| First of all, I am from The Netherlands. My feedback is based on the Dutch market. - Average monthly income? Hard to say what the average is, since last year I took a break for 7 months and needed another 2 months to find a new opportunity. But when I am working the average gross income would be somewhere above 10.000 EUR ex. VAT. I'm working 40 hours a week. I usually try to work for big clients for at least a year or so. - If in the same spot would you do the move again? Definitely. I wish I made the move years earlier (I started freelancing at 32 years old). I really appreciate the feeling of freedom and the idea that I am taking control of my own life to the biggest extent possible. - How long did it take to get a regular stream of work? Usually I can get work really, really quick - let's say just a couple of weeks. Last year was a bit problematic due to some issues with Dutch law, making potential clients more hesitant to hire freelancers. For mobile dev I am sure one can find many opportunities every single month and should never be long without work. For front-end work I imagine the situation is much the same. - Any other advice or tips you could offer. If you freelance, save some money for your future. I'd say ideally you tried to spread risk as much as possible. You could put some money in a tax deductible pension plan, some money in index funds and use some money to pay of your mortgage ASAP. Make sure you keep enough savings to survive at least a couple of months. If you manage to lower your costs of living, you will be able to survive much longer with the same amount of money. If you don't want to bother yourself to look for jobs, you could just let recruiters contact you. I get most of my jobs through recruiters on LinkedIn and Monsterboard, because I can't really be bothered to search for myself. Of course, they will take a cut of your pay check, but as long as I am able to make over 10k a month gross, I'm still quite happy. Just make sure that on your profiles you mention you are a freelancer. When you tell your rate, always start bidding a bit higher than your absolute minimum. So if the lowest pay you'd accept would be 65 EUR / hour (ex. VAT), start bidding at 80 EUR / hour. Some companies that deal with recruiters have some sort of insurance that you will get paid, regardless if the client pays the recruiter or not. At least ComputerFutures and Progressive Recruitment make these promises and such an arrangement can be nice if you like a bit more security with regards to payment. |
Btw, does your personal website help you with finding leads?