deskthority

Times are tough, and I know a lot of people are looking for work. I used to use Odesk when I needed programmers, and they apparently are now Upwork. Maybe you have skills that someone else needs and will pay for? Free to join; I think they take like 10% of the earnings.https://www.upwork.com/i/freelancer-categories/

There are quite a few others:
https://www.toptal.com/
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245953

I started looking at reviews online for freelancing companies and the responses are abysmal.

Has anybody had good experiences with them?

A lot of people I am an acquintance with are actually working for/through toptal. So far, I've heard only good things about them. Vetting process is tough, and people generally take a few months to get prepared for it.

I've been an IT hooker for 7 years now and try to avoid any kind of middle man. There is a business networking site that's very dominant in Germany (XING) as well as an international one (LinkedIn) through which I get most of my requests. Most of the customers I work for theses days hire me directly.

Wodan wrote: ↑
There is a business networking site .... as well as an international one (LinkedIn) through which I get most of my requests. Most of the customers I work for theses days hire me directly.

I have been a member of LinkedIn for many years but I have never used it in a "freelancing" sort of way. I will look into that possibility.

alh84001 wrote: ↑
A lot of people I am an acquintance with are actually working for/through toptal. So far, I've heard only good things about them. Vetting process is tough, and people generally take a few months to get prepared for it.

Toptal is the only one that enjoys a good reputation, but I am not a programmer and it seems like they are almost exclusively in the IT sector.

Wodan wrote: ↑I've been an IT hooker for 7 years now and try to avoid any kind of middle man. There is a business networking site that's very dominant in Germany (XING) as well as an international one (LinkedIn) through which I get most of my requests. Most of the customers I work for theses days hire me directly.

Yeah, I was a merc for 12+ years (and still freelance on occasion), and the disparity between what you get when you cut out the middle man and not is almost criminal. I was handling that side for a few people, and was embarrassed by how much I made for pretty much nothing.

I was thinking about freelancing (the middle man is "$&%/!#=?*") and i see people here have experience with this kind of business. My question is; can you live with only the "freelancing income"? My fear is that with the freelancing i will not be able to generate enough of the income to fuel all the things i have going on.

IKSLM wrote: ↑I was thinking about freelancing (the middle man is "$&%/!#=?*") and i see people here have experience with this kind of business. My question is; can you live with only the "freelancing income"? My fear is that with the freelancing i will not be able to generate enough of the income to fuel all the things i have going on.

You can. I did for many years. But you have to be aware of a few things, and capable of being disciplined.

1. You have to be hyper aware of the industry. For example, I was originally a Delphi programmer. I had to see years ahead that Delphi was going out, and be aware of the signs. Then I had to reposition myself, which leads to the second point
2. You have to be willing to remake yourself. In my case, moving from a lucrative Delphi consulting to C# was not exactly easy, nor straightforward. I first reinvented myself as a Delphi -> C# guru, which let me work on my c# skills, while legitimately providing value to the client. I became quite good at it, and quite known in that niche, which leads me to the third point...
3. You have to know when it's time to move. I could have become pigeonholed in that niche. There were still people willing to pay for my expertise. But moving when I did allowed that to be a subsection on my resume, rather than the whole of my resume.
4. You have to be disciplined enough to keep a good portion back for the lean times. I tried to keep a year in savings. And I was glad when a new contract took 6 months to pay. I just lived off of that, and was able to maintain a cordial relationship with them, knowing that they would pay (a successful fortune 500 firm), even though what they were asking was truly unreasonable.
5. You have to be willing to endure the lean times, in order to make the best money. You're only worth what your last contract paid. Many people make the mistake (because of not adhering to point 4 above) of taking a contract at a cut rate in order to get money flowing in. You have to play the long game.
6. Don't burn bridges. This is good in general, but when you work by word of mouth, for yourself, with no safety net... it's gospel.
7. Stay above the fray. It's easy to get drawn into the politics you see all around you in one way or another- you can't afford that level of attachment. Do your work, present the facts, and let everyone else with tenure take care of the rest.
8. Go in as if it's your last day everyday. Because it might well be. I advised a client one time that it was too early to end my contract. They said they were sorry to let me go, and I countered with the fact that I was talking about them, not me. I would be working Monday, and they would need me, and my rates would be drastically increased because of the after work angle. They let me go. I was working Monday. And they called me Tuesday. They didn't give me the chance to ramp down, and make sure their people were in a position to take the work on. Which leads to...
9. Be confident, but not arrogant. They're bringing you in because of a particular lack. You might not know everything, but take responsibility for finding out if you don't know right then. Because that's the reason you're getting the big bucks. But you don't want to rub it into the faces of the people around you. You want to be friendly, generous, and humble to those you're working with... which leads into...
10. Make use of those around you. You might be the best architect, the best coder, with the best credentials. But if you're doing well, you're going to be in situations where you don't know the business. That's where you rely on those that you're working with, and cultivate those relationships- and the people. In exchange for their help, leave them with something. Don't be afraid that you're going to make them better than you, or give away your trade secrets. I've stayed for a lot longer than I probably would have otherwise by following this rule. When they see that others are productive around you, and that that you're contributing to the enterprise, your worth skyrockets beyond what they're paying you.

Those are my tips. I'm sure there are others. But you can make a living doing it. You just have to be willing to accept a lot of risk, and a lot of stressful situations (but not necessarily stress). I stopped because I can no longer accept the risk, and wanted to slow down.

HTH!

Thanks a lot for this informative writeup!

How did you start your freelancing career? By joining some related website (upwork, toptal..)? Or some other way?

Useful and great advice, chuckdee. Thanks.

IKSLM wrote: ↑Thanks a lot for this informative writeup!

How did you start your freelancing career? By joining some related website (upwork, toptal..)? Or some other way?

I started freelancing back before the proliferation of freelance sites, back during the dotcom era. I was working for a company, and had been working there for longer than I should have. One of my friends left, and started making a lot more money than I, even though he was admittedly less skilled/qualified. He put me in touch with his contracting company, and I got to know the main guy... and he sort of became my mentor. But that was still working through someone.

He advised me to (a) incorporate, and (b) start doing straight 1099 rather than w-2 in a contract. The downsides are (a) handing your own corporate taxes and withholding (got burned on that with self-employment tax... what a terrible thing), (b) handling your own benefits (having one household on an insurance plan is a guaranteed terrible time... as your rates start to skyrocket as you use it), and (c) the company is likely to try to get the people that are on their payroll better jobs.

From that, I started to look at what the other contractors do, and admittedly got lucky. I found someone who was genius level, making an insane amount of money. But he had a focus issue- he'd get the design done and the basic framework.. .then he was in the wind. he didn't like to do the things to take it to deployment and beyond. So I made a living off of keeping in touch with him, and finding out where he was. Then I'd talk to his clients, and get them to agree to get me in house to help to land the plane.

That kept me afloat for about 8 years. Then he decided to go overseas, so I went back to doing the corp-to-corp thing at various consulting firms, and even negotiated my way to direct with a couple of my assignments with them that they no longer wanted. It was during that time that I was actually able to get to what I term as the big league- working for banks in Bermuda. They paid me to live in paradise, and paid for my actual living there too. But the downside to that was that they only give work visas for two years at a time, and don't really give anything other than that, so I came back to the states.

It was a lot of stress, a lot of continually selling myself, and a lot of risk. After the downturn, and being out of work for 6 months (thanks to Bermuda, it wasn't that bad), I decided to reposition myself, and give up the big bucks in exchange for stability. But I miss it. There's a freedom to working for yourself and being the captain of your own ship. But you know what they say about captains and ships...

Interesting... you often mention "Big bucks" but i have no idea what "scale" are we talking about? For somebody 1000$ a week would be big bucks but for somebody else that number would be 10.000$...

Any insight? (if not too personal)

It ranges, by a large amount, from $35 or so, to $750+ an hour. I'm sure people have made more, but that's the highest I personally know. And that was from a published writer of reference manuals for Delphi with a long resume. That gig in Bermuda was $450/hr, and as I said, I wasn't paying for anything other than meals and other incidentals. Of course, I had to maintain my living here, so it wasn't fully profit. And managing the taxes was a job in and of itself. The amount you can make is limited only by what you can negotiate in theory, but that carries with it the fact that if they're paying hourly, unless they really need you, you're out the door as soon as possible if you negotiate a higher rate, while it might linger if the rate is not so high. And location is key- in general if you have a 9-to-5 type gig that you're right around the block from, you're probably going to make less than if you have to travel and/or relocate.

With the downturn in the economy, I'm sure that the rates are not as high as they were when I left contracting. But I haven't really looked to see.

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I'm impressed by how timely rodgersimpson's post was. If he is a spammer, that was the quickest targeted spam I've ever seen.

ohaimark wrote: ↑I'm impressed by how timely rodgersimpson's post was. If he is a spammer, that was the quickest targeted spam I've ever seen.

We should feel honored. The website is spam-worthy!

Some really great advice chuckdee. Thanks for sharing.

livingspeedbump wrote: ↑Some really great advice chuckdee. Thanks for sharing.

Not a problem at all... always glad to help, so if you have any questions, feel free to post them or PM them.