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Freelancing questions

7 pointscdiptry6 comments

I have been working in the same company cor 5+ years, and I have not been doing a lot of cool stuff for the last years. I'm an experienced PHP developer , but I do have learned lots of stuff on my own though.

I am from Mexico, and the job market place is very difficult for developers so switching jobs it's hard, at least for me. For the last 5+ several years I've been under earning, and I have always been spending more than I earn because I negotiated very poorly my first salary (I was straight out of college). I've tried to negotiate my salary several times, but the increments have been very small to make a real difference at the end of the month.

I need extra cash to stay a float, and I'm willing to do freelancing but: a) Most jobs require full time b) Most jobs are not long term at all and not stable, and some can even not pay you. c) Many freelancing sites have hundreds of bidders (some automated), that it's very hard for me to land anything.

Do you have any tips or suggestions of what I can do to stay afloat? Any tips for freelancing? Or any part-time remote job site?

Any comment would be very helpful.

I don't know the situation in Mexico at all so please take my humble opinion with a pinch of salt. About 3 years ago I was asked a similar question so I wrote a blog post about it:

https://bjoernkw.com/2013/04/28/starting-a-software-consulti...

I think most of that still applies - no matter if you're in Mexico or the EU (as in my case).

From my additional 3 years of experience since then I can't emphasise enough that networking is absolutely key! Talk to a lot of potential customers and peers (fellow developers, particularly those who already run their own consulting business). Go to meetups and industry events. Follow up with potential clients on a regular basis.

You might want to work with recruiters as well if you have to but having direct client connections in my opinion is the only long term way to run a sustainable consulting business.

I'd advise against using freelancing sites for the reasons you mentioned. It's usually a race to the bottom in terms of pricing because you're literally competing with the whole world.

BjoernKW , thank you , this totally makes sense. I have not much direct contact with any (potential) clients, I'm going to try to work on that.

I completely understand your feelings as I'm in a similar situation these days. I'm from India and I've got 8.5 years of experience in consumer and SaaS startups + another 3 years as a freelancer prior to that. During 2005-2009, I used to get a lot of freelancing jobs, but as you mentioned, decent paying freelance work is hard to find these days.

I've been without a job for a week and don't want to take up another job right now. I just want to make $2.5K so that I can work on my own SaaS idea. I'm a PHP dev like you but I've also worked a lot on frontend (Angular, React/Redux, Backbone).

I've tried AngelList, Hackernews and pretty much all other sites mentioned on HN with very little success. If you are good at PHP/Laravel, you can probably try larajobs.com. Good Luck.

Thanks keviv, I do have Laravel experience, but as you mention, no luck so far in landing something.

I've recently started freelancing and from my experience the job boards aren't great. I've had a few leads from LaraJobs but most of my work has come through networking and repeat business.

It's tough but work will come! Just keep going with it and talk to everyone about the fact that you're doing a bit of freelancing, you never know when someone will need some work done.

Also, a good portfolio website will obviously help. Shameless plug for mine at: https://codefox.io :P

Thanks for your comment. Nice portfolio BTW

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