Anyone with a realistic roadmap on how to go about Freelancing?
What should I look out for?
What your advise ( please no generic popular BS)?
What platform should I use ( it’s seem there are hundreds of platform already).
A roadmap is needed please.
Thank you in advance.

What's your hourly rate?
If you don't know do you know how to calculate your hourly rate?
Do you know how many billable hours and non billable hours a week should have?
Have you thought about the costs and taxes, pension savings in order to provide your services?
What's your specialty or unique selling proposition?
Where will you offer your service and to whom?
Do you know what a retainer is?
What's your local freelance scene like? Do you have an Impact Hub near you where you can talk to other freelancers?
What do you know about marketing and customer acquisition?
Have you considered to Brand yourself? Logo, website, business card, html email?
Do you have enough capital to sustain yourself for at least a half a year without income?
What happens when you screw up and the customer demands compensation?
Do you have a lawyer who helps you and writes you favourable contracts?
Do you know if its cheaper to buy services from an bookkeeping accountant or doing the bookkeeping on your own?🤔

@heyheni oops 😬 all this work.

Here are things you need to consider (in no particular order)
1. What's your niche?
2. How will you charge clients? By value (Value-Based Pricing), hour or ba y project?
3. What's your business model? If you've got no idea what is then looking at templates would give you a good idea of what you need to consider.
3. Are you okay with using "race-to-the-bottom" platforms like Upwork, Fiverr and AngleList or less terrible ones like Toptal?
4. How are you going to get and approach clients?
5. How are you going to manage payments, are you going for sprint-based, milestone-based, or 50/50 (before starting and after finishing the project/job), 25/25/50 (before you start, after completing a significant chunk/milestone and after finishing) or 100% (after finishing, I strongly discourage from doing to do that)m
6. Do you have templates ready for proposals, quotes, invoices?
7. What is your ideal customer?

8. Have you considered if sole trading is more appropriate for you then set up your own company?
9. Are you planning on getting a partner (or more) or hiring people?
10. What is your brand?
11. Do you have a professional insurance? If not, why?

I strongly recommend you to watch videos from Jonathan Stark (even if you don't use VBP) and The Futur (even if you're not in the design business, plenty of their YT videos are gold and applicable to other industries). Not to mention, Traversy Media which also has freelance/business-related videos that are a must.

There are other questions which @heyheni mentioned that are important, all of those (yes, it's a lot but not an exhaustive list) should be a good start.

It will be a lot of work to get through all of that but, as someone who skipped some steps (and questions) *before* freelancing, I can assure you that it's not worth jumping before you have an answer to all of those and have gone through some videos from any of the above YT channels

@Meetife You've unsuccessfully pitched your start up idea right?
So you seem to have some experience but maybe you don't know enough about doing business to be confident enough to pull it of yet. Start-up and Freelance.

So learn more about
Business model
Marketing & sales
Graphic Design & Copywriting
train holding pitch presentation daily
service design

And if you start freelancing do it part time in the beginning. 60% Employed 40% Freelance.

Questions? 🙂

I’m a freelancer who teaches people to freelance, so - I can only tell you if you pay me...

And obviously - you’ll get no good advice in a basic text thread:

But here is a hint: a “platform” isn’t going to help you. It’s going to be high quality work and word of mouth.

@Berkmann18 good points!!!!

Well, I did like this

1. Start of necessity
2. Suck ass at marketing
3. Do tiny project at fraction of normal rate for one client
4. Don't find anymore work for months
5. Take office job that isn't even dev