So, You Want to Work from Home as a Freelancer

A Word of Caution

I’m your typical Millennial. I have multiple “hustles,” and I work from home. I don’t have a 9-to-5 job in the typical sense, even though I do work around eight hours a day.

There is something freeing about working from home, even if you do work your standard eight-hour day. For one thing, you realize that an “eight-hour day” isn’t eight hours at all. You have to think about all the time it takes to get ready, drive to work, do the shift and take breaks, if they’re off the clock.

For many people, this adds up to several extra hours a day. So, it’s not uncommon to find someone with an “eight-hour day” end up working closer to 12 when all is considered.

Working from home is a similar situation, but you cut out the “fat,” so to speak. As a writer and teacher, I wake up around 6:45 to begin teaching at 7:00. I work until 9:00 a.m., then I write until noon. At that point, I usually take a break, but I may work again in the evening or during a lull in the afternoon for a couple of hours if I have extra work.

I can take my work with me. I can work outside or inside. I watch my dogs while they play and enjoy working at parks or even while on a road trip with nothing else to do. It pays according to my effort, so the sky is the limit.

That being said, it’s not all glory. There are lulls in work and times when freelancing is tough. Not all people make it doing this type of work, even if they are supposedly envious of it.

Before you work from home, be sure you’re ready to fail

I would love to say that it’s easy to work from home, but you need to be ready to fail at it. I’ve been working from home since 2010, but I had no choice. I was very ill, and I couldn’t hold a normal position in a physical workplace. Over the decade+ of work, I worked out the kinks of this kind of employment in its infancy.

Freelancing is difficult because of how it changes over time. The places I pulled work from at the beginning don’t even exist now. I dealt with being “blackballed” by an admin at one agency that ended up hurting me at several. It would have been easy to quit and move on to other things, but I didn’t. Now, I’m reaping the benefits in an era where working from home is easier than ever, but people still don’t always make it.

You have to be driven, focused, and attentive to your work. Yes, you do need to hustle to get those contacts and clients. I could not tell you the number of people I tried to help get started- many of them quit after one or two tasks with an agency or during the interview process for teaching. They only see the short-term difficulties, not the long-term opportunities.

So, are you ready to work from home as a freelancer? You might be. It’s still a good idea to get yourself a mentor or to have others you know in the industry before you begin. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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