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Comment by ropz | Hacker News Reader

In the UK, my lowest rate is equivalent to $75 an hour. I can read and write code, but most of my work is documentation related. I, too, like to tinker around with my own projects, but tend to do that between gigs. I'd be delighted if I could work for 30 hours a week and spend the rest on my own projects.

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Do you have any tips on finding freelance work doing documentation?

For finding any kind of freelance work: make lots of friends. The online clearinghouse sites are a great way to end up doing too much work for too little pay for a shitty client. Everyone needs work done or know someone who needs work done. Work the networking.

And I mean friends. You're not going to get business out of a guy you just met. You're probably not going to get business out of many people the first time they ask you. Never ask them if they have work they need done, let them complain about not being able to find someone, then mention you do that sort of work (whatever it is, if you're smart you can figure it out well enough to do better than the majority of people). Don't back down on rate, they might balk at first, but when things get dire for them and they still can't find anyone, they'll remember you.

Avoid debt like the plague. It'll make you a slave to a constant, regular income. I have constant, regular income, but I also know I have urges to take 3 months off at a time. Debt is the mind killer. It's a lot easier to face the prospect of losing a contract when you know you have 3 months before you need more money, not 1 week.

EDIT: and definitely lie to your in-laws about how much you work. A) Few people my own generation can get over "not having a good job", fewer still of the older ones. And B) they might think not working for a cluent means you're not busy and they can make demands of your time.

How long did it take you to land your first gig? This definitely seems like the way to go, but as you can imagine there is a heavy amount of luck involved with your process (i.e. if all of your friends are not associated with companies that need your skills, then you probably aren't going to find many offers).

I am currently on a sabbatical of sorts, and am keeping the option of doing freelance work as a way to extend it, but so far, all of the 'dude, this would be great for you' opportunities from friends haven't panned out. Part of the problem might be that I don't really need the work, so I haven't been following up too aggressively, but it still feels like I would probably have to go outside my network to land the first gig.

its not as much luck as you make it out to be. If you don't have any friends who work for companies that need work, then go make new friends.

I had my fisrt gig within a month. in that month, I turned down a couple that would have been too low of a rate or bad work.

I stumbled into a lucky situation maybe 5 years ago. I posted a topic on a development forum mentioning my services and linking to a couple of examples. I received a few responses, people wanting work done for a couple hundred dollars, which would basically be a waste of time. Anyway, I get caught up with other projects, and a few months down the road someone sends me a message on AIM, saying they saw my post, and needed a quick project done in the next couple of days. Turns out they're a huge firm in New York with a bunch of Fortune 100 clients. Why on earth they sent me an instant message on some half-assed forum post, I'll never know. I ended up working for them for years and 80% of my work originated from them. It launched my career, and I quickly went from being a freelancer picking up scraps to working on big name projects and networking with tons of great people. All thanks to a random forum post, one of the few I ever posted during that time.

I think that is generally how it works. Big companies don't all operate through ossified HR departments, and even the ones who do still have rogue elements who are responsible for most of the productivity in the company. If anything, I'd probably make it a rule to only work with people who do not try to make me go through HR hoops to work for them.

I don't think of it so much as luck as "having many irons in the fire". None of the opportunities you will end up pursuing will be that good of a chance of coming through, we just kind of delude ourselves into thinking certain ones are better than others. It just becomes a game of stacking up enough low probability opportunities that eventually one of them comes through.

Here's how I got my best client:

I was having lunch with a former colleague, and his cell phone rang. It was his boss "help! Two of our programmers just quit! Do you know anyone who could start, like, tomorrow??"

There is a market in the UK for good technical writers. It's not as sexy as development (whoever heard of a technical writer making the cut as a YC founder?) but it pays the bills. My own problem is that around 10 years ago, I veered off into business development and sales, and have been struggling to get back into the technical side of things ever since. I was OK at bizdev and sales, but I worked for fantasists unfortunately and it's left me with a bad taste.

Where do I get contracts from? The usual suspects - jobserve, networking, and various other places. I think it's probably worth pointing out that having had a well-completed LinkedIn profile for over 10 years, it's never brought me anything.

Edit: drop me a line - happy to help, heck, this might be the beginning of a technical writing dynasty! ropley at gmail dot com.

Guide from a successful writer, albeit copy rather than technical:

http://bart-calendar.livejournal.com/2562326.html

That's the problem with working too many hours: you don't have any time to go look for other work and potentially charge more. It's very hard to get an existing client to pay more.

Yeah, you're right, but I'm stubborn. I won't move to where the work is - I have a family. I'm much much more productive if I'm actually interested in what the client is doing (... and that's hard to figure out) and I'm not particularly bothered about making top dollar - mid-dollar is OK by me.YMMV.

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