I'd suggest creating a few accounts on elance and odesk and under-bid on as many small projects as you can. I say create a few accounts there because contractors there are limited to the number of bids they can make (per month, I think). I say under-bid because you're up against a slew of Asian developers, who charge $500 for a month's work. But do it. You'll be making real money, building a real resume, and gaining a ton of experience. Once you get a few projects under your belt there it's easy to land gigs. Just make sure you deliver as promised and get rated well and after 6 months you could continue using those sites to source projects, at whatever rate you chose.
Ask HN: Becoming a Freelancer in 6 months?
41–50 of 66 posts
Re: Ask HN: Becoming a Freelancer in 6 months?
#42Take this with a grain of salt. There is no right way or the only way.
- Learn complete web development. Use something like CodeAcademy/Udacity to learn the complementary skills you need. My guess is since you know Html/css and Java, you are better off learning Javascript as well. Nodejs / advanced Java might be a good fit.
- Learn some of the theoretical fundamentals. This might not be of immediate need for freelancing, but you should almost always be honing your fundamentals. Take up the core computer science courses on Coursera - Algorithms (1,2), Programming Languages, Basic Math (linear algebra, graph theory etc) are some must haves. This can be a longer term goal and plan it beyond 6 months.
- Sharpen your skills with coding exercises. Do some of the stuff on InterviewStreet and other such sites. Being able to solve small problems effectively and time bound, is very important skills. You should practice hard for the first 6 months I think.
- Know your domain. Being a web freelancer means you might have to be full stack. Being able to write the client and server side with ease. You might want to be good at some specific domains - like building sites for X, Y, Z (you can build your own reusable code). Then expand. Looking at stuff at elance is an easy start.
Its doable in 6 months. IMO don't stop learning.
Re: Ask HN: Becoming a Freelancer in 6 months?
#43I'd take a step back, and ask: Do you enjoy coding? If you do, then just keep doing it. The rate at which your skill progresses really depends on you, subjectively.
Re: Ask HN: Becoming a Freelancer in 6 months?
#44Someone'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.
If you are familiar with another programming language, and able to DO programming, then, on average, it wouldn't take longer than a month. That would be sufficient, I GUESS. I built a social networking site in PHP in the last semester. And it was my first PHP web-application! I did learn PHP (and Relational databases) in a month before that.
I made a post about it, if you want to see (http://xworkspace.blogspot.in/2013/01/build-your-own-social-...)
But it all really depends on the amount of time (with brain) you spend on learning. :)
Re: Ask HN: Becoming a Freelancer in 6 months?
#45First, advice: Like many people here, I agree that there is nothing more important than building things that you can show people. However, the process of getting to that level of capability can often be somewhat mystifying. There are a few tools I recommend for that. First of all, interactive tutorials, like those at Code School, are fantastic introductions to web frameworks, if you're just getting started. I first l…
> How do you actually evaluate how much your skills are worth as a freelancer? How do you match with clients who need and are willing to pay for your particular skill level? They are worth what a client will pay. Trick: if you show a client “this will make you $20K in 6 months for this, this, and this reason, as I have done for this, this, and this client”—they don't care how much you make an hour. Bid $8K for the pr…
How do you get to the place where you can give clients numbers like that though? (this will make you 20K).
Past clients would be reluctant to tell how much a new site has made them I would imagine (and it can be hard to pin down for certain markets).
Re: Ask HN: Becoming a Freelancer in 6 months?
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If you are familiar with another programming language, and able to DO programming, then, on average, it wouldn't take longer than a month. That would be sufficient, I GUESS. I built a social networking site in PHP in the last semester. And it was my first PHP web-application! I did learn PHP (and Relational databases) in a month before that. I made a post about it, if you want to see ( http://xworkspace.blogspot.in/2…
$email = $_POST['email'];
$password = $_POST['password'];
$query = "SELECT emailAddress, password, userID FROM users
WHERE emailAddress = '$email' AND password = '$password'";
$result = $db->query($query);
Otherwise, it looks neat, good job. You might want to learn to code more defensively though. Especially if you're putting something up on Github.
Refer to: - https://www.owasp.org/index.php/SQL_Injection_Prevention_Che...
- http://stackoverflow.com/questions/60174/how-to-prevent-sql-...
for some direction towards better practices.
Re: Ask HN: Becoming a Freelancer in 6 months?
#47How I got work as a freelancer in one month.
Created an on line presence/blog. Wrote about skills I have on blog. Posted some programming posts. Went to Craigslist / Gumtree. Emailed people looking for people with skills I had. Navigated to Google. Searched web agencies near my town. Emailed web agencies. Wrote more emails. Answered phone and replied to emails. Told customers my rate ( it was too low ). Easily got work. Did good work. Got paid. Increased rate. Repeated.
Re: Ask HN: Becoming a Freelancer in 6 months?
#48Earlier 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!
Not sure about online, but yeah, this sentiment is not unique to softwre people.
Re: Ask HN: Becoming a Freelancer in 6 months?
#49The 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 ev…
I won't speak for Gexla, but from my experience getting into 'PHP' is far different than getting into 'Wordpress' or 'Drupal'. Unless you are subbing for another software dev, most clients don't care about the language, they care about what business value the software will deliver. For SMEs, I don't think there's any ecosystem out there that compares with Wordpress or Drupal in availability of talent (keeping prices reasonable) and free functionality (making it possible to build a very full featured site quickly).
To answer your question directly, I had a couple of years of Java when I did a PHP project (a CRUD system for my book club) and it probably took a few weeks. But I've also worked with Drupal and Wordpress and those take longer to get your head around (Wordpress to a lesser extent)--there are lots of moving pieces, and you have to try multiple plugins to know what will work (and the codebase moves quickly too). I'd budget two months for Drupal, six weeks for Wordpress, and I'd start out with simpler site proposals.
Re: Ask HN: Becoming a Freelancer in 6 months?
#50You could go REALLY far just by leveling up your copywriting and business/sales skills, and applying them to $7 WordPress themes you buy off Themeforest. The majority of web designers/developers are so focused on aesthetics, design, and technology that they completely miss all that matters for their clients: "Will this website get me more customers / sell more widgets / make me more money?" Once you're comfortable wi…
OP, keep in mind that this type of work (copywriting, sales, business) is a different kind of fun than coding. Still fun, just different. From your Ask HN text, it does seem like this might be more up your alley, though.