Introduction
Freelancing is a great way to make a living as a developer, you have more freedom, and its easier to work remotely. However with litt...
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I would like to know how to avoid Indian spam bots that bids for projects automatically, it's been like that for years on Freelancer, for every project or contest I usually have to reject 75% of the spam/fake/bots contestants ;)
Oh yeah this is a big problem, the easies method i find clients doing to weed out automated bids is adding a direct question in the project description or a clause at the bottom like “if you read the description write NOTABOT at the bottom of your proposal”, the automated bids will ignore your question/request so you should be left with only real bids.
Nice article. Personally I didn't have a great experience the first time with any of these sites. I've had clients trying to strongarm me into doing it cheaper because they saw it cheaper at another dev, and probably the worst is that the platforms favor clients so much it becomes a hastle to justify when you decide to drop projects or if the client is not happy with the finished product because they decided at the last sprint that they want half of the website changed.
In more practical terms, the platforms are good for a nice side project to have the occasional extra spending money, but for the majority it will seem like a massive problem to get into having clients accepting your bid over the indian guy/girl/bot bidding on the lowest bid, and then the client having left with a bad taste of the platform thinking that those are the norms for developers.
Yeah I hear you, and these are some of the reasons I left the platform.
If you are beginner you may be willing to slide clients way.
I found that establishing firm rules, and informing prior to the project start and sticking to them helps a lot.
If a client is strong-arming you like that it's best to be firm on your price, and explain the logic behind the price, in a lot of cases you will lose a client, but those that will understand it are the good clients you want to nurture the relationship with.
Also the platform favouring the clients, can't disagree here, the treatment from freelancer.com of their freelancers is abhorrent, and it's no wonder they mainly attract those cheap developers that go for quantity of projects over quality.
Still you can find some really good clients there, and this makes it a good place to get your feet wet in the freelancing word.
you still on freelancer.com or using another freelance site now? because in your marketplace list available you said **Marketplaces Available
This is the list of most popular freelancing marketplaces, I recommend to just focus on 2-3.** so now you work on upwork and fiveer?
Hey, sorry i meant focusing on 2-3 sites of your choice, depending on your skills/approach some sites may just work better for you, having said that freelancer, upwork and fiverr are the biggest ones so they have most projects, but also most competition.
I am still on freelancer, though i am not actively bidding on new projects. (Currently Looking for full-time position or a contract)
oh i see bro thanks for advice im also started off in freelancer.com but because of so many competitions today and many company go to there im looking for alternative like upwork or toptal but yeah really we just need to be patient to get the job on that site coz of so many competition but yeah freelancer.com has so many interesting job like nodejs which im really good at i hope i can get as many nodejs job there and good luck to you too for finding full time job bro!
Thanks!
Yeah toptal is an intresting one, since you have to go through an interview process to get accepted, I had it scheduled but i missed it, so now I have to wait for 6months to be eligible to go through it again.
If you have the skill and put the effort to present yourself and your projects you will succeeded. Before i got my first project i was bidding for weeks every day twice a day. Good luck in your freelance journey!
toptal is really tough for real i read one of the toptal developer experience there which is also a frequent dev.to article creator carlos russo he basically going from zero to toptal not in a matter of second but a series of hardwork but really after you get in to the toptal its just look like you work full time coz you work in a company like IBM for example but yeah toptal is just for 1% only but worth a try tho
Yeah it’s just a different kind of marketplace, and i am definitely going to give it a go again when 6 months passes. there was another marketplace like toptal which name i don’t remember now, but they also heavily vet the freelancers, the big thing i remember they promise minimum rate of 75$ an hour
probably crossover? damn $75 an hour ? i wonder how the work would be coz when i got like $750 fixed project in freelancer or even $2000 project the project kinda like royal rumble in wwe you know what i mean? like impossible to even be solved you know but yeah freelance really has some pros and cons along the way just keep on going bro!
Nice article; shows your experience with this site. I believe nowadays it is harder to get in there; I am thinking myself to give it a try.
Hardest part is getting couple of first projects, later it gets easier.
When I was starting out I also held a belief it's really hard to get in, in reality it's not hard to differentiate yourself on those marketplaces if you put effort in crafting a great profile, and your proposals.
I don't think much changed over last 3 years in that regard.
You should definitely give it a try for couple months, if you are patient and consistent in your bidding you should get a project sooner or later.
Good Luck!
I believe you are right; after all, experience doesn't lie. I currently trying to build my profile as a developer so that I stand out in job market.
Any advice on that? And what are some of the things you suggest to craft a great profile?
Best idea to stand out is building side projects if you don't have any prior work. If you show proof of work, then you are more likely to get hired with no experience.
Regarding the profile apart of the tips I wrote in the article, I recommend you find couple highly rated freelancer profiles in your area of expertise ( or area you aspire to be expert in ), and take inspiration from that. When I was doing my profile at the start I just copied what I saw and liked in profiles of other freelancers, and changed it up to give it my personal twist.
You should put most focus into building your portfolio with some side-projects, because this is what will help you stand out the most.
cool! Currently, I am just focusing on building side projects. Thanks for the confirmation. I will now be more confident along the way. Cheers!
Plz keep those good article coming😊
Thanks! I have a lot of draft articles open so I am surly going to post something soon!
haha...will be waiting....😉
hello please delete freelancer.com on your list turns out this is a scam website their trust score in trustpilot is a lie, i recently got scam $2000 by them as well, and not just me there is so many more, you can take a look here complaintsboard.com/freelancercom-...
Great article!
There's still one question that bothers me though. If the job were to write a web crawler in Python, what would be the most common way of sending the crawler to the client? Do they expect a package installable with pip?
Hey, good question. It will depend on a client, some clients will just want the crawled data delivered and don't care for the script, some clients will require a python files, for others it doesn't matter, in those cases I usually make the crawler an executable, or attach short instruction how to install python and packages to run it since its simple enough.