Working as a full time creative but still want to take on some additional freelance work? Sure. A lot of us do. I for one, did that for years until I started my little one-man studio. If you don’t mind the late nights, making additional income from freelance work is great. But if you’re going to walk down that road, there are a few things you might want to consider.
In my experience, most employers are just fine with you working some freelance on the side- as long as you play by some rules:
1. Don’t ever EVER bring your freelance work to your day job. This even goes for your freelance business calls. Keep them offsite, and on your own time.
2. Don’t EVER accept any work that will compete with the work your full-time employer does.
3. Make sure that there’s no clause against taking on side-jobs in your employee handbook or your employment contract.
If you have any questions about any of this stuff, just ask your boss. They’ll probably appreciate your openness and willingness to include them and play by their rules.
Also, if you’re between jobs and want to keep the freelance work coming in after you’ve found a new day job- be sure to study all of the terms of employment closely. If there’s something in them that’s going to prevent you from keeping your side-gigs, then you may want to bring it up at the next pre-hire meeting and try to get those policies amended in your contract. All of my employers have allowed me to do this when I explained to them that I didn’t want to lose my clients once I started working for them.
What kind of experiences have you had? Drop a comment.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
