A friend and I were discussing a while ago the prospects of choosing not to go corporate after graduation and instead focus on our respective freelancing activities.
Right now, we're pretty busy with our own undergraduate research papers that we could barely catch up with work, but we still do. We thought that, maybe, when school ends, we'll have more time available to spend the time freelancing and earning money online. I'm a bit into writing materials though I am pretty much interested in web designing work, while my friend is entirely for web design work.
The question remains, however. Is the amount of money earned by these freelancers ever enough to compensate the absence of work? In most of cases, it is. According to a survey commissioned by the American Institute of Graphic Art, it's pretty usual for freelancers to earn some $48,000 to $50,000 every year. That's a pretty decent amount of money if you consider the fact that you only stay at home. This may not be enough in places where the cost of living is nearly as high, but this income can be easily augmented when a freelancer works more.
For example, take a look at the service fee chart of this web design firm. The cheapest option is the $450 package, with turnaround of 1 to 2 weeks. Assuming this takes 2 weeks at most, this already translates to $11,700. And that is assuming you only work on a site one at a time, which is most definitely not the case. You can then command higher fees once you've already had much experience and demonstrated your kind of work.
In the meantime, my friend and I decided that maybe we'll wait until we get some offers from certain companies. From then, we'll be able to decide. In the meantime, we'll continue earning and trying to do something for ourselves.
