
Ask HN: Becoming a Freelancer in 6 months? - olso4052
Hey All,<p>Bit of an odd, specific question here, but I think it brings up an interesting discussion, so here goes -<p>If I have 6 months to get my web development skills to a level where I can be paid $35+&#x2F;hour freelancing, what&#x27;s the best way to go about it?<p>Now a couple things I want to mention to help keep the question clear: the timeline is somewhat arbitrary (give or take a few months), but for personal reasons I&#x27;d like to be able to quite my current job and move home for at least a year, while still being able to make some money (hence the freelancing). Also, I do have beginner&#x2F;intermediate level experience with HTML, CSS, Java and C++, but nothing that anyone would pay for right now.<p>So, with all that being said, what&#x27;s the best way to go about positioning myself to make money as a freelancer in the very near future? Is it possible in that timeline? What language(s) should be focused on, and where&#x2F;how should I learn? And what projects should I do to prove to someone that I&#x27;m worth hiring?<p>Edit: One other note, learning to code at a high level is something I&#x27;ve been wanting to do for a while, so this isn&#x27;t just a &#x27;one year and done plan.&#x27; After my hypothetical sabbatical, I&#x27;d like to join a start-up as an engineer and use the programming skills I&#x27;ve acquired. Anyway, thank you for the help. I&#x27;m interested to see the responses.
======
TamDenholm
Golden Rule: Do things, tell people.

Seriously, coding skills matter less in the real world than you think, those
will get better with time anyway. Eventually you'll get to a point where you
can work in places where coding skills do matter, like dev studios, startups,
big companies etc, but for non-tech small to medium businesses, they only care
what you've done, not what the quality of your code is. You can make a damn
good living setting up wordpress sites, installing a theme, adding content and
managing it with social media accounts if you wanted, and that requires the
least amount of skills out there.

Lets take the above scenario of being a wordpress installer. First, its about
selling yourself in the right light, you're not a wordpress installer that
makes people websites. You're an online presence consultant that helps SME's
engage with their audience and thus increase their profit.

Second, get your first client, ask everyone you know to put you in touch with
small business owners, get meetings and show them the package you're offering,
do it for $500 or something, hell do it for free if you have to, just get
something you can use as a case study, anything, a local pet shop, whatever.
Once you've got your case study, get your own presence setup, put your case
study on your website, get business cards printed up etc. Prepare a powerpoint
presentation and a few handouts with the benefits of an online presence,
making sure your contact info is on this.

Now join your local non-tech business groups, chamber of commerce, networking
events etc, and get yourself speaking engagements, make presentations to local
SME's explaining that they can increase their profit and talk to their
customers using an online presence, tell them about social media accounts and
how successful companies use them, show them they can build a mailing list,
show them stats on how well conversions work using the mailing list, and at
the end, show them how you did all of this for your local pet shop.

You are now the expert in all these guy's minds on how to do this, they will
call on you if they need it done, they will recommend their friends to you cuz
you knew what you were talkin about. Get their email addresses and add them to
a mailchimp account and send out a weekly newsletter re-iterating techniques
on how to communicate with SME's customers online.

Work will flow in. Now, i've used a very low skilled example for you, i dont
know if thats what you want to do, but this can be applied to just about
anything you want to go for, generic stuff like iOS/Android apps or specific
stuff like ordering and invoicing systems for oil and gas companies.

Do things, tell people.

~~~
atacrawl
_Seriously, coding skills matter less in the real world than you think, those
will get better with time anyway._

I wish I could upvote this a hundred times. The thing to remember is that most
people don't know the first thing about how stuff works on the internet. So
you could have the shittiest spaghetti code in the world, but if the site
looks and acts like it's supposed to, 99% of your clients will be satisfied.

Edit: Don't take that to mean "shitty code is okay," it's just that you don't
have to set the bar as high as you think when it comes to feeling like you're
good enough to charge what you want to charge for the work.

~~~
mbrock
I wonder if somewhere there's a forum where electricians or plumbers discuss
things like these... "Most people don't know the first thing about how wiring
works." On second thought, maybe I don't want to know!

~~~
TamDenholm
Theres not really any standard qualifications for us, plus, if an electrician
or plumber screws up, its much more serious than if we do.

~~~
astine
I think that depends a little on what you're writing:

"Oh no! The flight system on this rocket ship is going haywire!"

"Ok, ok, but at least it's not the plumbing!"

~~~
matt_s
Building a flight system for a rocket ship is probably not something you're
going to find as a job on elance or craigslist.

------
bdunn
You could go REALLY far just by leveling up your copywriting and
business/sales skills, and applying them to $7 WordPress themes you buy off
Themeforest.

The majority of web designers/developers are so focused on aesthetics, design,
and technology that they completely miss all that matters for their clients:
"Will this website get me more customers / sell more widgets / make me more
money?"

Once you're comfortable with writing for business and tweaking WP themes,
start attending networking events and start talking with business owners. Do a
lot of listening and learning, and make connections with people who might be
interested in what you have to offer.

Create a positive ROI for your clients (and remind them of it), ask for
referrals, get a testimonial ("Brennan redesigned my website and doubled my
online sales in less than 6 months"), and rinse and repeat.

~~~
mooreds
OP, keep in mind that this type of work (copywriting, sales, business) is a
different kind of fun than coding. Still fun, just different. From your Ask HN
text, it does seem like this might be more up your alley, though.

------
katzgrau
Someone's going to kill me for saying this: The biggest opportunity you could
hit in the shortest amount of time is probably with PHP/Wordpress.

Learn how to write smart, clean PHP (if there is such a thing), and learn
writing Wordpress plugins and themes inside out. And build a portfolio to woo
clients. A lot of developers think they're above this type of work, or that
it's soul-sucking and pointless. It is. But if you're willing to buck up, and
you want to be a free man/woman, and hit a (fairly average) target rate of $35
- $50 an hour, it's the fastest path.

Keep in mind, there's little respect for PHP and Wordpress development on HN,
but there's a ton of demand for it among the growing number of novice bloggers
who need help with their site. I get asked _all the time_ , and I usually
refer the work to a WP dev I trust (the quality varies quite a bit).

~~~
shire
This made me laugh, Is true everyone hates PHP on here but in my hometown
Seattle all the jobs on craigslist or anything other domain is mostly
populated by PHP requests for a lot of jobs. How long does it take to get into
PHP freelancing for someone who has experience with some Java.

~~~
roansh
If you are familiar with another programming language, and able to DO
programming, then, on average, it wouldn't take longer than a month. That
would be sufficient, I GUESS. I built a social networking site in PHP in the
last semester. And it was my first PHP web-application! I did learn PHP (and
Relational databases) in a month before that. I made a post about it, if you
want to see ([http://xworkspace.blogspot.in/2013/01/build-your-own-
social-...](http://xworkspace.blogspot.in/2013/01/build-your-own-social-
network.html))

But it all really depends on the amount of time (with brain) you spend on
learning. :)

~~~
krapp

        $email = $_POST['email'];
        $password = $_POST['password'];
        $query = "SELECT emailAddress, password, userID FROM users
        WHERE emailAddress = '$email' AND password = '$password'";
        $result = $db->query($query);
    

Um... not to digress but it looks to me like there's a SQL injection hole
here. Please use PDO and a bit more validation, this doesn't properly escape
anything. You could validate the email address with filter_var, for instance.

Otherwise, it looks neat, good job. You might want to learn to code more
defensively though. Especially if you're putting something up on Github.

Refer to: \-
[https://www.owasp.org/index.php/SQL_Injection_Prevention_Che...](https://www.owasp.org/index.php/SQL_Injection_Prevention_Cheat_Sheet)

\- [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/60174/how-to-prevent-
sql-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/60174/how-to-prevent-sql-
injection-in-php)

for some direction towards better practices.

~~~
roansh
Hey krapp, thanks for your input :D It's a great example of quick & dirty job.
There's still a LOT of work to do, I accept. The images are not scaled,
passwords are not `hashed', and no validation, of course. I should have had
worked on it later on, but I really didn't look in to it later.

I guess, I am also on the same path as with the author of this post. But yeah,
thanks again, I will improve it as soon as I can. :-)

~~~
krapp
Bear in mind, that since it's on github, even though it's a 'quick and dirty
job', people WILL just download it, run it and expect it to work, and if it
works, not care about auditing the code.

Those people deserve what they get, maybe, but still. Getting into a habit of
never releasing anything that doesn't at least have basic security is a good
idea.

When you come around to hashing the passwords consider
[https://github.com/rchouinard/phpass](https://github.com/rchouinard/phpass)

~~~
roansh
Right krapp. I will absolutely take care of that from now on, and also, I will
fix that code ASAP. :)

------
thetabyte
First, advice:

Like many people here, I agree that there is nothing more important than
building things that you can show people. However, the process of getting to
that level of capability can often be somewhat mystifying. There are a few
tools I recommend for that. First of all, interactive tutorials, like those at
Code School, are fantastic introductions to web frameworks, if you're just
getting started. I first learned Ruby on Rails with Rails for Zombies.
However, these tutorials will not give you the skills to actually build
anything—rather, they are a good primer. From there, find a good book,
preferably one that focuses on actually building something, like Michael
Hartl's Rails Tutorial. Finally, I really love to use screencasts (a la
Railscasts) for picking up domain specific information for particular tasks.
Hope that helps!

Second, a relevant question:

I've just recently started freelancing myself, and I see a variety of advice.
"No Rails developer should make under $75/hour!", "Take what you can get, work
your way up slowly!" "You probably charge too little!", etc. How do you
actually evaluate how much your skills are worth as a freelancer? How do you
match with clients who need and are willing to pay for your particular skill
level? If anyone has any links to relevant advice, those would be great to.

~~~
nthj
> How do you actually evaluate how much your skills are worth as a freelancer?
> How do you match with clients who need and are willing to pay for your
> particular skill level?

They are worth what a client will pay.

Trick: if you show a client “this will make you $20K in 6 months for this,
this, and this reason, as I have done for this, this, and this client”—they
don't care how much you make an hour. Bid $8K for the project, even if it only
takes you a week, and they're still crazy happy.

~~~
ciclista
How do you get to the place where you can give clients numbers like that
though? (this will make you 20K).

Past clients would be reluctant to tell how much a new site has made them I
would imagine (and it can be hard to pin down for certain markets).

------
Alan01252
How I got work as a freelancer in one month.

Created an on line presence/blog. Wrote about skills I have on blog. Posted
some programming posts. Went to Craigslist / Gumtree. Emailed people looking
for people with skills I had. Navigated to Google. Searched web agencies near
my town. Emailed web agencies. Wrote more emails. Answered phone and replied
to emails. Told customers my rate ( it was too low ). Easily got work. Did
good work. Got paid. Increased rate. Repeated.

------
hugofirth
I would suggest that with 6-9 months of dedicated learning you could
absolutely put yourself in a position where you could charge for freelance web
development services.

A few important things to note from my (limited) experience:

\- How much you are worth (per hour) as a freelancer is largely based on your
existing body of work and your network of contacts. As such, you might not be
able to make your stated figure straight away - instead as an average when
your earning potential rises with each completed job.

\- Go around your local community first. A lot of people say that you
shouldn't work for friends/people you know, but when you're starting out you
need portfolio pieces and people are far more likely to take the risk on
someone 'green' if they get some face-face time now and then. Local
restaurants and clubs was where I started.

\- Contract up ... always >.<

\- Specialise a bit. There seems to be a commonly held belief that freelancers
should be full-stack engineers - largely because you are likely to be working
solo on projects. Not only is this not realistic given your learning
timescale, but I've also found it to be untrue. If a project needs work that
you can't do then you sub-contract to another freelancer. They will be happy
for the work and there is always the possibility of payment in kind. One
caveat is that you obviously take on the risk of the contractor messing up.

~~~
mark212
>> \- Contract up ... always >.<

yes a million times. Don't think of it as being confrontational, think of it
as memorializing an agreement. You want to make sure you and your client are
on the same page, and it's a great reference (particularly when it comes to
defining a scope of work) down the line. It's as much for the client's
protection as it is for yours and as long as you keep it simple and to the
point, you'll be fine.

------
c0mpute
Take this with a grain of salt. There is no right way or the only way.

\- Learn complete web development. Use something like CodeAcademy/Udacity to
learn the complementary skills you need. My guess is since you know Html/css
and Java, you are better off learning Javascript as well. Nodejs / advanced
Java might be a good fit.

\- Learn some of the theoretical fundamentals. This might not be of immediate
need for freelancing, but you should almost always be honing your
fundamentals. Take up the core computer science courses on Coursera -
Algorithms (1,2), Programming Languages, Basic Math (linear algebra, graph
theory etc) are some must haves. This can be a longer term goal and plan it
beyond 6 months.

\- Sharpen your skills with coding exercises. Do some of the stuff on
InterviewStreet and other such sites. Being able to solve small problems
effectively and time bound, is very important skills. You should practice hard
for the first 6 months I think.

\- Know your domain. Being a web freelancer means you might have to be full
stack. Being able to write the client and server side with ease. You might
want to be good at some specific domains - like building sites for X, Y, Z
(you can build your own reusable code). Then expand. Looking at stuff at
elance is an easy start.

Its doable in 6 months. IMO don't stop learning.

------
hjay
I think one of the most common misconceptions people have about freelancers,
is that we know everything about every project we throw ourselves into. That
couldn't be further from the truth (at least for me).

As a freelancer, the most important skill is NOT coding. Yes, writing code
gets you to the end-goal, but what the client really wants, is results and
growth for their business. As a freelancer, you will often have to work on
something that you don't know 100%, and maybe even having barriers to
accomplish the project. However, hiring a freelancer is very much looking at
their past successes, and using that to gauge the result of their current
project, along with the value this freelancer can bring. As long as you get it
done and bring results, and maintain an amiable relationship with the client,
not much else matters.

So in on that note, I would say which language you choose hardly matters. But
that's not true. You want to choose a language you are familiar with, and one
that seems to be brought up in whichever areas you are looking for clients.

As many have already said, and I kind of hinted at above, learn as you build.
This is the best and fastest way to gain the knowledge and skills you need.
Much like building a startup, have something early on to put out into the
world, and build on top of that.

Any projects can prove to someone you are worth hiring. As a freelancer, part
of your job is to instill confidence into this potential client, and
demonstrate to the the VALUE you add to their business. Not the algorithmic
complexity, not the pretty code, not how many lines of code you've written,
but the VALUE (increase in revenue, lower costs, higher conversions, putting
their product on the forefront, etc) you bring to them.

I wrote a blog post[1] recently about things you should know about
freelancing, it's not too in depth as it's targetted towards people who have
not begun freelancing and are curious about it.

Keep improving yourself, and good luck!

[1] [http://www.jayhuang.org/blog/things-you-should-know-about-
fr...](http://www.jayhuang.org/blog/things-you-should-know-about-freelancing/)

------
rglover
Just start building stuff (anything) using your existing skills. As you run
into "how do I do that" style questions, fill in your knowledge. The benefit
of this is that you're able to apply what you know to solve real problems. Big
difference when all you're doing is studying theory/books.

Spend six months building stuff and you'll also have a decent portfolio that's
inline with your current skill set. Winning freelance work can be a "show
don't tell" sort of arena, so having any work helps.

------
Tichy
Since you can already code, I'd say you are already ready to go. 35$/h is not
a lot. Why not start now?

You could take up a job you can do from home. Then you could still adjust the
hours you bill so that they seem fair to you. Like if you spent 8 hours
reading a basic JavaScript tutorial to figure something out, don't bill 8
hours (or maybe do, it depends on your judgement - I think all dev jobs
require some time spent on learning, too, so it's not completely unfair to
bill for it).

------
agentultra
Learn a little Ruby on Rails or Django. Do what others are suggesting and
build websites for people. Learning either framework is a snap as they do a
lot of work for you but are flexible enough to meet the various requirements
you will encounter. And you can also get the benefit of transitioning into
freelancing with startups with web apps built in whichever framework you chose
to specialize in.

You can even take up contracts on oDesk or similar if you're not finding
enough local opportunities.

------
angelasmith
I've had a somewhat similar path to you in that I had no development
experience, yet after a year I'm now developing at a startup.

As mentioned, I think that the best route for freelancing would be to start
with Wordpress development. I say "best" in that there is consistent demand
for websites and these are projects that are great to learn on. You could
definitely start freelancing right now and charge $35 p/h. Just bill for 1/3
of your time as a previous poster mentioned & learn on the job - this is the
most efficient way.

In your spare time (if any), I would highly recommend learning Javascript. Not
Jquery - core Javascript. This will be incredibly useful when you do want to
go to a startup. You will most likely be positioned as a front-end dev anyway,
so focus on that. I have had to learn angularJS on the job and it's been
incredibly rewarding, yet I do wish that I had learned serious JS earlier
(rather than just rolling WP themes). Once you've got JS relatively down, move
to Ruby & Rails.

Enjoy!

------
al1x
I'd suggest creating a few accounts on elance and odesk and under-bid on as
many small projects as you can. I say create a few accounts there because
contractors there are limited to the number of bids they can make (per month,
I think). I say under-bid because you're up against a slew of Asian
developers, who charge $500 for a month's work. But do it. You'll be making
real money, building a real resume, and gaining a ton of experience. Once you
get a few projects under your belt there it's easy to land gigs. Just make
sure you deliver as promised and get rated well and after 6 months you could
continue using those sites to source projects, at whatever rate you chose.

------
billybob255
It's certainly possible to learn enough to become a competent freelancer,
finding sustainable work in that time may be another problem. Here[0] is a
link to a guy's progression who learned Python/Django in a month, it includes
extremely helpful resources to help. I would also learn the basics of throwing
up a Wordpress site just to have a quick way to demonstrate your abilities.

Is this a 6 months off to focus solely on learning development skills or 6
months to learn while working?

0\. [http://eddychan.com/post/15775730174/how-i-learnt-enough-
pyt...](http://eddychan.com/post/15775730174/how-i-learnt-enough-python-
django-to-be-dangerous-in-1)

------
cjcenizal
TamDenholm's comment is absolutely correct. At your stage, the easiest way to
get revenue is to learn how to sell something, e.g. present your services in a
way that demonstrates value to your customer.

You should read "Breaking the time barrier"[1]. It's a quick read, but it
presents some key guidelines on how to accomplish this, and will be invaluable
training when you're talking with a potential customer and trying to figure
out the best deal for you both.

[1] [http://www.freshbooks.com/blog/tag/breaking-the-time-
barrier...](http://www.freshbooks.com/blog/tag/breaking-the-time-barrier/)

------
gexla
The quickest way to become a $35+ freelancer with the least amount of skills
to pick up is to focus on a CMS like Wordpress or Drupal.

Learning a CMS well is much easier than learning to build applications
(mostly) from scratch. Your job is largely configuration (installing add-ons,
building / modifying templates, updating settings.)

You can do a lot with a decent CMS without having to learn PHP, but Wordpress
and Drupal do require some PHP skills to do significant changes to the
templates. However, it must not be much because I know people who freelance
building WP sites and know very little PHP. There are other CMS' which have
templating systems which don't require any PHP at all.

I mention WP and Drupal because there is a ton of work out there in those
ecosystems. At $35 / hour you can pick up work from other developers /
agencies all day long. Another reason I mention the CMS route is because it's
a niche path. It's easier to pick up work when you focus on a certain area
rather than being a general X programmer. It's also easier to focus when you
go niche.

When you have decided on a CMS, setup some development instances and practice
doing different things. Setup another development instance for your own
freelance services site and use that as practice as well. Set aside time for
learning PHP and Javascript. As the back-end (CMS) guy, you will be okay with
not having to do much on the front-end, but knowing Javascript well will help
a lot. For your PHP practice, spend some time in focused practice which
stretches your comfort zone, but also spend some time building helpful add-
ons. You can use those as part of your portfolio. Stick to simple add-ons at
first. If you aren't sure what to build which hasn't already been done many
times over, then look for newly released API's which could be helpful for a
general web site.

A big part of learning a CMS is learning the ecosystem. Figure out the "go to"
add-ons for a given task. You will find that for something simple like a
contact form there is probably 50 add-ons that you could use but only a
handful which everyone actually uses. Find out who the biggest players are
(most well known general developers and add-on developers) find out where they
talk to each other. This is most likely going to be a combination of Twitter,
forums and Google Plus communities. Get involved and show off what you are
building. These channels will be an important source of leads for work.

You can also learn and build your profile / reputation by helping people who
are asking questions. Spend some time answering questions in the above
mentioned channels as well as
[http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/](http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/). In
some cases, people ask you to fix their problems for them. Congrats, you just
got a freelance gig and a lead for more work in the future.

Look through Elance, Odesk and related sites to see what jobs are being
posted. You will see a lot of low budgets and developers offering to do the
work for low rates, but just ignore all that. If you pick the right jobs and
you can sell, then the $5 / hour developers become invisible to the buyer. You
can get a sense of who the buyer is from the history as well as the
description. Go by your gut, if the client seems like a good one, then drop a
proposal.

You will need to learn how to sell. If you are in a good niche and you can
sell well then you can land 8 out of 10 jobs that you apply for. The other two
fell through because you were too late. You need to develop proposals which
convey to the client that you are exactly what that person is looking for and
you know exactly what the client needs.Aside from examples of your work, you
might pull specifics out of the job description to tell the client exactly how
you would do certain parts of the project. This will show that you know what
you are doing and gives you a leg up on general PHP programmers who don't know
the CMS as well as you do.Of course, the approach depends on the type of
client. A non technical client who needs a site for a new business doesn't
care about technical details, so adjust accordingly (though you would be
better off starting out with other developers so that you can learn from them
and so they can back you up if you run into problems.)

Go this route and you could be freelancing in 3 months. You could start out at
$35 / hour and then raise your rates from there. This isn't the most sexy
route. PHP isn't the most sexy programming language. But by going this route
you would be tapping into an ecosystem with a lot of work and which is
relatively easy to break into. As you gain experience, then you could move
into other directions. Really, when doing freelancing, the tech side is easy
and isn't nearly as important as the people side. Learning to sell and
communicate well is far more important than working with the sexiest
platforms. Once you learn the important stuff, then you can change the other
variables as you progress (breaking into different programming languages /
platforms / ecosystems.)

~~~
shire
This was actually very help Gexla, thanks. I've been trying to learn Java as a
freelance opportunity but this thing is massive and takes forever to learn it
seems. Is PHP the right way for freelance web development? I noticed you
mentioned Wordpress and PHP. Coming from Java how long it will take to get
into PHP ? I tried it a bit but everyone here seems to hate it and rants about
the language ugliness so I didn't even try and went with Java.

~~~
mooreds
I won't speak for Gexla, but from my experience getting into 'PHP' is far
different than getting into 'Wordpress' or 'Drupal'. Unless you are subbing
for another software dev, most clients don't care about the language, they
care about what business value the software will deliver. For SMEs, I don't
think there's any ecosystem out there that compares with Wordpress or Drupal
in availability of talent (keeping prices reasonable) and free functionality
(making it possible to build a very full featured site quickly).

To answer your question directly, I had a couple of years of Java when I did a
PHP project (a CRUD system for my book club) and it probably took a few weeks.
But I've also worked with Drupal and Wordpress and those take longer to get
your head around (Wordpress to a lesser extent)--there are lots of moving
pieces, and you have to try multiple plugins to know what will work (and the
codebase moves quickly too). I'd budget two months for Drupal, six weeks for
Wordpress, and I'd start out with simpler site proposals.

------
accomplice
Yogo brings up a good point. You can get solid work via referrals, craigslist
and e-whatever-lance by rolling a few wordpress themes and customizing
wordpress sites.

You may be underestimating the value of intermediate skills. While a large
agency may not pay you as freelancer, you could easily get a roster of clients
through referrals and good old fashion hustle on craigslist (which leads to
more clients) I have plenty of experience making this work as developer...
which is weird since I am not a developer. If I can do it by accident, I am
sure you can do it on purpose.

~~~
accomplice
Also, 35 an hour might be too low. Charging more makes a great first
impression, and cheap clients are rarely worth it.

------
awwstn
I was once told that the fastest way to get your skills up to a level that
people will pay for is to find freelance work that isn't far beyond your
current scope.

If you have a deadline and a paying customer who is counting on you to produce
something, then you'll quickly learn how to learn quickly.

------
yogo
There are so many things to web development that unless you are already used
to building and shipping custom websites and web applications that would be
quite a challenge[1]. Anything's possible though.

1\. I'm assuming you aren't just looking to setup wordpress or squarespace
sites

------
nicoschuele
Today, I wrote an article about what I think is a really good path to teach
yourself to become a web developer. You can find it here:
[http://bit.ly/1246qMU](http://bit.ly/1246qMU)

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bhousel
Have you built anything using those technologies that you can show off
publicly?

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gearoidoc
Sorry but I can't help but feel that the majority of these responses have you
focused too much on your short term goal.

Can you become a freelance CMS installer in 6 months with no technical
background? Probably. But only just. I imagine most of the commenters below
are developers (like myself) who see things like Joomla/Wordpress/etc installs
as trivial pieces of work. Don't get me wrong: they are, but only if you've
had a considerable amount of previous dev experience.

Let's look at what's involved in becoming a CMS freelancer:

\- Setting up a working development environment: probably a few days.

\- Getting to grips with PHP (or whatever language) development: harder to
estimate but I imagine it will take at least three months to get to place
where you're familiar with Object Orientated Programming (OOP), basic app
layout, basic database skills, CSS and Javascript. Three months is actually a
REALLY short amount of time to get up to speed on all of that but maybe you're
a first learner - and hey, you're posting on HN so I bet you are ;-)

\- Server setup : lets say you use some service like GoDaddy or Blacknight
which offers 1-click CMS installers so you don't have to deal with all the SSH
and CHMODing so no real work here

\- Nailing your first piece of business: again, impossible to estimate but
trust me when I say that this business (particular "cheap" jobs like CMS
installs) is COMPETITIVE. If you live in a developed Western country then
someone out there will do the job cheaper than you, no question. So basically
you've going to have to operate well at a loss for the first few projects.

And here's where my BIG problem comes with the other replies in this post:

After you have X number of projects under your belt, your rate isn't going to
start going up at any considerable speed. Yes you will be better than you were
a few months back, yes you will have projects to show but guess what? So will
all those outsourcers in places like India and Poland and they'll STILL be
charging less than you.

My basic point is: this idea doesn't really scale. You'd be better off
learning development "properly" (night schools, online courses etc are good)
and then starting off at some entry level dev job. Yes its more pain up front
but its a much more viable strategy long term.

So to answer your question (finally!): Can you become a freelancer in 6
months? Yes. Will you make any decent money at it? I don't think so.

If you're looking for any help with this stuff then I'd be happy to help you
out a bit. You can find me on twitter: @modernprogrammr

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bdunn
I think you're assuming that Wordpress types aren't worth what a Rubyist might
be.

I know a quite a few consultants who are ridiculously smart at business and
realize that WP and other off-the-shelf solutions can solve the majority of
the problems they work on, and have hourly rates that eclipse the majority of
"real freelance programmers" rates.

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tnorthcutt
This is correct. I use WordPress, but I use it to accomplish business goals
for my clients. That's worth much more to the person signing the checks than
someone who knows Rails well, but doesn't bring anything to the table when it
comes to what should be built; only how to build.

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ChrisAntaki
I'd take a step back, and ask: Do you enjoy coding? If you do, then just keep
doing it. The rate at which your skill progresses really depends on you,
subjectively.

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hoju
Do some small projects on Elance in your spare time. That's how I learn new
technologies - gives you more motivation because have deadline and get paid.

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markgreville
I would start with codeacademy and once you do a couple of the courses on
there build a website.

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kumarski
CodeAcademy will teach you the basics of object oriented programming.

Once you master OOP/ the basic concepts....for loop, output statements, switch
statements, arrays, etc....

The original poster will need to start doing web development which is a
different ball game. I've been using onemonthrails.com and it has been pretty
effective especially if coupled with a programming mentor.

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bharathwaaj
[http://codelearn.org](http://codelearn.org) teaches rails.

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todd3834
Freelancing has its perks but you also have the option of working remotely.

