Freelance Chat

Imagine Laura, a 32‑year‑old graphic designer, sitting in a café with her laptop open. She has three unpaid invoices, a client asking for "a quick job" with no clear budget, and an Excel sheet where the numbers dance more than on TikTok. On the screen, a minimized tab: the #Chat_Freelance channel on ChatZona. There, amid laughs and memes of "the client said it was urgent for yesterday", someone just dropped: *"I charge €20/hour for design, but the real‑estate guy offered to pay in exposure. I sent him a link to my OnlyFans (doesn’t exist) and he shut up"*. Laura smiles, copies the joke for her friends group and, by the way, asks: *"Anyone invoicing with FacturaDirecta? Or is Holded better?"*.

Here we don’t talk about finance with suits and ties, but about what hurts (and what saves): rates that don’t leave you in the red, like that copywriter who discovered that charging per word was worse than selling kidneys on Wallapop. Or contracts that aren’t wet paper, like the programmer whose client paid him with a "I owe you a favor" (spoiler: the favor was another free project). We also debate how to invoice without losing your mind —VAT included or separate? What if a Spanish client pays you from an account in Panama?— and where to find clients who don’t treat you like Fiverr’s poor cousin, because yes, there’s life beyond platforms that keep 20% of your soul. And, of course, horror anecdotes: from the one who paid with a bad‑check to the one who had to threaten to post screenshots on Twitter to get paid.

What makes this room unique is that it’s not LinkedIn. There’s no posturing: nobody flaunts their "personal brand" while invoicing €5 for a logo. It’s a place where a translator swears that charging per page is around 90, where an illustrator explains how to negotiate image rights without getting ripped off, and where everyone agrees on an uncomfortable truth: *the client who asks for a discount "because it’s for an NGO" is usually the same one who buys a new iPhone every year*. Moreover, there’s collective wisdom: if someone asks *"What do I do if a client tells me my price is too high?"*, in five minutes you get answers ranging from the polite *"Well then look for someone cheaper"* to the nuclear *"Tell them your rate includes not sending them ‘team‑work’ memes at 3 AM"*.

To join, you only need a nickname (it can be "ElQueNoCobra" or "FacturaComoUnPro", you decide) and connect from any IRC client —mobile, PC, even a Raspberry Pi if you’re into retro. No registration, no algorithms spying on you, no need to upload a profile picture or pretend you like networking. ChatZona has been the same channel since 2007: pure text, no forced heart emojis, no moderators kicking you out for saying "shit" when a client asks for "a little extra detail". Use a webchat like IRC‑Hispano or set up a client like HexChat or mIRC. The server is irc.irc-hispano.org, the port 6667 (or 66