21
I am currently in the process of becoming a digital nomad myself. I have been investigating this for a few months now.
You must sort out a few things
Earn money: Ideally, you want several income streams to reduce risks.
Legal status: you want to make sure this is sorted out as without that you probably will have trouble charging anyone for your services.
...
12
It is perfectly acceptable to keep clients away from your home. I have been freelancing with local clients for 10 years and have never invited a client to my home. I offer to meet with them at:
Their offices
Coffee shops
Co-working spaces or other rent an office for a day locations
I've never had someone insist they should come to my office, but I'd simply ...
12
I, and other freelancers I know do a lot of meetings at coffee-shops. Also, I constantly see a part owner of a designer firm I know, who has a large office, also doing meetings in the same coffee shops.
In Canada it is also very difficult to get home insurance (if you give full disclosure) if clients come to your home, or even if they don't but you are ...
11
[Bit of background, I've done contract work exclusively through oDesk since 2006.]
As far as I see it, the single most important thing you can do in your cover letter is tell them how you'll solve their problem.
That's really what (in most cases) they're looking for. They only care about your past work, your experience, or how well you're rated in terms of ...
11
The first few years I was freelancing, I was so happy to not leave the house every day and be around people because I really prefer to be alone.
Then I realized that after a while I was TOO isolated. When I did see people, I felt awkward because I was out of practice. And it helps to be around other people sometimes.
So here are some things I do to combat ...
11
Plain and simple....
If you don't have 6 months to 1 year of savings to live off of, you aren't adequately prepared to start freelancing full time. You can do it part time and keep your job. However, until you are prepared to live, without income, for several months you aren't ready for full time freelancing.
And this is how you prepare for "no work" ...
10
I live in a city with half a million people and there are startups and small companies who want to share their office. That should exist even in smaller places.
I am mainly a software developer and I share an office with 3 industrial designers and 1 electrical engineer. Not only is it nice to have company, but there is also the advantage of new and ...
10
I am in the totally same situation. Instead of 8 hours I need to focus for 15+ hours a day recently in order to improve my skill in short period. Got complained? Yes for sure.
But finally I made some effort to set up a communication mechanism with my girlfriend. I share what I did and hope it helps.
I made a daily tasks checklist and let her know all tasks ...
9
I see you have a ton of experience which is good, but it's not enough to convince a client. I have been working for almost 8 months now and I'm starting to get more work than I can handle. Here are some tips to get more jobs:
Don't start with " I have a lot of experience...". It's good that you have, but keep that to the end. You must first catch the client'...
9
I do contract work and also charge by the hour. What I charge for is my time to complete the job given the tools that I have, and if that includes waiting on a file to up load then so be it, it gets absorbed into the billing.
I also bill on a per hour basis and don't bill on shorter time units, (although YMMV for your field of work) and the client ...
8
There are very good reasons to not meet in your home (at least in the US).
If a client were to meet in your home for business, then have some accident, like tripping and falling, homeowner's insurance may not cover the accident if the due to the fact it was a business transaction and not standard home use. I know, odd, but leave it to insurance companies to ...
8
Bill him for the hours you spend on the phone. Those are consulting hours. No further work will proceed until the account is brought current. All future phone conversations will also be billed. I went from disliking these type of clients to loving them. we could spend 12 hours on the phone for all I care. I have a Bluetooth so I can multitask and they get to ...
7
You cannot control if they work, nor you should. You should control their result!
Make a good system of tasks and milestones and make work-hour calculations for each task. If they are beginners, add some percentage to it and tell them to stick to that calculations meaning that they will be paid for those specific work hours only. All hours above that is ...
7
First off, remember that Linux is marketed as very robust, open source, and free (with a few exceptions). Can you keep that philosophy?
The reason distributions become popular are for different reasons. Ubuntu became popular because someone was able to make all the decisions, and choose where development happened. Debian is build to be rock solid, but doesn'...
7
I hate to say it but I don't think you should hire her at all.
If you hire her it seems you have only 2 options:
Talk to her about her husband and your concerns. By the sounds of it the husband would not take to this kindly. I don't think he would gracefully back down and imagine he would keep causing problems in your work. You also don't want to be ...
6
That's completely up to you, and what risks you're willing to take.
I'm a huge advocate for hourly billing and that (along with a few other key concepts) defines more than just what I charge for.
Because my freelancing philosophy is that I consider myself the product I have no reason to sell anything else (hosting, domains, other freelancers' time).
...
6
Here's my opinion and practice....
I never respond or contact clients during any time I want to myself, ever.
That is to say.. I don't respond to or contact clients before 9am, after 5pm, on weekends or on holidays - even if I happen to be working. If I get an email from a client at 6pm Friday night.. I do not respond until 9 am Monday at the earliest. I ...
5
As a freelance, sometimes I work also at my clients's company offices, when I do a project for that specific client, if they have a free office or desk usually I can stay with them from a few hours up to a few days.
While I work there I have people around, and the client is happy because we can interact more efficiently as I develop their project.
Of ...
5
It is imperative that even while freelancing that you keep your network of people you know growing. It is also important to keep in touch with prior relationships.
I tell my freelancers that they should book, and don't cancel, lunches OUT with a friend or business relationship at least one a week.
Benefits? Your sanity. Meeting new people in your ...
5
It's probably reasonable for you to make a rough estimate of the percentage of business use for your home office and Internet. You could keep a diary for a week or a month, noting down your hours for personal and business use and then extrapolate these numbers for the whole year.
There is no easy way for the tax department to check the actual percentages so ...
5
From my experience,
Coffee shops - I try all the coffee places in the area. There are some good small restaurants I discover too. I love it when I get to check out places other than Starbucks. Try it. You will be surprised at the places you'll find in there that are good for work.
Co-working spaces - you can pay for co-working spaces in your area so you ...
5
Friend, you have screwed yourself on this one, unfortunately.
The best you're going to be able to do to mitigate this situation is hiring an attorney in Arizona to represent you. You will have to show that there was a written agreement made constituting an offer and an acceptance; that there was work performed per that agreement; and that the payment wasn'...
5
As others have said .. all answers are opinions to some degree. For myself, I have dipped in and out of contract/freelance work over a 40 year career. I've built up about 15 years of freelancing in that time, so I can add practical experience to my opinion.
My rule of thumb is 1 year's net income kept in cash as an emergency fund. That sounds a lot, but it ...
5
A third area, in addition to @MichaelLai's first two, might be financial services. But, alas, that would also be lots (and lots) of programming. However, you'd also be developing models requiring lots of math.
I have an ms in physics, but most of my work has been programming models for the financial services industry in New York City. For instance, binomial ...
4
You should start by learning the basics of PHP and MySQL. For all available resources go on Google: the basics of php.
It is about learning the basics. What PHP and MySQL are, how they work, a bit of history.
What else you shoold keep an eye on is Git and Composer (are two essential tools you should know about later on).
Both BitBucket.org and GitHum.com ...
4
Whilst impossible to state that 'no that site does not exist', I can say that no such site exists that has significant market share and thus would not suffer from the same problem as the PeoplePerHour UK site.
Essentially your question is centred around two issues; needing higher quality (ideally UK) clients, and differentiating yourself from $5 per hour ...
4
You should try to find someone with a lot of experience on LinkedIn. People who use freelance websites are usually not looking for a business commitment. That being said it does not mean you cannot find someone on a freelance website.
What I would do (I don't know if it's your case) is find someone with a recommendation from someone like an ex coworker, ...
4
I have gone through the same situation something like 10 years ago, the girl could not understand that even if I was working from home I had a work schedule and hours, the fact that I was not in an external office, or inside a company, in her eyes was like it was not a real work but something that I used to do to earn some money while you stay in a endless ...
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