freelancing — Piper Haywood

Published Friday, 8 July 2022 by Piper Haywood

How and why I stopped freelancing

A quick disclaimer: This is NOT an article about how to find a full-time job. There are a million posts about that online. And anyways, beyond the general advice¹, I’m not sure how useful those articles usually are anyways. Every person’s path to a job is super different.

This is about the steps I took to make the transition from independent work to full-time employment as smooth as possible for my clients, my collaborators, my new employer, and most importantly myself. It’s also about the thought process behind that decision.

In many ways, this is all a long explanation of the feelings behind this earlier post.

It wasn’t without stress, but it worked out pretty well with a lot of prior planning and communication.

Before I go in to how, a little about why.

How I handle timeframes and scheduling ⏳

Scheduling work involves juggling the expectations of many people at once. There’s each individual client’s competing desire to be at the top of the list as well as my very real desire to not be an overworked trainwreck.

How I handle proposals 🧐

This post outlines how I handle proposals as an independent web developer, almost the whole pre-project arc including gathering info, writing and sending the proposal, and what happens after it’s sent.

I love chatting about potential projects with anyone who will entertain me, but I can’t stand writing proposals. My goal is to make the process streamlined enough that I hate it a bit less and am able to get proposals out the door much faster.

This is an important topic and something I’m continuously trying to improve. A good proposal lays solid foundations for a project and sets the tone of a working relationship. Sometimes it even helps weed out the people I’d prefer *not* to work with.

Some of this has evolved over years of freelancing, but a lot of it is brand new or newly refined. Moving from the UK to the US has given me the opportunity to reconsider my procedures and improve the commissioning process both for myself and for my clients.

I’m pretty happy with my approach, but I’m sure it could be improved. Also, what works for me may be totally unworkable for someone else. So take this as one person’s perspective, and please share with me if you have other ideas.

How I handle rates, pricing, and invoicing 🤑

Pricing is a minefield, and I’m not sure I’ll ever feel like I’ve got it totally right. That seems like a drag but on the sunny side, as an independent developer I’ve got total control over what I charge and can continue to adjust it as necessary.

This is where I’m at with pricing methodologies, rates, and invoicing at the moment. Please send me your thoughts if you have other ideas.