How to get started as a freelance entrepreneur

Freelancing is an increasingly popular career choice especially for those with an entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to escape normal office life. Taking the first step towards freelancing brings up a number of questions. How much can I earn? How do I sell my services to companies? Will running my own company bring along a lot of new work? Read this article to see whether freelancing is a good career choice for you and, if so, how to go about doing it.

Why become a freelancer entrepreneur?

In our experience, people choose to become freelancers for three main reasons: financial upside, freedom, and professional challenge.

Starting with financial upside, an experienced expert working on a NeXec assignment typically earns between 110 and 130 euros per hour – or even more. In a typical month, this adds up to almost 20 thousand euros – often from 50 to 100% more than regular employees earn. But remember also that if you don’t have a project, there is no fixed salary from an employer either. Hence, in addition to the hourly price, availability of interesting assignments is crucial for earnings.

As a freelance expert, you will also have more influence over your use of time. If you want to save money for buying the house of your dreams, you may choose to work longer hours and take less holidays in a certain project. Or, if you prefer longer weekends during summer months, you could alternatively seek projects where you work 4 days a week. We also have experts who take longer breaks between projects to pursue other interests: hobbies, renovation projects, travelling.

Experts seeking professional challenge often highlight that working as a freelance expert in projects for different customers and topics keeps them constantly learning. 

If these benefits resonate with you – and you believe that you can stomach the related risk – read on.

How to start freelancing?

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First, you need to clarify your strengths and understand if there is market demand for those strengths. Having a conversation with our network experts is a good way to get a read on market demand.

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Second, you will need to arrange a business-to-business billing setup. If you are not sure whether freelancing is a long-term path for you, freelancing platforms such as OP-Kevytyrittäjä, Ukko.fi or Odeal.fi can offer you a short-term solution. The optimal long-term solution is to establish your own limited liability company.

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Third, you will need to find a project. If you are a sales-minded person with good contact networks, you can go out in the market on your own. If you love the actual project challenge but are not so eager about selling (since you will have to have a pipeline of possible projects to ensure you won’t have too many breaks between projects), let us help you. With our customer network and framework agreements with large enterprises, we have a constant flow of interesting projects for experts like you.