c/freelance-life

Spent 4 hours tracking down a time tracking bug that was just a missing semicolon

I was pulling my hair out over a client's invoice that kept showing 0.00 hours logged. Turns out the whole thing was because I forgot a semicolon in my custom script and it was silently failing. Has anyone else had a tiny coding mistake eat up their whole afternoon?

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hannahj49•1d ago

That $300 project management tool nearly sank my whole year

I dropped $300 on a fancy Trello alternative thinking it would organize my freelance graphic design work better but it just made everything harder to find and I lost a client because I missed their deadline in the mess. Anyone else get burned by paying for software that just made things worse?

2 comments

quinnperry•1d ago

Picked up a scheduling trick at a coworking space in Portland...

I was at this coworking space in Portland last month and noticed this graphic designer always blocked out 2 hour chunks on her calendar with a label like "design time." She told me she uses those to actually focus without checking emails or Slack. I tried it for my freelance writing gigs and it bumped my output by about 30 percent. Anyone else use a hard block like that for deep work?

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kimr91•2d ago

Raising my rate by 50% felt insane but it actually worked

I was at a coffee shop last month and overheard two guys talking about freelance pricing. One said he doubled his rate and lost half his clients but made more money. I thought that was crazy talk. I had been charging $50 an hour for graphic design thinking I would price myself out of work. After hearing that I decided to try raising my rate to $75 just to see what happened. Lost two small clients who paid late anyway but gained three new ones who actually respect my time. Has anyone else tried a big rate jump and had it actually pay off?

c/freelance-life

Spent 4 hours tracking down a time tracking bug that was just a missing semicolon

That $300 project management tool nearly sank my whole year

Picked up a scheduling trick at a coworking space in Portland...

Raising my rate by 50% felt insane but it actually worked

Pro tip: I tried charging by the project instead of the hour and it totally backfired on me last month

The day I accidentally took a nap during client hours and made $300

The spreadsheet I built to track my invoice due dates actually made my cash flow worse

Small milestone - got my first referral from an old coworker today

Just realized I've been underpricing rush jobs for years...

That stat about 94% of freelancers not having a written agreement still hits me hard.

Swapped my morning coffee shop routine for a 15 minute walk before opening my laptop

I was Wrong about Time Blocking for 3 years, Trello Changed my Mind

Hired a VA for 10 hours a week and got back 15 hours of my life

Ditched my fancy invoicing software for a plain text file trick

That coffee shop on Elm Street where I lost a $2,000 deal over bad wifi

Burned $700 on a fancy projector for client presentations

Spent 6 hours trying to fix a single Excel formula for my invoicing system

That terrible Tuesday where everything went wrong at once

My weird calendar trick that actually cut my admin time in half

Talked to my accountant about quarterly taxes and it hit different

Switched from hourly to flat fee for web design projects

My laptop crashed during a client presentation at a coffee shop in Austin last summer and I had to finish the whole thing from memory on a napkin.

Spent 6 months sending project estimates without a signature line on the contract

Took me three tries to figure out how to bill a client for a 40 hour project

Just found out my platform fees are way higher than I thought