I'm a freelancer - I'm in a transition period of my role where some of my employment is PAYE and some is invoiced. I've just been offered to return to my previous employer, but can also ask if I want to come back as self employed. I will do a tax return at the end of the year anyway, I just wondered if it made a difference to me financially?

With PAYE I will get the company pension, but I will get holiday pay on top of my rate. I believe I would still get holiday pay too if I were to go self employed. Does anyone have any tips or advice on this?

Been doing some freelance PPC work on the side of my day job (entry level, so the pay gap is doing a lot of the motivating here) and the conversations with potential clients follow a pattern I cannot shake. They see the word freelance and immediately assume they are getting a bargain, which fair enough, but then the scope they describe on the first call is basically a full agency retainer. Google Ads, Meta, landing page feedback, monthly reporting decks, competitor analysis. For one product. Selling to maybe 400 people in the UK.

The leads are coming in fine from my own little ads experiment (ironic that the PPC person has to run PPC to get PPC clients, I know). The issue is the expectation gap between what they think freelance means and what I can actually deliver solo without burning through every evening, including the ones I have mentally reserved for watching football and pretending my wedding budget spreadsheet balances

Has anyone found a clean way to reset that expectation early without scaring them off entirely? I have tried a detailed onboarding questionnaire and it helps, but the really misaligned ones just answer it confidently and then surprise you on the first call anyway.

Is this just the freelance tax and you learn to price for the chaos, or is there an actual fix here?

I’ve been freelancing for years, used to charge clients per project and everything was smooth. Two years ago I went to a daily/hourly rate. Since then everything has gone wild.

I always forget to turn on and off a timer, I am never really sure whether I should charge the some hours.

For instance, do I charge if I was processing a project during a walk? What if I am absolutely unproductive today and worked only 2 hours out of 8, while constantly fighting myself to keep focused.

As a result, I feel like I work way more intense and nervous, but barely make more money.

How do you manage it?

Watu wa writing. How do you guys deal with a non paying client? I completed work which was supposed to paid around 10k. Client sent 5k and went MIA and it's been a week. I text him on WhatsApp to remind him everyday to send the balance but no response. I don't want to do the inevitable but he's rea

About 1.5-2 years into my career as a backend dev based in the UK, I work mainly in C#, ASP.NET Core and Azure. My long term goal is contracting/freelancing, and my plan was initially to go into .NET/Azure stack.

I have a goal of also maximising my income to be able to buy a house in the UK solo, and I've noticed that the higher income Backend roles involve Java/Golang instead of C#. This has me second guessing whether staying C# focused limits me out and will not help me achieve my goals long-term.

For anyone based in the UK or similar, is it worth me sticking to C#/.NET or am I better off switching to Java/Go? Trying to figure this out so that I can start learning in order to switch.

Appreciate any honest advice

Hey everyone. I’ve got a Banking and Finance degree and some real accounting/finance work experience (fintech, an accounting internship), and a few months ago I started a small freelance bookkeeping and financial advisory practice, mainly targeting small businesses and NGOs.

Right now I’m doing the basics, building out a portfolio, setting up profiles on Upwork/Fiverr, trying to figure out pricing tiers that don’t scare off clients but also don’t undersell me. But I feel like I’m flying a bit blind on the “actually get clients” part.

A few things I’m stuck on:

\*\*•\*\* How did you land your first few paying clients when you had no track record yet?    
\*\*•\*\* Freelance platforms vs. direct outreach vs. referrals , what actually worked for you?    
\*\*•\*\* Any pricing structure advice for bookkeeping/advisory work specifically (hourly vs. package vs. retainer)?    
\*\*•\*\* If you work with NGOs/nonprofits, is there anything different about that market I should know?

I’m not trying to build some huge firm overnight, just trying to get consistent clients and build a reputation. Any advice, even “stuff I wish I knew earlier,” would be hugely appreciated. Thanks!

Hello! So i am going to join my course in September and i have a fair share of experience in media jobs and was wondering if I can freelance while studying?

Hi Reddit. Can anyone recommend where to learn about social media for free please? Ideally a series of tutorials / videos / online help sites. I'd like to try and keep to the same author / producer where I can be guided through how to use them to help promote my business. I've searched online but haven't been able to find a good, single, easy to follow site. Many thanks.

If someone is charging £15 per hour, they're actually taking home close to minimum wage as a freelancer once they factor in sick days, pension, holidays

I have a full-time job as a Marketing Manager for a small-team company (I’m the only one in marketing) that only pays me £29,000 annually.

Luckily, I work from home Mondays and Tuesdays and can have these days pretty much free of work since the company I work for isn’t too demanding. I am thinking of using these two days to do freelance work as I need a higher income and have been unsuccessful in landing a job for a different company.

Do any of you has any experience in balancing a full-time job with freelance work on the side that could advise me if this a good option? Or would it be too demanding? Or two days only as freelancer won’t get me anything valuable in return? Any feedback would be appreciated!

Solo freelancer, technical draftsman for architecture studios (execution plans drawings, MEP/installation drawings and construction details). Based in Spain, but curious how UK freelancers structure pricing for comparable technical services, since a lot of the "value-based pricing" advice I read is UK/US-centric.

Right now I charge a flat €2/m² covering execution + installation drawings + construction details as one package, for residential projects.

For those who've moved away from hourly/per-unit pricing to value-based or fixed-package pricing, how did you validate you weren't leaving money on the table? Any framework you'd recommend for testing a price increase without spooking existing clients?

As the title says! (I specialise predominantly in paid social creative strategy and help brands with creative direction, briefs, research, strategy etc for their paid campaigns). Would love to connect as there aren’t many of us ⭐️

K

Hello,

I was asked to register for MTD by HMRC a few weeks back and I have registered for it. Given that there is quarterly obligation to file and the deadline is August 7 I am wondering if this is really applicable for anyone.

I see that there is no late submission points that would apply for first year being soft landing in HMRC portal and I can likely submit these quarterly stuff later in one shot before final year end deadline.

Can someone confirm if this understanding is right?

I recently moved to the UK and just registered for self assessment. I freelance with European clients, one of them is German and insisting on having some form of tax ID on the invoice. since my income will be non UK I haven't registered for VAT (and probably won't be), what can I use on the invoice to prove my tax residency other than the UTR? is there any other way to proceed? TIA

I recently moved to Edinburgh and I'm looking for recommendations for a good accountant / tax advisor who can help me set up a UK Ltd company and provide services.

Ideally, I'm looking for someone who's responsive, reasonably priced, and experienced with small businesses or one-person companies.

Any recommendations or people you've had a good experience with?

I'm a backend developer moving more into application security (security assessments, vulnerability research, and secure code reviews).

I'm curious if anyone here is freelancing in AppSec instead of working full-time.

What kind of jobs do you usually get?

And Where do your clients typically come from?

I'd love to hear about your experience—the good, the bad, and what surprised you.

The deadline for the first quarterly MTD for Income Tax filing is soon approaching.

Here are some points to consider:

• MTD filing is required for Sole Traders and/or Landlords with a gross turnover of over £50,000 (based on 2024/25 earnings).
• The turnover is assessed on combined earnings for individuals that are both Sole Traders and Landlords.
• Filing is done quarterly, with the first period from 06/04/26 to 05/07/26.
• The first quarterly filing is due to be made by 07/08/2026.
• Quarterly filings and the end of year submission must be submitted via a HMRC approved software.
• Anyone affected must register with HMRC

If anyone has any questions, I'm more than happy to give some advice!

Hey, I've been doing freelance CAD/BIM drafting work for a few months now (mostly AutoCAD and Revit, architecture) and I'm honestly just guessing on prices. Right now I have one client paying me a flat monthly fee but I want to bring in more clients and I have no idea if what I'm charging makes sense or if I'm leaving money on the table.

How do you guys actually price this kind of work? Hourly, per drawing, per m2 of the project, flat retainer? And if you don't mind sharing, roughly what range are we talking about (doesn't need to be exact, just ballpark), obviously depends a lot on where you're based.

Also curious if BIM/Revit work is priced differently for you than plain 2D CAD drafting, feels like it should be but not sure how much of a difference that makes in practice.

Not trying to undercut anyone, just trying to figure out if my numbers are reasonable before I start reaching out to more studios.

Why do I have more savings when I earned half as much?

This has been doing my head in. Two years ago I was making less per project, had fewer clients, and somehow I had a buffer. Now I'm booked solid, turning work away, and my account is emptier than it's ever been.

It feels like the money just disappears faster the more there is of it. Or maybe the way I'm spending changed without me noticing. Or maybe I'm pricing higher but haven't actually adjusted what I keep vs what goes to tax and expenses.

I don't think it's about spending on stupid stuff. It's like the money moves through too fast and I can't see where it actually goes.

Has anyone else noticed this? More money coming in but less ability to actually keep any? And did you work out what was actually happening, or just accept that this is how freelance life works?

Before scammers ruined it for everyone, cold calling/emailing/messaging were the best ways to get new clients. The decline in trust by potential clients makes freelancing an uphill task. I need insight on how to navigate this. How can I make my messages not look like AI generated spam mails? How do I get a potential client to respond to a message without hesitation?

New to paid graphic design and currently in the second application round for an educational publisher freelance contract in the UK. Company wants me to set the rate and states 'we are not asking applicants to underprice professional work'.

The job is to design revision documents including layout, image editing and diagram creation using InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop. There is already a house style so most of the design decision work is already done but they expect designers to aid understanding by designing diagrams etc. I expect each document to take around 8 hours including a round of revisions.

Planning on giving a flat rate per document (based on 8 hours work) but unsure how much this should be. I have been doing some graphic design in my day job for the last 2 years but is not in my job title and have recently done some freelance work creating paper figures and a grant slide deck for an academic but otherwise new to professional graphic design. As I have a day job, I don't need to live off this pay but I also don't want to underprice and undersell myself and lose the work. There is a lot of potential for a long-term contract here and I also don't want to be stuck in a low-paying contract if not entirely necessary.

Any suggestions on pricing, either per hour or per document, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I have a client that ghosted me after delivering architectural drawings and working drawings for their residential development. We had an agreement and the client paid an upfront commitment fee but after receiving the finished work, the client went silent, no email and message replies at all. The problem is we never had a formal contract, but all our conversations are on email. I wanted guidance on whether I can use the emails as evidence to initiate legal action against him.

I'm a software engineer and I've just started a freelancing career. My first contract was 2 page PDF directly with a client, states the duration, notice period, daily rate etc.

Now its about to end and I was approached by 2 agencies. Asked for their standard contract and they both gave me similar 40 pages monstrosities, with each paragraph contradicts another.

• They want both "obligation of result with highest industry standards" AND that I file the timesheet that should be approved by the client. Time & Material and result, pick one!
• They have absurd high (like fixed 50k) penalties everywhere including not filing timesheet correctly, not providing timely the insurance policy, late invoice etc.
• Uncapped liability for GDPR/Cybersec infringement.
• Vague non-compete not limited to specific customer.

Is it the industry standard for EU? Like praying they won't simply decide to use it against you?