How can I get freelance programming work?
November 4, 2010 12:55 PM Subscribe
How can I get freelance programming/Web development work?
I have a full-time job and I'm a happy corporate drone, but I need a chunk of extra money to buy an airplane, like a couple hundred thousand. So I need to get some freelance work on the side.
How do you do that???
I got mad skills. I can build a DB-driven Web app from scratch using Java, Ruby, or even PHP if I had to. I'm comfortable with Oracle and MySQL. I know what MVC design is to the point where I'm tired of it. I know so many acronyms I hardly ever use full words at all anymore.
There must be organizations out there who need stuff like that on a project basis. I just have no idea how to get in touch with them, or sell my services, negotiate a contract, etc.
Yeah, sure, Google. But you know how that goes. It would take me weeks just to sort through all the spam and bullshit and by the time I got done I'd no longer be sane or capable of productive work.
What about a recruiting agency. Are there any good ones? How do I get started???
I have a full-time job and I'm a happy corporate drone, but I need a chunk of extra money to buy an airplane, like a couple hundred thousand. So I need to get some freelance work on the side.
How do you do that???
I got mad skills. I can build a DB-driven Web app from scratch using Java, Ruby, or even PHP if I had to. I'm comfortable with Oracle and MySQL. I know what MVC design is to the point where I'm tired of it. I know so many acronyms I hardly ever use full words at all anymore.
There must be organizations out there who need stuff like that on a project basis. I just have no idea how to get in touch with them, or sell my services, negotiate a contract, etc.
Yeah, sure, Google. But you know how that goes. It would take me weeks just to sort through all the spam and bullshit and by the time I got done I'd no longer be sane or capable of productive work.
What about a recruiting agency. Are there any good ones? How do I get started???
The problem, as mkultra says, is time. When someone hires a freelancer, especially if they work with a lot of freelancers, they expect to own you for a block of time, measured in full days. They have deadlines to meet, and they'd rather pay person X to work ten solid days than pay you to work thirty evenings after your regular job, because it's going to take you three times a long.
Elance and similar bid-for-a-project sites are often a race to the bottom; it's you against someone in India or Russia whose idea of a lucrative job might be very different to yours.
You might just strike it lucky, but in my experience as a freelancer, the kinds of jobs where you can just work evenings and weekends tend to be some little startup that'll offer to pay you once they start to make a profit.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 1:21 PM on November 4, 2010
Elance and similar bid-for-a-project sites are often a race to the bottom; it's you against someone in India or Russia whose idea of a lucrative job might be very different to yours.
You might just strike it lucky, but in my experience as a freelancer, the kinds of jobs where you can just work evenings and weekends tend to be some little startup that'll offer to pay you once they start to make a profit.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 1:21 PM on November 4, 2010
>I just have no idea how to get in touch with them, or sell my services, negotiate a contract, etc.
Dude. That's ONLY the difference between a full-timer and a successful entrepreneur. It's gonna take some time!
This "need a couple hundred grand" thing is reminding me of that commercial where the guy runs around the gym once, then gets on the scale to see how much weight he's lost.
You are going to need to run around the gym a LOT.
People who do this stuff for a living tend to need at least 5-7 years before they're pulling in liveable income.
If you're also working full-time, potential clients and partners are going to hone in on that and ask "so is this just a hobby for you, or what?" Which, if your skills are really great, your competitors are also going to hone in on when they pitch their work, which will lock you out of the big contracts that get you headed toward $100K.
People know that if you're working full-time, you might just decide to pack it up one day and leave them hanging. I had this happen once and vowed it will never happen again. To this day, when somebody approaches me and they already have a job, I immediately want to know how soon they plan on quitting that job. If they make any remarks about testing the waters, or working until they earn $X for a trip to Y, see ya. I have real work to do.
Reference: I do this for a living, and hire people with your skillset to help me on big projects.
Anyway: To start, you should be out meeting people and making contacts. You should have a portfolio website that makes you look serious. You should KNOW for a fact that competing with your workplace on the side is OK. You should have a very flexible F/T schedule.
posted by circular at 2:06 PM on November 4, 2010
Dude. That's ONLY the difference between a full-timer and a successful entrepreneur. It's gonna take some time!
This "need a couple hundred grand" thing is reminding me of that commercial where the guy runs around the gym once, then gets on the scale to see how much weight he's lost.
You are going to need to run around the gym a LOT.
People who do this stuff for a living tend to need at least 5-7 years before they're pulling in liveable income.
If you're also working full-time, potential clients and partners are going to hone in on that and ask "so is this just a hobby for you, or what?" Which, if your skills are really great, your competitors are also going to hone in on when they pitch their work, which will lock you out of the big contracts that get you headed toward $100K.
People know that if you're working full-time, you might just decide to pack it up one day and leave them hanging. I had this happen once and vowed it will never happen again. To this day, when somebody approaches me and they already have a job, I immediately want to know how soon they plan on quitting that job. If they make any remarks about testing the waters, or working until they earn $X for a trip to Y, see ya. I have real work to do.
Reference: I do this for a living, and hire people with your skillset to help me on big projects.
Anyway: To start, you should be out meeting people and making contacts. You should have a portfolio website that makes you look serious. You should KNOW for a fact that competing with your workplace on the side is OK. You should have a very flexible F/T schedule.
posted by circular at 2:06 PM on November 4, 2010
When starting out as a freelancer, your best source for jobs is the contacts you made at your last full-time job. If you still happen to be working at that full-time job, this can be problematic.
Freelancing is all about personal contacts. I've been doing it since 2000; I just did the math, a grand total of 7% of my income came from sources that weren't at least indirectly related to people I used to work with back in the day job days. A grand total of zero percent comes from "google", job boards, or the like. (A glance at the going rates on elance et al should be enough to tell you how viable that is.)
Agencies do exist, if you're in a large city. They seem to usually be run as a side business by headhunting firms; they're mostly interested in placing you onsite for short-term fulltime gigs. I don't think they'll be interested in moonlighters, but I guess you can give it a shot. (My info on this may be out of date; the last interaction I had with guys like this was back when we had a functioning economy. But I doubt it's gotten easier since then...)
posted by ook at 3:07 PM on November 4, 2010
Freelancing is all about personal contacts. I've been doing it since 2000; I just did the math, a grand total of 7% of my income came from sources that weren't at least indirectly related to people I used to work with back in the day job days. A grand total of zero percent comes from "google", job boards, or the like. (A glance at the going rates on elance et al should be enough to tell you how viable that is.)
Agencies do exist, if you're in a large city. They seem to usually be run as a side business by headhunting firms; they're mostly interested in placing you onsite for short-term fulltime gigs. I don't think they'll be interested in moonlighters, but I guess you can give it a shot. (My info on this may be out of date; the last interaction I had with guys like this was back when we had a functioning economy. But I doubt it's gotten easier since then...)
posted by ook at 3:07 PM on November 4, 2010
Mod note: few comments removed - the anti-snark edict in AskMe is for everyone including the OP.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 4:09 PM on November 4, 2010
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 4:09 PM on November 4, 2010
As everyone has mentioned, it is often who you know. Are there user group meetings in your area for the types of work you'd like to do? I've got a lot of work through my local Drupal group, for example.
posted by Gomez_in_the_South at 4:54 PM on November 4, 2010
posted by Gomez_in_the_South at 4:54 PM on November 4, 2010
No opinion here on doing running projects as a moonlighter, but I do have a suggestion. I get random requests from friends/acquaintances who are freelancing for help with short, specialized tasks. Things like: configure a server; write/troubleshoot some webservice calls in language XYZ; tune up some badly running SQL queries. Something they didn't anticipate when they bid the work or some new request from the client. I forward these on to people I know with those skill sets -- many/most of whom have regular day jobs. The freelancers are fine working with people with day jobs, as long as they can start within a couple of days and hit the deadline. Competence is assumed, everyone has a reputation and this is all friend-of-a-friend stuff.
So the suggestion here is to put the word out to your developer friends in your personal network that you are interested in subcontract gigs. They already know about your mad skills and can vouch for your competence. I don't know if it would be possible to consistently string a bunch of these together into a steady income stream, but it would be a starting point. While I'm just acting as a (zero cost) intermediary in my personal network, I've found that the more I hook people up, the more requests for help I get. I assume that it works like that for developers, too -- the more of these short gigs you do, the more your name gets out there and you get more offers.
Good luck with the moonlighting and the airplane.
posted by kovacs at 5:13 PM on November 4, 2010
So the suggestion here is to put the word out to your developer friends in your personal network that you are interested in subcontract gigs. They already know about your mad skills and can vouch for your competence. I don't know if it would be possible to consistently string a bunch of these together into a steady income stream, but it would be a starting point. While I'm just acting as a (zero cost) intermediary in my personal network, I've found that the more I hook people up, the more requests for help I get. I assume that it works like that for developers, too -- the more of these short gigs you do, the more your name gets out there and you get more offers.
Good luck with the moonlighting and the airplane.
posted by kovacs at 5:13 PM on November 4, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by mkultra at 1:03 PM on November 4, 2010