Working from home
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- benfal99
Any QBNers working from home?
Are you working for one company or are you doing freelancing for multiple companies?
- rabbit0
Me meeee I have been doing it for about 2 years on and off.
Multiple companies, one when have a big project on etc.
Just sorta going from project ta project, ya heard?
- Morning_star0
This link probably won't show, but it is funny. And related.
- benfal990
@rabbit
And do you like it? is it hard to find jobs? How do you find your work?
- rabbit0
Love it! Best thing ever. More freedom to work the times that suit me, I mainly get my work through word of mouth after working in the industry here in Australia a long time, so no, not hard. Everyone I seem to talk to or meet needs a website.
I find just going out and talking to people gets me a lot of work too...
"Oh you build websites? I need a website..."
Thinking of making the leap benfal99? Good thinking, 99 ;)
- monospaced0
I've started working from home regularly now that our company has really pushed on the flexibility and put less emphasis on geography when hiring. I do find that I do more work sometimes, but other times it gets a bit lonely. I love that I have the freedom to decide to head into the office, or to stay home when it's particularly bad our, or if I just don't want to shave and shower.
- I work for a big company, but also freelance on the side.monospaced
- Definitely more productive at home. when focused.rabbit
- benfal990
And how do you do with money? Any stress? like "will i have enough job to pay the bills next month"
- exador10
i freelanced about 10 or 11 years ago, for about a year....and in most ways loved it a lot....
it can be feast or famine at times....there are times you're so busy that there's no weekend..it's just work work work....bust your ass to make your timelines etc...mostly because since you DON'T get a regular paycheck, you have a very hard time saying 'no' to work....so you say yes to just about everything to ensure that you don't go hungry....
which leads to a very busy life....
but...
when you bill...(and you need to bill regularly) and those checks start coming in....boy oh boy...is that ever fucking nice....
you'll see a LOOOOOTTTTTT more money than you ever did working for someone else...just make DAMN sure you save a good chunk of it for tax purposes...
as long as you budget yourself well, you'll be fine...
----
as for being lonely or focused....i found that it was a good practice to book a meeting or two every week...just to ensure that i got out of the house and met with clients etc...mix it up, hit folks up for more work etc....
- rabbit0
Also, this year I am going to setup my seperate 'office space' so it is more like "this is my office, I am at work now" and "ahhh this is my living room, I am off work now"
- ukit20
I haven't worked in office in about five years...don't think I could ever go back to that now. At the same time, working from home can get pretty monotonous. For the past few months, I've been working while I travel (traveling through SE Asia right now). There are a lot of great coworking spaces you can take advantage of in places like Thailand and Bali, it's like being on vacation permanently :)
- benfal990
how much do you charge /hour ? does it depend on the client? small business vs big one?
- exador10
Hey benfal
yeah, as a matter of fact, i did sort of have a bit of a pricing level when it came to small vs big...
for the 'friends and family' price, (as in, 'we cool') I'd go between 60 and 75% of what I'd normally charge a bigger company.... in some cases it was because they were just a 'kitchen table' enterprise and didn't have much cash, so i did my best to find them a comfortable number where they could have good design work that didn't break the bank for them...
for big companies, ....just had a very healthy rate and i didn't budge on it....which is fine....those big companies usually WANT someone with a healthy rate...makes them feel that they're working with a professional....serious....
- CygnusZero40
Its best to judge the projects and charge depending on the difficulty of the project. These days people are cheap, and not all that many clients value quality all that much, so they often look for the cheapest option. There are people from india bidding on projects and willing to do entire websites for like $75 lol.
Its just a matter of finding clients that are willing to pay for quality. I tried to work from home, using various sites like craigslist, many freelance sites and couldnt really get it going. I couldnt deal with the dirt cheap competition.
- yeah i tought about this... thats why i hesitate.benfal99
- mekk0
I would like to do my own freelance thing but have my office space in a big agency or with a bunch of others. All day home alone is no fun after six weeks for me. I like having people around =)
- CygnusZero40
Its really just a matter of getting an "in" with some good clients. A buddy of mine has been full time freelancing for years because he has good clients with ongoing work. When I gave it a whirl about 6 months ago, I couldnt get much going. Competing with too many people willing to work for almost nothing, and too many clients that dont value quality.
- CygnusZero40
I almost landed a good animation project, would have taken me a bit of time to do it, a good 3-4 minute aftereffect animation, and was willing to do it for $1000, which felt cheap to me, but just wanted to get an "in" with this guy, and he had someone offer to do it for $250 which blows my mind, so I was like yeah, go fuck yourself. hehe
- ukit20
Regarding pricing...you need to think of it from a business mindset. The goal is not to charge as much as humanly possible per project, it's how much are you making overall. Maybe you market yourself and charge a good price for a high end service, and spend more time on each project. Maybe you charge a more reasonable price, and turn over a lot of projects quickly. You can also build a virtual team of people to help and outsource stuff.
There is so much work out there right now that could support whatever model or niche you want to go after. Just need to advertise, network and take advantage of the tools that are out there.
- detritus0
I'm a slightly different space to you Benfal, and most other people here, but I 'work from home' where I have studio and office space for my lasering, etc.
If you've currently got a pool of Zero clients, I'd not jump straight to working from home — last place you want monthly financial depression, coupled with work worries, etc, is your place of refuge. Nothing more dangerous.
Once you've got enough regular and, perhaps more importantly, *repeating* clients to make the leap though, you'll find that the quality of your service and good manner should encourage networking and more clients.
It's just getting the first few that's the concern though.
- re: third paragraph: Unless you're a rude incompetent shit, of course.
detritus
- re: third paragraph: Unless you're a rude incompetent shit, of course.
- detritus0
One wee thing — I had a bit of a quiet patch a couple of years back, about three months in Spring where there was *just* enough work to keep me ticking over, but no real advancing traction.
I had a lightbulb realisation when a bunch of people donated a very small amount of money each to a 'good cause', namely I was amazed by quite how much money could be quickly realised by taking on loads of small jobs. I'd made the mistake of investing effort only going after the bigger jobs, where - yes - there was an opportunity for a high reward... but which means nothing if you don't win the job.
I spent the next two months focusing on tiddlers (eg. £30 a pop) and ended up having a good amount of work to be getting on with.
- Agai, this is different to Design and Development where the only £30 jobs are insults from Craislist...detritus