
Ask HN: Is part time freelancing possible - xupybd
A good friend of mine is looking for ways to boost his income as his third child is on the way. He is a youth worker full time, that&#x27;s his passion but it doesn&#x27;t pay well. He can write software but hasn&#x27;t professionally.<p>My gut feeling is that it&#x27;s going to be hard to make money without experience and connections but I&#x27;d love to be wrong. Has anyone had experience doing this sort of thing?
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codingdave
If he isn't trying to get "startup rich", and really just wants some extra
income, just knock on the door of every mom & pop shop on your local main
street and offer help with their web site. You'll find a few takers, and that
starts your portfolio and network. You won't make great money on such things,
but you'll start to get some folks who need simple projects - a script to copy
data from email into an accounting system, for example. So he can start to
write software professionally, and add that to his portfolio.

It will take time. The first few projects won't pay much. But that is how you
start - with small projects. Then you ask the people who couldn't afford much
more than a website with a couple scripts if they know anyone who needs help.
And you work your way up to bigger companies. With bigger problems. And bigger
budgets. Eventually, you'll see a pain point that multiple companies have
asked for. Write software to fix the pain point. And expand that software into
a business.

This is exactly how successful "lifestyle" software companies are built. Do
small things until you find the bigger things.

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brudgers
It's possible, but not easy unless work falls in your lap. If it doesn't fall
in your lap, you have to find it and finding it is hard. The difficulty is
probably proportional to how rich the people you know are. Rich people are
more likely to have a rationale for hiring a software developer and more
likely to have the wherewithal to pay for the work. In other words, the kids
your friend works with probably don't need software development and don't have
much money. Or to put it a third way, you're not hiring your friend which is
not a criticism of you just an example of how far up the food chain freelance
software clients have to be.

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davidajackson
>> My gut feeling is that it's going to be hard to make money without
experience and connections but I'd love to be wrong

Yes. You can do this by: Building lots of products and launching them and
reaching out to people who are looking for contractors online and sharing
similar/relevant products you're launched.

It sounds like you're describing the classic problem for getting started in a
new career (no work experience & jobs like experience). The numbers likely
won't be pretty for trying to get clients. For example, I know someone who is
a self taught designer, and very good too, and had to apply to 100+ jobs in
this market to get 5 interviews, and then had an offer from 1 and decided to
end the process and take the job. Those numbers can be discouraging but it
only takes 1 yes to get that first real work experience, and from there it
only gets easier.

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muzani
I've done it for a long time. The demand is so high that they'll keep raising
the prices even as you turn them down. Once you get clients, you'll keep
getting them.

It sounds like the hard part is just meeting enough people to consider
yourself qualified. A third of the work in freelancing is marketing, another
third is research and/or selling off prototypes at a loss. For example, it's
costly to figure out how to make an app with Google+ sign in, but it's easy to
do the second time.

It could be possible to start cheap, by letting experienced developers
outsource that kind of work to you for something like $10/hour. You can also
look for Fiverr style stuff like assembling a Wordpress site or writing tests.

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chrisandchris
If you start at $10/hour it won‘t hurt a company at all if you rise prices,
for like, 100%... But who will charge that much and still make a living?

Part-time freelancer might work, but you need to know your customer and your
customer needs to know what you provide him. Otherwise you might to loose
customers over „I‘m sorry I‘m only availble Fridays“.

~~~
muzani
I think it's a fair price for someone who has no reputation, poor availability
and little confidence. They can always increase their prices later with
experience. Lots of people are also happy to outsource to someone who works
slowly and cheaply, as long as the work isn't core. For example, we had a lot
of side features that nobody in the company had time to do, or things like
converting a hybrid app to native, where a lot of the work was porting
screenshots into XML.

Cheap, hourly makes sense sometimes, because a newbie might take 2 hours to do
one layout while an experienced pro might take 5 minutes. This lets them
experiment at their own pace and eliminates risk for a company. It also pays
better than say, doing Uber.

Ironically charging too high can be detrimental for someone new as they tend
to get paralyzed with trying to do too much in a compact amount of time. It
might take someone an hour just to get into the flow if they're new at it.

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stakkur
The answer always depends on clients. Can you find and keep them? Are they
adequate? Does the work amount to 'part time'?

And many 'full time' freelancers (I've been one) find themselves repeatedly
being 'part time' when there's a slow month.

Freelancing is hard, and is a combination of luck, timing, and seriously hard
work. There is no formula. Ever.

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giantg2
What I don't understand is why people pop out more kids if they have to pick
up another job to pay for them.

You already have 2. Isn't the point of having kids to spend time raising them?
Now there has to be a third and you have to pick up a second job so you hardly
spend time with them.

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xupybd
In this case he will be dropping his hours in his other job. He will do this
either way. His current job is for a charity and pays below minimum wage.

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giantg2
That would make sense. I didn't see that in the post.

