Thread by @pretzelhds

At this point I have people approaching me asking for advice on how to become a freelancer. It's weird.

Life pro tip: I *massively* lucked out. I was literally a working week away from filing for unemployment before I started making enough money to survive.

By the time somebody reached out to me via Twitter* I had exactly 87 EUR in my bank account with zero savings.

That one contract and follow-ups gave me enough time to keep on going until more clients came.

(* not mentioning a name, since I'm not sure if they're okay with it)

So my best advice is: Do good work, reach out to people, and yell as loud and far as you can! (I'm always happy to share people who look for work.)

Then once you find someone and you work well together, see if you can build up a longer lasting relationship.

There's not that many people (Like 5 at this point) I work for, but those I do work for have jobs for me repeatedly.

And it's enough to keep me afloat. To pay my share of the rent, to pay for insurance, to lease a car, to save some for bad times.

And I do acknowledge that I am with privilege in many ways. I always had parents to support me if things went wrong. I had access to a computer from a young age to learn programming. I'm still incredibly young at barely 21. I live in a country with wonderful social benefits.

At the same time it doesn't mean everything came for free. My July/August/September of 2016 were spent doing pretty much nothing but work/eat/sleep.

To give you some context about my current stats and values, here's my very first completely open report:

🏃‍♂️ Running costs: EUR 800/m
💰 Earnings: EUR 2000-3000/m
📅 Freelancing since: Jan 2017
👨‍💻 Recurring clients: 4
📊 Revenue in 2017: EUR 14,000

My 2017 revenue between January and July was ~2,000 EUR. The rest came in the second half.

My current hourly rate is EUR 50/h.

And to wrap it all up with a neat bow: If you want to work with me, I still have time in May.

Feel free to reach out. 🤓