Ask HN: How do I get freelance developer jobs?
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?
111 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 121 ms ] threadWork boards only make sense if you're in some developing country where dollars will go further. In a developed country, they're a waste of time.
You've got to press the flesh.
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.
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.
It is an attempt to stop employers dodging benefits entitlements by hiring their employees as contractors.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp#Vizcaino_v._Microsof...
In essence it means that you can't take paid leave or sick days, otherwise it counts as "disguised employment". Another interesting requirement is that you must have at lest one other person in your company who can reasonably stand in for you and perform your work, if needs be.
If caught on the wrong side of the law then you must return the tax you've saved along with paying a fine. Not nice.
Generally it's just a matter of how the contract is worded. You need to reserve the sort of rights a business would reserve.
The businesses have always seemed very similar to me, with the exception that it's easier to find remote computer work and the budgets with the computer stuff are uniformly more sustainable.
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.
When I said "clearly over budget," I meant in terms of your own estimate. Sometimes feature X takes longer to build out, and there's the inclination to cut corners to get things done so you don't drive your effective hourly/day rate down, assuming that the poor estimate was yours and you'll eat the cost.
But expanding on that, do quality work regardless of the scenario, such as:
* The codebase is already a pile of s* left behind by someone else * They're miserable, complaining, sons a' biches no matter what you do for them A fix could be sloppy and take 1 line of code, or quality and take 10
That kinda stuff.
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 :)
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.
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/philosoraptor
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...
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.
No shortcuts in creative work.
Contacting agencies my be a good bet - but so far I found still a lot of them don't want to work with remote/nomadic developers.
As for me, when I don't have contract I keep working on my own apps and put them on shelf when a new client deal is finalized. Most of the time finalizing a deal takes time.
"Freelance" can mean:
1) Working remotely as a contractor though a 3rd party agency.
2) Working remotely hourly or per gig for yourself.
3) Doing end-to-end project work. Start with designs, code, test, and submit as a package deal.
All have different ways of finding clients. However, they tend to follow a career progression in that same order. My career path did.
I advise you to think about freelancing, not as a developer, but a business owner. Consider the following:
* What sort of business entity are you going to have? All have trade offs, and specific obligations from a pure business perspective. One piece of advice that my accountant gave me: Just because you create an LLC with your state govt doesn't make you an LLC. From a court's perspective you have to act like it. In my state that requires Articles of Organization, an Operation Agreement and at least yearly documented meetings with the stakeholders.
* Learn how to protect yourself legally. This means find a lawyer and get a standard contract. Have an attorney review any contract before you sign it. Figure out a strategy for when someone doesn't pay, and how this strategy may change if they are local or remote. It is much harder to take someone out of state to court. I have turned down gigs because we couldn't come to agreement on contract language. One contract asked me to pay all court fees in the event the software led to any issues for their clients. (It was for a medical device.)
* Think about how you are going to charge. Hourly/by the project. Clients may ask for fixed prices and not-to-exceeds. There are a lot of opinions about this. Make an informed decision about how you are going to approach this.
* How are you going to sell yourself. Most of my work comes through word-of-mouth. Figure out your pitch, and how you differentiate yourself from competition. Reputation counts for a lot. Think about setting networking/sales goals. Expect the engagement process to take a long time, and not all of it to pan out. I've spend many hours trying to engage a new client, only to have them change their mind at the last minute. Account for this in your pricing.
* Expect feast or famine. Sometimes you may be sweating bullets because you don't have enough work and bills are coming due. Sometimes you're sweating bullets because several clients are wanting things all at once. Sometimes you may be working nights and weekends.
* As a small guy, you are the product. It pays to be a high quality product.
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.
I made some money but it seemed most things tagged JavaScript or PHP were either design work or WordPress plugins.
This thread inspired me to sign back up and raise my rate to something more realistic IRL ~ $30-35/hr.
Double that.
Now consider that you are your employer.
Indeed. Most work has to do with something pre-built, e.g CMS wordpress, joomla, etc. What projects do you work on?
I'm also very knowledgeable about PHP but prefer to use classic OOP patterns with it hence my reprehension for WordPress.
I use ASP.Net and JavaEE at work. Kinda more circumstantial than anything, ie working with third party software. I actively choose not to seek further work with these tools because I don't enjoy using them.
I wouldn't mind building web services with .Net or Java, though. I imagine those jobs are probably not very prevalent but I was only on Upwork for a short time.
It's way easier than constantly hustling for new jobs. Don't waste your time on Upwork—you'll make peanuts.
And how is that even relevant, given that gigster is about remote work?
Job boards
* http://weworkremotely.com
* http://remoteok.io
* http://remotebase.io
* http://linkedin.com/jobs
* http://workingnomads.co/jobs
* http://angel.co/jobs
* http://authenticjobs.com
* http://folyo.me
* http://getonbrd.com (latam)
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With broker
Here you apply as a professional, they approve you (or not) and then assign you projects.
* http://toptal.com
* http://workmarket.com
* http://crew.co
* http://hired.com
* http://onsite.io
* http://workingnotworking.com
* http://gun.io
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I do not recommend
* http://upwork.com
* http://freelancer.com
* http://nubelo.com
* http://fiverr.com
* http://workana.com
* http://guru.com
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Not reviewed yet
* http://gigster.com
* http://wearehirable.com
* http://localsolo.com
* http://speedlancer.com (looks fishy)
* http://yunojuno.com
* http://coworks.com
* http://theworkmob.com
[1] [redacted]
- they treat freelancers badly
- there're also a lof of other kinds of downsides about working there. google "why upwork sucks". or "odesk sucks".
Disclaimer: I have used it three times, made requirements clear, and paid workers fairly, and had no problems.. but I am interested to hear about others' experiences.
they've introduced job success, now those who know how it works more or less or newbies with an empty job history -- are the top freelancers, whereas those who have been there for a long time, for years -- at the bottom. Needless to say, upwork doesn't disclose the exact formula used to calculate your job success.
more over: upwork claims it's guaranteed 100% you get your money if a job is hourly paid. No. they still can take your money and return it to a client.
they're many good freelancers who have been banned for no wise reason, among them are the top ones.
there're many other insights.
Maybe not full reviews, but a short summary of why you do/don't recommend them would be very informative.
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.
- 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/
A few other platforms with a focus on contractors you might want to check out are Toptal and Gigster.
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.
Yes, bid limits are there but you can pay a (very) small amount to get a (much) higher number of bids. At Freelancer.com, it is something like <$10/mo. for 300 bids. I have also found PeoplePerHour.com [1] to be a good market place. Over there, after the free bids, it is more expensive to buy additional bids but I've found the overall quality/mix of buyers to be at least somewhat better comparatively.
[1] http://www.peopleperhour.com