
Drawbacks of Freelance Web Development - altern8
http://foorious.com/articles/drawbacks-of-freelance-web-development/
======
old-gregg
Another disadvantage of freelancing is generally lower bar of requirements and
less interesting work. There are always exceptions, of course, but it's
usually mind-destroying disposable CRUD work or building iOS clones of
existing web apps, don't expect to eat "rich programmer food" [1] as a
freelancer.

Besides, you will rarely have an opportunity to learn from other/smarter
people, so growing professionally will be a challenge. I may even go as far as
to say it's very easy to see your programming skills deteriorate unless you
apply a conscious effort to mentally stay in shape.

There are always exceptions of course (especially for a specialist vs
generalist) but this has been my experience being on both sides of the table.

[1] [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com.tr/2007/06/rich-
programmer-f...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com.tr/2007/06/rich-programmer-
food.html)

~~~
CM30
On the other hand, I would point out that sometimes the opposite is true.
Working alone (or perhaps in a place where you might be one of the best in the
room) means you learn more about programming and how to solve problems than
you would otherwise. Why? Because if you're the only one working on something,
you have to be the one to solve all the difficult problems.

On the other hand, if you work with other/smarter people, it's also possible
to end up not really doing as much challenging work, as they'll take over
anything you see as too 'difficult' or too much effort to learn. It's
definitely recommended to learn from others, but you have to make sure you're
not just letting them do all the work.

------
s3nnyy
Switzerland is very close to Italy. I don't know if you are willing to move
but if you are, you could easily work here 3-4 days a week (60%-80%
emploment), make more than enough to live, have no clients who call you at
night and build your own product/company in your spare time.

At least this is what I am doing right now.

If you look for a tech-job in Zurich, check out my story "8 reasons why I
moved to Switzerland to work in IT" on
[https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-
moved-t...](https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-to-
switzerland-to-work-in-it-c7ac18af4f90) or send me a mail to the address in my
HN-profile.

~~~
TheLogothete
What if I only know English? Do you have an idea how is the landscape looking
for "data science"/marketing analyst folks?

------
hayksaakian
Another angle is to progressively fire your smallest clients and get referrals
from your larger ones.

You can scale to 880$ per hour or whatever it was using this strategy.

It could be hard emotionally to fire nice clients, so keep a good list of devs
handy who you can send your undesirable work.

Last thing is to read patio11's guide about freelancing -- its a very relevant
read.

~~~
blue1
> patio11's guide about freelancing

link?

~~~
jk4930
[http://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-
hits/)

------
michaelbuckbee
In the context of HN: a huge upside of freelancing is that it puts you into
direct contact with the types of problems that would make great B2B and
bootstrapped startups.

I know a number of developers that were able to shift themselves from
freelancing to running a SAAS via productizing their consulting work.

------
pmontra
In my freelancing experience it's possible to scale the job by creating teams
of developers per project and coordinating them. The problem (if it's a
problem) is that your not a real freelancer anymore: you have obligations to
those developers and you have to care about them, so you're more like a
company boss. You might also have to become a real company, if your country's
fiscal legislation favors that. Still, you can't have more than a few projects
at the same time. I didn't make so much extra money when I had a couple of
loose teams over the Internet: the profit is linear with the number of the
developers. I think one must go all in and become a real company with as many
devs as possible, but that's a different life.

------
mhassaan
I have been doing freelancing for last 3 years and i agree with you but i
think you can avail opportunity to scale your business if you are lucky to get
big clients because you become a business for others and as every business man
wants to scale his business so i think its solely you who can show a big
picture to a client. If his business grows following your picture so as
you.Its my point of view though i am not that much experienced as you are but
i think that should work in this way (mutual benefits). Above all i am happy
to see a post in English by an Italian :p . Its my 2nd month here in Italy and
its hard to find an english speaker here. :-(

~~~
pmontra
In this kind of job is not so difficult to find people that speak English here
in Italy, but most devs read and write (especially read) much better than they
speak or understand.

~~~
mhassaan
You are quite right about this :) but i am sure developers somehow can
understand each other no matter the language .

------
misiti3780
I have been freelancing for 5 years and agree with most of this. Thinking
about it all the time is absolutely true, and my clients call me at weird
times also.

I think you can make more money free-lancing than you can working for someone
else if you are good at business development, and although it is difficult to
scale, if you have talented friends, building a consulting business in a major
metropolitan area (NYC,SF, Chicago) is probably easier than building a
startup.

It would be mucher harder to do from Italy because of the time difference and
a lot of high-paying clients expect you to be on site at least some of the
time.

------
einarvollset
The main drawback to freelancing is defining yourself as a "$$ by the hour"
worker. It's very common to do so, but it invariably leads to burnout. It's
not terribly hard to shift your mindset to do something different, but it's
not necessarily obvious how to do so.

The main things to do are:

\- understand that recurring revenue is unsurpassed in terms of LTV of your
customers.

\- realize that it's easy to become a world expert in an extremely narrow
field

..then combine the two: what niche thing (much narrower than you're thinking)
can you become a world expert in and charge a recurring fee for?

~~~
timpiele
Yup, bill by value not the hour. Look at a Project and say that'll be $10,000
and knock it out in two weeks.

~~~
pmontra
I usually do fixed cost projects unless projects are so ill defined to require
by the hour billing. Your advice is my advice but unfortunately customers are
not so out of touch with reality. If they expect the project to be done in 2
weeks they'll start negotiating from 2,000 and If I can do it in two weeks
they won't expect more than one month.

------
EGreg
Why not re-use software you made or others made. Use open source platforms
like Wordpress. At our company, we didn't find any good platform for building
modern social apps out of reusable components and have the whole thing be
maintainable (Drupal came the closest) so we built our own. It has been open
sourced so everyone is free to use it. Get a project, assemble it from pages
and tools, collect the overhead :)

[http://qbix.com/platform](http://qbix.com/platform)

------
CM30
I agree with much of the article, but I also sort of question the idea you'll
automatically make money being a freelancer. Because you see, a lot of small
companies and individuals don't really respect freelancers and single
developers as much as they do companies, and often see them as a cheap way to
get things done. An awful lot of them think you can pay someone a couple of
hundred quid for a clone of Facebook or the likes.

Agencies may pay their employees less individually, but they tend to be able
to negotiate prices better, since there's a certain perception of
'leigitimacy' that individuals don't have. The same company that pays them ten
or so grand for a site might think they can pay the random freelancer a couple
of hundred quid with a few extra beers thrown in.

This gets even worse if it's someone you know (like say, a friend of a friend)
asking for a site done, since the price usually ends up dropping even further
(from a couple of hundred quid to less than a hundred quid or free). Working
freelance is an easy way to make people think you'll help them with their
'world changing million app' for nothing.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Agreed; never market yourself as a freelancer. Become a design house - even if
its only you. That image flies much better.

------
timpiele
I've been a freelancer since 1996. I've made $5,000 a year and $200,000 a
year. You scale by charging more, using retainers writing books etc.

To fight boredom I'm selling my home in Seattle in 2016 and moving to Ireland
for 3 months, then Sweden then New Zealand etc.

------
jakemor
Awesome read, thanks so much for posting.

Have you ever hired developers to work for you? How did that go if you did?

