Being a Freelancer: Part 1 - The Wannabe Perception

Some time ago I stumbled across this page from Wikipedia, dedicated to the term freelancer. Here’s a quote from that page:

The term “freelance” was first coined by Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) in his well-known historical romance Ivanhoe to describe a “medieval mercenary warrior”.

Also according to Wikipedia:

A mercenary is a person who takes part in an armed conflict who is not a national or a party to the conflict and “is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party”.

If you think about it, the general perception of what freelancing is about hasn’t changed much. Sure, the people actually doing freelance work or the people that have experience working with freelancers might have a different view (the right one, if you ask me). But there are still a lot of misconceptions about what freelancing is about.

It’s been over a year now since I worked as freelance web designer, so what I would like to do in this post is to share some of my experience and also try to bust a couple of myths (I’ll only try to address the most common misconceptions) about freelancing. Hopefully, this article will change some people’s perception of what freelancing is really about.

The wannabe perception

“Freelancing is dangerous! What if I can’t find any projects?”

Sure, freelancing is not something that you should do without a safety net, especially if you have a low tolerance to stress. For a begginer freelancer, a safety net usually means a couple of months of freelancing “on the side”, with the good and the bad. It can also mean some cash put aside for rainy days, but that’s rarely the case.

At the same time, I’ve always thought that one should take some chances in life. Think about all the success stories that you heard about lately. Those people took a chance (or maybe more) and they succeed. Think about Steve Jobs. If you ask me, the risk of missing an opportunity is much bigger than the risk of failure.

“Freelancing means being your own boss. How cool is that!”

It’s pretty cool, I’ll give you that, but don’t think for a minute that it’s easy. What most people don’t know is that freelancers usually work twice as hard as employees. If you don’t agree with me, cause you work your ass off on your day job, then you have my respect! But hey, I really think you should ask for a big raise. On the other hand, if you’re like 75% of employees, then you probably only work 50% of those 8h you keep whining about. Come on, I’ve been there myself!

And another thing: a good freelancer will always try to improve his skills, to be better, faster, stronger. He will also look for ways to work less and earn more, by generating other income sources. But until then, he doesn’t have that certainty that the majority of employees have. He’s got to be tenacious!

“He’s a freelancer, he makes tons of money!” or “He’s a freelancer, he’s hardly making any money!”

When it comes to making money as a freelancer, you have to deal with highs and lows. But the two statements above are rarely true. And when they are true, it usually doesn’t have anything to do with being a freelancer or not. It’s about an idea, determination, thinking outside the box or it’s about being lazy, being self-sufficient, not thinking outside the box.

What I can tell you for sure (from my own experience) is that each month I usually make twice as much money as I did on my last day job. But that doesn’t make me a rich dude! Freelancing also means expenses, something most people forget to take into account (or ignore) when starting to freelance. But more about freelancing expenses in a future post.

Stay tuned for Being a Freelancer: Part 2 - The Client Perception.