[gregjor]

The easiest way to start is to change from employee to freelancer (contractor) with your current employer.

If you can start freelancing with projects lined up you won’t have to start out trying to get work, which will get demoralizing fast.

Don’t expect to get much from the popular platforms like Fiverr and Upwork. While it’s possible to get good contracts there, those sites are (a) full of low-paying short-term gig work, and (b) full of low-balling competition. Your need to aim higher because competition is always most fierce at the low end. Instead look to past employers, professional contacts, friends. Focus on building long-term relationships rather than churning through online piece-work boards.

Position yourself as a specialist in a niche that has business value (i.e. e-commerce security expert) rather than with a laundry list of languages, frameworks, stacks. Know your customer — no small business needs 2,000 more lines of Javascript by next month but lots of businesses need specific business problems solved.

I’ve been freelancing for over a decade. I wrote some opinionated advice on my web site (no ads, no paywall, no affiliate links).

https://typicalprogrammer.com/how-to-start-freelancing-and-g...

There are some other possibly relevant articles there too. Good luck.

[throwcean]

Thanks. That's valuable input for sure. I don't have the option to freelance for my current employer but that's OK. I know a few people that might know potential customers They have worked as freelancers themselves.

I will now go on reading your blog post and potentially others you have written. Thanks!

BTW I have read that advice to position yourself as a specialist in a niche before. For all others reading this thread here I can also recommend this article: https://andyadams.org/everything-i-know-about-freelancing/

[gregjor]

A business value niche, not a technical niche. Your clients will most often have no idea what React or PHP or Postgres mean. They will understand cost, risk, opportunity. Domain expertise has a lot more value to a freelancer than technical expertise.

I usually start with clients by asking them to list their top five or ten pain points or unfulfilled needs. Those are usually business problems: Our invoices get sent out late, we’re not calculating shipping charges accurately. Sometimes they are technical problems: server crashes every other day, we don’t have good backups, we failed a security audit. I’ve never heard low-level programming problems as top pain points. The potential client wants to hear that you can address their actual problems. How many years of React experience you have, or how cool you think Rust is, are not relevant.