
Ask HN: Is freelance web development still a viable path in 2019? - MathCodeLove
With the advent of wix, squarespace, and other code free forms of website developement, it seems as if the demand for custom built sites are at an all time low.<p>The little demand left is shared among a seemingly never ending hord of aspiring freelance developers, many of whom are willing to work at prices far below that of what their skills had once demanded.<p>With a market such as this what place, if any, is there for new developers who wish to break into freelancing? Is there any hope at all for these developers? Or have the days of freelancing been put to an end by abstraction and oversaturation?
======
CareyB
Not really. Wix and GoDaddy clobbered it, and now there are others. At one
point I had over 30 sites requiring regular maintenance, and upgrades. Plus a
few I developed, installed on other servers, and did not maintain. Now I’m
down to about four. These days there’s almost always someone in a small
business’ office with the requisite skills to do basic upgrades, and small
changes. I get called when things go wrong, or there’s a major overhaul in the
offing. Many small businesses do quite well with a Facebook page, or some
other self development tool. The sites look amateurish, and derivative, but
they get the job done. All you want is the ‘Who, what, where, when, and why’,
and standards are so low there’s no functional penalty for having a lame Web
presence. I find more clients hiring full time ‘social media’ specialists
rather than me. I have pondered becoming a ‘social media expert’, but the fact
that I have worked building some of the early experiments taints me against
the concept.

Almost all Web sites are similar these days, and there’s a value to designing
the UI/UX in a way users expect. I suggest that, for startups, and small
businesses, there’s virtually no need for anything other than a basic Web
presence. With the rise of social media, the appropriate account(s) will solve
that problem for most.

I worked through the wild west of this industry, and it was semi-fun, but I
think we’ve moved on, things have settled down, or are settling down, and
there’s a minimum sufficient requirement for a Web presence that’s pretty
freakin’ minimal.

~~~
mxuribe
100% THIS!

To your point about "becoming a social media expert", I actually began lightly
dabbling in this, and felt nauseous after some time...Allow me to describe:

You begin admirably trying to help a business (or individual) to gain
legitimate views and insights from their audience...but hoping to grow to
full, positive engagements, and so forth - not for merely having a social
media presence, but rather, with the overarching goal of growing their
business, or meeting some other business goal of theirs...and eventually, they
begin to get addicted, and whether its a true value to their business goals or
not, they begin chasing the dragon of growth. And, much like i can only
imagine like drugs - they get hooked. Whatever ethical advice i would provide
is ignored, and they only want advice on how to grow their audience like crazy
(think: hockey stick growth numbers, etc.) including employing fake follow bot
accounts, etc. Their "chase" for ever more audience continues on a darker
route...wanting ever more clicks/likes/views/attention - even at the risk of
their business' main value proposition. They begin outright ignoring your
continuous protests. You begin to feel sick - as if somehow you are the gun
salesperson selling a gun to a person you are only now discovering is
dangerous. Your client keeps pushing you for more and more dark patterns to
employ, and you continue to refuse...ultimately ending the business
relationship.

Now...are all clients like what i noted above? No, i'm sure there are good
clients out there that don't go dark...But for me, I kept encountering the
dark ones. So, for what its worth, I would not go down the route of being a
social media expert. Good luck, and cheers!

~~~
yeahitslikethat
Is not just social media. This is a problem in all aspects of human life. The
drive for more more more! Nothing is ever enough.

~~~
povertyworld
Indeed. Lucky for us flint hand-axes weren't enough for our ancestors.

~~~
infiniteseeker
> Lucky for us

Are you sure?

~~~
extra88
I’ll be sure when humans sustainability live off Earth.

------
andy_adams
I've been freelancing for 7 years, and the market has never been better for
reliable web developers. A knowledgeable full-stack dev can earn above SV-
level salary as a remote freelancer.

However, if you're marketing yourself purely as a "web developer", you're
already commoditizing your skills. Instead, become an expert in a specific
type of business/client and sell your ability to solve problems in that
business domain. Your clients should not care about the tech you're using. You
need to instead be seen as the expert who solves their problems with tech.

If you go this route, not only is freelancing viable - I think it's the best
way to maximize your earnings as a developer.

I wrote about freelancing in more detail if you're interested:
[https://andyadams.org/everything-i-know-about-
freelancing/](https://andyadams.org/everything-i-know-about-freelancing/)

~~~
cutler
Just curious, do you find the websites of small/medium-sized businesses are
predominantly PHP/Rails/Django or are you seeing ASP.Net and Java? The reason
I ask is because if you market yourself as simply a problem-solver you'll need
to be proficient in a wide range of programming languages.

~~~
andy_adams
I see mostly WordPress, Shopify, and a smattering of Rails (but Rails may be
because that's one of my favorite tools). I've never seen ASP or Java out in
the wild, but I'm 1 man who doesn't focus on those techs.

PHP dominates the web, but I'm sure there is plenty of business elsewhere. The
internet is pretty vast - some of my clients are in niches you've likely never
heard of. If you were working in particular industries, you might see ASP/Java
more often, depending on who the major players are there.

~~~
cutler
Are you saying PHP, Rails & Javascript has you covered for most of your work?
What's a typical client profile by domain and budget?

------
err4nt
I say yes, it is viable, and I'll explain!

Different clients will value your skills differently. If you can fix a website
and that creates 10% more sales revenue, somebody making $2,000 can only
afford to compensate you $200 or else they're losing money. But the same
skills and labour to a client making $2,000,000 represents $200,000 of value.
If you want to make money, you have to work for the people who value your
time, skills, and labour _more_.

So with that in mind, here's my secret: the profile of a profitable freelance
client. This has been from my experience, and I've made money from clients
that don't fit this profile too, but in general this is what making money in
freelance looks like now:

\- US-based small to medium sized business

\- that is already profitable and making money via their website

\- that is an organization still small enough you can speak directly to the
owner or a key decision-maker

This is the kind of client who:

\- has money to pay you

\- values your skills

I think too many freelance clients think that because they are a small
business, they must work for like-sized businesses, but tiny businesses simply
don't have the money to value what you do enough to compensate you. A
profitable company that's already making money from their website is precisely
who will value what you have to offer more!

~~~
kijin
This is absolutely true. There's no money in building new websites. Instead,
solve problems for people who already have well-established websites (read: a
steady revenue stream) and want to go further.

The client doesn't even need to be a business that's larger than your own, as
long as they have lots of money. There are websites out there that are run by
literally _one person_ and get tens of millions of page views per day. Be the
engineer who can solve his scalability problems, and he'll throw at you
whatever money you ask for.

I've also found professional associations to be well-paying clients. They're
too busy making money in their own professions, if they encounter an IT
problem, they'll pay anything to make it go away.

If you go down this path, though, be prepared to read and endless stream of
legacy code, write compatibility layers, do live data migrations, and spend a
lot of time in general trying to untangle other people's spaghetti
PHP/HTML/JS/whatever. It's an established website, after all. You're not there
to rewrite it in your favorite framework. Come to think of it, maybe that's
why I face so little competition ;)

~~~
jamesmp98
But how do you find these business who are established, but have problems that
can be solved. I don't want to be the guy who has a solution in search of a
problem.

~~~
kijin
Good old fashioned networking, I guess. Both online and in the local
community. I don't think there's a quick answer to that.

------
tsp
I am working as a freelance front-end developer in Germany since half a year.
Some things I learned on the way:

Building websites for individuals (personal portfolios), non-commercial clubs
and small scale businesses like barber shops or restaurants is a pain. You
have to compete with website builders like Squarespace and pre-made templates
for Wordpress. The amount of work needed to create one of these is way too
expensive for most customers. There is still a demand for people settings
these sites up (using a pre-made template), installing updates and so on, but
I would hardly call this front-end development.

As @bnt said already: The market for JavaScript developers is booming. If you
learn Angular, React or Vue.js, I am pretty sure you will not regret it.

If you present yourself in a good way on Linkedin, you will be flooded with
requests from recruiters.

I would go with React, because there are the most jobs waiting for you. The
market is huge!

~~~
locklock
How did you get into freelancing, specifically in Germany? Do you get most
work from Linkedin? I really don't like that site for various reasons but if
it's necessary for freelance work I might have to sign up...

~~~
tsp
I was not happy at my old job any more and decided to try if freelancing works
for me. At first I was struggling a bit. You have to get projects, figure out
how everything works, get insurances and so on.

Now I mostly work for a recruiting agency. They get a cut from what I make
(quite a huge cut actually), but they in return make sure that they have work
for me.

I am still figuring things out. What I most struggle with is finding a good
work-life balance. I work way much than I did before.

Before starting to freelance you should make sure that you have enough money
to survive ~3 month without any gigs. It will also take a while until your
first gigs are paid. Something to keep in mind.

Being on Linkedin is absolutely essential imo, if you don’t have a network
already. I just use the site to answer to recruiter-messages, that’s it.

~~~
dpflan
Thanks for sharing. I am exploring freelancing, and I am seeing a lot of
demand for React (and similar projects). Full stack POCs with mobile clients
seem like a good way to go.

Would you mind describing your path from deciding to freelance and where you
are you now? You mention networking and unpaid/low paid gigs. I assume that
you found projects in your near network, these projects were lower risk / with
trusted connections, then you eventually built a portfolio and got the
mechanics of freelancing down. Then made a connection with the agency and have
continued your success inertia.

Congrats by the way!

~~~
tsp
Thanks!

My path to freelancing went something like this: I used to have some small
gigs on the site while being employed—projects which were not interesting for
the company I worked at the time anyway. This way, before I actually quit, I
already was able to write invoices and did not have to figure this out as well
(but it is not that hard).

My first project was a web-experience for a venue which was paid okay, but
resulted in a lot of back-and-forth with the client. I am still working for
that client every now and then. I was applying to a job-offer of a small
agency on a job-board looking for a freelancer for that project. I spent a lot
of hours initially to go through all available freelance jobs on that (German)
platform, made a selection what I would be able to do and wrote some messages.
I don’t know any more how many messages I wrote, but it were less than five
until I got a gig.

The second project was a big Vue.js one for an agency, which is still ongoing
part-time. I got this gig via a freelance consultancy. Everything is quite
personal. No corporate. Remote work okay. At first I spent a few weeks working
from their office, then enough trust was built for remote work. I now track my
time and write an invoice each month. Being billed by the hour gives me some
peace of mind to not make wrong estimations. It is still hard for me to
realistically guess how much feature xyz or a whole web applications will be.
I guess that comes with time and involves to look at projects in retrospect
more.

Since starting to freelance I noticed a few changes:

I say “no” more often. I had to say no to a few projects in between. Mostly
interesting, badly paid short term projects. If I did not have to care about
money I would have loved to work on these, but right now I prefer “stable”,
well-paid projects. This is also because I come from a creative background,
where projects are often interesting, but chaotic. Finding the balance between
interesting and stable is not easy and everybody has to decide on their own
what is important to them. Working on better paid (maybe less creative /
interesting) gigs gives me more time to work on my own projects (in theory, if
I would reject more client-work). It is very important to spend enough time
writing proposals. It happened a few times already that the client and I had
different views on the final outcome of a project. If you took your time to
put everything in writing in the proposal, it will be much easier, because
there is no ground (or very little) for ambiguity. At first I just wrote
something like “Design and build website”. Now it will be much more detailed.
I will write how many pages the website has, if there is animation, if xyz is
involved or not and so on. My productivity in general increased. When being
employed you usually know that e.g. at 5 PM you can go home and do whatever
you want. If you don’t feel like working between 3–5 you have to look busy or
just do some work somehow. When you are freelancing you can listen more to
your body and decide on your own when working is okay. If I notice that I am
not productive I will most likely stop working and continue at a later point.
This way I get more done in an hour of freelance work than an hour of work in
my old job, which gives me a better overall feeling.

One last thing about the biggest down-side from my perspective: work-life
balance. You have to decide for yourself when it is enough. For me it is not
easy to tell myself: “You worked enough today, now you should do something
fun”. There is always more to do. Also if you get more done today, less work
will be there tomorrow. Right? Nope. I personally need to find rules to
restrict myself regarding working hours. Having some (personal) rules might
make things easier.

------
katzgrau
For small businesses, not really. The site generators have won there. Bigger
budgets are few and far between and its tough to convince anyone that they
need a maintenance contract - billable hours are always met with pushback. And
I find that budget size is inversely proportional to how big of a pain in the
ass a client is going to be.

For established businesses in healthcare, accounting, legal, and many other
non-obvious, absolutely. A law firm might pay 100k for a simple website
because they both have the budget and want to be absolutely sure they're
paying for quality.

So if you target the right clientele and position your freelance business well
(look established and not like there's a chance you could be out of business
tomorrow), it's absolutely viable.

------
arichard123
I have drawn a graph to explain what I think has been happening since 2006
when I started freelancing. [https://www.dropbox.com/s/i79fv0brlkvc79c/the-
graph.png?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/i79fv0brlkvc79c/the-graph.png?dl=0)

The x axis is "complexity of website" and the y axis varies. For the red line
that slopes from top left down to bottom the y axis is "demand for website".
The blue line is "Cost of website produced by web developer". Everything to
the left of the vertical green line has a tool (wix, squarespace, wordpress
etc) that makes it easy to produce that type of website. And over time that
green line moves along the x-axis complexity scale. But the green line will
only go so far, because you can't justify handling increasing complexity with
a decreasing demand indefinitely.

Also, at some point it becomes easier to hire a web dev to make you a custom
ecommerce solution, than to search through the 500 ecommerce solutions to find
the one you want, when what you want is weird.

My strategy since 2006 has been to stay to the right of the green line, but
not too far. My experience is that clients I've had on the right side of that
line are still clients, and those who were not, have moved on.

I think there's a lot of legs left in that strategy. Finding a client who is
on the right hand side of the line often means starting with some kind of
integration work they are struggling with, or updating a legacy web app, which
is always a pain. Or doing something weird. But once you've got through that
successfully you're established as a meaningful cog in their corporate
machine.

Interestingly, I drew the graph in 2006, and wix was founded that year, and
was one of the examples I used at that time, so it's funny to see it still
being mentioned now.

The strategy has given me a varied set of problems, I've worked on custom
ecommerce solutions, funding application and claim management systems, CPD
management, eLearning tools, and other more mundane things.

I've earned more each year I've been doing this, and it jumped up a couple of
years ago, so it's still working well for me.

~~~
la_barba
Hmm, but for a one-two person freelancing gig, how complex of a site can you
realistically build though? How much time do you spend on marketing & sales vs
actual development?

~~~
arichard123
Complex enough that someone wants to hire someone else to worry about it, but
not so complex that they can't communicate what they want without descending
into madness. I don't know how good an indicator of complexity SLOC is, but
I've a project with ~ 150,000 SLOC, another at ~ 60,000, another at ~ 16,000,
another at ~ 18,000. That's all the code I've added, not the included
libraries and so on.

My business grew organically, with introductions from friends, old colleagues
and distant family. So there were calls at the beginning. Now my business
number goes straight to voicemail, and important clients get to call my
mobile. So the answer is that I don't do marketing and sales so to speak, I do
quotes, so I suppose that should be included. That accounts for less than a
day a month.

~~~
la_barba
I see. Thanks!

------
codegeek
There are 2 things:

1\. Commoditized website development where any tom dick and harry can setup a
quick website on wix/squarespace etc because frankly, they don't need more
than that. It is really hard to compete against tools like these because they
sell $2/Year websites (or something low enough)

2\. There are businesses (small-mid sized) that have built something way back
(read:late 90s-early 2000s) who are struggling with their in-house system and
looking for a better solution. But they are too scared to think about changing
because they don't know who to talk to and what it will cost. You need to find
those businesses.

Source: My company finds the #2 and it is a gold mine.

~~~
pragmaticlurker
for the 1., it depends on the quality you want to achieve.

A business that relies on those platforms can't be called business.

~~~
Legogris
I'd argue otherwise. For example, my sister just opened a local swimming pool
for dogs and using one of these platforms is great for her so far. A presence
with opening hours, pricing and contact details are all many small businesses
need.

~~~
calewis
I need to know more about this business.

~~~
Legogris
Exercise and rehabilitation, turns out it's something dog owners in the area
had been missing.

------
willhallonline
As someone who has been a freelancer and ran a web development company for a
time (now I work in DevOps), I would suggest that the market for _web
development_ as a freelancer is limited. Honestly, I think that you would
spend most of your time picking up clients, who regularly will not want to pay
the rates that would cover your costs, let alone allow you to make a profit.

However, contracting seems as strong as it ever has done, especially in areas
like Javascript and Python development. I would opt for contracting rather
than freelancing, especially if you are able to get remote contracts.

I know lots of people who do make a living from web development, but they are
largely within medium sized companies that have a marketing/sales budget and
are able to cope with multiple large contracts simultaneously.

------
whamlastxmas
Strongly no. Overseas workers will work for tremendously less and it's hard
enough to get people to understand your value proposition in person. People
want cheap. Either start an agency and get real clients, often local, or just
get a full time job.

Even with the big projects I've gotten, it winds up being about $20/hour.
Versus about $60/hour at a regular job

~~~
potta_coffee
Most of my work comes from companies who have gotten burned by overseas
developers and want someone closer to home who they can meet personally and
will be in the same or at least mostly overlapping timezone. So yes, in the US
you can't compete on price but you can compete on service.

------
nathan-io
The money isn't in the website, it's in the related services.

If you're targeting SMBs, you can almost treat the actual site design/dev as a
loss leader.

Offer comprehensive packages that guarantee you long-term recurring monthly
revenue, rather than a just a one-off "website development" service.

For an example, a "premium" hosting/management service is an easy sell.

* "Your own virtual private server with dedicated IP address and hardware resources"

* "Uptime monitoring" (automated/free)

* "Site & Server Security" (one-time hardening of your CMS and/or any other attack vectors + apt update / apt upgrade every couple weeks)

* "DNS Management" (create or change some DNS record every few months, if ever)

* "Site backup and restoration" (one click on Digital Ocean and many other providers), etc.

* "x free hours per month of updates, no rollover" (will often go unused)

My agency has SMB clients paying up to $250/mo for hosting/management alone
(actual cost: $10-15 per client).

Easy money.

Next, we have SEM and local SEO (citation building/management and reputation
monitoring).

The beauty of these services is that they're relatively easy to scale and/or
outsource to some white label provider. In the case of local SEO, tools like
BrightLocal basically do all the work.

Even if you don't want to take this route, you can still differentiate with
strong backend development skills.

For example, we secured one contract because we offered a creative solution to
integrate the website with the client's legacy on-premise CRM (which has no
API), which no one else had the first clue how to do because there isn't a
WordPress plugin for that (slight sarcasm).

------
codingdave
I've gotten freelance projects from small local businesses, but not for
building the sites. After the sites are built, people need help solving the
problems that come next.

As an example, almost every local doctor's office in my town wants online
request forms that auto-populate their internal calendaring app. They all get
emails coming in, and have manual processes to move the emailed data into
another app. OK, I can help with that. Other times, they have functional web
sites but want help with making them convert more business. So it gets into
discussions about the design, the copy, calls to actions, etc. And sometimes,
they simply don't understand what a web site can do for their business - they
slap up a brochure and call it good, then wonder why it isn't helping their
business.

So you end up being more of a business consultant to understand what they are
trying to accomplish, and then applying technology to make it happen.

------
cubano
For sure it is. In fact, it's as good as it's ever been.

One caveat though...you gotta know your shit. The days of babysitting websites
and charging fairly outrageous fees are mostly over, and good riddance.

I've found that true LAMP or MEAN-full stack dev is really in demand now...so
much so that I recently raised my hourly to a once-only-dreamed-about $100/hr
US on Upwork, and I'm getting more interest in my services by the day.

Sometimes I actually have to pinch myself to believe this work environment is
real...I often tell my friends, as sincerely as possible and with true
humility, that I work in an absolute dream world that, up to now, only Rock
Stars inhabited.

I mean...who else gets to work their own hours?...do whatever I really want
_while_ working?...travel the country/hemisphere on a whim?...goto music
festivals and get paid while doing so?...live on the beach one month and on a
mountain top another?

Well..I do. And man, am I grateful.

------
Leggomyeggolas
I mean...........yeah. I make $125/hr consulting doing a mix of front end and
back end web development. The market is really strong for that. Maybe not for
glorified brochure sites, but when it comes to actual web app development the
market is super strong.

------
nullandvoid
We are in a constant struggle to fill front end web developer roles in every
place I've worked at in the UK.

Seems to be a real shortage of quality developers And we offer competitive
rates at my current place of work

~~~
akmarinov
But do you offer remote work?

There’s plenty of need for developers, yet almost no companies consider remote
positions.

~~~
onion2k
That's not really true. There's lots of companies that offer remote front end
dev positions in the UK - but only if you're somewhere else in the UK.
Otherwise tax and timezones are painful.

I know because I've been looking recently..

~~~
mprev
I run a small consultancy in the UK (not web dev) and hiring people outside
the country is a pain.

You have to really want that person because it is a trade off in terms of
admin overhead and cost.

Today, we have one full time team member in Germany and in the past we had
someone in the Netherlands too.

In both cases, we used specialised payroll companies who charge a fee to be
that person’s legal employer. They take care of taxes, health insurance, and
other legal requirements. The cost of such a service has varied between €350
and €450 a month.

The real cost though is in covering the different payroll taxes in other
countries. Add that to the payroll company’s fee and it costs us at least
£10,000 more each year to employ someone in Germany than if they were in the
UK.

I’ve seen confusion here and on twitter as to why more companies won’t hire
remote outside their own country. The reason might be that it’s relatively
expensive and outside the company’s competence.

~~~
lagadu
I don't get that. Just do what I did: open a single person company and charge
them monthly for your (pre-tax) salary. This has drawbacks like not being
protected by the employment laws of the country you live in (are any of us
really concerned about losing a job?) but advantages such as having a lot more
flexibility tax-wise along with usually very significantly lower tax rates due
to you paying yourself via dividends instead of salary, also you can have
multiple clients simultaneously if you can handle the workload.

Details on tax optimization vary depending on your country of residence and
the country where you opened your company.

For the "employer" company this is also very simple as they're just paying the
invoices you send them.

~~~
mprev
Not everyone wants the overhead of running a company.

Some countries, including the Netherlands and Germany, specifically prevent
this in either law or regulation.

------
nickelcitymario
Yes, but the honest money is at the higher end of the market.

At the smaller scale (think $2k budgets), clients are honestly better off with
a Wordpress template. I never recommend Wix or Squarespace because the code is
usually atrocious, which impacts mobile and SEO and accessibility, but there
are lots of excellent WP templates.

Clients who have bigger budgets can now look at things like:

\- Honest to goodness great copywriting. If the purpose of their website is to
sell their products and services, great copywriting is the easiest way to
improve. It's inexpensive compared to everything else, it's super fast and
easy to test ideas and optimize results.

\- E-Commerce. This is usually best served with a service like Shopify, but
it's still relatively involved enough that clients tend to like having some
assistance in the process.

\- Uniquely good design. Design CAN have a tremendous impact on a business.
But I list it in 3rd here because the vast majority of web designers are
putting out the same site[1] over and over again. If you're not doing
something truly unique, or if the client's needs are best solved with a
relatively standard template, then why are you re-inventing the wheel?

\- Engineering. Virtually any business can benefit from good web engineering,
because the out-of-the-box options will never 100% meet any businesses precise
needs. However, the cost versus benefit is usually far too high for most
businesses.

This is why I say the money is at the higher end of the market. Businesses
that have annual revenue in the double digit millions will not be well served
by default Wix or Wordpress templates. They generally need quality design,
copy, and engineering. And they won't be scared off if that ends up costing
$50k or $100k or even $500k, so long as the value is there.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you can make some quick-hit money helping
clients who simply don't want to do it themselves. I tend to charge roughly
$3k for a simple site, I'm 100% transparent about what they're getting (a
template, customized for branding; out-of-the-box WP functionality; very light
copy editing), and so far a lot of smaller businesses have been happy with
that service. The value is there for them, and they get the confidence of
knowing I'll solve any unforeseen problems that might come up.

[1] Ex: [https://www.dagusa.com/](https://www.dagusa.com/)

~~~
bluetidepro
> I never recommend Wix or Squarespace because the code is usually atrocious,
> which impacts mobile and SEO and accessibility, but there are lots of
> excellent WP templates.

I can't vouch for Wix, but the code in Squarespace is actually usually very
well done and semantic for most themes. And honestly, they can end up being
just as bad or good as any WP template you'll find, so I wouldn't personally
just throw that accusation around.

~~~
nickelcitymario
> I wouldn't personally just throw that accusation around.

Fair enough. I may be scarred from seeing some truly horribly implementations
in the past. But I've seen just as bad in WP.

------
ficklepickle
I freelanced to gain experience. Most businesses would rather not mess around
with Wix, but they also don't want to pay thousands.

Find a small business with a crappy website and make them a better one. I
mostly did restaurants/bars. I took partial payment in food.

If you are in it for the money, then no, it is not worth it. If you are in it
for experience and to progress in your career, then go for it!

Obviously, I can't guarantee it will work for you, too. But it worked for me.
I recently landed my first contract with a start-up, and I should never have
to go back to taking partial payment in food :-)

------
nness
Development expertise in enterprise tech is incredibly lucrative for
freelancing/contractors. The day-rate for an on-shore AEM Developer gives me a
small heart-attack.

~~~
chasd00
i agree, find some enterprise-y software and learn it well and then go out and
contract/free-lance to large companies and consulting firms. If there's a
certification for your system of choice pick it up. It may seem worthless to
you but to the people who have to get budgets approved resources with
certifications are a golden ticket.

~~~
jamesmp98
> find some enterprise-y software and learn it well and then go out and
> contract/free-lance

Unfortunately this usually means having built your prior career around said
software as it's not always cheap /easy / possible to get a cop and self-
learn. There are exceptions of course.

------
filesystemdude
Totally freelance? Not sure. Small teams doing custom site development?
Absolutely.

I've seen large companies pay six figures to stand up a microsite, the kind of
thing that one person could easily put together in a few weeks.

The catch is that you don't necessarily have a few weeks, you have a few days
to go from concept exploration to go-live. It really becomes more about
project management than web development in these instances, having a network
who you can turn to quickly when you need more hands on deck.

And though I hate the phrase "full-stack" because it means so many things that
it sometimes seems like it means nothing, they do really expect a well-rounded
technologist.

I'm working with a consultant right now on a web project for my employer. I
talked to him yesterday about IE11 fallbacks for Flexbox, proxy setup, CDN
configuration, logging and metrics, debugging a custom legacy spaghetti-coded
marketing-tech JavaScript, modifying a Drupal PHP module to support project-
specific requirements, configuring cron, and a handful of other things, and I
fully expect when I talk to him today he's going to have all of those tasks
finished.

Those people are invaluable. Someone who can write a little HTML and CSS and
maybe stand up WordPress? I'm sure there are jobs for that, but I don't have
any need to hire them as a freelancer because I expect everyone on our staff
to have those abilities.

That said, doing freelance web dev is _exactly_ how I got my foot in the door
with the job I have now. But it paid squat for the time I was doing it, and I
hated it because my time ended up being 50%+ of the time running the business
side of things instead of building website, which is the part I actually
enjoyed.

------
NoblePublius
I run a digital development agency specializing in mobile apps. For the last
three years, the web app portion of my business has doubled each year. There
remains extreme demand for front end web developers though the basic projects
for restaurants and doctors’ offices are now owned by Squarespacr and Wix

~~~
cutler
What is the profile of a typical client in the market for such an app by which
I assume you mean one built with React, Angular or Vue?

~~~
NoblePublius
Seed stage startups with non technical founders, Series B/C startups with big
backlogs and deadlines, or Fortune 1000s with idiotic legacy product teams
that couldn’t innovate themselves out of a paper bag.

~~~
cutler
Fee range?

------
biznickman
Yes! However if you bill yourself as a "freelance web developer" you have
instantly commoditized yourself. The only problem you are solving is someone
who's thinking to themselves "man I could really use a developer". This is a
lot of people who on average have small budgets.

If you package yourself properly (for example, "I help founders take their
startup idea from dream to reality"), you have now placed yourself in a new,
more valuable, bucket. You have to hunt for the proper client fit but your
offering is of greater value (in this circumstance you make dreams a reality).

Granted, entrepreneurs aren't the best market but the key is having some
differentiator in your market and not offering a commodity service (which is
what Wix, Squarespace, and frankly "web development" is).

------
vanadium
Clients care about the value proposition, and this is the right time to be
heavily specialized.

1\. In SEM and SEO both, technical performance is blossoming as a crucial need
in both search engine ranking and the ad bidding process, say nothing of the
benefits to mobile conversions and decrease in bounce rates. All of this is
well-covered in numerous e-com/retail studies. There's significant value here
for companies if you can articulate why. AMP isn't a cure-all in any way, and
many clients are going to look at the investment versus return and decide
instead that the investment in optimizing what they already have is worth the
price.

2\. Accessibility is also massively growing, due to increasing litigiousness
and the contemporary view that the ADA covers websites in general as opposed
to individual legal mandates (such as those in public education, healthcare,
etc). There are also specialized, legitimate certifications such as the IAAP
[1] where you can pretty much write your own paycheck with the amount of
consulting work out there.

But you _really_ need to know your shit for both of them, and increasingly,
specialized consultancies in these areas have formed or are forming to go
after those companies. You're not going to get away with half-assing it either
--especially #2 due to the legal liability--and you'll absolutely have to
demonstrate your value. Additionally, this actually opens up opportunities to
consult for companies that make site builders and other tools, to ensure
they're thoroughly considering these specialized aspects of development.

There's also still a lot of good remote roles out there for more experienced
folks; about 3/4 of the Front-End friends of mine clear well above $100k/year
working for established companies and startups in a 100% remote basis. The
best way to get into that realm is networking; the adage that the most
important way to get where you want to go is through networking is true, as is
the adage that a good percentage of the good jobs are never even posted.

But as for the bottom-of-the-market, I started back in '97 doing those types
of small websites, and there's been hardly any appetite for freelancers in
terms of being able to make a sustainable living of it. If you're going to go
this route, you need to land profitable fish with a real need and actual money
to pay you with.

[1]
[https://www.accessibilityassociation.org/certification](https://www.accessibilityassociation.org/certification)

------
bnt
The market for JavaScript developers is absolutely booming with no signs of
slowing down. I mention JS, only because you mention websites. But in reality,
the demand for skilled freelance developers of all skillsets is in rise.

~~~
abledon
what freelance website do you think is the best out there?

~~~
programmarchy
Don’t go this route. If you don’t have a network, team up with local agencies
looking for contractors and do staff aug with them to get your name out there.

------
nebulaserfer
Advent of mix, squarespace and other website builders is great. In general you
don't want to "code" boring similar sites with the same functionality each
time. It's awesome that small businesses and casual users can cheaply get some
website running without nightmare of hiring/managing, it just works for them.

As a web developer you can code really interesting stuff instead and
experiment with other approaches which can't be automated. If client wants to
tailor every aspect of logic and look is where the value of web developers is.

------
mimixco
I have to say no, as well -- unless you're going to do high end sites that
require custom code. Shopify is one option if you can get into their experts
program but, like any other platform, they can cut you off anytime they want
and there's nothing you can do about it. Outsourced devs overseas have also
cut the price of this business to nothing. I did custom web dev from 1995
until 2015 when the bottom dropped out.

------
stephenr
> the demand for custom built sites are at an all time low.

The demand for custom built _static_ sites you mean. Dynamic (i.e. functional)
sites, aka "web apps" are extremely popular. Every man and his dog want one
(often even when they don't need it).

------
cutler
I think mobile is the real differentiator for today's freelancer. I you have
React Native you will always have plenty of work. Better still if you also
have Kotlin and Swift. Everything is mobile now.

------
SteedMonteiro
the market is great for freelance developer and the demand will continue to
grow. Self-development service like wix etc... are failing because development
is something complex and people still prefer to rely on professionals.

If you are looking for remote work as a freelance try our platform
[https://open.studio](https://open.studio) we don't do interview, so keep your
resumate... only our work matter :)

------
matz1
I believe so, more and more app moving to the web now. I would image most
development in the future will be on the web.

------
lwhi
Who are you working for?

Freelance doesn't necessarily mean you need to work for businesses without a
budget.

------
Theodores
Yes. There is the game changing nature of CSS Grid that makes it possible for
the freelancer clued up on how to write HTML5 properly to compete against
agencies that are still using layout hacks and frameworks to make a website
look okay. It comes down to cost.

With a conventional visual design process it takes time for some visual
mockups to be made, approved and then sent on to the programmers for them to
make in a paint-by-numbers process. By then you have a team of ten and all of
them have rent/mortgages to pay. Before you know it the client have a six
figure bill. It is actually very difficult to make money if you own an agency
and have these UX people, UI people, SEO people, marketing people, sales
staff, micro-managers, team leads, test engineers, backend developers,
frontend developers, devops people, accounting and admin staff to pay for. The
actual job as brought in might actually only have two programmers doing the
work that actually gets delivered. Everything else is meeting room hot-air.

This agency team is not going to be able to move quickly to use CSS Grid as
everyone is specialised and the process that goes with it is rigid. However,
CSS Grid enables frontend web development to be done in a fraction of the
time. Getting a team to us it though? Not easy when people know what they know
and are used to doing things the way they have always done them.

Everyone has had a website already in the world of business. They know how
much it costs and how tedious the process is. They have established their
branding along the way. The UX of the web has also settled. But what they
don't know is that for the first time ever the web has a decent layout engine
- CSS Grid - so what they see as the website no longer has to be built with
hacks and more hacks. Even if these hacks are professionalised and given fancy
words like 'responsive' it is still a world of hacks and code that is a
nightmare to maintain.

For this reason - the game changing nature of CSS Grid - I believe that
freelance web development is not only viable it is a veritable gold mine. The
only thing holding you back being the realities of running your own business,
charging people and getting paid as well as doing the actual work.

CSS Grid is a new skill set. There is no horde of developers up to speed with
it. The benefits can be sold to clients as it is quicker, results in pages
that download quicker and it can be maintained. Accessibility comes into the
bargain too as for CSS Grid there is no need for HTML to be a mix of div
elements and class attributes, it can use the proper HTML5 elements and have
the accessibility benefits that these elements bring.

There is no point competing in the world of 'naive HTML'. You can make
qualitatively better web pages for people and command a premium for it that no
agency can pay you for.

~~~
velcrovan
Clients don't care what the CSS looks like.

~~~
mxuribe
Agreed, you would never sell "CSS" to a client...Rather, you might state that
you can turn around projects much faster than your competitors because of your
vast experience, as well as your skills in employing some advanced
technology...blablabla. You could also add that your use of this mysterious
advanced technology allows for web pages to be "lighter", hence faster for
their customers to view, and accessible to users with disabilities, which also
helps with search engines reading/indexing their website, etc. So, yeah, would
never sell "CSS" directly. ;-)

------
rabarar
Nope

------
throwayEngineer
If you are talking HTML/css, there are many paid and unpaid options for under
500 dollars.

However, those are ugly websites. You could make more being a beautiful
website creator. That is a different skill, requiring vision.

You could make more complex websites, ones that interact with the database in
custom ways. Full stack web development is not dead. Although likely pays less
than working at fortune 500 with the same skill set.

