Freelancer

veryangryman

Hi, anyone making a few quid on this? Any experiences of this would be cool to see if its worth getting into

L.Jenkins

I genuinely tried, but my ability to sell myself and get projects just didn't work out. I used the usually freelancer and peopleperhour sites. The undercutting on price for the effort just didn't seem to be worth it either.

John_Mc

veryangryman wrote: »

Hi, anyone making a few quid on this? Any experiences of this would be cool to see if its worth getting into

If you sell yourself for cheap then you won't be valued. The cheaper you sell your services for, the trickier the client in my experience.

It's better to provide a service to companies but they prefer to deal with other companies that aren't a one man/woman show cos if you get hit by a bus they're goosed.

You need to be good at networking and have a good list of contacts to make a success of feelancing I think.

BrokenArrows

You might undercut for a few jobs to get some experience under your belt, but long term you need to set a price that works for you.

Most of these sites are full of cheap labor, but that doesnt mean they produce quality work.

You want to find clients who want quantity over price and are willing to pay a premium for that. Customers who are haggling over your daily rate are not worth the effort.

You also have to remember that the going rate in one country is vastly different than another. So for a US client you will likely have no problem getting a top rate.

beauf

Many years ago I tried it, perhaps half halfheartedly on reflection. But found contracting, and working in companies more reliable and more money for far less hassle and grief.
Perhaps I took the easy option, and I needed to spend longer at coal face to build a client base/income stream that was viable.

off.the.walls

Did a lot of freelancing during college and now I wouldn't go near it with a barge pole! working full time as a developer now luckily and would much rather this to a project by project basis, you're always going to have to deal with clients who are either sound as, or annoying as.

moycullen14

I'd advise taking the night shift in Supermacs instead. You'll earn more money and the people are much easier to deal with!

14ned

moycullen14 wrote: »

I'd advise taking the night shift in Supermacs instead. You'll earn more money and the people are much easier to deal with!

Dunno, Supermacs late night Friday and Saturday is not much fun at all. Some of the customers are quite unpleasant. It's hard work, for the money involved.

In my more than two decades of work, I've learned that self funded once-off customers are always best avoided. By "once off", I mean a customer highly unlikely to return with more business after this project is done. The classic example is somebody building a once-off home, or a once-off project, using their own money. The problem is that it is their own money, they know how ignorant they are, they tend to be anxious, they often distrust professionals, and they often have the attitude that they must be getting ripped off, and of course they always know better than the professional.

Far more pleasant work environments are people repeatedly placing similar work using other people's money. Those are professionals. That's where you want to be if you're freelancing.

Niall

beauf

Supermacs- I think that was his point.

I found just as many companies tried to rip me off when I was freelancing. I think some of them have a revolving door of new freelancers for this reason.
Get freelancers to do a lot of work, as a loss leader for more work, which they then don't pay for. Rinse and repeat.

Comes a point when pitching for work and doing demo's, proof of concepts, is costing a lot of time and money.
Many of the companies and freelancers I knew stopped doing these for this reason.