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The story
A poster claiming to be a freelancer earning ¥300,000 a month started a thread saying, “If you want to quit your job, sooner is better.” While admitting to the harsh reality that hours worked translate directly into income — and that some months bring in ¥600,000 to ¥1,000,000 — the poster never revealed their actual line of work. This drew a string of pushback: “A company employee can get by fine on a ¥350,000 take-home salary working remote three days a week,” and “I can’t trust claims like this without concrete numbers or tax-saving methods.” The thread never found common ground and ran on parallel tracks to the end.
What people said
At a company you're stuck dealing with garbage idiots.
That sounds rough lol
On good months I pull in ¥600,000. But for freelancers, hours worked go straight to income — that's the downside.
Well, incompetent people who always blame others and can only think about dragging others down definitely can't hack it. For better or worse, freelancing is all on you — total self-responsibility.
But it's next to impossible for a company employee to make ¥2,000,000 a month. A freelancer who hustles can easily hit ¥2,000,000.
Isn't that contradicting the thread title? To make ¥2,000,000 a month as a solo freelancer, wouldn't you need to juggle a bunch of gigs at once?
No contradiction lol. I'm just saying you CAN make ¥2,000,000 a month if you hustle. Obviously that means juggling multiple jobs lol. Say a full-time employee brings in ¥3,000,000 in sales across several accounts — the company takes most of it, right? For a freelancer, that whole amount becomes your income.
Anyone saying competition is fierce is one of three things: no real skills, stuck in a red-ocean industry, or has a seriously bad attitude. Freelancing is such that if you look at the bottom, it's endlessly, pathetically miserable. But just by being reasonably competent you land in the top 10% and earn fine. And FYI, freelancers in specialized fields AI can't take over are still making plenty of money.
Come on… I haven't said a single word about what my actual job is. Read more carefully… Also, you can't go freelance without a certain level of skill to begin with — it's not work just anyone can do, so companies are basically paying for that scarcity. 'More rivals,' my ass lol.
I'd say the sidelined employee mindlessly doing pointless busywork nobody understands is the one with no sense of responsibility lol.
Exactly. The bottom of the freelance pile is pathetically miserable, and just being somewhat competent is enough to earn well — way too many people don't realize that.
Between a freelancer costing ¥600,000 as a contractor and an employee at ¥300,000, companies will pick the freelancer every time. Well, depends on the line of work though.
It's tricky. That said, freelancing obviously needs more skill than being some sidelined employee doing nothing in particular — you're basically earning by selling that skill piece by piece. Well, if you're not even motivated to build up a specialized skill in the first place, being a regular employee might suit you better.
There are months I hit ¥1,000,000. It takes pushing yourself pretty hard, but it's not impossible.
You led with 'relationships' right off the bat — guess you're not good at it, huh?
Not being able to find purpose in your work — that's kind of sad, honestly. If that's the case, grinding hard and pulling in tens of millions of yen sounds like a way more fun way to live.
I don't think going all-in on one thing is a good idea. Also, with freelancing, I hate that you have to burn time on stuff outside the actual work — expenses, sales, all that.
Seriously, I hate it too. Somebody just hire me…
Once you build a system for it, it's easier than being a company employee lol.
You need to earn a bit more before incorporating makes sense — like ¥20,000,000 a year in revenue. ¥10,000,000 is right on the edge.
Tax-saving or whatever, it's exactly what I already said in my earlier post. Nothing more, nothing less lol.
Okay, that's enough out of you.
If it's product sales, the expense ratio probably isn't great. Work-from-home freelancing, on the other hand, probably has a low expense ratio.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
Unlike company employees, freelancers (sole proprietors) have to cover on their own the indirect costs a company otherwise shoulders — half of social insurance premiums, paid leave, retirement benefits, and so on — so comparing raw freelance revenue directly to an employee’s monthly salary tends to make the freelance figure look higher than it really is. The thread itself raised this point, noting that “a company employee’s ¥3,000,000 annual salary, once you factor in what the company covers, is roughly equivalent to a sole proprietor earning ¥5,000,000-6,000,000” — a commonly cited pitfall of naive income comparisons. Also, because the original poster never revealed their actual line of work or tax-saving methods, there was no way to verify whether the claimed numbers were genuinely achievable, and the discussion devolved into a stalemate — a structure typical of this kind of thread. Practical details were scattered throughout too, like the instability that comes from freelance income being directly tied to hours worked, and rough benchmarks for incorporating (annual revenue of ¥10,000,000-20,000,000) — worth reading as reference material rather than taking entirely at face value.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Niyusoku VIP) thread “I’m a freelancer making ¥300,000 a month, but if you want to quit your job, sooner is better.”
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