For the purposes of this thread, we will say the requirements are:
-You regularly engage in short or relatively short-term (1-2 year or less) contracts for multiple employers/clients, without being wholly dependent or permanently loyal to any.
-You make at least part of your income this way. Otherwise, it’s a hobby.
Myself, I’m a “hobbyist” writer (by this definition), but would like to be able to call myself a freelancer, eventually. Tell me about your freelancing.
I´ve worked freelance more than I care to remember, some where good jobs, some where awful nightmares; in the end I think I gained a whole lot of experience and I´ve met many interesting people so I don´t regret that in the least.
I´ve done mostly graphic design freelance jobs, mostly 3D stuff and in one case I worked for a year and a half as a texture artist for an English company.
The worst freelancing experience was almost two years ago, I was working at my current job then (Character Animator in a studio) and by some odd arrangement of stars, or simply because fate fancies me as it´s punching ball sometimes, three deadlines converged at the same time. At the job it was a commercial that had to be made and I was in charge of modelling a creature; the other was a deadline for the English company I mentioned earlier and the third was another freelance job animating a character for a documentary.
I think I slept three hours in three days; at some point I was working on two computers simultaneously; I had one assignment in one and another in the second, I switched places while the computer made a calculation or while a file was loading… Somehow I managed to get everything done in time, but I hardly do any more freelancing since then.
I’m a musical director/pianist for the theatre. My whole life is rehearsing a show for two weeks, playing it for a couple of months, and then starting the whole process all over again with a whole new show!
It’s kind of cool… It would be easy to get bored if I did the same show for a year or two, and it’s nice to meet different people with each job.
Full-time freelance copyeditor for eleven years and counting. I work mostly on college-level textbooks on a variety of subjects, with a few trade books and fiction works thrown in for interest. I have four longtime “core” clients and am currently courting two or three more; I’ve also dropped a few clients over the years for various annoyances and infractions. I regularly turn down work and am currently the main breadwinner for the household, earning about double what I made at my last “Real Job.” I’ll never go back!
You’d probably call the freelancing I’ve done a hobby. I’ve always had a full-time job every time I’ve taken a project. For a while I was steadily writing book reviews for the paper. Prior to that, I’ve done projects for other newspapers, special sections and individual stories. It was never a significant source of income; mostly just something I like to do.
You’d probably class mine as a hobby too–I do freelance writing/editing/development for a game company, but it’s in addition to my full-time job as a technical writer in the software industry. It’s fairly steady as far as the amount of work goes, but the pay is sporadic so I couldn’t even come close to supporting myself on it.
My sole source of income for the last four years has been through Google Answers. I perform research projects – some large, some small – for which I am paid between $1.50 and $150, with the possibility of tips from satisfied customers. I am an independent contractor selected and approved by Google Answers, so I suppose this might qualify as “freelancing.”