DEV Community: dejan-mt

Making Money As A Web-Developer.

dejan-mt — Thu, 19 Nov 2020 08:56:16 +0000

Reading this, you are probably a web- developer, or you are learning to be one. Regardless you want to make some extra cash with web development, especially now, with this pandemic closing down business. In this article, I will reveal ways to make money as a web-developer!

Friends and Family
The first thing I'd recommend is to ask your friends and family members if they need a website for their business. Granted, you probably will not charge them anything or for a low cost, but this will give you client experience and potentially your first review. Get a friend or family member to hire you on Upwork and ask them to leave a review. This will help you out in your freelancing journey since clients will trust you more.

Freelance
The most popular way to make extra cash as a web-developer is to start freelancing. There are a lot of freelancing platforms out there; I'd recommend Upwork, especially for beginners.

Here are some other popular freelancing sites:

*Freelancer.com
*Fiverr
*Toptal

After signing up and setting up your profile, I'd recommend checking out my other article. Where I talk about essential tips to keep in mind while bidding on a project. Read Now...

Templates
In your free time, you can create a ready to use template or two. Then you can sell that template to your local business. This won't always work, and there is a 1/20 chance the business will actually buy your template. But it's worth giving it a try.

Reaching out to business
You can also find a business with outdated websites (information and technology-wise) and offer the business to update their website for an affordable price. You can also try to make a website for a business then show the business the website, and if they like it, they will buy it. This will take time and patients and might not give you a sale, but I will provide you with the experience and something else to put on your portfolio.

Those are some tips that make me an extra buck or two. These methods won't make you a millionaire but will give you some extra cash and work experience!

Missed something out? Comment it.

Stay safe and don't forget to wear a mask 😷.

Freelancing Tips From My First Experience

dejan-mt — Sat, 07 Nov 2020 09:16:01 +0000

Freelancing can be challenging, especially for those who are just starting, with no or low reviews what so ever you find it hard getting one single gig. And when you do, you have to sell your services at a low price for a lot of work. I recently got my first gig on Upwork after five months of hunting. Yeah, five months, I don't know what I have been doing wrong, if I was doing something wrong in the first place. Or it's just bad luck.

Anyways for those of you who have been living under a rock. Upwork is a freelancer site, and everyone is talking about it! Some say it's better than freelancer.com, which I agree since there are a lot of people (no offense) spamming in every proposal, and some of which are breaking freelancer.com's guidelines. I found it harder to find a gig on there. Upwork is more strict about their policies, which I'm A-Okay with.

I'm getting out of point, so let's get started with: Freelancing Tips From My First Experience.

Before Placing A Bid.

Before placing a bid on a project, read the title and the project description carefully; read it five times if you have to. This is because you need to know that you are up for the project. Lay it down on your head, and make sure you can build the project as smoothly as you can (obviously, it won't 100%). Now I'm not saying don't take a little challenge, but make sure you are up for it.

I know this is obvious, but some people bid randomly, not knowing they are biding something out of their expertise. Then they get chosen and accept the job. Trust me; people do this. And that is a recipe for disaster.

While biding be as honest as you can be, don't say you know PHP while to don't. The person who placed the job will feel your energy, and that might determine if you got the job or not.

Be Formal.

While placing a bid or talking to the client while building the project, ALWAYS be formal, nice, and polite. Don't talk to them as if they are your BBF; this will make you look disrespectful, and in some cases, they might even fire you from the project.

As the saying goes: What you give, you will receive. Or just get fired and get a one-star review.

Once you get the job, thank them for choosing you. Now, don't thank them too much since this would be unprofessional and make you look desperate (keep that part a secret 🤫). Even once completing the project, ask for feedback to see where you stand.

While in a call, talk loud with a clear voice. If you have your webcam on, make sure you are wearing something formal and clean up the background, don't leave a mess, especially in your workspace, unless you want to drop your coffee on your keyboard while showing the client their project.

Ask Questions and make suggestion.

If the client uploads a website framework you will be building, take a good look at it.

Have a question? Ask it to the client. Instead of trying to figuring it out by yourself and wasting time, ask it to the client; 80% of the time, they are able to help you. No, they won't fire you from the job for actually caring about the project. Your "dumb" questions are relevant to making the project run smoothly and with as few complications as possible. Unless you want to re-do the whole project just because you didn't ask that question/s.

Make suggestion. If you think that image would look better if you float it to the left instead of the right. Subjected to the client, maybe they agree with you, maybe they don't. After all, you are the expert. And if they disagree, close your eyes while working on it 😅 😂.

These two points will tell the client that you care about the project and that you aren't here just for the money, but also for work experience!

Actually Make An Effort.

After getting the job actually make an effort. Don't throw some text there and an image there and call that effort. Make the project look good and professional. Leave your client in ow with the complete project!

While building the project, keep the client informed of what you are doing. Update them every hour so they can see the progress and estimate how long the project is going to take you to complete.

Be Honest

The most important thing I learned is, to be honest. Be as transparent as possible (in a formal way) with the client. Let your client know your strengths. And if you took a job, you can't complete the project, make a deal with the client and go in your separate way. It's important not to waste too much time for you and the client. The client would appreciate it for not wasting his/her time.

And that wraps it up. Those are my four tips for freelancers. I just started getting freelance jobs, and I have a lot to learn, but for my first client, I realized how important these tips are and thought I would share it with you!

If you have any thoughts and think I left something out, let me know!

Stay save and don't forget your masks 😷.

Making A Web Developer's Life Easy

dejan-mt — Fri, 30 Oct 2020 10:06:13 +0000

Hi, today I decided I'd make your life a bit easier by sharing 5 tools that I use/used daily as a Web-Developer, which you may or may not know about, stay stunned to find out!

Animista

First up, we have Animista. Animista has simple yet good looking animation which you can easily implement on your website to any element. All you have to do is choose an animation you like and think it would be a good fit for your website, add a few tweaks such as duration time and time-function, click on generate code, copy, and paste to your script. And that's it; you have an animation on your website, which only took 5 seconds to do!

I still use Animista to this day, especially if I don't want to blow a fuse on CSS😂.

ColorZilla

Ever came across a color which you love but don't know the Hexadecimal to use on your project? That's why ColorZilla exists. ColorZilla is a chrome and firefox extension that you can download for free! After downloading it, click on the icon extension and click on the color you want to steal.

This is the one tool that I use daily; I'm not really good with color schemes 😶.

W3school Color Picker

I also use W3school Color Picker to pick colors. I use this online color picker to choose a color for a project I am currently working on. I like this specific one because it will automatically show you the color's shades when choosing a color from the color palette.

I used this mostly for on hover button since it gives you the shades of the color.

Pexels

Unlimited stock free photos which you can download and use for your projects and websites for free! There are other great stock free photo sites, but Pexels is the first link that shows up on Google, so might as well use that. So far, I have always found what I wanted from one single website, so I highly recommended it 📷.

WebDesign Inspiration

I recently discovered this website while writing this. With all honesty, the few seconds I scrolled through this website, I got a project idea which I will be working on this week. It has some good themes that will inspire you for your next project!

And that's it! Those are the 5 tools that will make your life a bit easier as a web developer, which surprisingly people do not talk too much on. As you can probably tell, I'm new to this blogging/ article writing and even newer to this platform (Dev). I would greatly appreciate it if you could leave a like and leave your thought in the comment section! Stay safe, and don't forget your masks 😷.