Are you working (or had in the past) as a freelancer?
What platform are you using to find work?
Tell us a little bit about your experience 😊
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Top comments (39)
I've been freelancing for a little over 7 years now - I've never had a full-time programming job. For the first few years, I had other various part-time jobs (cafes, delivery, things like that), but after a while I got some traction and was able to turn it into a "career".
Since then, I have been fortunate enough to have all of my work come as referrals from clients and friends.
Some benefits have been:
Some pitfalls, in my experience, have been:
Some things that are both a benefit and a pitfall:
Some tips:
I've been thinking about writing a series of blog posts on a lot of the above... this thread is a good nudge for me - thank you for starting it!
'Do not allow clients to contact you by text/phone, unless it's a real emergency. Set working hours and serious boundaries.'
Absolutely. The one client I was able to get as a freelancer I tried to fire because he couldn't handle boundries. He'd follow me around at my regular day job for hours at a time (management was split between thinking it was cute and wanting to fire me for 'keeping a distraction' at work). I'd also come home after work to find that my mother-in-law, who has cognitive problems, thought he was my friend and let him in, telling him to wait for me in my bedroom.
Boundries are incedibly important, and I recommend against freelancing unless your area takes harassment and stalking seriously.
These are some really good advices! Thank you!
My typical advice is to do everything you can to avoid the big online freelancer platforms. In my experience, many (not all) of the clients on those sites want a ton of work for little pay, and don't understand when you say things may take longer than they expect.
Instead, the most important thing you can do is "become a visible expert in your space". That could be a blog, ebook, conference talks, etc - but have something that you can point to online when clients ask what you've done before.
For me, that was writing an ebook about React. It took about 2 months of concentrated effort, but after that, it was like a cheat code for getting new clients. I could reach out to businesses that I knew were using React, and when they ask what I'd done before, I'd show them the book. After that, conversations became very easy. "Oh! you wrote a book on React... you must know what you're talking about" was the common sentiment.
It takes time, for sure, but it's possible! Good luck everyone :)
That's a piece of very good advice - become recognized as an expert or 'authority' in your field, and it won't be hard to stand out and get clients. A little bit of a practical problem that I personally have is that I tend to be a generalist, dabbling with a lot of technologies. This makes it a bit harder to follow your advice, but even then it's a great idea and one that I've been contemplating recently.
Yes, that does make it a bit more of a challenge - but perhaps you could also use it to your advantage? If you are a generalist, then you could write an ebook like "How to be an effective generalist programmer" (or something like that :) ). Good luck!
True! I would be telling a different story, but it could still be an interesting one, and clients need that sort of dev too.
(for all the time and effort I've spent on front end dev over the last years - JS, React, Vue, Webpack the whole shebang - I'm still being drawn time and time again by backend dev - yeah or maybe it's "fullstack")
That's a solid piece of advice! Thank you!
Been working on Upwork since 2010 when it was Odesk. I average about 4 gigs per week mainly doing Web scrapping, NLP/Sentiment analysis, Data Analysis, API Design and Web development using Flask and Django. I get clients mainly through referrals and have a few long term clients with regular repeat jobs. Despite the negative press it receives Upwork is a good platform if you play by the rules, identify high paying categories and provide good work. I average about $6K per month which is not bad considering i'm from a third world country. The platform however has some pain points like recent changes that seem to make it hard to create a new account and get approved especially in categories that already have a lot of freelancers.
4 gigs per week man that's a lot ... 6K per month that's also quite a lot, not just for "3rd world standards" - I think that many folks from 'developed places' (lol how stupid does that sound ...) would also be contented with that kind of money.
Do you make most of that 6K from repeat clients with whom you already have a good working relationship? I guess it would be hard to make 6K only by picking up gigs directly from Upwork.
Very nice! Congratulations!
The hardest part is self-discipline. You have to control yourself. I've been a procrastinator my whole life. I always wait for the last minute to start freaking out (yes, I freak out before I actually do my job lol).
Things have been changing once I try to digitize my work. Before I only use notepads and phone reminder. But lately I've been introduced to some of the productivity apps and the result is wonderful.
I onboard my client on a project management software called Quire. I don't have to use emails to update them with every change. They can just log in and see the progress.
Being a freelance has its up and down, but to me, it's one of the most rewarding job :)
Thanks for sharing your story. I'm also a procrastinator so this helps!
yeah you are spot on
pros: You can work from anywhere and in your suitable time period.
cons: you have freedom that means you can easily spoil your working hours..
I'm a WordPress developer now full-time with RocketGenius (parent company of the form plugin Gravity Forms). When I was freelancing (been there for over a decade), Codeable was a game changer for me.
When I joined in 2017, the proposed hourly rate on Codeable is $60-$100 and now it's $70-$120 (codeable.io/pricing/). It takes several phases to join Codeable - application, test project, interview, and live coding. Once you passed all of them you'll start a trial for 45 days (you get paid 100% in the trial even you didn't pass it), and then you get a certificate and can stay there ever since (I'm still there just don't take new clients).
In my opinion, it's the best platform if you are in the WordPress freelancing market. Nowadays WP is very common so there're plenty freelancers work for low hourly rates or bidding with low prices, but if you're very good at WordPress, you can find high paying clients on Codeable and $5-6k per month is very common among our best experts (members on Codeable are called experts). And the most successful ones are reportedly securing > $10k per month (e.g. nathanello.com/freelance/two-years...).
Nice! Glad to see it worked out for you!
I'm not a WP guy so maybe Codeable is not for me 😄
I have been working as a part-time freelancer on Freelancer.com since 2015.
So far, I have managed to complete 80+ projects, with 5-star rating, positive feedback and got a good number of repeating clients.
It's a pretty good experience and I've been thinking to move to full-time freelancing but I am too afraid to leave a full-time job and move to full-time freelancing.
I would put aside 3-6 months of expenses and then go full-time freelancing 😃 (this is what I did!)
I literally had 0 luck in the past trying to find coding work as a freelancer, it was terrible. I've been freelance writing for a while now, and that's been pretty good. I haven't been using any platform other than simply posting my work and either reaching out or getting reached out directly.
What kind of writing? and "reaching out/getting reach out" how does that work, via what channels?
By writing, I meant technical writing, as in mainly blog post, although I've published some books as well. And by reaching out I meant writing to editorial or technical blogs I know pay their authors and asking if they'd like me to write for them.
Finally, by getting reach out I mean getting contacted by those blogs because they've read my work somewhere else.
Thank you! so blogging and technical writing has been more successful for you (in terms of earning money) than pure development work, good to know and I'll keep that in the back of my mind.
I worked a lot for toptal in the past and the experience was amazing. You'll have great clients to work with and your network can grow quickly.
There are a lot of other companies like toptal: gigster, scalablepath, xteam, etc.. They all have a screening process and you usually can start the screening process anytime you like.
If you are looking for freelance jobs, taking a look at these is definitely worth it.
I'm working as a freelancer since end of 2011.
The first (I think) three years I worked from a coworking space every day. That was how I got all of my jobs and still get them (except for two: one was for an agency a friend of mine worked for, the other one was for someone who found me via google) - and I have always been fully booked since the beginning.
Online platforms might be helpful for some people, but I prefer to work for people I know directly or at least through a friend. That way chances that everything works smoothly are much higher in my opinion.
But I know that I have always been very lucky with my situation and that this definitely might not work for everyone.
I am on Fiverr, got a gig a few weeks ago and the client was so impressed he gave me a 2-month contract to work on their codebase that meant I had to create an Upwork account as his company uses it.
Mostly Python-related tasks.
Not sure if it's OK to promote your gigs here but here goes nothing: fiverr.com/s2/8ffb9f099b
Congrats!
Thank you