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There is a huge range of what "freelance" means, including:
+ Journalist-type freelancers who may be researching and/or writing a
dozen short articles and a book at any one time, pitching new
work every day, and chasing down payment from recalcitrant clients.
Very few hours are billable.
+ Consultants with a number of simultaneous clients some of whom are
ongoing, some of whom are one-time, and who take up differing amount
of time each week. There's still pitching and accounts receivable to
deal with. Some hours are billable, but most are overhead.
+ Consultants working longer-term projects for which there's only a
small number of clients and steady work, and companies that
(sometimes) pay on time with (minimal) pestering. A larger number of
hours are billable here.
+ Agency contractors for whom almost all of the overhead is handled
by the agency itself. Nearly all the hours are billable.
I've been in all these situations, and I wouldn't say there's any 50%
rule of thumb at all. The more freelance you are the more time you
spend on non-work-work. The more clients you have at once the more
overhead there is to manage clients. And of course workload varies
from week to week so (as Kat mentioned) some weeks are very billable
and some aren't at all.
The software at the URL in question seems to be aimed at consultants
working single projects who have trouble with time management,
invoicing, and accounting.... which for me are not actually the part
that takes up the most time. Its the gooey social problems that are
the hardest part of freelancing, for me, the networking, the calling
accounts payable over and over again, the networking, the interviewing
for jobs, the networking....
Laura
On Apr 5, 2010, at 12:19 PM, Milan DavidoviÄ wrote:
> Regarding the rule of thumb about freelancers being able to bill for
> half the hours worked, given here:
>
>http://www.ofuz.com/blog/2010/04/the-freelance-tipping-point/
>
> Does that ring true for those of you who work as freelancers? I don't,
> and I've been to only a few talks on freelance tech writing, but I've
> never heard of this before.
>
> --
> Milan DavidoviÄ
>http://twitter.com/altmilan
>http://altmilan.blogspot.com
>http://ca.linkedin.com/in/milandavidovic
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