Few orders and pay pennies: why is it scary to go to freelance and what to do about it

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

You can sit in the office for years and envy freelancers, or finally decide to work for yourself. If you are afraid to go on a free voyage, we explain why there is nothing scary about it.

Fear # 1: “I won't have orders. I will die of hunger in the prime of life!"

Bad news: there is still no queue of customers outside the office door waiting for you to finally work with them. The good news is that if you don't sit still, work will find you.

What to do

To get started, collect a portfolio - all your professional achievements and projects that you are proud of. If you are mastering a new specialty, educational work is also suitable: the customer must see what you can do.

Tell us about yourself: a simple site on Tilda, a public on a social network, even a Telegram channel will help. Then go in search of clients: study the exchanges and communities for freelancers, post links to your portfolio there and do not be afraid to be the first to write to potential customers.

Fear # 2: “I don’t know how much money to ask for a job. Nobody will pay me much, I have to hunchback for food"

It is difficult for beginners to charge a fair price for their services. In the long term, this does not bode well: there is a risk that you will be choked with the flow of orders, but you will receive a penny for your work.

What to do

Calculate how much an hour of your work costs. How it might look: suppose you are now working on a five-day week for 8 hours a day, and they pay 35,000 rubles a month for this. This October you have 184 working hours: we divide 35,000 by 184 and we get 190 rubles. If you dream of earning 60,000 rubles, the cost of one hour under the same conditions will be 326 rubles.

When you take on a large project and agree on payment, estimate how long it will take and multiply it by the cost of the working hour. You will get an approximate amount, to which you can add a coefficient for difficulty or, conversely, give a small discount.

Sometimes you can work with eminent clients for little money, but in return get valuable experience and a cool line in your portfolio. Consider this an investment that will pay off in the future.

Fear # 3: Freelancers have to pay taxes. Or not. A-a-a, too difficult!"

At office work, there are no problems: the employer deals with taxes, and employees receive money in their hands after deducting mandatory payments. The freelancer will have to take care of the taxes himself.

You can work in the shadows and pay nothing to the state, but this is a story for those who like to tickle their nerves. If the bank is interested in what money is regularly credited to your account, it has the right to block the card until the circumstances are clarified. You will need to prove that everything is clean, and not in words, but in documents. The tax office will also have questions: you will have to pay a fine for work without registering as an individual entrepreneur and reimburse tax debts in three years.

What to do

Do not take sin on your soul and work according to the law. A freelancer can register as a self-employed or sole proprietor. An experiment with self-employment is still underway in Moscow, Tatarstan, Moscow and Kaluga regions. If you work with individuals, you will pay 4% of income, with legal entities - 6%.

When working as an individual entrepreneur, choose a simplified or patent taxation system. If your activity does not require large expenses, you can pay 6% of income on a simplified system.

For some jobs (such as tutoring, software development, or translation), the patent system is suitable. The amount of tax here depends on the potential annual income.

Fear # 4: “Freelancing is not a job. My relatives will laugh at me!"

Others may indeed have complaints from the series “Petechka is great, he works in the office, and you only know that on the Internet to press buttons,” but who said that you need to listen to them? You work to get good money and live the way you want, not a neighbor from the fifth floor or a second cousin from Lipetsk.

What to do

The results of the work will say everything for you. Growth in income, cool customers and interesting projects, a free schedule and the ability to build your own working day, and not sit in the office from call to call - these are worthy arguments to justify the transition to freelancing. After all, the one who decides to work for himself deserves more respect than people who live by inertia year after year.

Fear # 5: “I have no remote experience. How is working from home?"

At first, there may be difficulties: you have to hand over the project, but instead you want to wallow, and it would be nice to iron the linen. The work is worth it, and you are drowning in procrastination and are ready to do anything but business.

What to do

Freelancing is also a job. In fact, it does not differ much from what you did in the office: there is a problem, you need to solve it by a certain time, and for this they will give you money.

The obvious option is the usual schedule from 9 to 18 with a lunch break, but no one forbids experimenting. Perhaps you are better off working in the early morning or late afternoon. If so, then warn your family that at this time they do not bother you and allow you to focus on business. The "tomato" technique will help you to concentrate: break your working time into half-hour segments, of which you work 25 minutes and rest for 5 minutes.

Fear number 6: "In the office, a stable salary, but on freelancing you will have to interrupt from order to order"

That's right, no one pays a freelancer just for being a good guy and sitting at the computer all day. But he doesn't need to beg the boss for more salary: if there is not enough money, you can take on a couple more projects or learn to manage the budget competently.

What to do

It sounds boring, but without taking into account income and expenses, freelancing is nowhere. Money can slip away on little things like another cup of coffee, making a dent in your budget. Finding out how much money you need to live is still in the office, when there is a fixed income. If you get the bottom line in a couple of months, you will understand how much you need to earn in order not to count a penny.

Create yourself an airbag in advance and replenish it regularly. If there are no new orders, the pillow will help keep you afloat. Ideally, every month you should have a certain amount that can be set aside for a bright future, so do not rush to spend everything that you have earned.

Fear # 7: “You can't freelance with my profession. So you will have to cook in the office all your life"

This fear is partly justified: for example, an office manager who fiddles with papers and meets company guests is almost impossible to work remotely. However, the list of professions firmly tied to the office is not so long. Not only journalists and designers go to freelance, but also lawyers with accountants and IT specialists. Even call center operators can work safely from home.

What to do

First, try combining freelance and mainstream work. It will not be very easy, but you will understand whether the format of working from home suits you or whether it is too difficult without live communication.

Another plus of a smooth transition: when you decide to leave the office, you will already have a pool of customers and a clear portfolio with reviews. This means that it will become easier to find new projects: you are not just a random applicant, but a freelancer with experience, albeit small.

Fear # 8: What if I get burned out? Will you have to drop everything and go back to the office?"

Burnout is often the result of excess stress and imbalanced work-life balance. And yes, freelancers can face this too.

Plus and at the same time minus work on freelance - you yourself determine the boundaries of the working day. In theory, it sounds beautiful: I worked in the morning, and in the evening - a well-deserved rest. In fact, it turns out differently. You are constantly distracted by household chores, then you find that time is running towards midnight, and there is still plenty of work to do.

What to do

A clear schedule will save you. Work is work, but you need to leave time for rest, otherwise sooner or later you will get acquainted with burnout.

If day in and day out you stay late with work, put things in order. Perhaps it is worth abandoning projects that do not bring much profit and pleasure, and look for something new and interesting. Just in this case, a financial safety cushion comes in handy.

Fear number 9: “I don't think I can do anything. Freelancers will expose me vividly!"

It sounds like imposter syndrome is whispering to you. You do not believe in yourself, are afraid of difficult projects and live in fear that the deception is about to be revealed, and you will be kicked out into the street. It's simple: if you were a really bad specialist, it would have surfaced long ago. Do you think your company would keep an amateur on the staff? That's right, no one is paid for beautiful eyes.

What to do

Take it as a fact: if you have been working in your specialty for several years, it means that you understand at least something in it. Everyone has failures, but it does not follow from this that you need to wind your nerves for every jamb in your work.

Switch to your accomplishments and feel free to ask clients for feedback on your work. There is nothing out of the ordinary here: you completed the project, the customer liked it, so why not leave a review about a good freelancer?

If it's still scary, upgrade your professional skills. Even though you are far from ideal now, you can learn something new and become better.

Fear # 10: “What if the client turns out to be inadequate? I will refuse - I will sit without money"

Sometimes you really have to work with strange customers who leave tons of edits and change requirements every day. The advantage of freelancing is that no one forces you to waste time arguing with them.

What to do

Before agreeing to a project, read the customer reviews. If you find out that he likes to throw money or asks to redo the project over and over again, conclude an agreement where the payment terms and the number of possible edits are spelled out.

If you feel that you cannot work together - fulfill the order and stop cooperation. This is not an office, no one will kick you out with a shameful record in the labor office. It is better to direct your energy towards finding clients who are pleasant to work with than to suffer day after day - this is not why you left the office.