Freelancer Questions

[lostprophetpunk]

Calling all freelancers!

 

I have a college project in which I have to ask freelancers some questions and then evauluate it. So I was wondering if you could help me out by replying to this topic with the answers the following questions.

 

This is for the main research part of the project, so I would be pleased if any freelancers could answer the questions.

 

1. Being a freelancer, you would have to find your own work. How would you personally go and find work?

2. Can you afford to live on freelancer wages alone? If not then do you have another job?

3. What is the hardest part of being a freelancer?

4. How do you pay your tax and national insurance?

5. Do you belong to a workers union? If so, which one?

6. Why did you choose to be a freelancer?

7. Can you afford to take holidays and time off to yourself when working as a freelancer?

8. What types of insurance do you have when working as a freelancer?

9. How do you keep up to date with skills? Do you do any training courses?

10. How do you establish contacts when working as a freelancer?

11. What training have you done? If so, what qualifications have you got?

12. Do you provide all of your own equipment?

13. What are the different ways in which clients can contact you for work?

 

Thank you for completing this for me,

 

Matt.

[Ken2k7]

1. Being a freelancer, you would have to find your own work. How would you personally go and find work?

Post it up on forums and starting my own site and advertising.

 

2. Can you afford to live on freelancer wages alone? If not then do you have another job?

No and yes.

 

3. What is the hardest part of being a freelancer?

Finding decent clients. Decent meaning someone giving you a decent amount of time to finish the task.

 

4. How do you pay your tax and national insurance?

Unrelated. Next.

 

5. Do you belong to a workers union? If so, which one?

No.

 

6. Why did you choose to be a freelancer?

Because I can.

 

7. Can you afford to take holidays and time off to yourself when working as a freelancer?

Of course. That's why it's called freelance work. >_<

 

8. What types of insurance do you have when working as a freelancer?

Insurance for what? Again, unrelated.

 

9. How do you keep up to date with skills? Do you do any training courses?

Read and practice. And no.

 

10. How do you establish contacts when working as a freelancer?

Poor question. I don't understand what you mean. If you meant how I communicate with my clients, then the answer is e-mail or IRC.

 

11. What training have you done? If so, what qualifications have you got?

Other than personal training, none. Just personal explorations and experiments.

 

12. Do you provide all of your own equipment?

Depends on the task. If the client is using MS SQL, I won't install MS SQL to work with it.

 

13. What are the different ways in which clients can contact you for work?

E-Mail or IRC.

[lostprophetpunk]

Thank you for the reply, I am glad that you have participated in this.

[Philip]

[*]Being a freelancer, you would have to find your own work. How would you personally go and find work?

• Forums, business site, but word of mouth is still the biggest

[*]Can you afford to live on freelancer wages alone? If not then do you have another job?

• You can if you play the game right, but I have another job.

[*]What is the hardest part of being a freelancer?

• Keeping clients happy while juggling multiple ones and a job.

[*] How do you pay your tax and national insurance?

• Like everyone else? lol

[*]Do you belong to a workers union? If so, which one?

• Nope

[*] Why did you choose to be a freelancer?

• Extra cash on the side is always nice, especially when it is your hobby

[*]Can you afford to take holidays and time off to yourself when working as a freelancer?

• Yes

[*]What types of insurance do you have when working as a freelancer?

• With my job, so n/a

[*]How do you keep up to date with skills? Do you do any training courses?

• Read (e)books, stay active on forums, etc

[*] How do you establish contacts when working as a freelancer?

• Typically referrals

[*]What training have you done? If so, what qualifications have you got?

• No 'official training', just some classes in college

[*] Do you provide all of your own equipment?

• Depends.

[*]What are the different ways in which clients can contact you for work?

• Email, phone, IM

[ignace]

1. Being a freelancer, you would have to find your own work. How would you personally go and find work?

 

job-boards, cold-calling, events, conferences, association meetings, seminars, .. did I left something out?

 

2. Can you afford to live on freelancer wages alone? If not then do you have another job?

 

Yup.

 

3. What is the hardest part of being a freelancer?

 

finding clients & get them to pay

 

4. How do you pay your tax and national insurance?

 

No comment.

 

5. Do you belong to a workers union? If so, which one?

 

No.

 

6. Why did you choose to be a freelancer?

 

Freedom to do any project and to drop it if the working relation with the client stalls

 

7. Can you afford to take holidays and time off to yourself when working as a freelancer?

 

Yup.

 

8. What types of insurance do you have when working as a freelancer?

 

No comment.

 

9. How do you keep up to date with skills? Do you do any training courses?

 

Training courses primarily

 

10. How do you establish contacts when working as a freelancer?

 

events, conferences, association meetings, seminars

 

11. What training have you done? If so, what qualifications have you got?

 

None, yet.

 

12. Do you provide all of your own equipment?

 

Yes.

 

13. What are the different ways in which clients can contact you for work?

 

social networks (twitter, facebook, ..), cellphone, e-mail, snail mail, ..

[seventheyejosh]

1. Being a freelancer, you would have to find your own work. How would you personally go and find work?

    - Frequent related forums with freelance boards, demonstrating expertise in your posts, scour local classifieds, have a good website of your own.

2. Can you afford to live on freelancer wages alone? If not then do you have another job?

    - Right now, it is more of the issue of if you can't get work can you keep your home etc... So I assume it's doable, but I'm not trying it. And yes, I have a full time web development job at an established company.

3. What is the hardest part of being a freelancer?

    - I find it extremely frustrating trying to counter the over abundance of people who'll bid $5 for a whole job. Then, when the client is finally ready for a good programmer, having been screwed over, they use the excuse of no money left to pay you properly due to going with some cheap idiot first, etc.

4. How do you pay your tax and national insurance?

    - If I make enough it gets filed as self-employment, but my freelance income is usually under my regular job's income, so it just gets filed as 'Extra Income'.

5. Do you belong to a workers union? If so, which one?

    - No

6. Why did you choose to be a freelancer?

    - Who doesn't like a little extra cash? As long as the 8-5 job gets done, the house / car is maintained, and the girlfriend is happy, I'd rather split my time on fun projects (personal coding, renovations) and freelancing (paying for those habits ).

7. Can you afford to take holidays and time off to yourself when working as a freelancer?

    - I wouldn't know.

8. What types of insurance do you have when working as a freelancer?

    - I have none, as I stick to small quick jobs.

9. How do you keep up to date with skills? Do you do any training courses?

    - I spend a few hours a week (in addition to trolling phpfreaks, etc.. ) just reading up on the newest things. I love stuff like lifehacker, albeit a bit unrelated to coding, but I have a few other places along those lines that I go to.

10. How do you establish contacts when working as a freelancer?

    - See #1 ?

11. What training have you done? If so, what qualifications have you got?

    - I've a combination of on the job training, self-learning, and college courses. Once you do it for a few years in a business environment, you learn not to mess things up, and keep the experimenting at home. That said, experimentation is key. Someone on this board has a sig that goes along the lines of 'coding is an art... truely great programmers will try to do the impossible..' or something. But just a love and a drive to do amazing things helps. Plus, you can't hate coding Don't let it become a chore or a job, or you'll feel no different then someone checking at Walmart.

12. Do you provide all of your own equipment?

    - I have a Macbook triple booting Ubuntu, 7, and OSX 10.6, multiple monitors, and countless other keyboards, mice, computers, laptops, etc.. so I'm never hurting for equipment.

13. What are the different ways in which clients can contact you for work?

    - It depends. If it is a job thru a site like elance, or guru, I try to communicate thru the site, purely to have that record, should things go sour. If it is from a forum, I like to just email / IM. If it is a local job, I'll consider telephone, or if it is big enough, personal contact. I've not enjoyed most of my telephone connections though, so I would recommend avoiding it, if at all possible.

 

- Josh

 

p.s. inb4 macs sux nOOb!!!!1!

[ignace]

p.s. inb4 macs sux nOOb!!!!1!

 

OMGZOR!!1! L337 OWNZOR!!1! w00t ... wait .. what ??  :-\