I did two stints as a freelancer. First stint, I was hyper specialized in a industry where I had a good reputation. Did it for a year, made a ton of money. Took a job offer from a customer which ended it. Only real mistake was miscalculated quarterly income taxes.
Second stint, same industry but it was retracting, so I expanded my services and marketing to include general industry digital needs, spent 13 months and made 15% of what I made my first foray into freelancing. Mistake here was not recognizing the writing on the wall and turning myself from a hyper-specialist into a generic do it all that made me just one of a million of which 999,999 of my freelance competitors could afford to undercut my rates. After 3-6 months it would have been much better to put my efforts into actively searching for a FT job instead. Basically I burned through 6 months of savings until I got over my pride.
> I’m not sure on the root cause of my burnout as I work a fairly regular 40 hour work week
The forty-hour work week measures how long people spend at work, not the time they spend working.
I bill the latter. The clock stops if I take a break, however brief. That means eight hours in a day don’t contain eight hours of billable work, but it does give me flexibility over my time: I work when it’s productive—which can vary with the day—not when the clock dictates. You may be doing the same.
Even if you charge differently, the typical forty hours (which companies and countries are experimenting with shortening[1]) don’t take you into consideration. It may be that you need fewer working hours to function, and that’s OK. The people who brag about sleeping less or working more than average are not worthy of admiration.
Author here. I could have worded this part better.
I probably bill about 5 hours a day, give or take. The 40 hours I referenced encompasses everything that goes into freelancing including my client work, not just the client work itself.
Work hours seemed an unlikely cause for the burnout to me because I've worked at least that my entire career (and in previous jobs many more hours) without even a hint of burnout. I'll never know the true cause, but I suspect it's a combination of the factors I mentioned in the post.
Read a bit of your post, I'll go back to it in a bit. Number one tip is, even if you're not billing by value, you should bill on much larger increments than an hour. My recommendation is to bill in day increments and invoice weekly. You can of course track hours if that helps, but never bill the customer for them directly. Decide on how many hours a "day" of productive work is for you and at the end of the week divide the number of hours you worked by that.
You should also charge more than feels comfortable for your day. Raise your rate with each new client until you don't have enough work in the pipeline, then back off a bit.
Those two things should provide better clients who expect a realistic amount of work for what they're paying.
Second stint, same industry but it was retracting, so I expanded my services and marketing to include general industry digital needs, spent 13 months and made 15% of what I made my first foray into freelancing. Mistake here was not recognizing the writing on the wall and turning myself from a hyper-specialist into a generic do it all that made me just one of a million of which 999,999 of my freelance competitors could afford to undercut my rates. After 3-6 months it would have been much better to put my efforts into actively searching for a FT job instead. Basically I burned through 6 months of savings until I got over my pride.