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This article takes a look at the first year of life as a freelance composer.<\/p>\n
This all started almost two years ago. I wanted to do more volunteer work with my church and also was growing more dissatisfied with my life in corporate America. I live in Chicago and had done programming\/DBA work for the last 10 years. I spent 2 hours a day commuting, sitting in an office with a pointless dress code, doing a job I could easily be doing from home. The final straw was when they changed our traditional insurance to a Medical FSA, which means you might as well save your own money for your basic medial expenses. That and replacing our already-small cubicles with coffin-like rectangles you could only pull your chair in and out of were all wonderful reasons to try something new.<\/p>\n
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-3 Months To Freelance Life<\/b><\/p>\n
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I was formerly a roommate of the founder of Bravado Waffle<\/a>, and he asked me to make some tunes for Robo Hero<\/a>. It was a fun experience and the first time I tried to make music that I really wanted to sound good. I also helped with art and level design. I did everything in my power to make the game look and sound like Megaman! When one reviewer called Robo “the new blue bomber” I could not have been happier. The game was not a financial success but had a good little following, and reviewers always said great things about the music. One of my dreams was to make a living doing music, but, more importantly not to be chained down to a corporate job. I called my plan, \u201cliving off the internet\u201d. I got inspiration from blogs like Wage Slave Rebel and reading other stories of people who just said No to a full time office job.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Month 1 of Freelance Life<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I am not an irresponsible person. I didn\u2019t decide to quit my job and just hope music would work out. I\u2019d love to believe in \u2018do what you love and the money will follow\u2019 but I have bills to pay too. Music was actually Plan C for how I\u2019d make a living off the Internet, my 3rd<\/sup> option out of about 7 (#8 is grilling burgers on the street!)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I set a plan to reach a certain $ of income each day. Plan A is my fill in the gaps between other plans, and at the start, that\u2019s all I did. I write articles for Textbroker and a few other clients that I\u2019ve built up over the years. It\u2019s grueling work to reach my daily $ goal. I start at 4am and finish around 3pm and then spend 2 or 3 hours working on music for my portfolio, marketing myself as a composer and trying to make connections with clients.\u00a0I spend one day during the week and the weekend doing volunteer work and occasionally I try that thing called sleep.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As far as music, I do some basic marketing,\u00a0which doesn\u2019t appear to pay off much at first and get a few small gigs for Podcast intros and things like that. Around the end of the first month, I land my first real client and do music for their iOS game. I take a gamble and buy some equipment on my credit card before being paid to make the music as good as possible. It\u2019s worth it! The client loves me and becomes one of my most regular sources of income.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Month 3 of Freelance Life<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The first three months were pretty hard, I realize I can\u2019t write quality articles 8-10 hours a day and keep my sanity. Plan A is getting harder but, fortunately, my Plan B, doing programming and QA as a freelancer starts to take off. This gives me more breathing room for reaching my daily $ goal in just a few hours a day and now I\u2019m spending serious time marketing my music stuff, trolling forums for work and trolling kickstarter for new projects. Plan C (The Music) is starting to pay some of the bills!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My Kickstarter trolling works out and gets me a job on the Rubicon<\/a> soundtrack when it skyrockets past its goal. I get some good comments on the chiptune-inspired soundtrack in many reviews of the game and am starting to build a solid portfolio with different kinds of music.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n Month 6 of Freelance Life<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n