have some marketable skills but aren’t a super-specialized professional. If you don’t have a portfolio or a lot of skills and are just grinding away at things like fiverr jobs or brainmass<\/a>, you’re talking more like 20 hours per week, which I don’t think is something to advise most people to expect. <\/p>\n

What, then, is <\/em>a reasonable expectation of what working freelance can do for you? I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m<\/em> way under my potential4,5<\/sup>. I believe <\/em>that I’m well above the median in terms of freelancers who work full-time day jobs, at least in specialized skills if not in billable hours, which means most should not expect to break even the $500\/mo point. But maybe my self-image is all wrong and the only reason I took issue with the B&E estimate is because I’m actually just unsuccessful. How much is a reasonable amount of work for the average person before burnout threatens? Again, I’ve personally prided myself on my stamina, but I lose a lot of time to other parts of my life — a young, single person with no commute could rock side income (but then is that typical\/average?). Is ~10 hours\/week sustainable if your commute is more reasonable? I don’t know what to suggest, which leads me back to part of why I’m stuck on that interview.<\/p>\n

However, the main point may still apply: freelancing may be a good way to build transferable skills and improve your finances. Most Canadians struggle to save even a few thousand dollars per year, so making even $250\/mo in a more realistic freelancing expectation could really beef up those retirement savings. <\/p>\n

As for me? I think I’ll move updating my websites and profiles back down to the bottom of the to-do list.<\/p>\n

1. I mean, I earned my American Medical Writers’ Association certificate two years ago and still haven’t gotten around to putting that fact up anywhere — in fact no where do I actually advertise that I do editing work, it’s all been thanks to word-of-mouth. And my CV\/bio is just a disgrace.
\n2. And of course, Michael James was ahead of me again to that idea, as you can see in the comments section at B&E.
\n3. Look at me, talking like I’ve had any kind of success in this field at all (I haven’t), or talked to more than two people who have (I haven’t).
\n4. Well, I know that I am: I charge almost half of what many money coaches charge, which I justify by focusing on education and making my clients work for themselves — I do less for them, at the end of the day, so it ends up being what I consider exceptionally fair, which makes me feel good as a service provider.
\n5. Also, I know that I am: I spent a lot of time writing the book last year, and this year on pro bono work for the library<\/a> as well as promoting the book and doing interviews — all time that I could have instead dedicated to making money by freelancing.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This has been a pretty good year for me for freelancing: I’ve had a fair number of clients on the investor education business side, as well as some editing jobs, including editing a novel-length fiction for another author — my first work of fiction (I normally work in non-fiction\/science\/health care\/personal finance). I’ve had on my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}