Great content Devon! I have often thought of moving into full-time freelance development work over the course of my career. I do freelance on the side somewhat regularly, but I have always been afraid to make that jump. I think what concerns me the most is that fear of constantly needing to plan for your next job/gig/project or finding yourself without income for a bit. Any words of wisdom around this?
Thanks, Joel! This is the difficult part of freelancing. What has made things a bit easier for me is having a client or two that has a consistent stream of work. That might be a studio or maybe you're augmenting an existing engineering staff on an ongoing basis. That gives you a baseline to help you absorb some of the natural ebb and flow of freelancing.
There are tons of ways you might fix this. Here are a couple of ideas. You could use content marketing or referrals to create a constant stream of prospects so that you have more opportunities at any given time than you could possibly work. That takes time to build, but it ensures you won't suffer the famine part of the cycle. You could also build a service that you charge for on a recurring basis. You've got tons of options for what to do there depending on your skillset and your target market.
Great content Devon! I have often thought of moving into full-time freelance development work over the course of my career. I do freelance on the side somewhat regularly, but I have always been afraid to make that jump. I think what concerns me the most is that fear of constantly needing to plan for your next job/gig/project or finding yourself without income for a bit. Any words of wisdom around this?
Thanks, Joel! This is the difficult part of freelancing. What has made things a bit easier for me is having a client or two that has a consistent stream of work. That might be a studio or maybe you're augmenting an existing engineering staff on an ongoing basis. That gives you a baseline to help you absorb some of the natural ebb and flow of freelancing.
There are tons of ways you might fix this. Here are a couple of ideas. You could use content marketing or referrals to create a constant stream of prospects so that you have more opportunities at any given time than you could possibly work. That takes time to build, but it ensures you won't suffer the famine part of the cycle. You could also build a service that you charge for on a recurring basis. You've got tons of options for what to do there depending on your skillset and your target market.
Thanks for the suggestions Devon! I'll make note of these as I continue to consider taking this path and plan accordingly.