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My full-time job pays me far too much money to make it worth my time to realistically ever waste it freelancing on the side.

Whenever I do actually sit down and start doing freelance work, it’s at my extremely ridiculous hourly rate. I charge effectively triple my hourly salary just to make it worth my time.

This seems quite self-contradictory. Regardless, I've found that after doing it for a few years, I can make 2-3x more doing freelance than I could in a salary job. All it takes is hustle.



3x salary is actually a great formula for equivalent compensation.

If you make $30/hr salary, you really make $40/hr with vacation/health/employer-paid taxes/use of office and equipment for free/reimbursed travel+conferences

+you don't get paid for slow times, and non-billable tasks

+you have to compensated for the increased risk you take on (consider the reverse--you would take less average pay to know that it's completely reliable and consistent)


While you don't get paid for slow times, you do get paid for busy times. That seems to balance out in my experience.


Exactly. That's what I meant when I said all it takes is hustle. When you freelance, your have very direct and tangible control over how much you make. You have some control when salary, but the correlation with effort is a lot murkier, in my experience.


Agreed, like I said in my last comment, it all comes down on how you see yourself in the market and how good you are at it. If you are good and you get the job done, clients will pay anything.




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