TLDR
- To start freelancing, pick one skill you already use at work and one type of client who would pay for it directly.
- Get your first paying client before building a website, a logo or a company. Get to three before you think about leaving your job.
- Check your employment contract first: some forbid outside work in the same field or with your employer’s clients.
- Price the first client properly, because your first rate becomes the anchor for every client after.
Most people who want to start freelancing start in the wrong place. They build the website, design a logo, register a company and choose invoicing software. Months later they have a shop and no customers.
The order that works is the other way round.
The order
- Check your contract. Look for clauses on outside work, conflicts of interest and non-solicitation of your employer’s clients.
- Pick one skill. The one you already use at work, that someone outside your employer would pay for. Not a new skill.
- Pick one kind of client. “Small accounting firms that need X” is a client. “Anyone” isn’t.
- Set a price. Look at what others charge for the same work, and don’t start at the bottom.
- Ask ten people. Not a post to the world. Ten direct messages or calls to people who fit the client you picked.
- Deliver the first job very well. Your second client usually comes from your first.
- Get to three paying clients. Then build whatever helps you get the fourth.
The first client is the business. Everything you’d rather do first is decoration.
What it does to your money
Freelancing alongside a job isn’t only about the extra cash. It’s what that cash does to your savings. An extra $1,000 a month, saved and invested at 5% a year after inflation, takes roughly seven and a half years off a typical 30-year path to financial independence. An extra $3,000 takes it to about 15 years. The maths is here.
What I did, and what I’d do differently
I’m an occupational therapist. My first salary was $1,700 a month. In 2008 I resigned and went freelance with the same skill, and my first month came to $4,800. The whole story is here.
I resigned first. You don’t have to. Three paying clients while the salary is still coming in tell you more than a resignation letter does.
Where it can go
Freelancing is the first step of a longer ladder: solo practice, then staff, then a business that runs without you, and one day possibly a sale. The six levels of a service business walks through each step and what it does to your date.
Run your own
Open the calculator and pick “I don’t have a business yet”. Set what freelancing would pay you to $1,000 a month, then $3,000, and see the two dates side by side.
Illustrative numbers, not advice. Check your contract and local rules before taking paid work outside your job.