Advice on Freelancing

[NotCamelCase]

Heyy guys,

Now that I have some free time off the work each week (of volunteering, nowadays actually), I'm considering to look for some remote/freelance works to earn some small money and keep my coding skills up to date (I'm volunteering on something completely different.). As I've got zero experience how it works, I'd really appreciate if any of you experienced can share some ideas about:

- The kind of tasks that game devs hire freelancers for -- bug fixing or feature implementation or what?
- The deadline -- too tight or relax or how?
- How to charge

Thanks in advance!

[dbtx]

I can't say much about my experience but I enjoyed this talk a while back:

[youtube]99dsgDUdrQE[/youtube]

[c6burns]

I've either been freelance, or with my own company for almost my entire adulthood. I dropped out of 2nd year university to start my own business, with my best friend and business partner, making rich media websites in Flash 4. I've launched 4 companies of my own and each was successful at least for a time. None of them outright failed, I just kept moving to greener pastures. I don't have any great advice for how to become a freelancer or start your own business, except to incorporate and never do your own taxes.

I just wanted to mention the absolutely insanely huge downside to freelancing that this gentleman seems to have missed. Health care. Even if you are not from the United States, perhaps you are from somewhere like Canada (which I am originally) then you get free healthcare but you don't get free dental, and you still have to pay for any prescription drugs completely on your own. When you are young(ish) and in good health (or especially if you don't have a family) this isn't a big deal, which is why it isn't surprising that he overlooked it. As you move on, this is a seriously big fucking deal. If you are unlucky, something could happen to not only rob you of all your disposable income and more, but it could be even worse ... like life or death situation for you or your closest loved ones.

Anyway just my thought on that video.

[NotCamelCase]

Thanks, I appreciate the inputs. I'm looking for somethings to do for a few months though, not like freelancing but an occupation for a while. I've started looking some places, talking to some guys so I'll see how it'll work. I'm also considering getting into some successful-to-be project just for the credit or ridiculously cheap.

I just wanted to mention the absolutely insanely huge downside to freelancing that this gentleman seems to have missed. Health care.

I don't know how my career will turn out but I think I'd not want to freelance for longer than a few months due to similar reasons. Thinking how much stress owning your company also put on my dad, I'm not so much into it, either. I wonder how it'll all turn out soon

BTW, I really liked the talk, it was amusing!