I do some stuff that might be a a bit unusual:

• I have day-rate instead of an hourly rate
• I don't do fixed-price projects.
• I charge more for longer contracts because they limit my freedom. Most people charge less because it gives them certainty.
• I charge less if I can work from home.
• I charge the time I can work while commuting.

When it comes to sales I believe that:

• You should believe that you have something that other designers don't have. Makes it so much easier to sell yourself and your rates.
• Become friendly with other freelancers that are already established. Work often comes in waves and if you say no to a client that is looking, you'll probably give them some of the names of people you like. Other people will do the same for you.
• Drink coffee and visit companies, even if they're not looking. You often don't find the company that is looking for designers at that exact moment, but they'll find you when they are looking.

Other than that:

• Ad-agency work is often rushed and not well-payed.
• Corporate gigs are usually longer and well-payed.
• If you like working in development teams, you'll often be an easy hire.
• Doing front-end development / any type of coding helps if you're an interactive designer.

Hi James, I see you're working for blinkbox, a shame it got sold on.

Here are some of my thoughts:

• It's a good market to be in as a contractor in London - lots of activity.

• Make sure you're on LinkedIn, good place to find contracts either direct or via agencies.

• Have a buffer of minimum 3 months - ideally 6. Sometimes you can start a contract within week, but it can also take longer - 1 month plus.

• For long term contracts (6 months plus) try to be client side - things are less rushed, i.e. quality doesn't suffer as much.

• Depending on your experience, you can find gigs ranging from £350 - £500 / day for UI designer roles. The higher rates when you know how to prototype (becomes easier and easier now with tools like pixate etc).

• This is a good book to get - www.contractorshandbook.co.uk - but most of the info can also be found here www.contractorcalculator.co.uk

Good luck and let us know how you get on.

I don't have the time I should to reply in full to this but here's my story from when I quit my job a few months back:

https://hubski.com/pub?id=174514

Since then made 4x my previous salary each month, except for january where I only brought in ~$1000 in leftovers because I spent a full month traveling through 6 countries.

The main difference is I now spend 50% of my time managing my projects, dealing with clients, prepping for meetings, writing proposals, etc. I barely work between the hours of 9-5 as I am dealing with clients and emails. Instead I get the bulk of my work done on the weekends and evenings and take calls and respond to emails while wandering around the city, watching movies, and generally doing whatever I want. I don't even try to get big chunks of work done during that time anymore. I play during the day, take a call from whereever, and then get it all done in the evening.

I spent the first few months trying to work between 9-5 and being frustrated that I got nothing real done during those hours and then actually worked between 5-10. It was exhausting. It's much better this way.

I also charge 2x my normal rate if I have to physically go anywhere or meetings over two hours. These little rules are written into contracts on a per-client basis. I don't worry about it for 99% of clients but the 1% who are oldschool and/or general fucks, I have clauses EVERYWHERE. You'll get the hang of that as you go. Don't worry too much about the horror stories - just trust your judgement and your gut.

Most of my clients were previous clients (I've always kept at least one side project going at a time), previous client's friends and family members and whoever, and that's it. I have yet to update my resume or portfolio. It's from maybe november 2013.

I also got in as the go-do dev for a marketing company that I had worked with once over two years ago. That was a ~10k gig. They passed me along to another big project after that was done and the backend dev team was also working on another big project and asked if I wanted to do frontend for that.

I haven't had any problems getting work, although I am waiting for the day where I have a moment to update my fucking portfolio site.

Oh! Also. I use Harvest for time tracking and invoicing. It is well worth the $12/month or whatever as it will save you a ton of hours trying to remember hours or going back thru your calendar and it will make sure you bill for every hour you work.

Motiv has a pretty great little calculator for seeing what your Freelance rate should be: https://motivapp.com/freelance-hourly-rate-calculator

My suggestion would be to place your billable time to around 60-70% of your hours in the day. You'll be spending time on the day-to-day of your business. Invoicing. Answering emails. Phone calls. etc.

When you start out on your own, let every friend and relation know what you're doing. Send them a link to your website and let them know you're accepting clients. You'll get most of your initial work from referrals and past co-workers/employers. From there hopefully it's all word of mouth on the quality of your work.

I have made the same jump recently in London and it's been the best decision I have ever made. For these reasons:

• I feel more connected to the money I make. If I don't work I won't get paid, and if I don't do good work I don't get work.

• If they are paying you it means they like your work. This not only gives you the confidence to work hard but also to know your work is valued and for you to keep working you must continue to offer value.

• I feel respected as a professional. No longer am I the guy who the other employees go down the pub with to moan about the boss. I come into to do a professional job and it's not my place to moan about internal politics. If something is not quite right I fix it or I leave.

• I get to do varied work all the time and each job offers very different challenges, I feel this vastly improves my skillset and keeps me fresh

• As a senior people value my agency experience. I can offer small startups a way of working and experience that has come from the investment of a larger employer. They love this and so do I, they draw on my experience and I feel great that I can offer something that I thought was second nature (Just make sure you stand up when they come asking or when you feel you can offer more than just sitting at your mac with your headphones on).

• I meet great people all the time and it's given me a great list of talented, digital professionals. If I ever build my own product or need a team then I will already have a list of people I know I can work with.

I would ask what level UI Designer you are? I'm a senior and averaging about £300-£340/Day.

If you are good at what you do, you are enthusiastic and happy to go out searching for work then you'll be fine. I had about a week off in the beginning and spent the whole time re-doing my folio to what I thought potentially employers would want to see (it needs another refresh now!). This was invaluable (along with a fair few phone calls and emails every day) and I have now been in work for almost a full year.

I did a lot of freelance for big agencies. There are certainly downsides, but you can get 1-4 months of 40 hour weeks at just about the highest rate you can expect before you've built out a client-base. It's a "safe" way to start freelancing.

If you know anyone who works at a big agency, start asking around. The agencies are always landing projects they don't have the staff for.

I was freelancer for more than 10 years. My advice: start progressively. Don't take risk, don't give up your job yet.While you keep your job, start to get some freelance contracts and work on it during week-ends, holidays or evening.

So you start to build your customer base, your portfolio, you see how much you can charge, and you start to have an idea of a potential income.

Once you will have freelanced for a few months, you will have saved money, got customers and you feel more confident. Then you can decide more surely when to switch to 100% freelance.

Good luck,

Check out hashtagfreelance.co (shameless plug)

We're a community chat on Slack with hundreds of freelancers... Tons of advice going around, both business and design topics.

It's great to have other freelancers to get feedback from.

Some valuable advise are being shared.

I am at the same boat of starting up as a contractor and hoping to become a full time freelancer in a couple of years time (work from home, not limited by location).

I live in Edinburgh, so the market is not that big here. I would love to hear from the contractors from smaller cities about their experience and how do you go about getting the work.

Great reading as I am thinking of moving down from Chester to contract/live in London. Thanks to everyone that has left useful information. I will be bookmarking this thread!