Sure there are sites like Upwork or Freelancer, but they limit the amount of jobs that you can bid for. I'm not sure if I could successfully get jobs there, so I don't want to waste any bids. People jump on any good projects like crazy. Aside from that, I've been told to scout out local business, but for the moment lets just say that one's a no. How can I get freelancing jobs as a developer?
Readit News
This works really well if you dont want to deal with end clients. You should also phone them every 3 months to remind them who you are, send them christmas cards, show them something you've done recently, etc. You can also replace "web" with "marketing", "advertising", "development", "design" etc in the initial google query.
If you're not an idiot and you're reliable and cost effective, this is a VERY good way to get regular, long term work.
I lol'd, but to clarify this very accurate point:
* Be reliable (never, ever go dark)
* Be a nice person (polite and upbeat, even if the client isn't exactly deserving)
* Do quality work, regardless of the circumstances (even if you're over budget)
If you hit those three points, you will perform far better, revenue-wise, than the average contractor - I did it for years while I was getting my product business off the ground.
+1 to this point. At a previous agency job I found this to be the biggest pain when hiring/dealing with contractors.
As long as they gave decent notice on days off I never complained about their availability.
What if you estimated all of the features, built them, and then the client comes back with a bunch of new features and changes that would require a new contract. Do you do them for free?
What about ongoing support? My contracts give the client one week to test any features, and once that week has elapsed without any issues, the contract is considered "complete" and they have to pay the other 50%. Would you be for or against that practice?
I guess I am wondering where the balance lies between protecting yourself and protecting your reputation.
Unfortunately, clients (just like all human beings) are squishy and forgetful. Your reputation can get damaged through no fault of your own. When do you decide to let someone go because their expectations don't match the contract they signed? Is the penalty to your reputation so high that it's never worth the time you would save by doing this?
I am genuinely curious to see how other contractors manage this.
DO visit each of their sites & see what they actually sell/market
DO make 6-8 version of your cover letter to fit different niches, and tweak each one to be a bit more personal before sending out
DO get a decent way to track them like they are customers (ie, a CRM or some good tool) so you remember to stay in touch.
Don't send anything that reads like a mass-mailed spam! Something as simple as "I see you are all in Boulder. My Dad went to UC" may sound a little corny but they need to see they aren't getting a form letter, and they need a way to remember you out of the crowd.
It is a lot of work, but over time it pays off.
Main downside is you will generally make less going through an Agency, but it is a great for new freelancers who are trying to fill up their pipeline.
Beware that if you type that you might end up finding web dev work though. It could be an unpleasant surprise :)
Do fixed fee if you can -- this gives you an incentive to invest in becoming more efficient and gives your clients predictability. Jonathan Stark has some good material on moving away from hourly: https://expensiveproblem.com/
The thing that's been a huge success for my freelancing business and helped me avoid feast or famine is having ongoing, hands-off sales processes that keep going no matter how busy I am with client work.
I hired a VA and originally had her email relevant leads from lead newsletters like LetsMakeApps or Workshop, and now am shifting towards cold email towards relevant leads. Use a CRM (close.io is my personal favorite) and a drip email service like prospect.io for automatic followups -- persistence boosts conversion rates massively for this sort of sales. Block off a day or two a week to take sales meetings and use Calendly to schedule -- meetings popping up whenever is huge impediment to flow, but keeping up sales regardless of how busy you are. If you get overwhelmed, raise your prices to reduce the amount of work you are selling.
Happy to talk about building a freelancing business -- email in profile.
- https://www.pipelinedaily.com/ for $49/mo, James will send you really good leads on Mondays.
- http://letsworkshop.com/ for $597 every quarter, Robert will send you leads daily.
- Get back to your LinkedIn connection and let your friends/connections know that you're looking for freelance work. I had always had LinkedIn friends/connections who gave me enough work, while I freelance in-between my Startups.
- As for the other advice about working for Agencies. You can try that too. I used to lead a 50+ team of designers and front-end engineers. I had a spreadsheet of my outside contacts (freelancers/contractors) who supplement my team, and for those special requirements.
## Long Term
- Maintain an updated Github (or Bitbucket, Gitlab) public profile, with few public repositories that a potential client can see and gauge your talent.
- Write a blog. You can go technical, or just updates about the works/projects you do.
### Plug
I run a remote-first design + front-end services firm, show me your work (Github, portfolio or otherwise), we might have something for you - https://alarisprime.com/
I would be tempted to find a local client and offer to do something small, but real, for free...provided I fronted them the fee to pay me via UpWork. Just to bootstrap the reputation/experience on the platform.
You're averaging roughly double that $35/h, consistently for a full working week, every week, solely via UpWork?!
"John Shipp, a senior web developer in Brule, Nebraska, who charges $166.67 per hour on the platform, joined it in 2011, before it changed its name to Upwork. About 80% of his business came through Upwork in the first quarter of 2016, he says."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/elainepofeldt/2016/05/03/freelan...
No shortcuts in creative work.
Other ways are through LinkedIn groups or small business groups that you can find in your area.
At the end of the day it comes down to networking. Say yes to every meeting and say yes to meeting people. Even if they aren't wanting to hire you, they know your name and will pass it on.
I've freelanced for the last 10 years on and off. I've never needed to advertise, I just make a post on LinkedIn and say I'm freelancing or go to a Meet Up and contracts start coming through.
You're looking for people with costly problems who need a developer to solve it. Meeting up with developers is pretty much the opposite of that.
Also: It can take a long time (months, years!) before the inflow of work has any sort of steadiness. And it will be steady only due to how good you are at turning back the bad contracts. Don't fret about a week.
First, there is a drastic oversupply of programmers, as you noticed, and everybody knows it. You're competing with people earning $5/h or less, or are straight-up working for "equity" or "portfolio". Public opinion of programmer skills and value is exceedingly low ("we just need some coder to make it all work!"), and programming shops that do value developer time are usually religiously keyed to one specific toolset and methodology, only recruiting from that specific pool.
By and large, there is only one in: getting referred by people who already like your work. That's why so many freelancers fall into the working-for-free-to-get-referrals trap, by the way, never do that. But what you can do is start small. Look up local companies working in your field, and comb through your address book for anyone who could possibly have use for your services.
After getting any contact, your most important job is to cultivate the good customers and get rid of the bad. I cannot count the number of times I failed at either of these, it's my number one regret from when I started freelancing. There were two instances in my freelancer career where I let people down very badly that still haunt me - don't be that guy. Sometimes you get lucky and you hit upon a successful relationship by chance, keep such relationships alive at all costs.
Finally, as a mostly-ex web developer I think working for web stuff is poison. Often, people looking for skilled allrounders will actually think less of your skills if they include web work. Also, web development is by far the most overcrowded field in software development. And web shops themselves are getting utterly ridiculous in their use of overblown tools and bloated frameworks. If there is any way you can get into low level programming, graphics programming, maybe game development, framework development, and so on: I'd suggest you do that.
There are many shops in various fields that work like that. Certainly game dev is notorious, especially if you're a salaried worker at a big studio. However, someone starting out with their freelancer career, that's not the same thing. You're going to contract with smaller studios and tools developers. I don't think they're especially toxic as compared to other software shops, and certainly being a freelancer protects you from some of the general traps that befall salaried workers, at the expense of financial security.
> Why do you recommend it?
Several reasons. Being an old programmer, I lived through several bubbles and hypes. I can recommend games or game tool development because it's challenging work with a somewhat stable demand, and it's an industry with enough funding in general. It's also an opportunity to create things that will be part of our culture for a long time, as opposed to most other software that's being written.
I have read this lot lately. Is it really true? Where I am from there is a huge shortage of people with a Computer Science or Software Engineer background. Where are you from?
AFAIK, there's a strong undersaturation of devs with a CS degree, which in turn makes companies hire carreer changers, making it more attractive to get into the field as original non-programmer.
Identify and find a more experienced developer (it doesn't necessarily have to be a "senior developer", just somebody more experienced than you) who has far too many plates spinning and is getting bogged down in lower-level tasks, and offer to take care of that work as a contractor. Be great at unsexy things nobody else wants to do. Make sure these are the kinds of jobs where you can fill out your GitHub and get a few recommendations from the person or team you're contracting for.
Use this experience to get more jobs. Wash, rinse, repeat.
You might lose a couple of jobs upping your rate to $100/hr but you'll need half the work to keep your pay the same.