Hi ! I'm 20 years old, in intership contrat and I will make freelance in my extra hours. I've two years of experience into symfony, api and web world in general.
I've already found many website to simplify my status of freelancer.
Now I need some help for money, bank account, work-life balance, organize my work..
Thanks !
Top comments (5)
I was a full-time freelance (backend) web developer, I picked up on a few things quickly.
NEVER Quote a job what you think it costs, always over quote a bit (for a fixed price job). 90% of people hiring you will try to get something extra or find something wrong with what you've done. Don't spend a week on a $100 project because someone keeps finding things they don't like.
ALWAYS make sure of the job requirements & goal. Be sure you understand what needs to be done, having to quit a job because you didn't understand the requirements and aren't skilled enough to complete is a huge blow to your self-esteem.
Be calm, patient, and kind. I guarantee that you will run into a client who you end up hating, you've gotta be patient with them and their requests. You may spend a bit more time than what you expected on their job but if you can get the approval of a tough client you can do anything.
Don't be so serious. You aren't interviewing for a full-time, life dependent job. Your cover letter doesn't need to be 2000+ words (it won't get read), keep it short and sweet. Get to the point while being professional.
Shortcuts are no good. When you're completing a job for a client don't take a shortcut or undercut them. You don't want to get a call in a few months from a client because you took a shortcut in your code and it ended up breaking something (or everything).
The Resume. I never included my resume in a cover letter, email, or IRC message to a client. Portfolios are preferred by many potential clients, If I was hiring you I would prefer to see previous work then see a list of degrees or previous jobs (if either applies, I have no degrees).
Ensure you will be paid. If you're suspicious about a client not paying once the job is complete ask for a percentage of the money up front & don't give them the work until you're paid. Most freelance sites will hold money to ensure the freelancer is paid and will charge your client if they refuse to pay.
Hope some of this helps, I found work on a freelance site called Upwork (still work with one of my Upwork clients today). It's a great site for finding work but Upwork charges insane fees (20% + random maintenance fee to freelancer).
Couple things off the top of my head from my freelance days...
Get a tool to track your work, something like Asana where you can schedule out tasks associated with each project, integrate with everHour or something similar for reporting, even if it's just you, the reports are helpful as a visual how you are spending your time. asana.com/apps/everhour
Obviously you're just starting out, but having a professional, clean looking site is going to be important (after all, you're hanging your shingle out as a web developer and clients are going to look you up and check out your site). If you've already done a couple things, put together a portfolio/projects page to show samples of your work (get permission for stuff like that from previous employers).
What are your strengths? Web Developer these days covers a wide range of technology, so you probably want to have a couple key words to emphasis your strengths, i.e. WordPress, PHP, CSS, UX, JavaScript, IA, etc. In addition to the technology you are familiar with, discuss accomplishments, value added to the businesses who are your customers, such as setting up a shopping cart that helped a business convert X amount of vistors giving them $Y in additional sales. As you start off on this journey, ask clients for testimonials that you can post for other clients to reference as well.
As for finances, when I did consulting I always kept separate accounts between the "business" and personal, just because it was easier to track income and expenses that way, so you may want to see about setting up a separate credit card to pay for any incidentals that you only use for business expenses, i.e. buying yourself a new monitor, computer, paying for internet access, development tools, client lunches and other incidentals.
Lastly, don't stretch yourself at first. You always want to under promise and over-deliver, since you're just starting out you may be tempted to under-estimate projects trying to win a contract. Be careful with your estimates. When I first started out I always tried to give the estimate "assuming nothing went wrong", but then you end up with unclear requirements, additional feature requests, or you code yourself into a corner and spend a lot of time crushing bugs and running over deadlines. Always give yourself plenty of time.
If you estimate two days but it takes you three, you end up being a horse. But if you estimate four days and it only takes you three, you're a unicorn.
I remember when I first started in the freelance world. My best suggestion is to do good work. Always make your customer happy and try to go at projects with fixed pricing. This has been my secret for the past 10 years and it has served me well!
For the past 10 years, I've made at least a good 10K extra per year on top of my day job. It is all built into the relationships you create with your clients.
How do you do cost estimate for fixed price cost?
As customer always change and give detail requirement after your quote, too low estimate would lower your income.
In short, fix cost projects require a lot of upfront documentation to provide a defined scope of work. Clients always work with you as long as you have the paper trail to prove what you guys talked about. I do it with a detailed scope of work.