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Ask HN: How do you find freelance work?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you find freelance work?

#21

Post by tixocloud »

pleasecalllater wrote: post #16
fastbeef wrote: post #13

Are consultant brokers/agent only a thing in the Nordic countries? I started my own consultancy firm last year and just sent my profile to a bunch of brokers. They all got in touch and presented assignments they had. I selected one, went on 1 interview (!!) and bam - six month assignment. The broker gets 10% of what I make. It’s super convenient and saves me a bunch of stress and time hunting assignments so the 10% i…

10% seems quite a lot, I'm wondering if your hour rate is so high that the 10% doesn't matter.

If you think about opportunity cost, it might not be as much as you think. Sometimes there’s a fee for getting to the next stage quicker than doing it yourself. You’ll have to decide if the fee is worth it.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find freelance work?

#23

Post by trav4225 »

A bit off-topic, but after reading "software engineer with a full-time job, but I have lots of spare time in my off hours" I find myself contemplating if I'm alone in wondering how anyone can have free time with a full-time software job. I work full-time in software and it is an all-consuming, life-eating thing. Perhaps (hopefully) I'm just "doing it wrong" and there is hope out there for a life beyond work... :-)

Re: Ask HN: How do you find freelance work?

#24

Post by nickjj »

If you're curious, I wrote a post[0] quite some time ago that covers a few things you could do to start a successful freelance business without any prior network.

The TL;DR is to goto local meetups and talk to people in the street while avoiding freelancing marketplaces like the plague. That's how I mostly started freelancing 20 years ago and it's what I still do today.

You don't need a portfolio or anything to start getting clients.

[0]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-start-a-successful-fre...

Re: Ask HN: How do you find freelance work?

#25

Post by passiveincomelg »

mvid wrote: post #15
fastbeef wrote: post #13

Are consultant brokers/agent only a thing in the Nordic countries? I started my own consultancy firm last year and just sent my profile to a bunch of brokers. They all got in touch and presented assignments they had. I selected one, went on 1 interview (!!) and bam - six month assignment. The broker gets 10% of what I make. It’s super convenient and saves me a bunch of stress and time hunting assignments so the 10% i…

Can you list a few of these brokers?

Hays, Gulp.de, Computerfutures, Darwin Recruitment, Montash (not an endorsement, just the ones I could think of right now)

Re: Ask HN: How do you find freelance work?

#26

Post by Cyberdog »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #19

Once a month on the first, HN does a piece called "Freelancer / Seeking Freelancer." You could post to that and/or check it for "Seeking Freelancer" comments.

Unfortunately, the "Freelancer" posts outweigh the "Seeking Freelancer" posts by ten to one or so. I tried posting in the last thread, and the only response I got was from someone asking me to work on a project which involved helping people buy a certain substance which is still illegal in my state. Didn't wanna touch it.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find freelance work?

#27

Post by Cyberdog »

aspectmin wrote: post #17

I do AI/ML/data science freelancing, (usually around cyber security), but also do a lot of Devops / systems work. The AI/ML stuff is harder to find, save through networking, but for the DevOps/cloud/sysadmin - I favor weworkremotely.com and workingnomads.com. Their email notifications are pretty handy as well. As someone else mentioned - upwork works, but it’s very very competitive, and I much preferred their Elance…

> workingnomads.com

Is that URL correct? I'm trying it and I'm seeing what appears to be an error page in… Dutch. I'm gonna guess Dutch.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find freelance work?

#28

Post by dizzystar »

Cyberdog wrote: post #26
DoreenMichele wrote: post #19

Once a month on the first, HN does a piece called "Freelancer / Seeking Freelancer." You could post to that and/or check it for "Seeking Freelancer" comments.

Unfortunately, the "Freelancer" posts outweigh the "Seeking Freelancer" posts by ten to one or so. I tried posting in the last thread, and the only response I got was from someone asking me to work on a project which involved helping people buy a certain substance which is still illegal in my state. Didn't wanna touch it.

It's hit or miss, but I've had more legit contact than gray area or sweat equity contacts.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find freelance work?

#29

Post by news_to_me »

trav4225 wrote: post #23

A bit off-topic, but after reading "software engineer with a full-time job, but I have lots of spare time in my off hours" I find myself contemplating if I'm alone in wondering how anyone can have free time with a full-time software job. I work full-time in software and it is an all-consuming, life-eating thing. Perhaps (hopefully) I'm just "doing it wrong" and there is hope out there for a life beyond work... :-)

IMO, if I'm thinking about work more than 8hrs/day, I'm doing it wrong. That's just me though. I love my job, and I love not worrying about it when I leave.

Different employers can have pretty different expectations about this. I always try to let potential employers know it's important to me when looking for a job. Usually it's as simple as "Work life balance is important to me. Can you describe how your company handles that?"

Re: Ask HN: How do you find freelance work?

#30

Post by brandontreb »

"I don't have a ton of networking skills"

Work on this. I have built my consultancy over the past 6 years and it started with me doing freelance and now we do over $1m/year in revenue.

I attribute the majority of success to networking. Here are some of the things I did early on (and still continue to some extent).

1. Local meetups. Great place to show off, hear about leads, etc...

2. Find influencers / networkers in your area and buy them coffee. Ask tons of questions and end with "Who else do you think I should be talking to?"

3. Build stuff - I decided I wanted our team to be known locally for doing crypto dev, so I just started building cool stuff and showing it off at the local dev meetups. Now we have tons of crypt contracts!

Whatever you do, come at it with the attitude of wanting to contribute to the community using your gifts/skills. The work will follow.

Best of luck!

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