Re: Freelance, contract part-time

[Gene Kim-Eng <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>]

We all write "consumer-facing documents," because every document has a 
consumer, whether it's written for paying customers, internal users or 
pointy-headed regulators. They key here is to figure out who is the 
person who actually decides whether or not your work is worth spending 
money on - and it isn't always the person who ends up having to use the 
document - and make sure he or she is happy with your results. Because 
if your goal is continued employment or marketability, that's who your 
"consumer" is.

Small business owners will almost always have smaller budgets than 
larger companies.  To work with them you need to deal direct and carry 
your own contract rather than going in through a temp agency that will 
skim 30-40% off the top of what the client is paying. This is hard to do 
at the beginning of a career, when you don't have a track record and a 
base of happy past document "consumers" to recommend you to prospective 
clients. So unless you get really lucky, your most likely path is 
several years of in-house employee and temp agency work before you are 
ready to make a go at freelancing.

Gene Kim-Eng
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Adobe TCS 5: Get the Best of both worlds: modern publishing and best in class XML \ DITA authoring | http://adobe.ly/scpwfT

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