How to Start Freelancing While Working a Full-Time Job

Have you ever sat at your desk at work and thought, "I could be doing this on my own"?

Maybe you're a designer, developer, engineer, writer, or someone with a skill that other people would happily pay for.

You already know how to do the work. You might even have a few potential clients in mind.

But there's one problem.

Where do you find the time to actually start?

Between your full-time job, commuting, household responsibilities, friends, family, and everything else, starting a freelance business can feel almost impossible.

The good news is that you don't need to quit your job, rent an office, or suddenly find an extra 40 hours a week.

You can start small. That's exactly how I did it.

1. First, make the decision

Before worrying about clients, websites, business cards, or hourly rates, you need to make one decision:

I'm going to start freelancing.

Not "Maybe someday."

Not "When I have more free time."

Decide that you're going to try it, even if your first project is tiny.

You don't have to know exactly how everything will work yet. Most things become clearer once you actually begin.

Starting while you're still employed has one major advantage: you have your regular income to fall back on.

That gives you the freedom to experiment, make mistakes, discover what clients want, and figure out whether freelancing is something you genuinely enjoy.

But before accepting your first project, there's something important to understand.

2. Find out where your time actually goes

Most people have a rough idea of how they spend their day.

Eight hours at work. Some time commuting. Dinner, chores, maybe a little exercise.

And then suddenly it's 11 PM.

Where did the day go?

The easiest way to answer that question is to track how you spend your time for a week or two.

You don't need anything complicated.

Start recording the main activities in your day:

• Your regular job
• Commuting
• Cooking and household responsibilities
• Exercise and hobbies
• Social media, browsing, and entertainment
• Personal projects and learning
• Rest and sleep

At the end of the week, look at the numbers.

You might discover that you spend seven hours commuting every week. Or that your evenings contain more unplanned screen time than you realized.

But you might also discover that you're already using most of your available time well.

The purpose isn't to eliminate every unproductive minute. It's to find out what is realistically available.

Rest, exercise, and spending time with people you care about aren't wasted time.

Freelancing shouldn't require you to sacrifice your entire life.

3. Find your realistic freelance hours

Once you understand where your time goes, it's much easier to decide how much you can commit to freelancing.

Let's say you discover you can comfortably free up:

Eight hours might not sound like much.

But that's roughly 32–35 hours a month.

Enough to complete a small design project, build a website, write articles for a client, or start developing your own product.

Just remember that available hours aren't always productive hours.

After a full day at your regular job, you might not have the mental energy for another three hours of demanding work.

Be realistic. It's better to promise yourself five hours and consistently achieve them than to plan for fifteen and burn out after two weeks.

You also don't need to fill every available hour with client work.

Some of that time will go toward communicating with clients, preparing quotes, learning new skills, invoicing, and running your business.

4. Learn how long your work actually takes

One of the hardest parts of freelancing is estimating how much time a project will require.

When you work for an employer, somebody else often absorbs the cost when a task takes longer than expected.

When you're freelancing, that extra time comes directly out of your own schedule — and potentially your earnings.

Imagine you're a freelance product designer.

A client asks you to design a relatively simple product.

You estimate eight hours of CAD work.

Sounds reasonable.

But here's what actually happens:

You expected eight hours.

The project occupied seventeen.

That's more than twice as much time as you initially estimated!

Now, should you charge your client for all seventeen hours?

It depends on what you've agreed upon.

Some clients are happy to pay for research, documentation, meetings, and revisions.

Others expect those activities to be included in your original quote.

Sometimes you spend three hours learning something because you personally lack experience with a particular tool. You might decide that time shouldn't be billed to the client.

On the other hand, research specifically required to solve the client's problem may be completely legitimate billable work.

There isn't one universal answer.

The important thing is to track all the time involved, even if you don't bill all of it.

That way, you can distinguish between:

• Time you actually spent on a project
• Time you agreed to charge the client for
• Time spent improving your own skills or managing the business

That information becomes incredibly valuable when you estimate your next project.

5. Hourly rate or fixed project price?

Most freelancers eventually encounter two common ways of charging for their work.

Charging by the hour

You agree on an hourly rate, track the time spent on agreed billable work, and invoice accordingly.

For example, at €50/hour:

8 billable hours × €50 = €400

Straightforward, right?

But remember our previous example.

If you spent seventeen hours on the project and charged for only eight, you received €400 for seventeen hours of your time.

Your effective hourly rate was:

€400 ÷ 17 hours = €23.53/hour

That's before your business expenses and taxes.

Quite different from the €50/hour you thought you were earning!

This doesn't automatically mean you undercharged the client. Some of that extra time may have been an investment in learning, and perhaps the remaining project activities should have been agreed as billable.

But now you have the information to make that decision consciously.

And next time, you'll know that an eight-hour design task might require additional hours for research, documentation, and communication.

Charging a fixed project price

With flat-rate pricing, you agree on a total amount before starting the project.

Let's imagine you quote €600 for the same design work.

Whether you finish in eight hours or seventeen, the agreed project price remains €600, unless you and the client agree to change the scope or price.

If you finish in eight hours:

€600 ÷ 8 hours = €75/hour

Great!

But if the project takes seventeen hours:

€600 ÷ 17 hours = €35.29/hour

Not quite the same result.

This is why tracking time matters even when you charge a fixed amount.

A fixed-price project doesn't mean your time stops having value.

It simply means you've agreed on the price in advance.

The more projects you complete and track, the better you become at estimating realistic prices.

You also learn which kinds of projects are profitable, which clients require the most communication, and where unexpected hours tend to appear.

6. How I gradually went from full-time employment to freelancing

I didn't quit my job one morning and suddenly become a full-time freelancer.

I was working at Riga Technical University (RTU), doing product development and prototyping, when I started accepting small freelance projects on the side.

At first, these were simply additional projects I could fit around my regular work.

But something interesting happened.

When I compared what I was earning per hour freelancing with what I was earning at my day job, I realized I could potentially earn more while working fewer hours.

That changed how I thought about my time.

Instead of looking at freelancing as just an extra source of income, I started seeing it as a realistic alternative to full-time employment.

But I still didn't quit immediately.

I started reducing my employment workload.

First, I went from a full-time position (1.0 workload) to 0.8, giving myself more time outside my regular job.

That extra time allowed me to accept more freelance work, develop client relationships, and become more confident in my ability to earn independently.

Eventually, I reduced my employment to 0.5 — half-time.

By then, freelancing wasn't just something I did occasionally in the evenings. It was becoming my main source of professional opportunity.

I had already founded my company, LAPSA 3D, while I was still employed at RTU. I was gradually building an independent business alongside my regular job.

Eventually, I left employment and moved into full-time freelancing.

The transition wasn't one dramatic leap. It happened in stages:

Full-time employment → small freelance projects → reduced employment hours → half-time employment → fully independent.

And perhaps the most important thing was that I had actual numbers to help me make those decisions.

I could compare how much time I spent working with how much I earned.

It wasn't just a feeling that freelancing might be better.

I had evidence from my own projects.

Of course, a higher freelance hourly rate doesn't automatically mean more take-home income. Freelancers also need to cover unpaid admin time, gaps between projects, expenses, and taxes.

But tracking my time helped me understand the opportunity realistically.

You don't necessarily have to quit your job to build your own business. You can gradually make your job less necessary.

7. Start with one small project

Now that you know how much time you have available, don't immediately accept the biggest project you can find.

Start with something manageable.

Ideally, choose a project that:

• Uses skills you already have
• Has a reasonably clear scope
• Can be completed within your available freelance hours
• Doesn't require you to promise impossible deadlines

For example, if you have eight hours available per week and estimate a project will take sixteen hours, don't automatically promise delivery in two weeks.

Allow some room for revisions, communication, and unexpected problems.

Your first project is not just about earning money.

It's also an opportunity to learn what working independently feels like.

You'll discover what it's like to communicate directly with clients, estimate work, negotiate changes, deliver results, and take responsibility for your own schedule.

Before accepting outside work, check your employment agreement for any restrictions involving competing activities, confidentiality, intellectual property, or using your employer's equipment.

Keep your freelance work separate from your employer's work.

8. Track your freelance work from day one

One mistake you can avoid is waiting until you're busy to start tracking your work.

When you have only one client, everything seems easy to remember.

You worked on something Tuesday evening and a little more on Saturday.

How hard can that be?

But eventually, you'll have two or three clients, several projects, small changes, meetings, and unexpected requests.

Suddenly, remembering exactly what you did last Thursday becomes much harder.

For years, I used a simple weekly board to organize my work and a spreadsheet to keep track of the numbers.

It wasn't particularly sophisticated, but having a visual overview of the week worked for me.

That experience eventually inspired me to build StickyWeek, a visual weekly planner and time tracker designed around the way freelancers actually work.

Instead of starting with complicated project-management systems or corporate timesheets, you start with your week.

You can place your work on individual days, track the time you spend, and see how much you're earning across projects.

It works for hourly projects, flat-rate work, and even activities you don't bill for.

But whether you use StickyWeek, a spreadsheet, or a notebook, the principle is the same:

Start tracking before you think you need to.

Your future self will appreciate having the numbers.

9. Review your progress before making the big leap

After you've completed a few freelance projects, take a moment to review what you've learned.

Ask yourself:

How much time am I actually spending?

Not just doing the work, but also finding clients, answering messages, preparing quotes, and managing projects.

How much am I really earning per hour?

Compare the money you receive with the total time involved, not just the hours you invoiced.

Do I enjoy working this way?

Freelancing offers independence, but it also means managing clients, deadlines, finances, and uncertainty.

Some people love that responsibility. Others discover they'd rather keep their employment and take on occasional projects.

Both are perfectly reasonable outcomes.

And finally:

Could I realistically grow this into something bigger?

Once you know your available hours, actual earnings, and ability to attract clients, you can make a much more informed decision about whether to increase your freelance work or eventually leave your full-time job.

There's no reason to rush.

Start small. Track your time. Learn as you go.

Starting freelancing alongside a full-time job isn't about finding a magical extra eight hours in every day.

It's about understanding the time you already have and using a manageable part of it intentionally.

Make the decision to start.

Track your activities for a week.

Find a realistic amount of time you can commit.

Take on one small project.

Track everything you spend on it — billable or not.

Then learn from the numbers and improve your next estimate.

You don't need a perfect business plan to begin.

You just need to start.