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Ask HN: Where can I find remote or quality oriented freelancing work?

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Re: Ask HN: Where can I find remote or quality oriented freelancing work?

#81

Post by g1gecon »

Full disclosure - I work at Toptal and have been for over 3 years. Now that’s out of the way, I would like to encourage you to check out Toptal.com . Our entire purpose is to connect talented freelancers with companies looking for serious work. That way you, as a freelancer can focus on engaging in quality projects.

Let’s face it, you are already busy with a 40h/week job and you don’t need to be burdened with additional clerical tasks associated with freelancing. We will take care of the billing and pay you directly. We want to make sure that you are successful as a freelancer in our network, so we will help set you up for success.

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find remote or quality oriented freelancing work?

#82

Post by Kokoloko22 »

unnouinceput wrote: post #78
add1ct2 wrote: post #41

I'd suggest going with Toptal. You'd join an elite network of the world’s top talent, connecting the best and brightest in business, design, and technology. This will give you a chance to work top organizations from anywhere in the world, on your terms. All Toptal clients are thoroughly vetted. Only those with the budget, skill, and intent to hire make the cut. You get paid on time, every time as Toptal handles all b…

Toptal is full of BS on their screening process. I am a freelancer on Upwork for 10+ years now (at that time they were oDesk) and a few years ago I applied at Toptal, out of curiosity. The experience of the screening process where they asked to do free work on a project, disguised as a throwaway test, except the specifics of the test was too much inline with those of a ongoing project made me decline it. Also I menti…

That's factually incorrect, but I am sorry that you've found it bothersome.

I don't see how you being part of a different platform, makes any difference to them.

It's like saying "Hey, I interviewed at Facebook - so everyone has to immediately hire me".

It is a freelancing platform and there are thousands of freelancers in their community, I'd suggest attending one of their events where you could meet & greet them, and talk about their experiences. As far as I can tell, they find it valuable to be part of it, so much that they dedicate their own time to spread the news, and work on Toptal's recognition.

The process is very similar to the interview processes at companies like Google, Facebook, Palantir etc.

Yeah, you're expected to do a project, as did every individual that made it through the screening process.

I really don't see how, with so many years of experience, you could possibly claim that they have hundreds of people (weekly) complete their clients projects? For free?

And,they've done it for years? Seems ludicrous to me mate.

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find remote or quality oriented freelancing work?

#83

Post by diweirich »

aksahy wrote: post #75

> I'm currently working 40h/week as a backend PHP developer and I think I can put an extra 20 hours every week to increase my earnings. However, I struggle to find remote work or above the average freelancing projects. Freelance is all about branding, word of mouth and selling your self. Maybe give blogging a shot and keep looking. Shameless Plug: I was a PHP/Node developer. now I am trying to switching to go or elix…

What made you want to switch languages?

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find remote or quality oriented freelancing work?

#84

Post by throwaway_def2 »

jlgaddis wrote: post #66
ArtofSaf wrote: post #22

Here's something you can do: 1. Go to https://trends.builtwith.com/websitelist/PHP to see websites that use PHP 2. Focus on smaller to mid-size companies (large corporations likely have the tech team and contractors to cover almost of their needs) 3. (Optional) Search for each company on Linkedin and add managers with relevant roles (VIP of sales, project manager, marketing manager, etc.). The goal is to familiarize…

> 5. Reach out to the most senior person with a relevant role at each company with a personalized 1-on-1 email. So, spam them, basically? I'm not even "the most senior person" and I get tons of e-mails along these lines all the time. I am the asshole mail server admin who blacklists each one of them and submits their spam messages, though. At the least, I can prevent their messages from making it through to other peo…

If you work for a SaaS company your CEO, your Head of Sales, your VP of Business Development are "spamming" other companies too in order to put food on your table. Read the history of famous startups and what tactics they used to get their first customers. "Naaaah they are just selling services and we're making the world a better place", right?

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find remote or quality oriented freelancing work?

#85

Post by throwaway_def2 »

throwaway_def2 wrote: post #84
jlgaddis wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 5. Reach out to the most senior person with a relevant role at each company with a personalized 1-on-1 email. So, spam them, basically? I'm not even "the most senior person" and I get tons of e-mails along these lines all the time. I am the asshole mail server admin who blacklists each one of them and submits their spam messages, though. At the least, I can prevent their messages from making it through to other peo…

If you work for a SaaS company your CEO, your Head of Sales, your VP of Business Development are "spamming" other companies too in order to put food on your table. Read the history of famous startups and what tactics they used to get their first customers. "Naaaah they are just selling services and we're making the world a better place", right?

And my advice to other freelancers: This is why you never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever contact a tech person first if you want to offer your services to a company. Go to business people and decision makers. Avoid gatekeepers.

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find remote or quality oriented freelancing work?

#86

Post by thisisrajat »

Here's some actionable advice (hope it helps):

- Join Toptal (https://toptal.com) or similar sites. I've found their criteria of getting developers on board to be quite hard. Brush up your skills. You'll end up getting good projects overall. The upside is huge. People generally don't bid too low.

- Start by cold emailing executives at small-medium tier startups. You can find those companies on Crunchbase (https://www.crunchbase.com/) and AngelList(https://angel.co). Find engineering manager or a C-team executive (CTO, CEO) on Linkedin and message them (or cold email). Tell them how you can add value to their engineering team instead of just asking if you can get a project. All depends on your ability to write a well-crafted email.

- Build relationships. I've freelanced before and can vouch that finding good clients is HARD. Keep a healthy relationship with the ones who hired you before, ask them for referral, etc.

- Write a useful blog and convert clients from there. Assume it to be your sales funnel if you will. - Tweet, connect with people virtually. Be genuinely nice. Many people I know got their "big break" in freelancing via Twitter.

- If you have Wordpress skills, you can go so far with managing instances for people who don't know a thing. I know people earning $3K a month pretty easily by invoicing a handful of bloggers. Again, cold email is your friend.

My parting advice would be to not look for freelance projects. They're a waste of time. Instead, just look for high paying remote PHP jobs. You'll work much less and earn a lot more. I was skeptical at first but YES remote companies pay well too. Go to DailyRemote (https://dailyremote.com) and filter jobs by $70k+. Start applying to those positions. Also, remote companies that are not actively hiring would be interested in a good candidate if you just tell them that you're looking out. Tell them why they need to have you on the team. Most of them would be happy to accommodate.

Hope it helps. Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find remote or quality oriented freelancing work?

#87

Post by ianmobbs »

throwaway_def2 wrote: post #85
throwaway_def2 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you work for a SaaS company your CEO, your Head of Sales, your VP of Business Development are "spamming" other companies too in order to put food on your table. Read the history of famous startups and what tactics they used to get their first customers. "Naaaah they are just selling services and we're making the world a better place", right?

And my advice to other freelancers: This is why you never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever contact a tech person first if you want to offer your services to a company. Go to business people and decision makers. Avoid gatekeepers.

I completely agree, but often, the gatekeepers and decision makers end up being the same person. For example, it looks like if I were selling managed-email-servers-as-a-service, jlgaddis would be the person I want to talk to.

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find remote or quality oriented freelancing work?

#88

Post by smnplk »

akor wrote: post #19
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #17

This is maybe going to be an unpopular suggestion, but I think certain technologies are going to more commonly be associated with race-to-the-bottom markets, and I think PHP is one of those. It might make sense in investing in studying some more niche and higher-barrier-to-entry languages.

What languages do you suggest? Does Javascript have the same association with "race-to-the-bottom markets"? Having used Symfony and Laravel I don't understand why PHP has such a bad rep except that it's on the easier side so any language that makes things simple would suffer the same fate (attracting inexperienced developers (hello Javascript, Ruby, Python)). Both PHP and Javascript have many language specific issues…

Clojure seems niche enough.

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find remote or quality oriented freelancing work?

#89

Post by aksahy »

diweirich wrote: post #83
aksahy wrote: post #75

> I'm currently working 40h/week as a backend PHP developer and I think I can put an extra 20 hours every week to increase my earnings. However, I struggle to find remote work or above the average freelancing projects. Freelance is all about branding, word of mouth and selling your self. Maybe give blogging a shot and keep looking. Shameless Plug: I was a PHP/Node developer. now I am trying to switching to go or elix…

What made you want to switch languages?

Looking for better alternatives on the backend. I really like PHP. I have used it heavily so there is not much I am gonna learn from PHP. Elixir seems like good choices for a few reasons. easy access to the OTP and a good ecosystem (when compared to Clojure).

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find remote or quality oriented freelancing work?

#90

Post by philip1209 »

longnguyen wrote: post #72
philip1209 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for using Moonlight! If anybody is considering using it - email me (philip@moonlightwork.com) and I'm happy to provide positioning advice on your profile. We launched a feature this year called Broadcasts where you can share what kind of work you want, then we'll match you to hiring managers. The goal is to decrease the number of applications you need to do! https://www.moonlightwork.com/

Stripe is not available in my country yet. Is there any other ways I can apply?

We are looking at alternative solutions. But, at this point, Stripe will probably add new countries faster than we can add a new payment processor.

Some developers have set up contracting entities in Estonia or the USA to get access to Stripe, too.

Where are you based?

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