<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>philjones88</author><text>Signed up too. I kind of started freelance work but like Alan&apos;s post, the c# freelance world was either &quot;contract&quot; or &quot;permi&quot;.&lt;p&gt;Found some good guys to do work with now on a kind of &quot;per project&quot; approach which is good.&lt;p&gt;Interested to read the book as I found my weaknesses to be:&lt;p&gt;1. Charging for my work. I still find I undercharge as I enjoy the work and feel awkward asking for large amounts per billable hour. I&apos;m now kind of trapped on low billable hours with my initial clients...&lt;p&gt;2. Finances. I&apos;ve learnt enough and in the UK you can survive for the first 6 months without an accountant. I&apos;m probably going to get one soon to handle the more complex tax/pay stuff.&lt;p&gt;3. Work out a proper  hourly rate. Don&apos;t use the same broken formula I did thinking I can work 7 billable hours per day. I end up with about 4.5. I didn&apos;t account for the gaps between work. I now understand why freelancers have high rates.</text><parent_chain><item><author>stevejalim</author><text>Shameless, shameless plug alert: if you found Alan&apos;s post interesting, you may also like the book I&apos;ve almost finished writing. Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://freelancedeveloperbook.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://freelancedeveloperbook.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The plan is to ship it before the end of June - am publishing via leanpub.com (great experience so far) and it&apos;ll be a paid-for book to cover the (many, many, _many_) hours I&apos;ve put into it.&lt;p&gt;When it&apos;s ready, I&apos;ll make a sample available so you can try before you buy, and will be pulling out a dozen names from the early-sign-up hat for a free copy.&lt;p&gt;So, if you&apos;re interested, please do sign up.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>My first month freelancing</title><url>http://alanhollis.com/first-month-freelancing/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>kranner</author><text>Looks interesting! Signed up and emailed you.</text><parent_chain><item><author>stevejalim</author><text>Shameless, shameless plug alert: if you found Alan&apos;s post interesting, you may also like the book I&apos;ve almost finished writing. Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://freelancedeveloperbook.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://freelancedeveloperbook.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The plan is to ship it before the end of June - am publishing via leanpub.com (great experience so far) and it&apos;ll be a paid-for book to cover the (many, many, _many_) hours I&apos;ve put into it.&lt;p&gt;When it&apos;s ready, I&apos;ll make a sample available so you can try before you buy, and will be pulling out a dozen names from the early-sign-up hat for a free copy.&lt;p&gt;So, if you&apos;re interested, please do sign up.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>My first month freelancing</title><url>http://alanhollis.com/first-month-freelancing/</url></story>