Hope my boss doesn’t see this… yet.

As with many who hit career goals and start charting the path ahead, I’ve realized that time is by far my most valued asset. My investments in crypto have not made me a bitcoin millionaire who can comfortably retire, but a part time freelancer job in web3 could certainly cover the gap, so the planning has begun.

Is my goal realistic? Let’s say I want to make $150,000 per year and I only want to work 25 hours a week. $150,000 / 52 (weeks per year) = $2884 (per week). $2884 / 25 (hours per week) = ~$115 per hour. The market supports this rate right now if each hour was capitalizable. I’ve heard that one should budget anywhere from 25% - 50% of their freelancing time to marketing, planning, and other administrative overhead, which would give me about 19 hours per week out of 25 that I can actually bill, meaning my average would need to be closer to $150/hr to achieve my yearly goal. Still possible, but quality and building quickly will be important to provide the right value to clients.

So the numbers appear to work out, what’s next in planning. I’ve talked with a number of freelance developers and asked them about their entry into the freelance world and one of the biggest takeaways was to get your contracts right. My favorite way to view contracts was informed by Garry Keller. Instead of trying to form a comprehensive agreement, think of a contract as what you want to happen if you CAN’T agree. We can all agree to stay flexible and find the path of least resistance on a project, but what happens if you disagree on what that means? A couple gems that were given to me (thanks @DaxDev.eth, and others):

• I retain all ownership of the code and reserve the right to use it in my templates, on other projects, and in my portfolio.
• Ownership of my code is a perpetual lease that allows the buyer to use it in perpetuity so long as they don’t do anything illegal, immoral, or unethical with it.
• Discounts to my standard rate mean deadlines are out the window along with pretty much anything else that would add stress or urgency to the project.

Having been a full time professional developer for the last 17 years I have a wide range of skills, but very little in the way of a visible portfolio. My website is going to be very important not only to explain my skills and offerings, but to show them off. I’m not the worst designer, but it’s not my strongest skill. Do I contract a designer to create a beautiful template, or do I spend the time working through it to develop and showcase my abilities? Find out at https://www.curiouslycory.com

There’s a lot of other considerations I’m making about the whole thing, but the last one I want to talk about is weather I want to join sites like fivver, or upwork. There is a LOT of competition on these sites, and there’s a lot of effort that needs to go into creating, managing, and marketing the accounts to even hope of getting any organic traffic. I’ve been in touch with Freeflow and think their model is great. They’re a much smaller, more intimate organization, really keeping a close relationship with both their developers and clients. My own organic marketing through discord groups, twitter spaces, and other web3 events has also proven to be a great source of leads.

I can’t keep working the side gigs and my day job without flirting with burnout, so I’ve set a soft goal for end of February to make the call on what I really need to focus on for the next year. Follow along with me on this journey here and at https://www.curiouslycory.com. I’m excited to share what I learn along the way from the successes and the failures.