do you recommend starting a small business or freelance work

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was wondering because I heard that self employed aspies do better than working for people. Is that true? also how hard is it to make a living doing freelance?

It depends on your areas of expertise how well it can work for you. My AS husband liked being in control, but hated having to manage - you have to bill clients, get clients, organize priorities, keep the books, set up an office, and more. He also hated always been in direct contact with the clients. But, then again, in an office, he hates dealing with the layers of people from the office ...

Freelance work with a few set companies removes some of those issues, but the work may be unpredictable, and there will be no benefits. You have to make sure you up the hourly rate to make up for all that.

In many fields, to get good freelance work, you have to pay your dues and build contacts first. People are more willing to give you flexibility if they know your work.

I agree, it depends on what area.

Say if you're going to do website design and content writing [I'm familiar with this because I used to run a small hobby business from home doing just this], the start-up is cheap because you can do most of the work from the privacy of your room, so there's not a lot of overheads. Probably just a website where you can show your portfolio and what you offer, a phone in case someone wants to discuss issues with you personally, and an email for clients to contact and send any requisite images for the site.

The issues you're going to face initially is building up a portfolio, no matter what line of work you are thinking of pursuing. You have to show clients that you are genuinely skilled, and that they can entrust you with their business. You have to sell yourself, because work isn't going to come to you. If you're doing website design, creating some templates for a popular content management system [i.e. Wordpress] comes to mind. Or offering your time to a volunteer organisation who might also be about to offer testimonials about your work.

Make sure that you are charging people a fair rate - which may mean calling competitors about what they charge and seeing if you can afford to offer a similar rate or lower.

Then there's little things - learn how to make a professional-looking receipt template, for instance. Gives clients that extra feeling that they are dealing with someone who knows what they are doing.

I enjoyed working freelance while I did - I was able to fit my work around my lifestyle and I was able to do the majority of my client contact online which reduced the stress. However, I didn't like the sporadic income so eventually I moved into office employment. Weigh up the pros and cons for your situation and see what's the best

No. I was married to someone with his own business for 10 years, and my brother had his own business. Too many problems. A small business owner has to wear many hats and be responsible for everything, and hire and fire, and deal with complaints, and the government paperwork, on and on. You have to be a multi-tasker and have good people skills.

Besides, I like having a specific job that I do, where someone else tells me what they want done. I don't want to worry about how they pay the electric bill, or what OSHA thinks about the safety issues, or how the group insurance is handled.

Unless I could have my own cleaning firm and clean offices at night when no one was in them. There are times when I'd like to throw science out the window and do just that!

I worked briefly as a freelance commercial photographer and even though I was doing well... The clients liked my work and I was making a decent amount, I found the need for frequent interaction with people to be too much.

I think work that you can do on your own with little interaction might be acceptable. I guess the key is knowing what you can tolerate and knowing what the job requires.

Running your own business is a mixed bag.

1. You are the boss. Success or failure is your problem. You can't blame someone else's incompetence for the mess you're in. Still, you're free to do things as what works best for you.

2. You have to worry about where your "business" will come from. If you can "independent contractor" a needed service to more than one business (a common practice today), you can work at home, or in an office's back room, etc. and make good money. So long as you are polite to those you deal with and churn out a good product/service, you might always have a "paycheck." To me, the hardest aspect of self-employment is finding someone to pay for what you are offering, but once you get going, it tends to be easier to keep it going. It's easier to sell yourself when you know you have 2-3 happy clients you do good work for you can offer as references to a prospective customer. Starting out is the hardest part.

3. You get no benefits. If you want insurance or retirement, you better discipline yourself to set aside money for those things. Not that having a job is much better (in today's economy), but you can't expect someone else to do these things for you.

The chief advantage of self-employment for people like us is that we can't wait for someone with an open mind to offer us a good job. Might as well work on taking care of ourselves and start working for ourselves. I started my little operation because someone told me I'd never get hired in the kind of job I wanted. I'm too "different" (his words) to fit in and most places I'm looking at (corporations/government) focuses on hiring someone who won't make the hiring person look bad. If there is any risk you MIGHT be a problem, they won't hire you out of fear it will embarrass them later.

It depends on the need for your services and your personality. Your going to be working long hours, with little breaks at first.

My experience being self-employed was negative (in fact, it's what led to my diagnosis).

But that's just me. Other Aspies might have a very different perspective.

I don't know if my work fits in this category but I could never keep a job more than 6 months. I've had more than I can even remember. Then 2 years ago I got a job as a contractor for a home-based call centre. I'm still doing it. It's ironic that it's customer service and I hate people but it's the only job I find I can do. I get to pick my own hours and it's simple - if I don't work, I don't get money. It's considered self-employment and there's no pressure. I only work about 10-15 hours a week so I have enough to pay bills and get by but it's perfect. I try to do my shifts so I work for 1 hour then have a 30 minute break and I only do a few hours a day. That way I don't get too stressed out talking to people. The job is brainless work really just taking info from customers and following a script so it's easy. Sometimes if I find it hard to talk I'll just take the day off. I don't think I could ever work in a office job again and I tried running my own business once but it failed badly. I didn't have the personality to get clients.

Freelancing is a b***h. It's do-able, but I will advise you now that it is astonishing how stupid clients are. Frankly, you'll never believe how willing they are to push through a patently s**t idea.

Here's freelancing in nutshell:

Client: "Tell me the lie I want to hear."

You: "No, that's really dumb and amounts to putting cash in a pile and burning it."

Client: "Is there a clean-up fee for clearing away the embers of my bank account?"

You: "Oh my f*****g gawd. You are so ret*d. I want to hurt you."

Client: "If I let you hurt me, will you then implement my exceedingly s**t idea?"

You: "Oh, f**k it. Why not? If I don't burn you money for you, an unqualified person may try."

Client: "Yippee! Who do I make the check out to?"