

How do I start freelancing? - _RPM

I have signed up for Odesk.com and have just recently started signing up for Elance.com<p>Successful freelancers who make a decent income, can you tell me your secret?<p>I&#x27;m currently a college student and have been doing web development for ~5 years, so I am capable. I have had 2 clients that I&#x27;ve met from my personal network, but I find it hard to expand that, so that is why I signed up for those websites.
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wikwocket
Here was my approach:

\- Talk to a family member who is employed in a business.

\- Find out a task they do that is repetitive, inefficient, automatable, and
enhanceable. Spoiler alert: there will be a lot of these.

\- Automate/improve/streamline said task.

\- Get noticed by said family member's boss.

\- Arrange to do more of same in exchange for 1099 compensation.

\- Lather, rinse, repeat.

\- Get referrals from said boss to other companies in same industry. To them,
you are not an employee's family member, you are an experienced industry
consultant. Raise your rates.

\- Lather, rinse, repeat.

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ozy23378
Since Odesk/Elance merger there's been a flood of freelancers who bid a low as
$3 per hour and very little for fixed price jobs. Seems the avg dollar amount
for work has been dropping. I could be wrong. Anyone else noticing a trend?

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thejteam
I have worked on the writer side rather than the tech side but I have noticed
some changes recently. I've seen 1)more obnoxious clients and postings and 2)
fewer actual awards being made.

A penny or two a word used to be the bottom end, now that seems to be mid-
range and some clients are demanding downwards of half a cent per word or less
while at least pretending that they want high quality work.

Needless to say I've spent even less time on there than I used to.

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gregjor
This article and comment thread from yesterday has some good freelancing tips.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8616952](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8616952)

My article about freelancing:

[http://typicalprogrammer.com/tips-for-successful-
freelancing...](http://typicalprogrammer.com/tips-for-successful-freelancing/)

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mrfusion
I'm curious if you could expand on why it's not worth looking like a real
business. Wouldn't a professional website, and business cards be useful for
networking?

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gregjor
It depends on your potential clients, of course. What I was cautioning against
in my article is spending a lot of time and money on the trappings of a
business -- LLC or corporation paperwork, accounting, web site, business
cards, office, separate phone number, etc. You don't need any of those things
to get started freelancing, and it's easy to get caught up in that non-
productive stuff because there's an industry profiting from selling the form
and trappings of entrepreneurship, when what you really need is the substance.

Most networking is done with smartphones and social media these days. Business
cards can be handy, but far more often I exchange email addresses and phone
numbers (or Twitter handles or whatever) with someone I want to follow up
with, or who may want to hire me. It's important to be findable online.
Potential customers you meet or who hear about you from someone else will more
likely be looking for you by name. A blog with prominent and current contact
info works, as does a public LinkedIn or GitHub profile.

I'm always a little skeptical of so-called freelancers who have the trappings
of an important consulting firm but give the impression that _that 's all_
they have.

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derwiki
Check out CodeMentor.io -- I make $60/hr helping people with simple Rails
issues. It's great lead gen for other contracting gigs!

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mrfusion
It seems like there are a ton of "mentors" on that site. How do you get
noticed?

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derwiki
Set availability hours, fill out different skills in your profile, keep a
CodeMentor tab open with status "Ready for Requests". You can also go to "Open
Requests" and volunteer for sessions.

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cweagans
odesk and elance are places where you go to get work that a) doesn't pay well,
b) has bad working conditions, and c) has next to no chance of future re-hire.
I do not recommend this.

As another commenter suggested, codementor.io is a good place to go. gun.io is
my favorite. There's a ton of interesting projects on there.

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_RPM
I believe you. Do you have experience with those sites?

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cweagans
Yeah. It was a long time ago, but the situation hasn't changed at all. You
simply can't make the kind of hourly rate that you should be making in
software development on those sites. It's too easy to get undercut by some guy
in India, Pakistan, etc., and even if you do get work, they'll expect a ton of
freebies and discounts. It's simply not worth the trouble.

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frankwiles
Start blogging solutions to problems and contributing to Open Source projects,
even if it's just docs. Raising your exposure online in general increases the
number of random freelancing offers you will receive.

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bizocean
Basic is sell at very low when you dont have good reviews. When you have
review raise your prices.

