How Many Hours Per Day Does a Freelancer Work?

If you’re looking to work as a freelancer, you may be wondering how much commitment you’re going to need to make. So that brings us to the question, how many hours per day does a Freelancer work?

The answer to this question depends on many factors, including how many clients you’re taking on at once, what type of skill you have, and if you’re freelancing full time. After looking over some stats, we’ve concluded that full time freelancers looking to make $50,000 per year could work 5-7 per day depending on how many days they work in a week.

Of course if you’re looking to make more, you’ll have to adjust the math, but below we will go over the information we found and how we came up with the hours we did.

How Many Hours Does Per Day Should a Full Time Freelancer Work?

According to a study by Payoneer, the average freelancer makes $28 per hour. So this means you’ll have to reverse engineer. Let’s say your goal is $50,000 per year and you plan to work 5 days per week. This means for the 260 days you work, you’d have to make $192.00 per day to hit your goal. Lets say you extend it one day and work 6 days a week. This means you’d have to make $160.25 per day.

If you work both of these example out hourly on a daily basis, working 5 days per week you’d have to work roughly 7 hours per day. For the 6 day example, you’d have to work 5 hours and 45 minutes per day.

Both of these examples aren’t that bad in terms of the amount of hours you have to work. For example a 9-5 is typically 8 hours a day.

How Many Hours Should You Work As a Beginner Freelancer?

When you’re starting out as a freelancer, it’s important to realize that you’re going to have to hustle a bit more. You might not have the same number of clients and you might not be making as much money as you want.

This means you should be prepared to work more hours than the average person. Instead of making the average of $28 per hour you may only make $20 per hour. This means you’ll have to work more hours to make the same amount of money.

What You Shouldn’t Do As a Beginner Freelancer

It could be exciting to start out as a freelancer, especially since we’ve already done the math and see you could make a good living off of it.

However, there are a few things you shouldn’t do as a beginner freelancer.

Take Too Many Clients Off The Bat

Taking too many clients off the bat is bad for your skill development as a freelancer. Unless you’re absolutely sure you can handle the workload, it’s best to start off slow.

Don’t Quit Your Job Too soon

This is a mistake a lot of freelancers make. They think they can make it on their own and they’ll be able to quit their job right away. This could lead to some financial instability and could make you question if freelancing was the right decision.

Take your time in developing your freelance business and don’t quit your day job until you’re absolutely sure you can support yourself.

Also, if you start while you’re working another job, make sure your work contract doesn’t state anything against you freelancing while working for that specific company. Take a look at this article to see more about freelancing while working full time.

Neglect Everything Else

Yes it’s exciting to start a new venture, but you still have family, friends and other responsibilities. Don’t let your freelance business consume your life to the point where you’re neglecting everything else.

What Are The Highest Paying Freelancing Gigs?

Since you’ve came to this article, you’re probably trying to figure out how to transition from a job to a freelancer full time. This would require you to start looking for gigs that actually pay well.

Here are some of the highest paying freelancing gigs according to Upwork:

  1. Copywriter
  2. Web designer
  3. Digital marketing consultant
  4. Social media manager
  5. Editor
  6. Web developer
  7. & More

So Why Is Freelancing So Much More Popular Now?

You may be wondering why freelancing is so much more popular now if you only have to work 1 hour less to make the same amount of money as a 9-5 job.

Well, there are a lot of reasons why freelancing is more popular now.

You’re not tied down to one location

When you go to your 9-5 job, you’re pretty much tied down to that location. You can’t just pick up and leave whenever you want.

With freelancing, you can work from anywhere in the world as long as you have a laptop and an internet connection. This gives you a lot more freedom when it comes to your personal life and where you want to live.

You Can Make All of Your Hours Count

When you work a 9-5 job, all of your hours are consecutive, which means a lot of your time is spent on things that are not work related.

For example, you have to commute to work, you have to take lunch breaks and sometimes you have to do things for your job that are outside of work hours.

With freelancing, all of your hours can be dedicated to actual work. This means you can make a lot more money in a shorter amount of time.

You can also use the time you usually use to commute to exercising, spend time with family or do other things that make you happy.

You’re In Control

When you’re a freelancer, you’re in control of your own business. This means you get to decide how much work you want to take on, who you want to work with and what hours you want to work.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the average full time freelancer could work anywhere from 5 hours to 7 hours per week or more depending on how much they make. Based on the Payoneer average, those are the numbers of hours per day we came up with.

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Do you want to learn more about freelancing? Click the tag below and take a look at our other freelancing articles!

How Many Hours Per Day Does a Freelancer Work?
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