I’m curious to know if people successfully freelance and what do you find works well?
Who is your typical customer? What kind of work is suited to freelance work?
Where do you find work?
Do you use sites that provide testing type work? The ones I’m aware of are Global App Testing, Testlio, UTest.
But then there can be other more generic platforms, like Fiverr where work can be found.
Are people (successfully) doing freelancing in between finding their ideal permanent role?
Can I add a couple of questions for those that did.
These were blockers for me in the past both as a tester and as someone who was asked to use crowdsourced testing services, some models just did not feel right and I’m hoping its improved a lot.
What was the testing footprint like?
For example if you compared it to one inhouse tester but they were utilising more than one for the freelance side, if bigger by how much?
What was the remuneration model?
For example paid well as a professional for the time and work you did or perhaps a competitive testing model and paid only as the first person to find and log the issue?
Ive been a freelancer (inside / outside IR35 contractor in the UK) for 25 years or so.
The underlying model has changed over the years with legislation, it used to be very common to be a contractor via your own limited liability company, recently the government has been pushing people more towards an employee model while still being an external contractor.
Companies look for contractors for a short to medium term contract, usually project-based work. My longest has been several contracts totalling nearly 10 years with the same company, the shortest has been 6 months or so. Most for me are around 18 months - 2 years.
Work-wise youre better off being in a niche and offering services that companies can get from you and not a big box test factory.
Benefits include moving around through multiple projects, which I find increases your nicheness with more experience. And of course the higher payment rate - though this is usually a daily rate which means that you’re responsible for your own pensions, no paid holidays (including statutory), and no employee benefits like training, etc. As a one-person business you’re expected to cover this yourself.