This week, I’ve written my first guest post, Freelancing—Dream or Reality? for the new blog Freelance & Create.

My post covers the differences between my youthful vision of freelancing and the reality today. As a companion read, I highly recommend reading Manda’s full post, 10 reasons Freelance Designers Get Screwed. Below is an excerpt. I couldn’t have said it better. (Though I tried on this post!)

3. The design firms who ARE posting their prices upfront are cheap-o crowd-sourcing sites or cheese-ball do-it-yourself template sites

Although most respectable designers aren’t able to post flat-rate prices upfront because of the difficulty involved in pricing out jobs on an individual basis, large crowd-sourcing or out-sourcing sites are more than willing to blast their prices all over their homepage. “Websites starting at $100!” Factory assembly-line design firms that crank out site after site from the same template are equally cheap, and proud of it. Clients looking for a website don’t know the difference between one of those sites and custom design from an experienced designer. All they know is that they saw websites advertised starting at $100, and that’s the price they are expecting from you. If you give into this rationale, you’re guaranteed to get screwed.

So go visit Freelancing—Dream or Reality? and leave a comment. And don’t miss Manda’s article, either! Thanks!