Welcome to the first issue of Adem's Freelance Journey.

When I first started freelancing I didn't have anyone to turn in for advice. I've had to learn everything myself.

And no one shared the "dirty" parts of running a freelance business.

So I want to change this.

I'll try to be as open as possible in these posts and share the struggles of everyday life as a freelancer.

I'll try to write these posts every month.

I'll NOT share any sensitive information about my clients.

With this said let's get started.

TL;DR made $1844 for ~ 70 hours of work on three different projects. Have two other projects in the pipeline.

Income

I've made $1844 this month.

This seems pretty low for a freelance software developer and honestly, it is.

September was a super-busy month so I burnt down a bit this month and didn't feel like working a lot.

Projects

Client #1 ($1739 for ~49 hours of work)

I've been working on this client's project every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as a part-time developer.

I charge him $35 an hour which is lower than my usual rate of $50 an hour. The reason I'm charging so low is the founders of this company are ex FAANG employees, they have a super cool and useful product and they're gaining a lot of traction in their niche.

The problem is they're 100% bootstrapped so they can't pay me my usual rate but it's fine for now.

Client #2 ($105 for 3 hours of work)

Client #2 is also a bootstrapped SaaS company.

It's run by one person with half a dozen freelancers.

I'm charging this client $35 an hour because we've been working for quite a while and the work I do is pretty chill so there's no real reason to increase my rate.

We've done a lot of work during September and I didn't hear back from him until a couple of days ago so that's why I've worked with him for only 3 hours.

Client #3 ($0 for ~18 hours of work)

Client #3 doesn't like paying freelancers hourly so we agreed on $1000 for about 20 hours of work.

I've already charged him $300 dollars and I expect to invoice him the rest sometime next week.

It's a classic board game made in React and WordPress.

Future leads

Work was slow the first three weeks of October.

I was about to start scouring IndieHackers, Reddit, and HackerNews for new opportunities.

Fortunately, Client #2 reached out if I'm available to do some work on his side project which I've accepted.

Also, Client #3 is pretty satisfied with the current state of the project and he's planning to hire me for another project once we're finished with the current one which is pretty cool.

Conclusion

I hope this post was fun to read as much it was fun for me to write it.

I'm looking forward to reading your feedback so please don't be shy in the comments.

If you want to read these updates as soon as I write them, you can sign up for my newsletter.

Thanks for reading,
Adem