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Ask HN: It's 2015 and I'm not in the situation I wanted to be. Need Advice

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Re: Ask HN: It's 2015 and I'm not in the situation I wanted to be. Need Advice

#11

Post by blakerson »

EmmEff wrote: post #5
jwondrusch wrote: post #3

It may be unpopular to refer anyone to WordPress, but I made a 5-6 figure income as a freelance developer working with WordPress clients. WordPress is often a good fit for non-tech, small-medium size businesses that do not have an in-house tech department. Many of them will keep coming back as they see the potential that you offer them. If you know PHP, WordPress is easy to pick up. The backwards compatibility emphas…

This sounds like solid advice. I've done freelance work with Wordpress for one of my clients and it showed potential. Any tips on pitching WordPress to those who are not sure what it can do for them? This client, in particular, I was working with was interested in setting up an online store using WooCommerce. FWIW, I am a developer with strong Linux/unix admin knowledge, and plenty of PHP experience.

As someone who frequently hires Wordpress freelancers, I offer this:

Don't 'sell' the client on using Wordpress relative to other frameworks. They don't need to know the complete power and limitations of the WP ecosystem; that's your job (in their eyes). Just say 'yes.'

>Can I add products later? Yes. >Can I add pages? Yes. >Can I add coupons? Yes. >Does it have SEO? Yes.

It's easy work for someone like you with sysadmin and PHP skills. Your client will love how quickly you can diagnose whatever problems they're having.

Re: Ask HN: It's 2015 and I'm not in the situation I wanted to be. Need Advice

#12

Post by FreshPuzzles »

One thing I've found helpful over the years is mixing free and paid work. You can use them as a ratchet to work your way up the mountain of your career. In my experience you usually get paid to do what you don't love and you usually don't get paid to do what you do love. So if there's an area you're interested in you may need to do some free work there - an open source library, or offering your time free/cheap to prove yourself or learn. If all goes well, you have something in your portfolio you can point to and say - "I can do that" and some people you worked with who will vouch for you. It's a slow process and requires you to know what you want. Bottom line, if there's an area you're interested in and don't have experience there, you need to spend effort figuring out how to get experience there.

Re: Ask HN: It's 2015 and I'm not in the situation I wanted to be. Need Advice

#13

Post by vitd »

You talk about having "5 star ratings," and such. Where are you finding these jobs and where are you getting ratings? It sounds like you're using a website where people post jobs they want done and you bid on them. If so, that could be your problem. Those types of web sites tend to attract the lowest bidders with either the most boring work or the most unrealistic expectations about what could be done for what amount of money. I've been out of freelancing for about 10 years, so I don't know the scene now, but I'm sure others here would have advice on better places and ways to find freelance work.

Re: Ask HN: It's 2015 and I'm not in the situation I wanted to be. Need Advice

#14

Post by thirdtruck »

Bahamut wrote: post #8

I'm of the belief that earlier on, it is better to work for companies fulltime since there is a better chance that they would be more willing to give the opportunity for developers to learn new tech on the job. My own experience is that I tend to get siloed into AngularJS projects since my Angular knowledge & productivity is nearly impossible for companies to find. However, I have leveraged it to get some backend exp…

Going full-time first could work, but it can also turn into a trap (speaking from experience). Bronze handcuffs, if you will.

For someone starting in full time but looking to go freelance later, I recommend:

* Spending well below your means. I can "afford" my mortgage, taken out when I got my first full-time job, but I presently can't afford to not have the full-time job.

* Take small jobs early and often. No job-finding method seems to work better, for everyone involve, than word of mouth, and that network takes time to build up. I'm hampered by own lack of a freelance-specific network.

* Check out the Homework podcast (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/home-work/id513251648?mt...). One of the hosts makes his living as a freelancer.

Re: Ask HN: It's 2015 and I'm not in the situation I wanted to be. Need Advice

#15

Post by debacle »

EmmEff wrote: post #5
jwondrusch wrote: post #3

It may be unpopular to refer anyone to WordPress, but I made a 5-6 figure income as a freelance developer working with WordPress clients. WordPress is often a good fit for non-tech, small-medium size businesses that do not have an in-house tech department. Many of them will keep coming back as they see the potential that you offer them. If you know PHP, WordPress is easy to pick up. The backwards compatibility emphas…

This sounds like solid advice. I've done freelance work with Wordpress for one of my clients and it showed potential. Any tips on pitching WordPress to those who are not sure what it can do for them? This client, in particular, I was working with was interested in setting up an online store using WooCommerce. FWIW, I am a developer with strong Linux/unix admin knowledge, and plenty of PHP experience.

WordPress is a 10k piece of software that is completely free. You start from there, and explain how and why OSS works, and what work they would be paying for.

If they can understand the "everyone does a little bit" model (an overgeneralization), and understand the value proposition of WordPress, there's not really a lot to sell. Almost everyone can afford a WordPress installation and WordPress can scale to fit almost everyone's needs. Just don't abuse it.

Re: Ask HN: It's 2015 and I'm not in the situation I wanted to be. Need Advice

#17

Post by debacle »

You need to work very hard to acquire your first 10-20 real clients. Clients who are less than 1/20th of your annual income are not clients, they are customers.

Do whatever you need to to get these clients. Craigslist eLance, back alley deals, etc. Once you have them, you will keep getting new clients as long as you do good work, do a bit of basic marketing (the same kind of stupid simple SEO you would sell a client), and communicate well.

Once you have more work than you know what to do with, slowly start raising your rates, maybe $10-15 dollars per hour per year (don't raise rates every other month you'll look like a wingnut).

Re: Ask HN: It's 2015 and I'm not in the situation I wanted to be. Need Advice

#18

Post by BannedInSweden »

The number one way I have obtained good freelance projects is through friends who are primarily artists. They want to do art, hate to code, and are happy to call me when they come across something bigger and more complicated than they can handle (weeding out the $40 and $100 jobs).

Also - Ansible and Docker are... neat. I see/use/talk about these a lot during the day in the big corp world. However, I've never had a freelance client need either. What they generally need is help customizing off the shelf CMS/CRM/POS systems or creating custom replacements.

They also seem to have language/platform preferences from lots of hearsay (nothing solidly informed). Being able to work in their language/platform of choice (despite if its a good choice) has helped me land a lot of work. So I'd keep boning up on your english, and learn the ins and outs of all the major programming languages .net, Java, PHP (yes PHP!), and most of the major Database systems.

I have to imagine that if you do all that and it doesn't work out at least you'll be set for another corporate gig.

Re: Ask HN: It's 2015 and I'm not in the situation I wanted to be. Need Advice

#19

Post by greg_gy »

If you are on a freelance platform, don't sell yourself as a coder, sell yourself as a problem solver. Some freelancer sell them as the professional who reduces your website page loading time, or the guy who is pretty good at building real estate site. Find a niche. Show to the people you can help them to improve their business. Most of your potential clients have no idea what Ansible or Docker are.

Re: Ask HN: It's 2015 and I'm not in the situation I wanted to be. Need Advice

#20

Post by rwhitman »

Freelance is all about your network of clients. It takes a long time to build and maintain a solid client base and you need to know how to sell yourself.

You're going to get mostly small "testing the water" type projects with new clients if you aren't very established yet. If you're any good, after a while these clients will continue to hire you for larger and larger gigs, and some will refer you to other, better, clients. Keep building the relationships and eventually you'll have a solid foundation of steady clients.

A tip I give to new freelance devs - try to work with boutique design / marketing / interactive agencies. They pay less than tech cos but will continue to give you interesting challenges and generally have lots of work and referrals. Great way to build a client portfolio early on. When I was starting out and didn't have clients I compiled a list of small agencies and sent each a cold intro email.

(Sometimes I hire devs for projects. Feel free to reach out, the website on my profile has a contact email.)

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