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Ask HN: Where can I find good freelance opportunities?

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Re: Ask HN: Where can I find good freelance opportunities?

#32
You might want to check out ooomf (http://www.ooomf.com).

They curate a daily mailing list for freelance developers and designers. Jobs are screened and clients provide set spec/set-price they want it done at. For devs, Lots ofsolid projects listed at what amounts to 45-63$/hour.

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find good freelance opportunities?

#33
post #22

Sorry to piggy back on this thread, but can anyone give me an estimate of how much a freelance gig can earn per project? Also, do you take on more than one project at a time, usually?

It totally depends on who you're serving and what their needs are, and what you want to do and how you market yourself. I've had $2k projects and I've had 6 figure projects. For better or worse, I still do not focus my image enough in one area, and I get a wide variety of things crossing my plate, and have a wide variety of project sizes/scopes. The $2k ones are not as common these days, but even when they were, they…

Thanks. I've never freelanced before, so I think I'll start off with $2k projects, so i can begin some kind of portfolio

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find good freelance opportunities?

#34
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It totally depends on who you're serving and what their needs are, and what you want to do and how you market yourself. I've had $2k projects and I've had 6 figure projects. For better or worse, I still do not focus my image enough in one area, and I get a wide variety of things crossing my plate, and have a wide variety of project sizes/scopes. The $2k ones are not as common these days, but even when they were, they…

Thanks. I've never freelanced before, so I think I'll start off with $2k projects, so i can begin some kind of portfolio

Sure. Also, I felt a bit weird mentioning 6 figure projects - I say it not to brag so much as to give people some indication that you can do larger projects on your own (actually those tend to involve others for additional skills) - it's not all just basic wordpress installs.

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find good freelance opportunities?

#35
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I've never freelanced before, so I think I'll start off with $2k projects, so i can begin some kind of portfolio

Sure. Also, I felt a bit weird mentioning 6 figure projects - I say it not to brag so much as to give people some indication that you can do larger projects on your own (actually those tend to involve others for additional skills) - it's not all just basic wordpress installs.

It's not a problem. I was after as much detail as possible. Very helpful, in fact!

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find good freelance opportunities?

#36
I started using freelancer.com. It's honestly a pretty bad site, unprofessional in a lot of ways, high fees, etc. I got low paying jobs that took a decent amount of work, although the quality of work expected wasn't too high. However, it allowed me to get some light experience to start which was useful, and as I finished projects and got all 5-star reviews (my point is not that I was super wonderful, but that if you do decent work and communicate well, clients will like you) I began to get more involved, higher paying jobs. It got to the point that I no longer had to actually use freelancer.com to find work - people I had worked for in the past or other connections I had made while working would contact me asking for things. This was great for a couple of reasons - no website fees, good long-term relations with trustworthy clients, no time spent hunting for jobs, etc.

In short, if you're willing to put up with the bad parts of freelancing websites, you can probably use it as a step towards much better work.

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find good freelance opportunities?

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what about ruby or django? How good are the opportunities? I'm an asp.net developer and I'm wanting to branch out a bit. Not sure which platform to start with. I tried PHP a bit but it seems very unorganized and incapable of doing large scale web applications.

Oh, I see. I'm in Canada so the market here is different, I'm assuming you're based in the U.S.? In my experience and research, there are Python (Django) and Ruby (mostly Rails) jobs out there. The corporate world tends to favor PHP, .NET, and Java. While startups and freelance gigs will either let you choose the tech, or specify one of the popular scripting languages. In the PHP ecosystem, there are Model View Contr…

No, I'm actually in Victoria, BC :) where are you?

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find good freelance opportunities?

#38

I started using freelancer.com. It's honestly a pretty bad site, unprofessional in a lot of ways, high fees, etc. I got low paying jobs that took a decent amount of work, although the quality of work expected wasn't too high. However, it allowed me to get some light experience to start which was useful, and as I finished projects and got all 5-star reviews (my point is not that I was super wonderful, but that if you…

Same. Started on Elance and underbid to play the game and just get some gigs. Over-delivered on projects and got all 5's on reviews. Built a solid reputation and profile to the point where I get about 5 invites a week, most of which I turn down. Raised my rates three times in less than a year (have more than doubled) and am able to pick and choose what work I take on. It does suck at first, but carving out a niche can really help if your niche is an advanced method/tech/service. The high paying jobs are harder to find, but they do exist and are waiting for people who know their stuff. My largest client to date was found on Elance and I never would have known who it was from their posting.

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find good freelance opportunities?

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I see. I'm in Canada so the market here is different, I'm assuming you're based in the U.S.? In my experience and research, there are Python (Django) and Ruby (mostly Rails) jobs out there. The corporate world tends to favor PHP, .NET, and Java. While startups and freelance gigs will either let you choose the tech, or specify one of the popular scripting languages. In the PHP ecosystem, there are Model View Contr…

No, I'm actually in Victoria, BC :) where are you?

Same place :)
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