Here's the deal: I've been giving a lot of thought to freelancing lately and was just curious to see what experiences the guys here had with it.
My situation is this: I currently have a remote work agreement and let me tell you, while being miles ahead of being stuck at a desk in some office, it is still far from ideal. I am still tethered to email and IM and get scolded when I disappear for too long, I can't really travel internationally, I get pulled into bullshit conference calls that do nothing but waste time and often at shit hours due to time zone differences, and I am still at the beck and call of my manager. I am 100% grateful I was able to pull it off. I moved out of DC and am sitting in my apartment in Honolulu as I write this but I am thinking that I am going to use the summer to save a bit more money and educate myself on freelancing in order to go to work for myself 100%.
So I suppose my questions for the guys here are: what type of freelancing are you doing? How much are you pulling in monthly and on how much work? Is is relatively stable/easy to find new clients? Those types of things.
I am leaning heavily towards branding myself as a copywriter. I have a marketing background and I have always really enjoyed and excelled at writing in my current consulting gig, no matter the subject, so that seems like a natural fit. I've also had two guys who are pretty established in the online world tell me that its the best skill to have because it can't be outsourced too well due to language barriers and it can't really be automated with templates and apps like web design or programming have been. But if anyone else has any opinions on high-demand skills that lend themselves to freelancing and could potentially be learned on my own, I'd be happy to hear it.
Thanks guys/
My situation is this: I currently have a remote work agreement and let me tell you, while being miles ahead of being stuck at a desk in some office, it is still far from ideal. I am still tethered to email and IM and get scolded when I disappear for too long, I can't really travel internationally, I get pulled into bullshit conference calls that do nothing but waste time and often at shit hours due to time zone differences, and I am still at the beck and call of my manager. I am 100% grateful I was able to pull it off. I moved out of DC and am sitting in my apartment in Honolulu as I write this but I am thinking that I am going to use the summer to save a bit more money and educate myself on freelancing in order to go to work for myself 100%.
So I suppose my questions for the guys here are: what type of freelancing are you doing? How much are you pulling in monthly and on how much work? Is is relatively stable/easy to find new clients? Those types of things.
I am leaning heavily towards branding myself as a copywriter. I have a marketing background and I have always really enjoyed and excelled at writing in my current consulting gig, no matter the subject, so that seems like a natural fit. I've also had two guys who are pretty established in the online world tell me that its the best skill to have because it can't be outsourced too well due to language barriers and it can't really be automated with templates and apps like web design or programming have been. But if anyone else has any opinions on high-demand skills that lend themselves to freelancing and could potentially be learned on my own, I'd be happy to hear it.
Thanks guys/