John Roux
Are you a senior?
nuclearpengy
Before freelancing ask yourself:
Do you love doing admin? - rock solid admin can be the difference between a happy life and endless battles with SARS. Do you get work done whether or not anyone is asking you and do you currently manage your time well. Could you meet deadlines and get work done and still "have a life"? - When you're freelancing, no one is going to encourage you, motivate you, push you to be the best you can be, you need to want this for yourself.
Do you have a big network and relationships with people who will refer work to you? - Finding work when you're an unknown is really difficult. Getting jobs on jobbing platforms is difficult and requires a lot of time. Referrals saves a lot of time and often the fact that someone was referred reduces risk and reduces the chances of it not actually turning into work. i.e. you spend more time fostering relationships with people that could actually turn into clients and less time on nonsense and pitching people who just want stuff for free.
Can you afford to not get paid for 6 to 12 months (or longer if things go badly) while trying to establish your brand, build up a client base, actually get work done and then battle to collect payments from clients who drop you? - When you run your own business, with or without employees, everything is your problem. You need to find clients, ensure work is delivered and do the admin and also continue to invest in yourself and learn so that your skills remain relevant. This is not for everyone.
Do you feel comfortable cold calling, looking for projects, doing estimates and quoting? - Some people like to do work but are not good at everything that comes before the actual work. You need to be good at this first step and figure out how to do it in a way that doesn't eat up all of your productive time.
Overall, I think most people will be happier in a day job. Freelancing or business ownership is really not for everyone. There definitely are non-financial benefits but it's far from rosey. You will need to take on projects you don't actually want in order to survive and pay the bills. Not everyone gets to be fussy about projects, especially in the beginning. Once you've established a good reputation things get easier but you must also be willing to do some work for free (with discretion) in order to develop your relationships (or maintain them), it's going to happen at some point.
This is a stub, please make suggestions or links based on hourly/fixed/value/retainer based billing
Start here: https://jonathanbossenger.com/the-definitive-guilde-to-calculating-your-billable-rate/
Also see: https://twitter.com/tom_hirst/status/1277933730078785537?s=09
For anonomous anecdata: https://zatech.slack.com/archives/C0JEGJ5AT/p1525349113000274
Software development: https://github.com/zkrige/freelancer_contract
zeorin
Required reading for NDAs:
http://blog.jpl-consulting.com/2012/04/why-i-wont-sign-your-nda/
Ewald
https://taxrek.co.za (Hannelie Coetzee)
startumproject
[email protected] (Irene Olwich)
She's a freelance accountant works mostly with other freelancers.
simonstewart
http://www.accumulo.co.za ([email protected])
I’ve used Accumulo for many years for my company and they’ve been great. They are based in Jhb, but I only need to see them once a year in person [email protected]
johnroux
https://vdmaccountants.co.za ([email protected])
I've used Carel since before day 0 of my company and it's been a lovely (and rewarding) experience
johnroux
ZATech, Networking, slack groups.
By far the best resource I've had for getting good clients has been word of mouth
These always end up being a race to the bottom and they're not likely where you should see your long term goal. However if you're in a pinch and need some extra work, they are an option!
- Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/
- Hubstaff Talent: https://talent.hubstaff.com/
- Outsourcely: https://www.outsourcely.com/
- FreeeUp: https://freeeup.com/
- PeoplePerHour: https://www.peopleperhour.com/
- Truelancer: https://www.truelancer.com/
- Guru: https://www.guru.com/
- Toogit: https://www.toogit.com/
- Toltal: https://www.toptal.com/
ZATech Coworking space (hasn't been updated in a while) https://wiki.zatech.co.za/coworking