not an ad Finding yourself with some free time and looking to make some extra cash? Welcome to the wonderful and slightly confusing world of the side hustle (aka the casual second job). The tech world is swamped with freelance and consulting opportunities. I mean how many times have you heard the developer success story of ‘making the switch’ from the 9 to 5 grind into consulting full-time? But what does that really look like? Luckily, that’s what we’re talking about today with my friend Kevin Griffin, CTO, Microsoft MVP, and host of the Multithreaded Income Podcast.
If you’re looking for the link to click, it’s here.
And for the rest of you:
In the immortal words of Blink-182— late night, come home. Work sucks, I know. It’s not surprising that so many people are turning to freelance gigs and consulting as a way of breaking up the monotony of clocking into the same job every day. But, also it costs $50 just to leave your house these days, and lots of people just need the extra cash. So if you’re ready to dip your toe in the freelance waters, we have a little bit of advice.
Step one, just start with a toe. Don’t uproot your whole life without scheduling some time for self-reflection to consider if you’re really cut out for adding this onto your full-time gig or making the full transition over. Just because it’s an easy task for you to complete, doesn’t mean it will be easy combined with everything else you have going on. Plus, you need to bake in some time for learning and managing your new client’s expectations. Because quickly getting on the same wavelength as your client is half the game here.
Not to mention, you have to turn yourself into a used car salesman on a car lot that only sells your skills. If you’re not comfortable with the handshake and a humble brag, this is going to get difficult. Kevin and I talked about needing to be an “aggressive marketer” for yourself, and that’s the truth. Like I’m always saying, take advantage of your social media platforms and stay visible and top of mind to the people in your network.
If you’re looking for a place to start— senior developers head over to Gun.io (shameless plug), but lots of people are getting work on platforms like Toptal, Upwork, and PeoplePerHour. These sites seem to be a much cleaner experience than trying to network around a recruiting agency. Just do a good job, communicate, and be nice. Lots of companies are willing to turn a one-time job into years of work if you put in just a little extra effort.
So what’s the difference between freelancing and consulting? Freelancing is typically smaller jobs while consulting is bringing you in to assess a situation and then putting a process in place to fix said situation. You can do one, or you can do both. As long as you’re doing whatever makes sense for you.
Now the fun part, taxes. Most freelance opportunities are 1099 positions, meaning that you’re paid a full amount without any taxes removed. Some people choose to have that money deposited into a separate banking account, but that’s not completely necessary. If you’re keeping things small, most people don’t run into too many issues (outside of some super fun tax forms and payments). But if you’re thinking of taking things to a larger scale, it’s worth researching if you should look into running everything through your own business. There are some tax breaks and other benefits someone smarter than me can tell you lots more about.
Things aren’t exactly easy out there, so taking on small side jobs is becoming a regular thing not only in the tech world but for most working people. At minimum, it’s some extra income. And in abstract, it may be the first falling domino in your whole new career path. Whether you find that company through a job you complete or make the switch to full-time freelance. But there’s only one way to find out, right?
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