(Book Review) The Wealthy Freelancer, 1st Edition

Overview

Review Published: May, 2023

From marketing coach Steve Slaunwhite, and freelance copywriters Pete Savage and Ed Gandia comes a introductory How-To guide for those considering a career in freelancing.

From the initial mental preparation, to troubleshooting specific issues that often arise, this book serves as a primer for those looking to learn more about the benefits and pitfalls of freelancing within their chosen profession.

Rating:

4 / 5

(Great Content, Presentation is Clear)

What does this score mean?

Difficulty:

Beginner (Provides easy-to-understand general steps that readers can modify for specific circumstances).

Length:

274 Pages.

Where to Buy It:

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What's Good

Succinct, actionable steps; the initial daunting prospect of building and running your own freelance business is broken down into a dozen distinct steps, each with detailed best practices that can be modified to suit your specific circumstances.
Lots of experience & unique perspectives; each of the authors are successful freelancers hailing from different fields and backgrounds (and are still successfully doing so today).
Practical & easy-to-read; the way that the content is broken up makes understanding each section quite simple, and the language used is practice, everyday level with little-to-no jargon.

What Can Be Improved

Some missed opportunities & outdated examples; while specific websites/apps are provided in some of the activities to set up your freelance business, several these have become stale/obsolete since writing, and it would have been a bit more future-proof to spend more time describing the essential functions of these instead (i.e. so future readers could find their own analogous resources).

The Bottom Line

A good starting point for potential freelancers; while this book is applicable to basically any discipline, I think it will be a great introduction to UX professionals specifically as an additional option for providing our craft to a wider marketplace (i.e. growing organizations that can’t afford full-time hires, but need access to UX skills to compete with larger competitors).
For more experienced UX professionals looking for something different; while the experience of formally working within larger organizations is definitely important (i.e. understanding how they work, strengths and weaknesses involved, marketplace specifics and mechanisms, etc.), this book opens the door to additional options once that critical learning has been achieved and you want to operate outside of those organizational constraints.
Needs some updating, but very worthwhile; apart from some dated specifics (which a focus on the desired functionality instead of the specific resource/practice would solve in a 2nd edition), the content is still very good, making this book a worthwhile investment at around $25.