Ask HN: Becoming a Freelancer in 6 months?

>> - Contract up ... always >.yes a million times. Don't think of it as being confrontational, think of it as memorializing an agreement. You want to make sure you and your client are on the same page, and it's a great reference (particularly when it comes to defining a scope of work) down the line. It's as much for the client's protection as it is for yours and as long as you keep it simple and to the point, you'll be fine.

I think one of the most common misconceptions people have about freelancers, is that we know everything about every project we throw ourselves into. That couldn't be further from the truth (at least for me).

As a freelancer, the most important skill is NOT coding. Yes, writing code gets you to the end-goal, but what the client really wants, is results and growth for their business. As a freelancer, you will often have to work on something that you don't know 100%, and maybe even having barriers to accomplish the project. However, hiring a freelancer is very much looking at their past successes, and using that to gauge the result of their current project, along with the value this freelancer can bring. As long as you get it done and bring results, and maintain an amiable relationship with the client, not much else matters.

So in on that note, I would say which language you choose hardly matters. But that's not true. You want to choose a language you are familiar with, and one that seems to be brought up in whichever areas you are looking for clients.

As many have already said, and I kind of hinted at above, learn as you build. This is the best and fastest way to gain the knowledge and skills you need. Much like building a startup, have something early on to put out into the world, and build on top of that.

Any projects can prove to someone you are worth hiring. As a freelancer, part of your job is to instill confidence into this potential client, and demonstrate to the the VALUE you add to their business. Not the algorithmic complexity, not the pretty code, not how many lines of code you've written, but the VALUE (increase in revenue, lower costs, higher conversions, putting their product on the forefront, etc) you bring to them.

I wrote a blog post[1] recently about things you should know about freelancing, it's not too in depth as it's targetted towards people who have not begun freelancing and are curious about it.

Keep improving yourself, and good luck!

[1] http://www.jayhuang.org/blog/things-you-should-know-about-fr...

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 Drupal do require some PHP skills to do significant changes to the templates. However, it must not be much because I know people who freelance building WP sites and know very little PHP. There are other CMS' which have templating systems which don't require any PHP at all.

I mention WP and Drupal because there is a ton of work out there in those ecosystems. At $35 / hour you can pick up work from other developers / agencies all day long. Another reason I mention the CMS route is because it's a niche path. It's easier to pick up work when you focus on a certain area rather than being a general X programmer. It's also easier to focus when you go niche.

When you have decided on a CMS, setup some development instances and practice doing different things. Setup another development instance for your own freelance services site and use that as practice as well. Set aside time for learning PHP and Javascript. As the back-end (CMS) guy, you will be okay with not having to do much on the front-end, but knowing Javascript well will help a lot. For your PHP practice, spend some time in focused practice which stretches your comfort zone, but also spend some time building helpful add-ons. You can use those as part of your portfolio. Stick to simple add-ons at first. If you aren't sure what to build which hasn't already been done many times over, then look for newly released API's which could be helpful for a general web site.

A big part of learning a CMS is learning the ecosystem. Figure out the "go to" add-ons for a given task. You will find that for something simple like a contact form there is probably 50 add-ons that you could use but only a handful which everyone actually uses. Find out who the biggest players are (most well known general developers and add-on developers) find out where they talk to each other. This is most likely going to be a combination of Twitter, forums and Google Plus communities. Get involved and show off what you are building. These channels will be an important source of leads for work.

You can also learn and build your profile / reputation by helping people who are asking questions. Spend some time answering questions in the above mentioned channels as well as http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/. In some cases, people ask you to fix their problems for them. Congrats, you just got a freelance gig and a lead for more work in the future.

Look through Elance, Odesk and related sites to see what jobs are being posted. You will see a lot of low budgets and developers offering to do the work for low rates, but just ignore all that. If you pick the right jobs and you can sell, then the $5 / hour developers become invisible to the buyer. You can get a sense of who the buyer is from the history as well as the description. Go by your gut, if the client seems like a good one, then drop a proposal.

You will need to learn how to sell. If you are in a good niche and you can sell well then you can land 8 out of 10 jobs that you apply for. The other two fell through because you were too late. You need to develop proposals which convey to the client that you are exactly what that person is looking for and you know exactly what the client needs.Aside from examples of your work, you might pull specifics out of the job description to tell the client exactly how you would do certain parts of the project. This will show that you know what you are doing and gives you a leg up on general PHP programmers who don't know the CMS as well as you do.Of course, the approach depends on the type of client. A non technical client who needs a site for a new business doesn't care about technical details, so adjust accordingly (though you would be better off starting out with other developers so that you can learn from them and so they can back you up if you run into problems.)

Go this route and you could be freelancing in 3 months. You could start out at $35 / hour and then raise your rates from there. This isn't the most sexy route. PHP isn't the most sexy programming language. But by going this route you would be tapping into an ecosystem with a lot of work and which is relatively easy to break into. As you gain experience, then you could move into other directions. Really, when doing freelancing, the tech side is easy and isn't nearly as important as the people side. Learning to sell and communicate well is far more important than working with the sexiest platforms. Once you learn the important stuff, then you can change the other variables as you progress (breaking into different programming languages / platforms / ecosystems.)

You 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 with writing for business and tweaking WP themes, start attending networking events and start talking with business owners. Do a lot of listening and learning, and make connections with people who might be interested in what you have to offer.

Create a positive ROI for your clients (and remind them of it), ask for referrals, get a testimonial ("Brennan redesigned my website and doubled my online sales in less than 6 months"), and rinse and repeat.

http://codelearn.org teaches rails.