Ask HN: Becoming a freelance web developer

[shire]

Okay I need some advice friends. I want to become a freelance web developer code from home and make money.

Can I make this happen in 2015 or is too late?

I want to either go with the JS or PHP route to begin my journey which is easier and will show me results right away as far as money?

Before I go to barnes and noble or started taking courses I need your advice on the right way to become a freelance web developer.

[bopf]

Never too late to do this. Just keep in mind that you are competing with super high skilled and inexpensive web developers from Eastern Europe and Asia. I would go down this route, build up great ratings on freelancer.com for example and slowly raise my rates. At the same time, I would always try to work on my own web projects with the goal to make an income from these. There are enough ideas out there and only very few who have the skills to bring them to life. If you are not sure what to build to make a living from your own projects, just read growthhackers.com - lots of stories there on how to build something that has a shot at becoming big.

[overallduka]

I start how freelancer few months ago(2), already take some jobs, is not late..and if you have several years of experience this is good. Just a tip, learn some new which are few people making it, im Rails developer and have many people doing it but PHP is 100x more, so i recommend get experience in some language/framework ascending like elixir/phoenix, go language, cowboy, erlang,javascript(have tons of frameworks like ember), so learn some new and make many apps using this, you can take 4 years of experience in some months and put this is your description/CV of the job.

Good Luck.

[fsk]

You didn't give enough information to answer.

Are you already an expert web developer? Are you a complete beginner? You sound like a complete beginner.

Try making a simple website and putting it on the Internet somewhere.

If you have no experience, it's going to be very hard to find clients. Maybe you should work a couple years as an employee somewhere first, to get experience?

You can try bidding for jobs on those elance/odesk websites, but those will be bottom feeder clients. Those will be the type of people who expect you to make a Facebook clone for $100.

[Gustomaximus]

It feels like there needs to be a mid-range Elance site. Perhaps some minimum prices to avoid the bottom feeders plus the workers are vetted to a higher level of skill/quality.

On Elance, I've used it for some basic jobs. I'm absolutely going there for affordable labor on lower skill projects, but I'm not trying to get Facebook @ $100. A typical job would be for someone to do a basic template brochure website build (with all copy/structure mocked up) for $600-$1,000. Locally this would be $3-8k. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me for a cheaper country wage... though perhaps people would disagree.

As a client I find it tough to find guys that offer quality work. The contractors I've used are more than helpful but consistently lack attention to detail and value ad in the build process I would expect from experienced designers. Time is valuable and it seems to be death by 1,000 cuts on small comments a quality designer would typically sort out before you see.

[fsk]

Once you start to "vet the workers", then you have the problem of "how are the workers vetted"?

Those freelancer sites already have thin margins. If they start restricting their pool of workers and clients, it wouldn't work.

You get what you pay for. If you get a bargain on price, then you get lower quality or have to spend more time checking their work.

[Gustomaximus]

> Once you start to "vet the workers", then you have the problem of "how are the workers vetted"?

It's a problem but solvable. How does any employer vet applicants? It's a matter of additional process/time/cost, ideally more than covered by the higher earnings and strong demand for services.

>You get what you pay for. If you get a bargain on price, then you get lower quality or have to spend more time checking their work.

This can and cant be true. I moonlight offering marketing freelancing services. 80%+ of clients that come to me have have been sold overpriced snake-oil from boiler room marketing agencies. A big part of initial meetings is to re-establish trust in marketing. Typically I'll increase ROMI by 30%-60%, and I'm not paying myself peanuts. In the extreme I had a client last year paying ~$10k/mth to have a company list them across a handful of free directories. These business owners are experts in other areas and just don't know they are being screwed until someone more knowledgeable sees it. I'd be the same with much IT work. And if I could have a freelance service that set a quality benchmark, then I'm happy to compete on price from there. With Elance I don't know if I'm paying more for less, or less for less.

I guess this is why word of mouth and relationships are so valuable.

[deepnet]

Go large.

Do some fraction of something like this http://blog.jenniferdewalt.com/post/56319597560/im-learning-...

Learn and make a Portfolio and get a lot Publicity at the same time - when you ask for work people could know your name.

Blog or Web-cast then your journey can inspire many.

[flippant]

Webcasting is a great idea. I'm currently doing this while learning Haskell by creating a custom server for Agar.io. In each session, I give myself a few tasks to finish. It is motivating because videos are more tangible record of one's progress than a git commit log.

[stevejalim]

Am too tired to write a clever self-deprecating yet self-promoting post, so: please check out my profile - you might find a link there useful...

[shire]

It could change someones life.. write your post :)

[mafellows]

It's never been easier to freelance develop remotely. Definitely not too late, and I'm not sure it ever will be too late.

[shire]

what would you charge starting as a freelancer?

[fsk]

Charge whatever you can find someone willing to pay.

Increase your rates until you can't find someone willing to pay that amount.

If you can't find customers at your rate, then lower your rate.

[josephjrobison]

Start at $30/hr then $50 then $100

[automathematics]

Then $150...