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Ask HN: Becoming a Freelancer in 6 months?

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Re: Ask HN: Becoming a Freelancer in 6 months?

#31

Post by vinceguidry »

gexla wrote: post #25

The quickest way to become a $35+ freelancer with the least amount of skills to pick up is to focus on a CMS like Wordpress or Drupal. Learning a CMS well is much easier than learning to build applications (mostly) from scratch. Your job is largely configuration (installing add-ons, building / modifying templates, updating settings.) You can do a lot with a decent CMS without having to learn PHP, but Wordpress and Dr…

I personally wouldn't even bother waiting three months. Bill yourself out now at $35/hour, then only put one-half to two-thirds of the number of hours you're actually spending on the project on your bill. Learn on the job.

Another thing worth trying is charging per day.

Re: Ask HN: Becoming a Freelancer in 6 months?

#32

Post by 6d0debc071 »

mbrock wrote: post #14
atacrawl wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, coding skills matter less in the real world than you think, those will get better with time anyway. I wish I could upvote this a hundred times. The thing to remember is that most people don't know the first thing about how stuff works on the internet. So you could have the shittiest spaghetti code in the world, but if the site looks and acts like it's supposed to, 99% of your clients will be satisfied. Edi…

I wonder if somewhere there's a forum where electricians or plumbers discuss things like these... "Most people don't know the first thing about how wiring works." On second thought, maybe I don't want to know!

IME a lot of low level jobs, especially where the company is offering to train people themselves, without any sort of regulatory oversight and where results are difficult to measure, have that sort of culture. If your rep's not that important to you....

Re: Ask HN: Becoming a Freelancer in 6 months?

#33

Post by gearoidoc »

Sorry but I can't help but feel that the majority of these responses have you focused too much on your short term goal.

Can you become a freelance CMS installer in 6 months with no technical background? Probably. But only just. I imagine most of the commenters below are developers (like myself) who see things like Joomla/Wordpress/etc installs as trivial pieces of work. Don't get me wrong: they are, but only if you've had a considerable amount of previous dev experience.

Let's look at what's involved in becoming a CMS freelancer:

- Setting up a working development environment: probably a few days.

- Getting to grips with PHP (or whatever language) development: harder to estimate but I imagine it will take at least three months to get to place where you're familiar with Object Orientated Programming (OOP), basic app layout, basic database skills, CSS and Javascript. Three months is actually a REALLY short amount of time to get up to speed on all of that but maybe you're a first learner - and hey, you're posting on HN so I bet you are ;-)

- Server setup : lets say you use some service like GoDaddy or Blacknight which offers 1-click CMS installers so you don't have to deal with all the SSH and CHMODing so no real work here

- Nailing your first piece of business: again, impossible to estimate but trust me when I say that this business (particular "cheap" jobs like CMS installs) is COMPETITIVE. If you live in a developed Western country then someone out there will do the job cheaper than you, no question. So basically you've going to have to operate well at a loss for the first few projects.

And here's where my BIG problem comes with the other replies in this post:

After you have X number of projects under your belt, your rate isn't going to start going up at any considerable speed. Yes you will be better than you were a few months back, yes you will have projects to show but guess what? So will all those outsourcers in places like India and Poland and they'll STILL be charging less than you.

My basic point is: this idea doesn't really scale. You'd be better off learning development "properly" (night schools, online courses etc are good) and then starting off at some entry level dev job. Yes its more pain up front but its a much more viable strategy long term.

So to answer your question (finally!): Can you become a freelancer in 6 months? Yes. Will you make any decent money at it? I don't think so.

If you're looking for any help with this stuff then I'd be happy to help you out a bit. You can find me on twitter: @modernprogrammr

Re: Ask HN: Becoming a Freelancer in 6 months?

#34

Post by shire »

gexla wrote: post #25

The quickest way to become a $35+ freelancer with the least amount of skills to pick up is to focus on a CMS like Wordpress or Drupal. Learning a CMS well is much easier than learning to build applications (mostly) from scratch. Your job is largely configuration (installing add-ons, building / modifying templates, updating settings.) You can do a lot with a decent CMS without having to learn PHP, but Wordpress and Dr…

This was actually very help Gexla, thanks. I've been trying to learn Java as a freelance opportunity but this thing is massive and takes forever to learn it seems. Is PHP the right way for freelance web development? I noticed you mentioned Wordpress and PHP. Coming from Java how long it will take to get into PHP ? I tried it a bit but everyone here seems to hate it and rants about the language ugliness so I didn't even try and went with Java.

Re: Ask HN: Becoming a Freelancer in 6 months?

#35

Post by shire »

katzgrau wrote: post #8

Someone's going to kill me for saying this: The biggest opportunity you could hit in the shortest amount of time is probably with PHP/Wordpress. Learn how to write smart, clean PHP (if there is such a thing), and learn writing Wordpress plugins and themes inside out. And build a portfolio to woo clients. A lot of developers think they're above this type of work, or that it's soul-sucking and pointless. It is. But if…

This made me laugh, Is true everyone hates PHP on here but in my hometown Seattle all the jobs on craigslist or anything other domain is mostly populated by PHP requests for a lot of jobs. How long does it take to get into PHP freelancing for someone who has experience with some Java.

Re: Ask HN: Becoming a Freelancer in 6 months?

#36

Post by lifeisstillgood »

mbrock wrote: post #14
atacrawl wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, coding skills matter less in the real world than you think, those will get better with time anyway. I wish I could upvote this a hundred times. The thing to remember is that most people don't know the first thing about how stuff works on the internet. So you could have the shittiest spaghetti code in the world, but if the site looks and acts like it's supposed to, 99% of your clients will be satisfied. Edi…

I wonder if somewhere there's a forum where electricians or plumbers discuss things like these... "Most people don't know the first thing about how wiring works." On second thought, maybe I don't want to know!

Because software is like writing. It is a creative process.

When we want life or death critical software, like life or death critical writing, we take a lot more care, as in making laws, writing treaties and contracts.

But we can never make it prescriptive.

Re: Ask HN: Becoming a Freelancer in 6 months?

#37

Post by cjcenizal »

TamDenholm's comment is absolutely correct. At your stage, the easiest way to get revenue is to learn how to sell something, e.g. present your services in a way that demonstrates value to your customer.

You should read "Breaking the time barrier"[1]. It's a quick read, but it presents some key guidelines on how to accomplish this, and will be invaluable training when you're talking with a potential customer and trying to figure out the best deal for you both.

[1] http://www.freshbooks.com/blog/tag/breaking-the-time-barrier...

Re: Ask HN: Becoming a Freelancer in 6 months?

#38

Post by krapp »

katzgrau wrote: post #8

Someone's going to kill me for saying this: The biggest opportunity you could hit in the shortest amount of time is probably with PHP/Wordpress. Learn how to write smart, clean PHP (if there is such a thing), and learn writing Wordpress plugins and themes inside out. And build a portfolio to woo clients. A lot of developers think they're above this type of work, or that it's soul-sucking and pointless. It is. But if…

Oh, definitely. Everyone hates PHP, and all the 'real' coders won't even learn the language or take the ton of jobs for it.

Although those jobs also tend not to pay much. Wordpress especially.

Re: Ask HN: Becoming a Freelancer in 6 months?

#39

Post by bdunn »

gearoidoc wrote: post #33

Sorry but I can't help but feel that the majority of these responses have you focused too much on your short term goal. Can you become a freelance CMS installer in 6 months with no technical background? Probably. But only just. I imagine most of the commenters below are developers (like myself) who see things like Joomla/Wordpress/etc installs as trivial pieces of work. Don't get me wrong: they are, but only if you'v…

I think you're assuming that Wordpress types aren't worth what a Rubyist might be.

I know a quite a few consultants who are ridiculously smart at business and realize that WP and other off-the-shelf solutions can solve the majority of the problems they work on, and have hourly rates that eclipse the majority of "real freelance programmers" rates.

Re: Ask HN: Becoming a Freelancer in 6 months?

#40

Post by dynamic99 »

TamDenholm wrote: post #9

Golden Rule: Do things, tell people. Seriously, coding skills matter less in the real world than you think, those will get better with time anyway. Eventually you'll get to a point where you can work in places where coding skills do matter, like dev studios, startups, big companies etc, but for non-tech small to medium businesses, they only care what you've done, not what the quality of your code is. You can make a d…

I love this.

Just get out there and do it.

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