Any other freelancers about? I'm looking for tips with balancing work

[Oli]

Ok, so i'm currently working freelance, been at it for about 8 months now and i've got 2 clients who I do 'regular' work for-- totalling about 60 hours a week between them (including weekends, I work from home for one of the clients). Obviously being freelance means that potentially, by the time i've written this post, there's no more work for me-- but how do you balance it between working-enough-to-get-some-savings, and not-working-every-hour-every-day? I'm keen to get another couple of clients to do little bits for-- mainly for 'backup', should the work for the current ones dry up, but I don't think that I can cut down on the current clients as the work is certainly there for now.

Any other tips for money-saving as a freelancer would be appreciated too-- every little helps! :)

Cheers!

[Johnny Mac]

All I can say is, don't put all your eggs in one basket and charge what you're worth.
Good luck Oli.

[Frank]

What line of work are you in? I've done contract and freelance web development work for years now and I've never had to work weekends unless there's been a mad rush job. It's always tempting to say "oh, I'll have that ready for you next week" but you never know when you're going to hit a problem (professional or personal) that stalls the job.

The answer is to be absolutely realistic about estimating the time needed for a job. Clients will often make BIG plans around what may be an off the cuff guess about project completion times and when someone is screaming at them for results, they start screaming at the contractor and tempers get frayed. Be realistic about the amount of time needed and very importantly, let them know as soon as you see a problem. If you try to work every hour of the day getting a job out then you start cutting corners and the work suffers.

In the past I've agreed to work for fixed-fee contracts where the payment is not hourly or daily but simply for project completion and in those cases it's vital to plan the job properly or you can spend months making changes before the project gets signed off.

Speaking of changes - GET A DETAILED SPEC BEFORE YOU START! Clients love to sneak in job changes on a "could you just do this ... ?" basis and these can mount up and nearly double the amount of work involved. I always insist on a full spec then write a technical response document detailing the exact work to be done, this helps me understand the requirement and it ensures that you only agree to do the work set out in the tech response. In short, if it's not in the spec then it doesn't get done.

Oh yeah, one more thing - don't be afraid to say "I can't do that job" if it's beyond your technical knowledge. Sounds obvious but when you're trying to develop software for unfamiliar systems then the task becomes twenty times more difficult. And know when to say "I'm sorry but I can't deliver a good product for that much money", chances are they'll either find an idiot on gumtree (who will invariably let them down) or they'll reconsider and come back with a sensible offer.