How do you handle working with clients remotely?

I’m a graphic designer with US clients. I’ve been working from Europe since 2007. The clients who’ve stayed with me after I moved overseas know me, know I’m extremely responsive on e-mail and can live without phone calls, skype sessions and anything that requires my virtual presence at the same time as them. I discourage that anyway. When it’s really necessary I make arrangements for it to happen: usually I ask if they can do an early morning call: 9am EST is 3pm in the places where I work in Europe, so we can usually make that work. If I ever pick up any new clients, I make sure to give them some facetime (via skype or whatever) in the beginning so they’re comfortable dealing with me, then we switch to slack or e-mail, as they prefer.

It’s worth remembering that legally speaking, your clients can’t tell you exactly where and when to do your work (if you’re 1099 or a corp). It’s true that you’ll want to accommodate calls and meetings, but I think if you offer reasonable options, that shouldn’t be a big deal.

Re: the other issue (money) - earnings and taxes. I’m self-employed and will take the FEIE this year. I also plan to claim I’m “itinerant” (no tax home, even though my business is registered in the U.S.) because I’ve been moving around a lot. I will owe SE tax. Regarding rates, I do favor US clients only because of this issue – I’m just now considering working with a European client, and don’t know how that will go rate-wise.

My much bigger issue is that the gigs I’m seeing advertised for my field of self-employment for 15 years, UX, want to role 3 huge jobs into one (and only ask for a couple years of experience, usually). I’m not qualified for that and don’t think it’s the best way to work. It does make me wonder if the people considering remote resources are just very cheap with labor and trying to squeeze a lot out of one person, a recent grad. It’s discouraging.

I’ve been working for a company but I’m going to have to figure out the freelancer thing at some point. I’m not looking forward to it. Keep in mind that if you use FEIE it might impact your retirement savings options. I was told I couldn’t do a non-employer sponsored retirement account because my income was effectively 0 so I didn’t qualify. Just something to keep in mind while you’re planning.

I am a developer too. I tried a 5 month work abroad test last year, staying almost a month in each Iceland, Germany, Spain, Italy and France, and visiting other countries during the trip.

I enjoyed the time zone difference while in Europe for the 5 months last year. In fact, I was able to radically increase my productivity and billings. The time shift worked out great for my dev work, allowing me to really get tons of work done before clients on the east coast came online or were even awake . It was difficult when US west coast clients wanted some off hours work done, but it’s easy to schedule and a tiny adjustment. I loved having my free time being early morning/day with my 3 kids, exploring, traveling, or even just going to the grocery store or public markets, or doing the necessary errands, like banking, then working afternoon to midnight. Most of that time my kids are sleeping anyhow, so I feel like I am missing out less and I can be more involved. I am a night person anyhow so it works out better for me than when I am on the west coast, usually 3 months out of the year. I hate being up and available for my clients 9am ET when it’s 6am PT, and dread the 8am ET meetings/conference calls. I am trying to figure out how I can get my family to Hawaii for a number of months to test things out. I hadn’t been back there for more than 20 years and I’d like to share that experience with them.
Most of my clients are in the US on the east coast, a few on the west coast and middle US, and one in Japan. Most communication is over email, then skype, then phone. Use Vonage, project Fi or similar to bring your phone number where ever you go. My business is all about providing excellent customer service, and I always answer my clients calls, even at 3am, regardless of time zone.
As for taxes - I have not found a good solution. I am hesitant to setup a foreign corporation, that would employ myself and wife. Currently we are both self employed. So that means we are stuck paying the SE Tax. From my understanding, the FEIE would only apply if we were employed by a corporation, not self employed. As it stands now, with deductions, i401k and retirement savings, we are only hit with a 12% overall tax. I’d love to see this reduced, but having found a practical way to do it yet, plus we haven’t been out of the us for the 330 days to qualify in any given tax year.
It would be great to find some other like minded families that wanted to setup a collection of pied-à-terre in various countries to inhabit in a round robin fashion to perpetually travel and explore.

I do client based work in the US and I’m planning on leaving to SEA next month, so I know where you’re coming from. I’ve already told all my current clients about the move and how it will impact my work. Honestly, not much will really change since I’ll be at a co-working space and will be working somewhat regular hours.

About 90% of my client interaction is email right now anyways. When I move, anyone who needs to talk on the phone will need to make an appointment at least a day before and I’ll have certain hours that I’ll take calls (done on Skype).

From where I am (Wisconsin), Italy (in your example) is 7 hours ahead, so you could always take calls from 8AM-11AM which would only be 3PM-6PM in Italy. Just make yourself available for calls during certain hours of the day or maybe even certain days of the week,

Not only will this help your productivity, but will help let your clients know to keep calls for more vital info and to keep them more concise. There is always email and many different online project management tools to keep track and manage work.

Regarding taxes, there are many ways to minimize or even eliminate taxes. Some nomads qualify for exemptions (Foreign Earned Income Exclusion). Otherwise by documenting business expenses and having a good accountant can help as well. Last year I didn’t pay any taxes, actually I got a $800 refund. So, if you’re paying “High taxes” maybe you should consult with your accountant on how you can minimize what you’re paying.

everyone does it differently. and a lot depends on how needy your clients are. i don’t even have a phone number so clients can’t call me. we communicate via email. I have set business hours and give them a response time estimation that accounts for time zone issues.

re taxes, look into the FEIE to help with that.