For seven years, freelancermap has asked freelancers in the German-speaking market the same survey question: what is your biggest challenge? The top answer never changes. Not taxes, not difficult clients, not loneliness. Finding the next project. In the Freelancer-Kompass 2023, 62 percent named client acquisition as their number one problem, well ahead of everything else.
Few people sit closer to that data than Stefania Volpe, product manager at freelancermap, where she works with hundreds of freelancers internationally and helps run those surveys. She joined Yurii for both 9am podcasts. On Freelance Sucks, she walked through the complaints she hears most often. On Freelance Thrive, she got practical about the topic freelancers find most awkward: what to charge, and how to calculate it properly. Together, the two conversations cover the pain and the fix.
The most expensive hours are the ones nobody pays for
Ask Stefania what freelancers struggle with and she doesn't hesitate. "The most common complaint I hear from freelancers is project acquisition, client acquisition," she says. Ask her what eats the most time, and the answer is the same. That double role is what makes acquisition so brutal: it's the hardest part of the job and the least visible one.
"Many freelancers underestimate the time and effort needed to land new projects. The longer it takes to find new clients, the longer they don't earn anything." (Stefania Volpe)
Stefania calls acquisition, accounting, admin and customer care "unproductive tasks". Not because they're useless, but because no client pays for those hours. By her estimate they swallow around 20 percent of a freelancer's time; the Freelancer-Kompass 2023 measured 17 percent. Either way, roughly one day per working week generates no invoice, and most beginners never price that in.
Acquisition failure has a domino effect. No pipeline means fluctuating income, and fluctuating income means economic instability now and thin savings later. "Everything is tied together," Stefania says. Her timing advice is simple: if you know a project is ending, start looking a couple of months before, not the day after your contract runs out.
Yurii has drawn his own conclusion from hearing this complaint over and over: test the market before you commit. Build a simple website or a LinkedIn presence and try to win a client while you still have a salary. If somebody buys before you're officially a freelancer, you have proof the business works. Stefania endorses the approach, with a grin at the fantasy it punctures: "Otherwise people think, I'll go freelance, I'll sit with my laptop on the beach and jump in the ocean every minute. And then they face the harsh reality."
The skills nobody puts on their invoice
Being excellent at your craft gets you to the starting line, not further. Asked what freelancers actually need beyond professional skill, Stefania puts communication first, "and it also implies selling yourself, being able and confident in selling your services." Then time management, discipline and the rest of the soft skill set that decides whether a good developer or designer becomes a good business.
Visibility belongs on that list too. Most freelancers she sees are on LinkedIn and freelance platforms; many run their own websites, blogs or social profiles, and some speak at conferences. "If they don't know you exist, you have to build your brand," she says. It costs time, which loops back to the same lesson: unpaid work is part of the job, so plan for it.
Her third piece of advice for anyone about to start is the one freelancers most like to skip: financial reserves. Markets turn fast. The pandemic froze projects overnight, and inflation later pushed companies to cut external resources first. Stefania's rule of thumb from the survey work: enough cushion that your business survives a couple of months without new projects, which she puts at around 12,000 euros set aside. The freelancers surveyed for the Kompass 2023 are even more cautious: their median recommended starting capital is 15,000 euros, and 75 percent say at least 10,000.
And one more, delivered with a laugh but meant seriously: protect your work-life balance.
"At the end we have one body and one mind. It's the most precious resource we have, and without it there's no business and no work." (Stefania Volpe)
How to calculate an hourly rate that carries your business
Most freelancers set their rate by googling what others charge and copying the number. Stefania's method, laid out in the Freelance Thrive episode, works from your life backwards. Grab pen and paper and go through three steps.
Step 1: add up all your costs. Private costs first: rent, food, clothes, everything your life needs per month. Then business costs: office, software, tools. And taxes, which she singles out because so many freelancers forget them until the first bill from the tax office arrives.
Step 2: count your real working days. A year is not 365 billable days. Subtract vacation, public holidays, weekends, sick days and training time. What's left is the time that has to earn everything.
Step 3: set your minimum acceptable rate. Divide your total costs by your realistic working hours, add taxes and a profit margin, and you get the lowest rate you can responsibly work for. "Your business has to grow, so include your profit margin," Stefania says. From that floor, adjust upward for experience, skills, your country, your industry and the kind of clients you serve. For orientation: the average all-in rate in the German-speaking freelance market was 100 euros per hour in 2023.
The hardest ingredient is experience, because it doesn't show up on any receipt. Stefania's rule: your rate should rise as your experience grows, every year. Compare notes with freelancers in your network doing similar work, check the public rate reports, and give your experience an actual price instead of treating it as a free bonus for the client. If you want to sanity-check your math, the Freelancer Toolbox collects calculators and tools built exactly for this.
The most common mistakes she sees are the mirror image of the three steps: leaving costs out of the calculation, forgetting taxes, and underrating your services out of insecurity. "New freelancers set low hourly rates because they lack experience, and at some point that's not sustainable for your business."
Selling value when someone cheaper is always available
One objection came up in both episodes. Yurii put it concretely: an experienced freelancer charges 90 euros per hour and finishes in five hours. A cheaper one charges 50 and needs ten. The experienced freelancer costs the client less overall, 450 euros against 500, yet loses deals because the hourly number looks bigger.
Stefania's answer is to move the conversation off the number entirely. "You don't want to focus on the price. Find strategies to communicate it through the value and the quality you provide." Show past work, testimonials, case studies. Quantify results with metrics wherever you can, so the client sees what they get at the end, not what one hour costs. Pricing research says the same thing: Harvard Business School Online describes value-based pricing as setting prices by the customer's perceived value rather than your costs, which is precisely the shift from "my hour costs 90 euros" to "this project saves you 50 hours a month".
The same logic answers the globalization question. A freelancer in Zurich or Munich can't undercut one in a country with a fraction of the living costs, and shouldn't try. Stefania's alternatives: specialize and offer niche expertise others don't have, add services on top like ongoing support or consultation, target clients and industries where budgets allow higher rates, and experiment with pricing models beyond the hour. Day rates, fixed project prices for those with enough experience to estimate well, performance-based pricing for the brave, even subscriptions. "With project-based or performance-based pricing you can make more money than with the hourly rate," she says, with the honest caveat that both need experience to calculate safely.
What to do with this
- Treat acquisition as a permanent part of the job. Start looking for the next project a couple of months before the current one ends, not after.
- Budget for unpaid work. Roughly a fifth of your time earns nothing directly; your rate has to cover it.
- Test the market before you quit. Win one client while you still have a salary.
- Build a cash cushion that buys you a couple of months without projects. The surveyed freelancers recommend five figures.
- Calculate your rate from your costs, your real working days and a minimum acceptable rate. Add taxes and a profit margin, then adjust up for experience.
- Never compete on the hourly number. Sell outcomes, show proof, and consider day rates, project prices or subscriptions.
- Keep one body and one mind intact. No well-being, no business.
Stefania's parting advice on professional loneliness in remote work, for the record: get a pet. It works for her.
If you're building your own client pipeline right now, a free profile on 9am puts you in front of companies in the DACH market that hire freelancers directly. And listen to both episodes above: the details in Stefania's answers are worth the half hour.
This article is based on Stefania Volpe's conversations with Yurii on the Freelance Sucks and Freelance Thrive podcasts by 9am. Both episodes are embedded above.
