After procrastinating for a while ( ok a long while… ) I finally plucked up the courage to enter the Freelance market and these are my main takeaways so far.

Firstly it is worth mentioning that the contracts I have picked up so far have all been through upwork.com, I chose it for no other reason than seeing people's positive experiences on Twitter.

I also, due to still working full-time as a Service Management consultant, only put proposals in for small assignments/projects that I could do in the evenings and weekends.

Read the small print – sounds obvious but most of us tend to skip Terms and Conditions. I mention this as there are charges that are not so obvious when using job listing sites such as upwork.com.

Be professional – whether writing your proposal/cover letter or communicating with your client remember that you are a business. This does not mean that you cannot be convivial but at the same time try to maintain a level of detachment so you can be an objection to the work.

Don’t be afraid to say “No..” – there will come times when, as I found out when you will have to take a stance with a client who is trying to change the scope of the work, on a fixed price contract, without paying extra (scope creep).

I chose to terminate an agreement with a client after having repeated discussions where they kept trying to shoehorn extra work into what should have been a couple of hours of work at most. I didn’t feel great about doing it but the aggravation was just not worth the £££.

If you think you can do it, put a proposal in – just because you are not a 100% match for the required skills don’t be afraid to take a leap of faith in yourself. Use it as an opportunity to grow your skillset whilst getting paid.

Expect surprises – unless you get an opportunity to review the code prior to starting a project/assignment expect there to be surprises and added complexity.

My first assignment was posted as creating a simple PHP template that needed styling to match a pdf design. What arrived on day 1 was a set of complicated and interconnected files that I spent the first 2 hours just going over to understand the data flow.

Ultimately it was a great learning experience but initially, there was a definite “WTF…” moment.

So in conclusion I am loving my first few weeks as a freelancer and am looking forward to continuing to learn and grow.