Dan Spratling writes on DEV Community about their just two week old freelancing adventure:

I’ve been struggling to thrive in corporate environments for a while. Lots of meetings, very little team-play, or having poor leadership. Some of the workplaces I’d been in had been toxic, others just couldn’t accommodate the growth I was capable of. Whether big or small, I’d been held back working for other businesses and I’d had enough.

It was time to take back control.

I started researching, as we all do when making a life-changing decision (I hope!). I gathered as much information as I could, looking for ways to make a living as a freelancer. Many of my friends had been freelance at some point so I asked them for help, either by asking for advice or through referrals.

Becoming a Freelancer – DEV

Great tips for aspiring or existing freelancers in this post from new freelancer Dan Spratling, a UX consultant and website specialist, who I came across recently on Twitter. A lot of folks starting out are afraid to commit to avoiding hourly billing, insisting on upfront payment collection, and ongoing marketing. Dan is farther along than I was when I started out. 🙂

Corinne McKay writes on her blog about freelancers that are concerned they’re “too old”:

Does your brain still work?

“I’m too old for this”: valid concern, or not? – Training for Translators

I love how simply Corinne responds to this question.

Merilee Kern interviewed David Fields for Innovation Enterprise. It’s filled with lots of nice tidbits like this:

Fields contends that most consultants—particularly boutique firms—who don’t have enough clients believe they have a visibility problem; i.e., not enough prospects know about them. In fact, most of those consultants have an impact problem. They’re in front of enough prospects, but those prospects don’t care about what the consultant is offering. In contrast, successful consultants know how to ‘fish where the fish are,’ which means they focus their firms on issues clients are aware of and urgently want to solve. Amazingly, many consultants offer solutions the consultants think are important, without ever checking the market need.

What Few Consultants Deliver That Every Client Wants | Articles | Strategy | Innovation Enterprise

Tom Hirst writes:

Pricing freelancing projects is tough. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Everything I’ve learned. A thread.

Pricing Freelance Projects | Tom Hirst

Tom started a quality Twitter thread about his experience pricing projects as a freelancer a couple weeks back. He has since posted it in article form on his blog.

Blair Enns writes on the Win Without Pitching blog:

Many agencies like to boast on their websites and in their pitch decks that they “partner” with their clients. It’s bullshit of course. What they mean is they aspire to have their clients treat them like partners instead of vendors. I get it. It’s good to have a goal. But putting it on the website doesn’t make it true.

[…]

As an industry, we need to let go of this need to claim partnership with our clients and embrace the fact that some of these relationships are purely transactional. At the same time, however, we should keep an eye open for those wonderful but rare opportunities for true partnership. 

You Don’t Really Partner With Your Clients | Win Without Pitching

Also his observation about client mix is worth mulling over:

A Normal Distribution of Client Types

In a healthy client roster you will have a mix of client types. On the left-hand tail you will have a small number of transactional price-buyers to whom you are effectively selling excess capacity, and once-good clients on their way out.

In the middle you will find the bulk of your clients, made mostly of value buyers who, though they might be price sensitive, understand they need to invest in your services to generate value in the marketplace.

And out on the right-hand tail you might possibly have a coveted partner. Maybe even three.

Once you get the hang of this performance pay thing, you may decide to be more selective about your clients with the goal of one day having all of your clients be partners. But that’s a path few firms will choose and fewer still will be able to master. Most will choose instead to spread the risk across many engagement types with the bulk of their engagements being in the low risk, low reward category.

David C. Baker writes on his blog:

The only reason to track time is to create a feedback loop that allows you to do a better job estimating the next time around. And when you’re pretty good at that, you drop timekeeping altogether and step up to value pricing. By the way, this gets easier if your client relationships slowly begin to look more and more alike as your positioning creeps into your service offerings.

Putting a Final Nail in the Timekeeping Coffin — David C. Baker

Good insights here, particularly for folks straddling the (supposed) fence between hourly billing and fixed/ value-based fees. It’s not as simple as just throwing out hourly billing or time tracking. It’s more nuanced than that (particularly at first).