From missing career advancement opportunities to not getting paid, the struggle can become pretty severe.

I’ve been freelancing for about a year now, alongside my full-time job. While my income allows me to quit the latter and take the plunge, several aspects of freelancing have kept me from doing it.

Today, I’d like to talk about precisely them. The seven things that no one tells you about freelancing, and why you might want to do a bit of it before taking a leap into a full-time freelance career.

1. You might make more money, but it comes at a cost.

The higher per hour rate is typically what you will spend for things like tools and additional costs (e.g. taxes, insurance, accounting), so don’t be fooled that you are actually making a ton more. At least not at the start.

You must factor in the time you will spend running your business. This includes time earning money from your business, as well as time spent on administrative tasks such as bookkeeping, marketing, and account management.

When starting your own freelancing hustle, you need to make sure you are making a profit. To do this, you need to calculate your business’s overhead costs. Overhead costs are the expenses that are necessary for your business to operate but do not produce any revenue. These costs can include things like rent, utilities, and office supplies. To calculate any business’s overhead costs, you will need to know what are your:

• Fixed Costs: These are costs that do not change, regardless of how much or how little your business produces. Fixed costs can include items like rent, utilities, and laptop insurance premiums. It can also be the tools that you use on a daily basis (e.g. a subscription to Grammarly, a software payment each month, subscriptions to services)
• Variable Costs: These costs vary depending on how much you work and how you organize it. For me, once I had to hire help for just one month, which meant I had a consultancy fee for this month — an additional expenditure.

Once you know your overhead costs, you can then calculate your profit margin. To do this, divide your business’s revenue by its overhead costs. This will give you your business’s profit margin percentage. If your business’s profit margin percentage is positive, your business is making a profit. If it is negative, your business is losing money.

While it is certainly possible to make a high income as a freelancer, this does not guarantee that you will become rich overnight. In order to make a good living as a freelancer, it is important to be knowledgeable about your industry, to maintain a high level of quality in your work, and to be effective at marketing yourself.

2. Pay negotiation can be a struggle, especially at the start

How do you negotiate rates?

Nobody talks about what the appropriate rates are for the industry and what you will often find is what at the beginning you might low-ball yourself quite significantly, or you may be inclined to do so due to your lack of experience.

By all means, the sooner you start talking about money and mark up (if you are submitting work to an agency that then communicates with the client), the sooner you can stop feeling used and abused.

There are different methods of charging that you can use, e.g. per hour (the worst), per project, or a monthly retainer.

This thread by Tom Hirst summarises all you need to know for making the most out of your freelance incomehttps://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?type=text%2Fhtml&key=a19fcc184b9711e1b4764040d3dc5c07&schema=twitter&url=https%3A//twitter.com/tom_hirst/status/1277933730078785537&image=https%3A//i.embed.ly/1/image%3Furl%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fabs.twimg.com%252Ferrors%252Flogo46x38.png%26key%3Da19fcc184b9711e1b4764040d3dc5c07

3. Learning can become stressful, or it may lack completely less you make deliberate room for it.

Learning is stressful.

I don’t know about you but there is a huge difference between doing a project as a freelancer and as a full-time employee.

One allows you room to fail and grow, whereas the other one for the most part doesn’t — it’s all on you, you’re a one-man team betting your personal brand and reputation on the fact that you can do the job.

This typically results in more stress and less creativity in how the tasks are completed.

At times, freelancing can also be stressful because you’re constantly learning new things and trying to keep up with the latest trends. You may also feel overwhelmed with all the work you have to do and the deadlines you need to meet.

4. Admin work might feel suffocating at times.

Hours spent pitching a new client?

Hours spent writing a proposal?

Hours spent writing a project description?

You’re not getting paid for those, I guarantee you. Going back to my previous point — you really need to negotiate your rates appropriately.

Put in all the projects you pitch an additional 2–3 hours for admin, another 1–2 for meetings for getting the brief of the project and the delivery.

At the start, you might find it hard to state the prices, but trust me paying yourself first goes a long way into feeling more relaxed about the entire ordeal.

5. Finding clients can be hard, but getting paid might be even harder.

Everyone talks about how finding clients can be hard. If you are a personal brand wizard, I don’t need to tell you that this will be a breeze — you already know. Provide value and clients will come.

The struggle will be getting paid.

Sometimes, you might not get paid for ages. Your Christmas payment might come in late January, and that’s just the reality of things. And you can kiss that bonus goodbye!

There can be some challenges associated with getting paid as a freelancer.

This can include issues such as getting paid on time, getting paid the correct amount and ensuring that the client is happy with the work that has been done.

It is important for freelancers to have a good understanding of their billing process and to be comfortable discussing money with clients. It is also important to have a good relationship with a reliable bank or financial institution to help manage finances.

6. Feeling like part of a team or something bigger than yourself is really rare.

It’s really hard to feel as part of a team or as part of something bigger than just you when you are freelancing.

There are a lot of things that are hard about freelancing, but this one might be the hardest. When you are freelancing, it can be really hard to feel like you are a part of something bigger than just yourself. You don’t have the camaraderie of coworkers, and you don’t always have the same sense of common purpose.

It can be hard to make connections and feel like you are part of a community.

One way to combat this is to find freelancing groups or online communities where you can connect with other freelancers. This can help you feel more connected and part of a larger whole. You can also try to find clients that are more collaborative and supportive, so you can feel more like you are working as part of a team. And, finally, try to find ways to celebrate your successes together, so you can feel like you are all in it together.

7. You might end up missing out on greater career opportunities.

There is a genuine risk of missing out on greater career opportunities, especially if becoming a solopreneur or business owner is not something you aspire to.

Consider this — for the salary that you are making as a freelancer and the time you put in getting clients, would you rather be in a more comfortable role where you are not engaged with things that you don’t enjoy doing.

There’s this saying about when you become a freelancer you are no longer a service provider, you are also an accountant, a salesperson, an administrator, and a personal assistant.

There is so much extra work that goes into it, and if you are not someone that really pushes themselves to be better and or you don’t have access to communities where knowledge sharing is standard practice, then it will be very difficult to maintain the same type of growth and learning that you might get at a corporate job or agency.

Freelancing is definitely not for everyone. It can be a great way to make some extra money on the side or to transition into full-time freelancing, but there are a few things you should know before you get started.

Here is a summary of the seven things that no one tells you about it:

1. You might make more money, but it comes at a cost.

2. Pay negotiation can be a struggle, especially at the start

3. Learning can become stressful, or it may lack completely less you make deliberate room for it.

4. Admin work might feel suffocating at times.

5. Finding clients can be hard, but getting paid might be even harder.

6. Feeling like part of a team or something bigger than yourself is really rare.

7. You might end up missing out on greater career opportunities.