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Article:
Gut Check: Quitting Your Full-time Job for Your Freelance Career by: Yuwanda Black It's 6:00 p.m. You're dead tired, but instead of an early night, you go to your 'second job' '” your freelance business. Between writing articles, researching new assignments and invoicing for completed work, it will be well past midnight before you can even think of going to bed. How much longer can you keep this up, you wonder? If this sounds familiar, maybe it's time to quit your job and focus on your freelance career full-time. One of the best ways to ensure success as a freelancer is to start part-time while holding a full-time job. However, when do you know it's time to let go of your job? The following checklist will help you decide if it's time to make the leap from employee to full-time freelancer. 1. Money: If you started freelancing with the intention of one day quitting your full-time job, then that plan should have included setting income aside for this day. Do you have six months to one year of expenses set aside? Is your business bringing in steady income? If you were able to devote 15-20 more hours per week to it, could you at least double what it brings in now? Looking back over one to two years of numbers should give you enough data to do some smart (read, conservative) projections. Don't have at least 12 months of income data to analyze? Then my advice is not to quit '” unless the business is exceeding all expectations and you are really raking in the profits. Bottom line: If you have six to twelve months worth of expenses set aside and won't have to depend on your freelance income to pay you anything during this period, then maybe it's time to consider quitting, or at least switching roles (ie, working your job part-time and freelancing full-time). 2. Time: Do your freelance duties take up more than four hours a day? Do you work six to seven days a week just to stay on top of your workload? If this is true and you have a steady stream of projects already lined up, then maybe it's time to make the move. Note: Freelancing is an up and down business. Just because projects are lined up does not mean they will come to fruition. If these are steady clients that almost always come through (ie, they do an annual report every year and you have been doing it for the past two years), then you can 'safely' count on the income. However, be careful that the bulk of your income is not coming from 1-2 clients. Get '6
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