Work as a freelancer

8 min readFeb 14, 2021

If I want to make a definition of this concept, I would like to explain it like

“A work culture where we can get a project-oriented work from anywhere in the world and declare your financial independence without being under a company in different professions.”

what do you think about this definition? Is this definition sound good? I guess, yes it is. But this is not that easy don’t forget that.

Responsibility

To be work as a freelancer, you have to so much under discipline. At the top of these, time planning and motivation.

What Else ;

It will be necessary to start this work alone as a hero,
You will find yourself in a new agreement in every new project,
You should find your business by yourself and sometimes it will be really difficult at the beginning.
If you were working from an office, it will be difficult at the beginning for you to work by yourself without your teammate. (Maybe to be work at some coffee shop,co-works spaces, etc…)
You will pay your medical insurance, income tax or other taxes, etc …
If you can’t plan your time good, you can mess up life with your work,
7/24 you will manage all emailing, phone traffic, etc.. by yourself.
You will plan all of the project’s process from the beginning until publishing by yourself.

Some of the base responsibilities are above which I list. But probably you will face more stuff than I said.

Confusion of Concepts (Freelance and Remote)

While explaining the concept of Freelance, I would like to point out the most decisive fine line between the concepts of Freelance and Remote working, which should not be confused with each other but are similar. But if you are a remote employee, you are also the Contract Worker. Actually, I mean exactly what you have to do in a standard company such as meetings, working hours, deadlines, company rules, etc. On the other hand, you would have to go out of the house to go to work in the mornings and spend time in an office environment until the evening, or I can say that you do not need to be in the same city or country as the company, the project owner.

Which Professions are Eligible?

So, thinking that this much explanation satisfied you, “Which professions are ideal for being a freelancer?” I seem to hear you ask. So let me give you a few examples of jobs where you can be Freelancers;

Software Developers,
UX / UI Designer,
Editors
Writes ( Book, Newspaper etc…)
Translators
Photographers,
and some other professions…

These are some of the professions that come to my mind and you can already find more by researching. These can also be classified as professions suitable for remote work.

Another question you might have, “I want to be a Freelancer, but from where and how can I get a job?” In fact, if you look at it, there are many online websites to find a job as a Freelancer. But before I talk about these websites, I would like to give you a few tips. If you want to be a freelance software developer, I can say that the best way to get a few jobs in a simple way is to get along with your environment, both in order to gain experience (not professionally but as a freelancer). If you have a professional career before becoming a freelancer (this will be beneficial for technical problems you will encounter), getting along with your colleagues and company in your past business life will open a door for you to come to freelance projects in the future. I can easily say that these are some of the advantages that I have personally experienced and benefited from in my own freelance life.

Let’s talk about the websites where you can find freelance jobs online, I would like to share with you some of the most well-known ones.

Freelancer
Upwork
Armut
Indeed

Among those I shared above, I can especially recommend Upwork and Freelancer websites.

What Should I Pay Attention To In Some Freelance job websites?

I would like to give you a few tips on this subject, and you should carefully examine the profiles of the project providers in the websites I shared in the previous topic. What are these;

Project descriptions,
Comments,
Defined payment methods (such as credit card),
Payment Type (Fixed Price, hourly)
Payment facilities for your country,
Taxation

The Pricing

On such websites, usually, two payments are made. This type of payment depends on the determination of the project owners or your bidding by the project. Also, the relevant site receives its own share from the project at a certain rate. In order to turn this situation into your own, keep your relationship with the project owners so that you can get a job by removing the relevant websites.

Hourly Wages

Hourly wages are calculated on the basis of the minimum hourly working wage set by Freelancer. This situation may be different when the project comes to you and it may be different when you bid for a project.

Fixed Price

Fixed pricing is generally based on the freelancer’s bidding on a project with a certain fee. The price set by the project owner usually indicates the maximum price he can give or can be considered as the fixed price that the freelancer will set.

How should the project be planned and what should I pay attention to?

There is no reason not to take the project if you do not have any previous experience and believe that you can handle the project when buying a freelance project.

If there is no project analysis presented to you before you start the project, you need to analyze it and prepare it and report it to the relevant project owner. But the main thing is to remember that this is part of the work. can offer work with project analysis. In this case, feel free to charge for the analysis.
You need to be careful with fixed price projects, or it may cause you trouble. Because you usually receive your money at the end of the job. When the work is finished, there is always a master. You need to plan your time very well.
In freelance projects, you should divide the work into milestones and define a fee for each milestone. This is the biggest factor that will finance you until the end of the project. In addition, it will visualize how well you plan your work and reflect on the other side that you are doing a professional job.
The most important issue is to determine the boundaries of the project on paper and to agree on paper before analyzing. This step is the primary point you need to do in terms of both the project and your health. Otherwise, neither disagreements nor the project ends. If you skip the stage and enter the project directly, you will have to hear this phrase all the time “I didn’t want it that way” and “Can we add that too?” …

Project into Milestones

For example, someone offers you a web project and you set it as $ 40 per hour. You can allocate 5 hours a day and 5 days a week for the project you will receive, and you can reveal this with an average account of how many months you will finish the project. The best way to do this is to divide the project into milestones and plan what challenges we will face and at what stages you will receive financial payments.

When dividing Milestone, you can collect each step under two general headings as Analysis and Design. I would like to give you an example of these stages in a software project using a pattern I use.

Let’s design a milestone, assuming that we will allocate $ 40 per hour and 5 days a week, as mentioned above. With a very simple mathematical formula, we will calculate the total and the fee we will receive per milestone. To take into account the exceptional cases that may arise. Adding to the project completion period for a few weeks in exceptional cases outside the development process.

Calculation

weeklyWage $1000 = hourlyWage($40) * Daily(5)hours * Weekly(5)day;
monthWage $6000 = weeklyWage * (unexpectedWeek(2) + (4)weeks);
Total $24.000 = monthlyWage* releaseDate4Moth;

General Milestone Example

Determination of requirements and analysis (according to the requirements of the project owner) This step helps us to plan everything that will come up during software development. (2 weeks) ($ 2000)
Application Architecture Design Architecture (Dashboard, Webpage, API, etc.) (2 weeks) ($ 2000)
Database Design (2 weeks) ($ 2000)
Frontend Design (Dashboard, Webpage, etc.) (4 weeks) ($ 4000)
Starting the Software Development Process (8 weeks) ($ 4000)
Project Completion and Release ($ 10000)

I gave a simple example of the milestone above, which can be understood in just 6 steps, and showed you which steps you can charge a piece by piece fee in a freelance project. We have extracted the weekly, monthly and total cost of the project with a simple calculation above. It would be better to distribute this fee for 6 phases according to the time allocated for each milestone step and here it would be better to determine at which step you will charge more. But the larger 40% of the fee. –It would be better to leave 50 of them for project submission or divide them into equal parts for each phase.

In Addition

In order to ensure mutual trust while developing the project and to facilitate your own work, you can define the things to be done on a Kanban Board such as Trello and facilitate your follow-up and you can say that the project owner can follow your work instantly from there.
If you are having problems planning the project or if you want to see everything clearly when you look at it and want to make an effective presentation in project presentations, I recommend you to research the Mind Mapping topic.

Attention

Before the project starts, do not forget to tell the project owner these situations that I have mentioned before,

What are these, let’s recall and add some new information.

Indicate that the deadline for the completion of the project is an estimated time and may end before and after the relevant milestones. Also, remind that this situation will be shaped according to the user’s wishes.
Based on the sample web project above, state that your offer is subject to the development of the project only and that any extra fees will be reflected separately. (Hosting, Domain, etc.)
After the project analysis has agreed to determine the boundaries of the project mutually, commit that you will not accept any new request or change so that you will not be troubled later. Otherwise, remind me that the deadline date will be extended for the project.
At the end of the project, I recommend that you submit the project after collecting the final fee.

If you decide to become a freelancer someday, remember that the last step is to become a digital nomad.

So much from me, I hope you enjoyed reading it and I was able to clear most of the question marks in your mind.