Disadvantages of being a freelancer

November 6th, 2008 . by polygeek

Here’s a list of all the disadvantages I’ve thought of for being a freelancer. Jump over here if you’d like to see a list of the advantages.

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Too little or too much work
By far my biggest stress in freelancing is deciding if I have time to add a potential client and the converse of running out of client work.

I almost always have multiple clients at any given time. I target a certain number of hours to work each week but that varies wildly. A few weeks ago I had 2 hours of billable time. Two weeks later I did 35, which is way over my target.

My worry is that all of my clients will run out at about the same time leaving me with nothing until something new comes along. My wife and I are working on building up a buffer so that I can go 3 months without work with no worries. Even when I was just starting as a freelancer I didn’t have any trouble finding work so I doubt if I’ll ever come close to needing that much of a buffer but it certainly helps with piece of mind.

Taxing
Either as a freelancer or an employee you pay taxes but it’s a much bigger pain in the ass to pay taxes as a freelancer. My wife and I have found an accountant who has experience doing taxes for freelancers and she’s going to walk us through the process for the first few years. But her services aren’t cheap.

It was also very difficult for us to find an accountant who would take us as clients. We live in a small community in the mountains of Southern California and accountants are few and hard between. If you live in a small community you might want to procure an accountant prior to becoming a freelancer.

5-by-5
Working with new people/teams all the time can make it difficult to have clear communications sometimes. That’s something to be aware of. I make a conscious effort to be very clear and detailed in early communications until I feel that I’m on the same page as my client.

Office meet home, home meet office
Working out of a home office can be both a blessing and a curse. Of course there are distractions in the office but you probably don’t have your XBox/Playstation handy at the office. The temptation to take a break and play a game can become a habit and before you know it you’re behind with your client work.

There’s also the issue of separating work time and non work time. When you’re working in an office you have a commute to differentiate between work and home. Without that I find it’s nice to have something to act as a transition time between my workday and evening time. My wife and I might go for a walk or I might play a game on the XBox.

I’m so alone
If you like the office environment then freelancing may not work for you. I spend lots of time alone in my office every day. My only contact with the outside world is the occasional phone call and lots of email. But Twitter really helps take up the slack of having water-cooler conversations.

Collecting
This can certainly be a stressful aspect of freelancing. So far I’ve not run into any sort of issues with collecting money owed to me. ( Well, there was that one time but we came to a mutual satisfactory solution. )

Oddly enough getting too much money too soon has been a bigger issue so far. I’ve had two potential clients, that I hadn’t accepted yet, send me money to try and push me into working for them. I don’t let clients do that anymore.

What else?
Can you think of anything I’ve missed? I’d love it if you’d share your thoughts in the comments.

See a list of the advantages of being a freelance developer