

How to start freelancing with real example? - afail

Hi,<p>we are small development team from Europe. 3 people. We are all currently employed at other companies, meaning not yet registered as company, just a development team that wants to grow carefuly, slow and precisely. We have setup a website with 0 cost (using Google App Engine) and posted our few apps as portfolio there, also a tutorials section and a blog. They are not very popular, but yet show the ability of our team to develop mobile and web software.<p>It seems like we have everything, but the trust from people. We are trying for a month now to get a freelance project on the commonly used websites for the purpose (Freelancer and ODesk), but noone chooses us. It's like they see 0 projects, 0 rating and just skip us. And we are ready to deliver projects on time and in good quality. What in your experience should a freelance team or person do so that people that outsource chooses them as their freelancers? Could it be that sites like ODesk and Freelance are more for personal use (Firstname/Lastname), rather than using a team name (which comes as a company name)? Or there is something we miss in the whole process and get not chosen when someone makes their freelancing decisions?<p>Thanks!
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kellros
Having a website is useful but essential - all of my freelance contracts I
have gotten were via contacts (friends, family, acquintances).

Recently gotten one from a friend who I consulted a couple of months ago and
told them (he's a part owner of the company) that they don't need a website
(yet - unless they never plan to make money off it). Now they're back with a
budget and a plan ready to get things rolling - and I've managed to get 10%
share in profits generated by the website.

I'd suggest you approach it differently - consider your freelance team a
business. One of the reasons I dislike Freelancer/ODesk is because they tend
to treat website/software developers as commodities.

That generally works out bad for everyone. Build me a facebook for 50 dollars?
Heck no.

Convert an entire website to Joomla and replace "Live Chat" functionality for
a fixed price of 5 dollars? Haha.

As a business doing 'freelance' work you shouln't opt to work for less than
40-50 dollars an HOUR. Looking over those requests you can easily judge ones
that are worth it.

Avoid the el cheapos - it's usually the people that can't make up their minds,
always extends deadlines to 'add in last minute features' or refuse to pay you
(only offering 10% payment for work done).

Find out their budgets beforehand and guestimate them if their specs are
within their budget. Don't work for charity, unless it's for your mother or
for charity - which then you should be looking at
<http://www.hackersforcharity.org/> not on ODesk or Freelancer.

Also, aim for local freelance projects. Your clients will be much quicker to
react if you can make time to sit with them to discuss their strategy and
goal. (Agile over e-mail doesn't work)

Be sensible and be honest with your prospective clients. They just might be
sending more work your way (that's how freelancers get 'set' with a steady
flow of work).

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Donito
Link to portfolio?

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gexla
General tips...

On Odesk, Elance, etc. Go for projects from buyers who have a history of
picking projects. Stay away from people who make lots of listings but never
pick a provider. Don't neglect new buyers with no history, but don't expect a
high rate of being picked up from them. Make sure the listing is strong, well
fleshed out, etc. If it's a two liner then stay away.

Don't do scatter shot if you can avoid it. The more niche the better. If you
can position yourselves as an expert in X rather than "we will take on
anything" then you will have a better chance of standing out and less
competition. Hit a good niche and you can land nearly every project.

Do a good explanation of how you will tackle their project rather than just a
general "this is who we are and this is what we can do" sort of proposal. The
more specifics the better for standing out. Giving them information they need
to know is a great way to get them to contact you asking more questions.

Try to go for project pricing rather than hourly pricing. A project which will
bring you in $100 / hour of development with project pricing will look better
than charging $50 each hour. Hourly rates shouldn't matter anyways as it's
really about the ROI.

Look for gems where you know the other developers don't know what they are
bidding on. Sometimes you can find projects where the other developers don't
know what they are bidding on but you know that you can knock it out in little
time and still get a great rate even by undercutting the other crazies. Don't
undercut, just set your bid around the top of the others.

Sometimes if you need more info, just set your bid to something crazy like $1
and then ask for more information. This will make you stand out and obviously
they won't hold you to the $1 bid.

Figure out what sort of work you would like to get and then run a Twitter bot
to look for certain keywords which indicate people are looking for developers
for that sort of work. There are tons of posts on Twitter for this sort of
thing. People like to use Twitter because it's a lazy way to get responses.
Generally these people are also very responsive. Use other social media as
well.

Roam forums and other areas where people can post to for the sorts of work you
would like. People who need developers know to go to these places and post
requests. You could also get more specific by drilling down to specific
software. In other words, if you do Ruby work, then you might look at forums
for Ruby based content management systems. Maybe you would rather not work
with a CMS, but at least this could get you started. Find something which has
a big community around it. Another twist is to find something which has a big
community and also has a commercial license, then you know that these
customers are willing to pay and they probably need a developer to go with
that license. A good keyword to look at for this sort of thing is "pro
network." This is niche gold.

Network like crazy with other developers. Getting work seems to be feast or
famine. Developers starting out may not find any work, but the developers who
have been at this a while have more work than they can handle with new
opportunities always knocking on the door. If you can show other developers
that you know your stuff, then they may ask you if you can take on their
overflow. This is great for them because they can give their overflow a better
response than "sorry, I can't help you at all."

You might consider doing something other than client work. Client work can be
a black hole which can devour you and all your time. Perhaps you could try
building something which can make money through subscriptions or by selling
products. An example of selling code would be Wordpress add-ons. If you could
build some sort of web service then this would give your team the experience
of building, shipping and growing something. That's great experience that a
lot of your competition may not have.

If you still want to do client work then you should consider saving up 3 - 6
months of living expenses and going all in. That way you will have the
flexibility to jump on more opportunities and open up more time if something
goes wrong. Once you get the flow started, you might also find that it doesn't
stop and that you could easily book yourself up for months to come.

This was largely off the cuff. If you were to brainstorm then you could keep
this list going. Always be tweaking and turning over new stones. This is how
you create your own luck.

