In many ways, the rise of freelancing as a popular and lucrative method of working is the global economies worst-kept secret. After all, an estimated 53 million U.S residents currently work as freela…
Source: Is Now the Time to Take the Plunge From Full-Time to Freelance?
Thanks to Craig Cardimon for posting this article on LinkedIn. If you read my last post, this is something that I’m seriously thinking about, and have been thinking about for the last year or so, but haven’t been able to quite get off the ground. There are some interested pointers in there.
What do you think? Is there some good, sound advice in here? Post your comments below.
–TechCommGeekMom
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Danielle M. Villegas is a technical communicator who currently employed at Cox Automotive, Inc., and freelances as her own technical communications consultancy, Dair Communications. She has worked at the International Refugee Committee, MetLife, Novo Nordisk, BASF North America, Merck, and Deloitte, with a background in content strategy, web content management, social media, project management, e-learning, and client services. Danielle is best known in the technical communications world for her blog, TechCommGeekMom.com, which has continued to flourish since it was launched during her graduate studies at NJIT in 2012. She has presented webinars and seminars for Adobe, the Society for Technical Communication (STC), the IEEE ProComm, TCUK (ISTC) and at Drexel University’s eLearning Conference. She has written articles for the STC Intercom, STC Notebook, the Content Rules blog, and The Content Wrangler as well. She is very active in the STC, as a former chapter president for the STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter, and is currently serving on three STC Board committees. You can learn more about Danielle on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/daniellemvillegas, on Twitter @techcommgeekmom, or through her blog.
All content is the owner's opinions, and does not reflect those of her employers past or present.
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TechCommGeekMom 
Interesting article. I’d say that the one, big, overriding factor is the last one in Ms. Cole’s list: Can you value your time in a way that meets your financial goals? That requires an honest assessment of (1) how much you need to earn to make it worthwhile, and (2) the marketplace in which you intend to sell your services – which is Ms. Cole’s second point.
I wouldn’t worry too much about her first point, which is the global economy/ You can neither predict nor control that. However, I would emphasize a couple of things that Ms. Cole didn’t mention: how well equipped are you to assume the risks (for example, do you have money saved up? a second income?) and how willing are you to do the difficult work of marketing yourself, working overtime when two deadlines converge, etc.?
To be honest, it’s those last couple of things that have kept me from becoming a full-time freelancer. But I’m not most people. As you and I have discussed before, a lot of our colleagues have done very well freelancing in technical communication.
I agree that you can’t start this without some sort of nest egg until you get on your feet or have some other kind of financial income. As it is, for me, I have both a small nest egg, and I’m not the primary breadwinner of the family, but I have the breadwinner’s support if I can get things going. It might not be for me either, but I’ve been exploring the idea for a while. I’m still figuring out the logistics of making it happen. I’m not too worried about the global economy part. I ended up on the better side of that because of going to grad school and learning TC–my salary almost doubled as a result (not that it’s that high, but it was a big jump from the rate I was making before). I think it’s being answerable to myself and clients directly rather than answerable to someone else that is what sounds appealing to me. Many places don’t give you the flexibility you need to get your job done the way you want. I want that. Freelancing might be the answer to that.