I really feel lost in the world of freelancing, I mean I literally have three jobs on the go so barely any pressure and yet I'm cocking up my time estimations and mixing up code for each site, and giving incorrect predictions for completion, so basically I keep ending up working for free. Freelancers of the depths of devRant, please help! How do you manage to maintain a work life balance? Is accurate predictions and time management just something that comes with experience?

Also huge props to you for being able to keep your mentality!

@magic If you feel like you’ve fallen into the trap of not charging enough for what you’re worth, make a decision today to start charging more. By incrementally charging increasing your rates, you can quickly get to the market rate for your type of freelance work, and if you’re really good at what you do, you can even start charging more than the market rate. I started 20 years ago at 25/hour - I wouldn't even get out of bed for anything below 100/hour right now.

Estimation is a tricky one. The hard bit is when they want an estimation RIGHT NOW with barely any investigation or evidence. I've always made it clear that the scope of the project may change and that needs to be included in anything signed.

@YoungWebRebelz thanks for the advice man, I'm on £19/ph right now and it does help with motivation, but I don't think I'm ready to charge more yet; I don't want to jeopardise the flow of work. That seems really good for an hourly rate, what field are you in man?

@ChrisCooney Yeah that's right where I keep falling down, I forget to account for the time spent on other projects, and I'm worried about losing business if my deadlines are too far away/ambiguous

The only answer you should give when someone is demanding an estimate right now is "let me get back to you". Even if they just ask "that's not much work, right", you answer "Let me get back to you". That gives you time to think it through and give a better answer.

You can even go "Let me get back to on when I can get back to you" if the request is huge and you're swamped.. :)

@magis I used to do full-stack development, websites, web applications and android/iOS apps. Landed a job at a startup and pushed it to CTO nowadays. If you need any more advice let me know, I'll gladly discuss some things.

@YoungWebRebelz thank you man that's really good of you!

@4screendev thanks for the great advice man! Yeah it's that last part where I'm just kind of tripping up, the fact of accepting that if I've been stuck for say, 5 hours, and then I spend 5 hours more developing, I'm hesitant to bill for the first 5 because I feel like somewhat inadequate as a dev

Thanks for the great advice man!

The walking away part is definitely something I need to just get on with. Bighead and all when I think I can do it, but you're definitely right I just need to accept it and move on

@magis we'll since you're using pounds your currency is now essentially worthless so you HAVE to start charging more.

Jokes aside, what I do is double (or at least +30%) of what a comfortable timeframe would be and ask more than I think is fair. For freelancing that's the only way to do it

I agree with @xroad here. Any time scales I have are always doubled I think around 25% extra is the lowest I've ever gone purely to win a job.

But it really does have to depend on your own skill at estimating. For example in my day job I leave individual developers to tell me their timescales. Before I pass those timescales over to clients I always triple them.

Everyone has a tendency to underestimate their timescales, be it either they think they are better than they are, or they are just too eager to please.

Remember a client will complain if your work is completed 1 minute after deadline. If you complete 1 day early they will tell everyone how amazing you are. So don't feel bad about adding extra time on! :)