Category: Freelancing

I spent the better part of my thirties staring at spreadsheets that made me want to weep, wondering why I was working sixty-hour weeks only to end up essentially subsidizing my clients’ lifestyles. I’ve seen every “guru” on LinkedIn claim that the secret to success is a complete rebrand or a fancy new website, but let’s be honest: none of that teaches you how to raise your rates without feeling like a common thief. You don’t need a new logo; you need the backbone to tell a client that your twenty-one years of experience isn’t a charity project. I’m not…

I remember sitting in a drafty corner of a Soho café twenty years ago, staring at a contract for a developmental edit that felt like a personal insult. I had spent three days researching “market standards,” only to realize that the industry doesn’t actually have a standard—it has a collection of polite ways to underpay people. Most of the advice you’ll find online about how to set your first rate is either academic nonsense or predatory “hustle culture” garbage that suggests you should charge less just to get your foot in the door. Let me be clear: starving is not…

I remember sitting in a drafty corner of a Soho cafe in 2004, staring at a spreadsheet that told me I’d effectively paid £400 for the privilege of working for myself that month. Most “gurus” will tell you that transitioning to independence is about finding your muse or curating an aesthetic Instagram feed, but they’re selling you a fantasy that leads straight to bankruptcy. If you want to learn how to go freelance sensibly, you have to stop looking at your passion and start looking at your overhead. It isn’t about “manifesting” clients; it’s about the brutal, unglamorous math of…