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Going freelance can be incredibly liberating. But starting out as a freelancer can be a daunting experience. There are loads of things to worry about past building websites. The truth is that you’re going to make mistakes, we all do.
In this post I want to share with you some of the lessons that I have learned after spending the past four years as a freelance web developer.
A common question that comes up when starting out is how should you brand yourself? Do you set up an agency, or do you just use your own name. There’s not really a right or wrong answer to this.
When I started out, I set up an agency called ‘Developer City’. I figured that I’d probably be employing people someday, so it would be better to create a new brand. As it turned out my priorities changed over the next few years and I became comfortable working as an ‘agency of one’. If I started over again I’d choose to just use my name. I think that there’s a lot of value to be had by developing your personal brand rather than creating something entirely new.
My advice is to use your name if you plan to work alone. Start an agency with a new brand if you plan to build a team.
Photograph by flickr user .dh
Another common question that new freelancers ask is “Should I work from home or get an office?”. There are lots of options open to you when it comes to where you do your work. The key is to find somewhere that is separate to your non-work life. If you want to work from home this could mean a spare room, a garage, or even a large shed. Any comfortable space that’s closed-off from outside distractions will do fine.
If you cannot find this space at home, renting a dedicated office could be a good option for you. This not only provides you with somewhere to get your work done, but may also come with other benefits, like picking up new customers (if you work in a business center) or having access to meeting rooms.
Renting a dedicated office is often costly so it’s not always an option available to people that are just starting out. A good middle-ground is to work from a co-working space. Co-working spaces have been popping up all over during the past few years and offer a great place to work as well as meet new people. One of the biggest challenges when going freelance is dealing with loneliness. Now if you’re an introvert (like me) this might not bother you too much, but if you’re used to being the life of the office you could find working alone to be quite a shock. Working from a co-working space is a great way to surround yourself with like-minded people and reduce the feeling of loneliness.
Of course when you have no boss insisting that you’re glued to a seat for 8 hours a day you can pretty much work from anywhere you want. I like to vary my surroundings so I’ll quite regularly venture out to a coffee shop for a few hours, or work from the local park. There’s no one-size-fits-all option when it comes to workspaces. Just experiment a little and set up shop wherever you do your best work.
The best thing about freelancing is that you get to work to your own schedule. I keep a general rule that I need to be contactable during standard business hours, but other than that I work when I feel most inspired. For me that’s usually first thing in the morning and late afternoon through to the evening.
Having the freedom to work when you want swings both ways though. You need to be conscious of how many hours you’re working to avoid burning out. Burn out is the freelancers kryptonite. Working until 2am might be necessary every now and then, but if it becomes the norm you have a problem. Burning out leaves you exhausted to the point that you find it hard to work on anything. This feeling can sometimes last for weeks or months so you need to be really careful not to push yourself too hard.
Learn to switch off. It’s not always easy, but it’s important.
Putting a price on your time is not easy. It’ll take a bit of trial and error before you’ll find a price that you’re comfortable working for (and your clients are comfortable paying). If you’re wondering where to start, check out the results from Cole Henley’s annual freelancer survey. You should be able to get an idea of a reasonable price for your experience level from the data Cole has collected.
Mike Monteiro is responsible for the greatest talk ever given on how to make sure you get paid for your work. His talk, F*** You Pay Me emphasizes the importance of having a contract in place that outlines how you’re going to get paid and what happens if problems occur during a project.
Working without a contract leaves you vulnerable to a whole bunch of scenarios that could make it difficult for you to get paid. Ideally you will want to spend some time with a lawyer to draw up your contracts. If this isn’t an option to begin with, you should be able to piece together a contract by looking at examples online. It’s important that you get this reviewed by a professional as soon as possible though.
Hint: Andy Clarke’s contract killer could be a good place to start.
Having contracts in place has helped to get me out of a few tight spots in the past. Taking a bit of time to get your contracts in order can save you a lot of stress down the line.
This is probably the most important thing that I’ve learned while freelancing. You need to trust your gut.
If you’re talking to a prospective client and something doesn’t sound right, it probably isn’t. Ignoring red flags at the start of a project almost always leads to problems further down the road. As hard as it can be to walk away from a project, it’s better than doing lots of work and then having a client refuse to pay you. Again, refer to Mike Monteiro’s talk for advice about these sorts of situations.
One of the best things about freelancing is that you get to pick your clients. As you complete more projects you’ll get to know the type of clients that you like working with the best.
For me it’s small businesses. I’m usually dealing with the owner of the company (i.e. the decision maker) so projects tend to move quickly.
Others like to pursue work with larger companies, or freelance for other agencies. Just go with whatever enables you to do your best work.
When you’re just starting out you might feel like you don’t have the power to pick and choose your clients. The trick is to seek out your ideal clients as soon as you figure out who they are. Don’t wait for them to come to you. There’s a lot of competition out there and you need to be pro-active.
Hopefully the ideas that I’ve discussed in this post will help you to navigate around some of the roadblocks that will inevitably appear during your freelance career. There’s so much more that I could have covered, but in the interest of keeping this post a reasonable length I’ve opted to pick the things I think are most important.
If you’re a freelancer with some thoughts to pass on, feel free to share your ideas in the comments.
The post Going Freelance: How to Thrive When Working For Yourself appeared first on Treehouse Blog.
]]>LLC Students - Please see below for information from the December GSA Senate meeting.
- January 10 and 11, 2014 Dependable Strengths Workshop, GSA will pay for the first 20 graduate students to register
- February 12, 2014, 5:30-7:00 pm, Men's Basketball Cookout, all Graduate Students are invited
- March 26, 2014, Graduate Research Conference, please register by February 15th at http://gsa.umbc.edu/grc-2/
Please congratulate Jesse Fox (Biology) for his new position as University System of Maryland Student Council President and Inte'a DeShields (LLC) for being UMBC's Student Regent Nominee. These are great accomplishments and no other UMBC graduate student has ever served in these positions
The new Director of Athletics, Tim Hall, spoke at the Senate meeting and requested that graduate students contact him at halltw@umbc.edu with any ideas on how to make the RAC more attractive for graduate student.
If you should have any concerns that you would like to bring before the GSA
Senate, feel free to send an email to Romy at romy.huebler@umbc.edu.
After years of working at a digital design agency surrounded by designers and developers, Joelle decided she was no longer fulfilled by her role as a project manager. It was time for her to expand her skills so she could finally grasp and understand coding. So 9 months ago she jumped headfirst into learning with Treehouse, while simultaneously changing her career path with an exciting new venture as co-pilot of Small HQ. Within a matter of weeks Joelle was building websites. Today she now frequently contributes to client projects, is able to turn her ideas into something tangible, and most importantly loves her job.
I worked as a project manager for about 5 and a half years at a digital agency (mainly we designed and built websites but there were some other digital projects mixed in…apps and such). I was surrounded by designers and developers on a day-to-day basis so I grew to have a pretty good understanding of how things worked and a pretty solid base of terminology. But I never actually looked at any code, let alone touched any. It sounds ludicrous now, looking back, to think I was managing projects that I didn’t fully have a grasp of – but it’s actually not uncommon at all in that industry.
Long story short – life as a project manager was not a fulfilling path for me at all. I wasn’t having any fun and I certainly wasn’t growing or learning. I feIt like I wasn’t contributing…not in the way I wanted to be able to anyway. I wanted to be able to create, and that ability wasn’t going to exist until I did something about it.
About 9 months ago I joined Matt Goldman full time to help him build Small HQ. We had a handful of client projects at the time – all with the intention to build up enough runway money to devote 100% of our time to Minimalytics and HookFeed (our two SaaS apps). With any free time I could muster I jumped head-first into Treehouse—primarily HTML/CSS courses. In a matter of weeks I was not only building websites on my own – I was charging for them. I got my first, very own, web project that I handled from start to finish (with a little help from Matt on the back-end).
This still blows me away – that in a matter of weeks with only the investment of a few bucks and a good chunk of my time, I was able to execute really solid work that was worth something to someone. Wow!
Since then I’ve done a half-dozen more websites. I’m finally having the kind of impact on projects that I was missing in the past and it’s the best feeling!
I’ve moved on to Ruby/Rails which is a slower learning curve for me than the front-end stuff, but Treehouse is giving me a really solid foundation in that too. It’s going to be a special day for me when I can contribute code to our own products 
I think what I love most about Treehouse is its addicting nature. It helped me move really really quickly. I don’t know what it is, but once I get absorbed in a course the hours fly by and I feel like a sponge. I think it’s because every lesson is so applicable to what you’re working on and you can see the bricks stacking as you go. I definitely pause the videos A LOT to try things on my own, rewind over and over when something isn’t making sense. It’s not a passive learning experience for me, which I think is why I am picking things up really quickly. I learn by watching and by doing, and Treehouse makes that super easy.
Now I can sit down in front of a computer and turn an idea into something tangible…something profitable. It’s literally changed my life.
The post Student Success Story: Joelle Steiniger appeared first on Treehouse Blog.
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The following full-time positions have been posted within the past week to UMBCworks. Login to your account (via the link in the Jobs & Internships topic in myUMBC) and find details and application instructions as well as hundreds of other job postings!
9262336 - Programmer Analyst Technician - CareFirst BlueCross Blue Shield
9262316 - .NET Developer - Corporate Brokers, LLC
9262306 - Administrative Assistant - Space Telescope Science Institute
9260548 - Administrative Control Assistant - Maxim Biomedical, Inc.
9262261 - IT Systems Analyst - AAI Corporation
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The following part-time positions have been posted within the past week to UMBCworks. Login to your account (via the link in the Jobs & Internships topic in myUMBC) and find details and application instructions as well as hundreds of other job postings!
9262343 - Medical Scribe in Emergency Department - Scribes STAT
9262344 - PE Specialist/Specialist Class Instructor - YMCA (Ellicott City)
9262342 - Rehabilitation Counselor - Humanim
9262269 - Consumer Electronics Sales - Actionlink
9262208 - In-Home Piano Instructor - Playtime Piano Instruction (Baltimore and Howard Counties)
9261540 - IT Support Specialist - BYK Gardner - USA
9262132 - PaRaBal, a mobile software analysis and designer is seeking Technical and Liberal Arts majors for this part-time position
MUST be a UMBC Residential Student
International and U.S. Citizens are welcome to apply!!