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Ask HN: What sites do you use to find contract work?

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Re: Ask HN: What sites do you use to find contract work?

#41

Post by vitd »

DrJokepu wrote: post #27
aggieben wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't charge by the hour but by the value This sounds like a recipe for disaster to me without a lot more explanation. Time is the main cost to a provider, so it's very natural that time would also be the driver for billing. "Charging for value" sounds like you're trying to say "fixed price" without actually saying it. I have many, many issues with trying to do fixed price projects of any appreciable size (say, more…

Really depends on the client. If your client is able to agree on tight specs and project plans, everyone is better off with fixed project fees. The client can more easily plan financially with a fixed budget. You can charge more, because instead of charging $DAILY_RATE * $DAYS, you can charge $REVENUE_CLIENT_WILL_MAKE_WITH_FEATURE - $THEIR_MARGIN, and the latter figure tends to be significantly higher. You can also d…

>You can charge more, because instead of charging $DAILY_RATE * $DAYS, you can charge $REVENUE_CLIENT_WILL_MAKE_WITH_FEATURE - $THEIR_MARGIN, and the latter figure tends to be significantly higher.

That's really going to depend on the type of work you do and the type of clients you can find. In my experience, it's difficult to get contracts with larger businesses unless you know someone already or have some sort of "in" with them. And smaller business tend to be poorly run and are barely making any money on their products and services, so they have very thin margins or are even losing money.

Re: Ask HN: What sites do you use to find contract work?

#42

Post by dustingetz »

darklighter3 wrote: post #9
dustingetz wrote: post #3

HN who's hiring threads, exclusively update: I post my pitch in the freelancer thread and potential clients contact me, for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9998249

Have you had success replying to those posts and asking 'Would you consider a freelancer for this position?' or how do you go about it since these threads seem to implicitly indicate that they're looking for employees?

I definitely don't do that. I posted once in the who-wants-to-be-hired thread, but I don't do that anymore, because I had one guy get really angry once he realized I didn't want to be his employee, he accused me of bait-and-switching him to outsourced development (LOL). I was open to perm/ft work at the time for the right fit (which this guy wasn't), but his response was so visceral that I decided it was just a bad form to post there knowing for 95% of inquiries there was no chance of me going perm and that for the longshot 5% i would probably find them through another channel.

Re: Ask HN: What sites do you use to find contract work?

#43

Post by aantix »

darklighter3 wrote: post #9
dustingetz wrote: post #3

HN who's hiring threads, exclusively update: I post my pitch in the freelancer thread and potential clients contact me, for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9998249

Have you had success replying to those posts and asking 'Would you consider a freelancer for this position?' or how do you go about it since these threads seem to implicitly indicate that they're looking for employees?

Don't ask, tell. Tell them your credentials and how you're going to solve their immediate problem. Don't beg them "please hire me even though I'm remote!", spell out that you're a seasoned veteran, here's my code on Github and my open source projects with the air of confidence that if "you don't hire me, someone else will."

Re: Ask HN: What sites do you use to find contract work?

#44

Post by marknutter »

I posted this article on medium the other day that contains all the advice I've compiled after 8 years of freelancing as a software developer: https://medium.com/@marknutter/advice-for-the-freelance-deve...

In short, to answer your question, I never used any sites to find contract work. I got all my leads through face-to-face interaction with real humans in the real world, and a good deal of it came from word-of-mouth because of exceeding my clients' expectations.

Contracting sites marginalize developers and the type of clients who troll them are typically the kind who will try to squeeze as much work out of developers for as little money as they can. On top of that, developers are generally a pretty introverted crowd, so the number of introverted and talented developers who troll those sites looking for work is far greater than the number of outgoing, personable developers in your local area. Which group do you want to compete against?

Re: Ask HN: What sites do you use to find contract work?

#45

Post by swimduck »

I have a different approach to finding contract work, particularly as I don't have much work experience. Upwork and similar websites have not worked well for me.

Instead, I browse job boards and when I find an interesting role I contact the company. If they are interested in my background and the fit is right, I sell them on setting up a contract relationship instead of full-time employee. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn't. The important part is being honest that you are looking to work as a contractor, not an employee.

Job boards to consider: AngelList, WeWorkRemotely etc. If you're looking for a list of job boards (http://nodesk.co has lots and so does this article by teleport http://teleport.org/2015/03/best-sites-for-remote-jobs/)

Re: Ask HN: What sites do you use to find contract work?

#46

Post by eswat »

I tackle this sideways by going to Meetup or Eventbrite. Specifically I go to meetups and events that potential buyers go to and let them know what I do (I don’t try to sell my services on first contact). It takes some pruning but after a while my preferred clients are the ones I keep in contact with and we start working. I get less work through this than just by referral though.

Depending on your living situation and time available I’d recommend trying to establish your own identity so you don’t have to go through a marketplace for contract work. Instead you’ll have the contract work come to you and not filtered through a middleman that would take a cut out of your work. I would never recommend someone go through fiverr, Upwork or these other marketplaces unless they were just moonlighting.

Re: Ask HN: What sites do you use to find contract work?

#47

Post by peterbsmith »

a_shane wrote: post #37
peterbsmith wrote: post #19

Personal networks. I came into Syracuse knowing nobody and nothing. I had never done any app making as of January 2015. I had done some wordpress stuff, but just the basics. And I had (and have) no CS degree. I now make a living on contract work. I did it by going to local meetups and introducing myself as a freelance web developer. Nevermind that I hadn't done freelance web development ever. I kept going to meetups…

I want to add a bit to your comment - it's important to try and identify the kind of meetups you'd like to attend that will help you meet your desired customer base, and the kinds that will help you get known in your local community (ie: meetups for web devs to connect). I find that meetups can sometimes become circle-jerks for people in a similar field to just get together and talk/humblebrag. Which is fine, but if…

Good point.

Some meetups I went to were the exact circle-jerk/humblebragfests you're talking about.

The one I consistently go to (shameless plug [OpenHack Syracuse](http://www.openhacksyr.com) is a monthly meetup for developers to talk about what projects they're working on and to spend time together working on projects, ideas, and sharing info. It's really just an organized hangout/hack session. And it's these types of meetups which are best for getting contract work (because contract work isn't the goal)

Re: Ask HN: What sites do you use to find contract work?

#48

Post by eropple »

bcks wrote: post #20

I've had good success hiring developers for short-term project work through https://gun.io .

I can't speak to the employment side of things, but the work side of things is disappointing. Their recommended gigs are scattershot and a lot of the ones they push ("in conjunction with gun.io" or similar verbiage--sounds like premium postings) are six-month, monopolize-all-your-time contracts at a low hourly rate. And they don't seem to respect their own site's rules, at least not the spirit of them: every once in a while I'm spammed with a '$1,000' offer from gun.io themselves that's really "we'll pay $100 for a blog post".

Unfortunately I'm not sure that anybody else is much better! I still get most of my work through interpersonal connections and the occasional email from Hacker News readers.

Re: Ask HN: What sites do you use to find contract work?

#49

Post by Nursie »

dmitri1981 wrote: post #24

For those who are London based, I recently launched a mailing list for members of the London Hacker News Meetup, which sends out contracts based on your language preference. It's averaging about 10 jobs a month at the moment however I am working on getting it to about 100 pm by the end of the year. The current sign up page is at http://eepurl.com/byq7Af

Interesting! I'm not London-based but am London-commute friendly so will check it out.

(I've been contracting for about 3 years now, some in London)

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