Freelance / full-time coefficient or How to understand that it’s time to think about freelance

Calculate how much you earn at your current place of work per day and per hour - and compare this to what you could earn by completing tasks that you can do, remotely.

This is a simple formula, the discovery of which took me several difficult years.



In 2010, I went to regular office work with a salary of fifty thousand, and after a couple of months I found some extra money - a corporate blog, in which I had to write four posts a month for 30K. Naturally, I saw this as a part-time job because the position of the “main place of work” in the traditional paradigm was occupied by work, where I was paid as much as 50K. This, I thought, is my main employment, my career, and the posts are like that, leftist.



This leftist turned out to be not only a part-time job, but also an airbag, when in the spring of the next, 2011, I lost my main job. Earning thirty instead of eighty was, of course, a shame, but the process of finding work for me was even more repulsive, so I delayed it as much as I could. Well, of course, I began to look for other side jobs: the failure in earnings motivated me more than enough - I worked all day, took the smallest orders, wrote large articles for a thousand or two rubles - and exhaled only in August, when it turned out that in the previous month, even after deducting the Sony-then-still-Ericsson blog, which had already become my main source of income, I earned twice as much as I was paid at the “main job” earlier. At that moment, I realized that I no longer needed to look for work.



But I understood the true significance of what happened only years later, when a friend-engineer decided to ask me for advice regarding a proposal he himself had to take a “leftist” in programming microcontrollers in addition to his main work in KB. Answering him, I realized that from the very beginning I perceived what was happening inside out: the working month consists, on average, of 22 working days or 176 working hours. Thus, in my “main job”, I earned ~ 300 rubles per hour. The “side job” took about 30–35 hours a month and brought ~ 900 rubles per hour. That is, in fact, I didn’t have one, but two careers - on the line of one of which my labor market services were three times more expensive than on the other. The decision in which direction one should move further is quite obvious - but then it seemed to me absolutely forced and unnatural.



I advised my friend to calculate how much he was offered for this part-time job per hour - and compare with how much you are paid for your hour at your main job. If they offer him as much or less, then they offer him poor conditions for part-time work, but if they offer him many times more, then he works on poor conditions.

The formula is freelance / full-time coefficient.



Calculate how much you earn at your current place of work per day and per hour - and compare this with what you could earn by completing tasks that you can do on freelance.

• If the difference in favor of freelance is within 30-50%, then there is no point in worrying.
• If the ratio is below unity, that is, on freelance you would earn less than you get now - you are lucky with work.
• If the coefficient is one and a half and higher, it is worth thinking about changing the form of employment.

In my case, the freelance / fulltime ratio was three (900 rubles per hour / 300 rubles per hour) - so I threw out the labor and registered an IP, which I have not regretted once in the past seven years.

Two steps to freelance

Every fourth office employee would like to switch to freelance in the future . Even if you are not one of them, but have opened this post at work, perhaps you should calculate how much your hour in hiring costs.



In 2019, Russia leaves, on average, 21 business days per month . In the first half of the year, a full working month without holidays was only in April - exactly twenty-two workers and eight days off. The average salary in April in St. Petersburg was 39927 rubles - 227 rubles per hour, 48 425 rubles in Moscow - 275 rubles per hour or 35026 rubles, for example, in Omsk - 199 rubles per hour.



1. Get to know the market to get an idea of ​​what kind of earnings on your topic can, in principle, be counted on freelance.

• go to the website of any freelance exchange;
• Type in a keyword for the specialization you are interested in.
• or browse sections with orders.

2. Gain experience to determine the market value of your services in the freelance market.



“By eye” to estimate your possible earnings on freelance, without real experience, will fail.



In fact, during the year I combined both types of employment, until, finally, it became more clear to me how much one option is more profitable than the other. That is, in my case, it took a year to determine my freelance / full-time coefficient.



I think that in the case of most people this will be the minimum reasonable interval necessary for making a decision - after all, we are talking about choosing the path of development of our career. This stage will not work out right away - and it will never work out without starting to try your hand at freelance.

Transition rule: Freelance in parallel with your main employment until the best option for you is decided with all clarity.

Freelance - not only for IT people

Freelance customers are divided into two main groups: some are looking for artists with special professional skills, while others just need a couple of additional responsible hands. Moreover, in both of these categories you can get even without experience in freelance. People who have never tried to evaluate their competencies in the freelance market often do not even suspect that some of their skills have market value.



Let's say that freelance often requires copyright on a specific topic - from metal structures to the services of cosmetologists and dentists - for whom people who know what they are talking about are more suitable than people who professionally write about everything.



There are a lot of tasks on the SMM freelance - many people already run their social networks as if they are waiting for large advertisers to come up with generous offers - instead of looking for those who need, for example, Instagram posts themselves.



Two percent of Russians who are fluent in English can always easily earn money with translations. However, knowledge of any other language besides Russian may turn out to be even more profitable: orders for translations from or into Uzbek, Korean, Arabic, Spanish, Polish or Vietnamese may not occur often, but those who can fulfill them also.



Freelance is not a profession, but a relationship format; and anyone can find themselves freelancing, regardless of their social and legal status: lawyer, logistician, accountant, schoolboy, student, housewife, cashier, foreman, guest worker, demobilization, officer and police officer.

The main minus and the main plus of freelance

A person who chooses self-employment instead of “working for an uncle” takes responsibility for all aspects of his life that he had previously delegated to the employer.

Work - or, rather, employment - is a central factor in the life of many, if not most, people. And the choice of the form of employment - self-employment, self-employment or entrepreneurship - affects a person’s life far beyond working hours, in fact, structuring it: when he is busy and when he is free; what he earns money on and what he spends on, how he shares his personal life and career, how his efforts are rewarded and how he pays for his failures - for someone this is the most important minus of being unemployed. And for me this is her main plus.



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