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January 31, 2008

Freelancing: Why it could, or not be for you

Freelancing is the act of doing work for someone that you are not truly working under. They give you a task, a time frame, you complete it, and if you like each other you may do more projects together. There are many sites that help you find freelance work.

Freelancing has been known to pay out pretty well for pretty simple work. Most companies looking in the freelancer market are simply needing some quick fixes or a small addition to their company, and hiring a dedicated person or entire team to do this is just not in their budget. You can speak to 90% of CEO’s out there and I’m sure they do not truly understand the amount of time, skills and testing to get various tech-related things done.

So basically, Freelancing sounds awesome! You’re getting paid a premium, from home and after you’re done with the job, you most likely never have to speak to the client again. What is there to lose?

First of all, this is coming from the point of view that freelancing is a “part time job” and you are not doing this fulltime. Freelance full time is just a stupid idea in general and I don’t know why anyone would put themselves through that kind of hell.

Where does Freelancing go wrong? It limits you, it restricts you, you’re usually not working with your own code, and client’s are absurdly picky. Here’s some disgustingly annoying things I’ve had to see/hear:

• Working with other peoples code can be the worst thing ever. One client I worked for had a large scale website that was developed by a freelancers from India. Each page had a mix of PHP/Html, it was horribly formatted, and to simply change the header of the site, I had to modify about 25 files because they did not use a simple header inclusion. This is of course one of those worst-case scenarios but it is very common.
• A client I worked for would spent about an hour or two with me making small, tiny tweaks after I had completed the project to his look. He sent me a PDF with the image of what he wanted, and it was essentially a carbon copy. He then spent an hour telling me small things like “Make the S from the header be above the N in ‘Name’. What the fuck is that?
• Many clients are flaky. I haven’t had this happen too much but some will promise you money, or more projects down the line before even paying you, in an attempt to make you lower your price or essentially work for free.

Those are of course, only a few of the things I’ve encountered over the last few months. Freelancing has its upsides, it pays generally well (An average of $35-50 / hour), you don’t need to have a close relationship with your client, and you can do it at your own leisure.

However, I’ve realized freelancing is not for me. Sure, I can do it at my own leisure but the tasks I am doing are crippling my creativity. Last week, I spent about 10 hours total working on a project for a client. I got paid, and was happy, but I also lost a lot of my free time to work on my own personal projects and move my own ideas forward. Nitpicky clients, the loss of time for your own self, and horrible code are some of the reasons why I won’t be freelancing anymore.

I myself am full of ideas and think it would be a greater investment not only financially, but more so mentally and educationally to spend my time doing the things I love and working for myself, creating wonderful applications and services that I am happy with, not the entire polar opposite.

Although this post was mostly bashing Freelancing, here’s some good resources:

• Freelance Switch - A great site helping you move your life to full time freelance. Gives tips on dealing with clients, finding the good jobs, and balancing it all out.
• oDesk - Probably the best site I found for freelance work. It’s easy to use, and it can send you daily alerts of new jobs based on a criteria you’ve chosen.

November 16, 2007

Making the most out of your Google Adwords

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