

Ask YC: What's the best way and place to start freelancing? - vineet7kumar

Hi,
  I am planning to start freelance coding but don't have an idea which is the best place and best way to start. Any help towards this will be great.
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Ramone
Don't. :)

Seriously... Free-lancing is harder work than any job you've ever had. You
have to be able to handle the work you take on as well as doing the accounting
and bringing in the sales. It's just not feasible for most people without
really working your ass off.

And then what do you get? You certainly don't have a business, because it's
unsellable as such, and it doesn't exist if you walk away. What you have is
the most time-consuming job possible. You didn't even get rid of your boss...
In fact now you've got more bosses.

Speaking from almost a decade of freelance experience, I'd suggest you either
get some partners or get a job.

~~~
webwright
I'd second that. If you are going out on your own, be a contractor, not a
freelancer... i.e. find big companies who will pay you $80+/hr for 40h a week
on an ongoing basis. The overhead and "bench time" (time between jobs) is more
expensive than you think.

~~~
netcan
Or go the other way & be service provider. Saleable business, clients etc.

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symptic
Find one client at a low rate and please the hell out of them. Then find
another client, but increase your rates. Do the same; do anything it takes to
get the job done ahead of schedule and to make the client as impressed as
possible.

Eventually you'll find the ceiling in terms of how much you can charge per
hour, but you'll have an entire mountain of reputation built by being fast,
dedicated, and reliable.

I'm a student and due to a family lawsuit (dad's business partners ran off
with the company's bonding money, fitting him with the bill) I can't get
student loans so I freelance to pay my bills and to fund my own projects. My
main philosophy when I'm working with a client (and I tell them this) is "the
sooner I get in and out with this project, the sooner you do too" and I then
sit down with them if they are available and work on it until it is done. It's
not as feasible for programming as it is for designing, but the same focus on
speed is killer as a freelancer.

I'm still finding work at $100/hr as a 22 year old freelancer, so soon I can
finally begin leveraging my personal brand equity and my time to creating more
passive sources of income, (i.e.: services and products).

Hope this helped a bit.

~~~
symptic
And on a side note: ALWAYS take the blame when something goes wrong, even if
it's not your fault. A good client will appreciate that you have the balls to
claim the fault is yours which will actually improve your relationship, and
bad clients will show their true colors and give you an opportunity to send
them to someone more desperate for work.

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mixmax
Unfortunately it is more about who you know than what you know.

So start networking...

~~~
robertk
I have freelanced a little, and now my best offers come from previous clients,
or people who have found me by reputation. For example, on eLance, I was
recently invited to a job which took me four hours but paid $1000. It was
invite-only (they did not list it publically), and such a bid would never fly
by usual eLance (i.e., Indian outsourcing) standards.

Fortunately, I have a regular income (and besides that am still young enough
to mooch off my parents), so I can afford to only take nuggets like that. :)

EDIT: Come to think of it...I never look for a freelancing offer anymore, last
I did was months ago. Now I simply accept the 5% or so of offers actually
worth doing. Of course, doing those creates satisfaction in my new clients,
which provide me more offers!

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bprater
If you want to get serious fast, go to tech-related conferences. Take a stack
of business cards. Shake hands. Constantly. Arrive early, don't eat lunch,
stay late.

Be focused on how you can help people's business, even if you can't help them
directly. (Don't make it all about "me, me, me". God, I hate when people are
like.) You aren't trying to make a sale, you are building a relationship one
handshake at a time. Directly or indirectly, you'll find plenty of business.

~~~
mhartl
I'll second this. Conferences might seem expensive, but by giving you good
business leads they often pay for themselves (and then some).

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lallysingh
Please only consider this as a last resort (which it may be, in this economy).

Here are some notes from my own experience here:

1\. Small, manageable deliverables. Always error on caution and honesty,
instead of optimism and salesmanship.

2\. If your customer (who you should just call your boss, if there's only 1)
isn't technical, you'll hate life. You may as well be selling corn futures to
a martian.

3\. Two new phrases which will dominate your life: Requirements Management,
Customer Expectations Management.

4\. Find customers by going to user groups/mailing lists for the technologies
you're good at.

5\. If you have to integrate with any other software system, make sure you
have access to enough information/support to handle hard-to-track bugs. The
worst place to be is a remote freelancer guessing at what's going on, billing
by the hour.

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wesley
Create a blog and start building a reputation. Interact on forums. You really
don't need to go to elance or other such sites.

~~~
tonystubblebine
I second this. I like to hire freelancers and their blog is the most important
thing I look for. Use your blog to give an honest representation of what
you're interested in and how you think. It's much more important to focus on
the world of people that you could work well with, rather than the world of
people you could convince to do one project with you. That's because
freelancing is driven by repeat business and references.

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sireat
If you are in a country where cost of living is low, then elance.com and other
similar sites are an option. Competition there is extremely fierce, don't get
into underbidding wars. Much better would be to work on projects where you do
get some face time with the client.

~~~
vaksel
his profile says he is in India

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brandonkm
Most of the time with freelance coding potential clients want to see evidence
of previous projects, or personal projects So to extend on what others have
stated here... network --> work on personal projects --> practice --> ??? -->
profit!

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staunch
I actually do have a "secret" method: Datacenters. If you're a
programmer/network/system guy there is no faster way to get lots of clients
than meeting people in datacenters. They're the most qualified leads you'll
ever find.

~~~
villageidiot
How do you find them? What do you do? Look up datacenter locations online and
then go hang out there to see if you can hang out with a techie? Or are you
talking about contacts you make through your job?

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tstegart
I second two things, the blog, and the previous projects. People want to see
that you get things done. So if you can whip up an amazing project, then
they'll know you can get their stuff done as well.The blog/website is the
place to showcase that.

For example, if you design webpages and want to attract people looking for you
to design their Wordpress sites, create a really great free theme. The better
your work, the more people will notice it.

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DarkShikari
IRC is your friend. I have gotten almost all my best jobs from
corporations/people on an IRC channel looking for a contract for assistance
doing X.

Replace X with your specialty, and find the associated Freenode channel.

Depending on your field, mailing lists may be useful as well.

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petercooper
What language? What niche? What sort of development? The tactics will vary a
lot based on the answers to those questions.

------
known
check job postings in <http://craigslist.com>

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NonEUCitizen
try contracting with former managers / employers who already know you can
deliver.

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smysore
blog (to market yourself) and be able to show people what you've already done
(to show your credentials / expertise / authority on some technology)

