I've Made $1844 in October of 2020

#freelancing #contracting #entreprenuership #development

Welcome to the first issue of Adem's Freelance Journey.

When I first started freelancing I didn't have anyone to turn in for advice. I've had to learn everything myself.

And no one shared the "dirty" parts of running a freelance business.

So I want to change this.

I'll try to be as open as possible in these posts and share the struggles of everyday life as a freelancer.

I'll try to write these posts every month.

I'll NOT share any sensitive information about my clients.

With this said let's get started.

TL;DR made $1844 for ~ 70 hours of work on three different projects. Have two other projects in the pipeline.

Income

I've made $1844 this month.

This seems pretty low for a freelance software developer and honestly, it is.

September was a super-busy month so I burnt down a bit this month and didn't feel like working a lot.

Projects

Client #1 ($1739 for ~49 hours of work)

I've been working on this client's project every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as a part-time developer.

I charge him $35 an hour which is lower than my usual rate of $50 an hour. The reason I'm charging so low is the founders of this company are ex FAANG employees, they have a super cool and useful product and they're gaining a lot of traction in their niche.

The problem is they're 100% bootstrapped so they can't pay me my usual rate but it's fine for now.

Client #2 ($105 for 3 hours of work)

Client #2 is also a bootstrapped SaaS company.

It's run by one person with half a dozen freelancers.

I'm charging this client $35 an hour because we've been working for quite a while and the work I do is pretty chill so there's no real reason to increase my rate.

We've done a lot of work during September and I didn't hear back from him until a couple of days ago so that's why I've worked with him for only 3 hours.

Client #3 ($0 for ~18 hours of work)

Client #3 doesn't like paying freelancers hourly so we agreed on $1000 for about 20 hours of work.

I've already charged him $300 dollars and I expect to invoice him the rest sometime next week.

It's a classic board game made in React and WordPress.

Future leads

Work was slow the first three weeks of October.

I was about to start scouring IndieHackers, Reddit, and HackerNews for new opportunities.

Fortunately, Client #2 reached out if I'm available to do some work on his side project which I've accepted.

Also, Client #3 is pretty satisfied with the current state of the project and he's planning to hire me for another project once we're finished with the current one which is pretty cool.