Lessons learned in a year of freelancing

swizec.com

19 pointsSwizec4 comments

From what I know, you've freenlanced even before you've opened your own company. So this step up probably wasn't as hard as maybe for someone who hasn't done as much freelancing before. Any advice for anyone that just realized "gee I feel like I should be a freelancer" and doesn't have much exposure or contacts to start with.

Going from freelancing next to college for 10 hours a week to full-time freelancing and having to pay all the government fees all week is a beast. Nothing to sneeze at.

Your last few words explain what somebody fresh should do: "doesn't have much exposure or contacts to start with" -> get those. Work on finding contacts, here on HN works really really great, talk to people in the industry, attend events, give talks, gain exposure.

Some pretty good points in here. What pisses me off about posts like this is seeing a freelancer learn some of the important things in one year what may have taken me years to figure out. ;)

We all learn at our own pace, which is why it's good to learn from others. Your pace might just kill you.

I learned a lot of the lessons because sites like HackerNews gave me the courage and fire-under-ass to learn them.

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