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Can I continue to be a freelancer? For life?

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Can I continue to be a freelancer? For life?

#1
I have to sort this out. I am a freelancer (frontend) working as an assistant to other developers/small agencies per project wise, whenever someone needs my services. Thats my full time work and pays me OK ever since i started. But friends/family think otherwise and advice me to start my own full blown 'yet another web design company'.

But neither i have that knowledge to be make/run a company, nor i am interested to loose the FREE part of freelancing (time for family, peace of mind, time to read a book or watch a movie, friends are life). I am less interested in getting uber rich, amount of money that pays me to buy a home or car is good enough for me.

So my concern is, is this a good plan to continue as a independent coder (with learning more stuff slowly of course) for life? Would like to hear other's views, and essentially from people who continue to do that successfully.

Re: Can I continue to be a freelancer? For life?

#3
Hopefully while freelancing you'll meet lots of different people and leave a good impression. Then in later years you should have enough of a network to get a sufficient amount of requests for freelance work. I am not that old yet, but I've seen it work for some older friends.

I don't see why a company should be inherently more secure than working as a freelancer.

Re: Can I continue to be a freelancer? For life?

#4
You should check out "4 Hour Workweek" by Tim Ferriss. I'm only halfway through, but he has already touched on a lot of concepts that I think would really hit home with your concerns for freedom.

I run 'yet another web design company' and while I don't have a family, my social life is rewarding and I don't usually put more than 30-40 hours in a week.

Re: Can I continue to be a freelancer? For life?

#5
Why do your friends and family think that? Do you agree with them?

Given your freelance background, I would imagine you might know more than most first time entrepreneurs? I haven't met any business owners who surrender having a life for their biz (though I haven't met any multimillionaire business owners, either). Perhaps finding patterns in your freelancing and building those solutions into products while continuing the per-project work would be a good in-between to help you decide?

Re: Can I continue to be a freelancer? For life?

#6
Why not? I work as a freelance software consultant, and I just switch between working on other people's projects and working on my own projects as needed. I don't have any plans to stop this anytime soon. Maybe as I get older I'll change the ratio of consulting/not-consulting to provide for a family, or I'll find some other way to generate money and stop working as a consultant, but I really see no reason not to just do this indefinitely.

Re: Can I continue to be a freelancer? For life?

#8
Do you have health and long-term disability insurance? If you tomorrow get into an accident and lose all your fingers, are you going to end up living in a box on a street corner? If you make sure that your freelance gigs pay you enough to take care of that part of life, there's no reason why you can't continue doing what you are doing for as long as it makes you happy.

Re: Can I continue to be a freelancer? For life?

#10

Dude, you're missing the best part: maybe you won't be the one who has to do the actual work . Spend your time making sure the work's good, meeting customers, making business. Then, eventually, stop even doing that and live off your equity in the company.

There are many that enjoy doing the actual work, making rather than dealing with customers/associates/quality control.
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