"Top freelancers". So begginer ones arent welcome?
Ask HN: What makes a great freelance portfolio?
11–20 of 45 posts
Re: Ask HN: What makes a great freelance portfolio?
#12"Top freelancers". So begginer ones arent welcome?
Re: Ask HN: What makes a great freelance portfolio?
#13"Top freelancers". So begginer ones arent welcome?
We're definitely built for more experienced freelancers over beginners, but we're focused on talent over age or time : )
Re: Ask HN: What makes a great freelance portfolio?
#14As someone with little technical skills when it comes to software development, I like that I can see a person's past work and read reviews from people he/she has worked with in the past.
Re: Ask HN: What makes a great freelance portfolio?
#15Full disclosure / shameless plug: I've worked with these guys for a few months now, and they're a great team. They're freelance devs who built a site and service for freelance devs. Their approach -- matching portfolios, profiles, and feedback to available jobs -- is a good one.
There are a handful of similar services out there, and to be honest, I wish all of them well. This approach has worked for design-freelancing sites, and properly adapted and adjusted, it could work well for development projects. In the long run, the big win here will be in recommendations and semi-automation of matching portfolio signal with job characteristics. They're also doing interesting work on making the job posting, scoping, and selection process easier for nontechnical to mildly technical hirers.
Re: Ask HN: What makes a great freelance portfolio?
#16Great looking design. However, instead of outsourcing my portfolio I just got a domain and added my own stuff. check out http://appsonify.com, curious to know some actionable steps I can take to improve it. The whole thing is hosted on Amazon S3 bucket and it cost me like 50 cents in traffic so far. No need to run a static http server, just point your domain through route 53 and point it to amazon bucket.
Re: Ask HN: What makes a great freelance portfolio?
#17are you competing with freelancer sites?
Based on the HN discussion 3 days ago, it seems that freelancer sites are ripe for disruption.
Re: Ask HN: What makes a great freelance portfolio?
#18I'd say that a great freelance portfolio would be one that conveys the freelancer's skills to a prospective client regardless of that clients' level of technical understanding.
It would be great to have a portfolio that could showcase a variety of different information (dynamically) catered to the person looking at that that profile.
Re: Ask HN: What makes a great freelance portfolio?
#19We've found some awesome designers on dribble, I hope you guys can do the same for freelance dev's!
Good lord, a Dribble for Devs would be absolutely wonderful.
I hate hiring devs on oDesk / Elance / etc - alternatives would be marvellous.
Re: Ask HN: What makes a great freelance portfolio?
#20As someone hip-deep in professional services: consider whether the answer to "freelancing sites are terrible for software developers" is "we need better freelancer sites", or whether instead the answer is "freelancer matchmaking sites are generally not in the best interests of freelancers".
In this rare instance I think I'll try speaking for Patrick McKenzie, a fellow consultant, along with myself: we think the answer is the latter.
If you're aiming for the most lucrative work, the conversation you want to be having with prospective clients has very little to do with anything you'd put on a developer portfolio, and a lot more to do with (a) being able to speak the language of business (ie: making a credible benefits-focused pitch and understanding how "customer service" principles apply to our kind of work) and (b) being able to tailor a case study or two to a client.
The latter might sound like something you could profitably host on a freelancer site, but the kind of case study I'm talking about works more like a resume cover letter than the resume itself.