redundancies when the post is completely superfluous, in practice nearly every redundancy needs a gap that can be most readily filled by its previous occupant. If you’re offered work by your alma mater, it can be very difficult to turn it down. However, accepting is a double-edged sword.
On the plus side, you get a head start in building up the volume of work you need. You also get to work with a client you know very well, and for whom you can probably deliver a lot of value. Presumably, you can also be fairly confident of getting paid too. The downside is continued dependence on your former workplace, in a number of ways – financially, socially and intellectually. Building a career as a freelance means striking out on your own, depending on yourself to bring in work and developing a unique worldview that reflects your unique experience. Preserving ties with your old workmates can restrict your growth in all these dimensions. So even if you decide that you do need to accept work from your old firm, you should at least be aware of the drawbacks and try to compensate for them by pushing for new clients, new contacts and new types of work.
Who could your new clients be? It’s a question that only you can answer, but the key is to cast the net as widely as possible. Don’t restrict yourself to companies that are similar to your old firm. Just as you considered all the ways in which your existing skills could be rearranged to form a new freelance job, so you can shuffle the elements of your new value proposition to throw up new ideas for clients.
Your rates
Setting rates is one of the most difficult things a freelance has to do. And it’s a problem that never goes away. Even after several years as a freelance, chances are you’ll still be finding it difficult to quote on the same basis for every client, or take the same negotiating stance across the board. Expectations on price vary wildly from client to client, so it’s very difficult to take a consistent stance. However, you need to start somewhere, which means setting up some sort of rates tariff before you start.
One of the most obvious places to start is your old job. Don’t. There may be little or no relation between what you earned as an employee and what the freelance equivalent (or near-equivalent) can earn. Because freelances have expenses (computers, travel, accountants) that employees don’t, there’s an expectation that they need to charge a little more – or there should be. But that’s not all. The old saying about salaries is that employees do as little as they can to avoid being sacked, while employers pay as little as they can to stop people leaving. There’s more than a little truth in that, and it means that your salary may have been more to do with your employer’s perspectives than the value you were actually delivering. Whatever – that’s all over for you now. But you do need to get a sense of what you can charge going forward.
The salary mindset might push you towards a daily or hourly rate for your services. Many people, using the salary as a baseline, might calculate their previous daily rate and try to increase it. That’s OK, but set your standards high. There’s really no need to tie yourself to a salary scale that may have been completely arbitrary, ad hoc or badly thought out in the first place.
Another way – a better way, in my opinion – is to charge by the project. This allows you to charge rates that reflect the value you’re delivering. For example, as a freelance copywriter, someone might ask me to write a high-profile advert, or they might just ask me to edit an internal document. While both are important, the approaches are going to be very different. The ad campaign might take one or two days of serious thought, followed by just a few hours’ writing. The editing requires no forethought, but might take four days to complete. You can already see how troublesome an hourly rate is going to be. Better to take a view on how much value the client places on each project and charge accordingly. You don’t want to get into thorny discussions with a client of how long it takes you to do a particular task.
Flexibility is important with pricing. Clients and budgets differ, and your personal circumstances vary. At the outset, you might be willing to take a hit on price in order to build up a portfolio. That’s fine – but it’s something you offer, not something clients demand. Don’t let anyone take advantage of you on the basis of ‘you’re starting out’ or ‘lots of work in the pipeline’ – the client is talking to you, and they want you to do the project, so you bring value to the table. At other times, you might be a bit quiet, so you want to put in a price that all but guarantees you’ll be doing the work. When you’re busier, prices might be less compromising.
Your future
So there you have it. You’ve designed a role, identified clients and set prices. Now all you have to do is the wok. But as a former salaried employee, you already know you can deliver. Provided you can handle all the baggage that comes with freelancing too, you’re well on the way to a flexible, varied and highly fulfilling working life. Good luck!
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