Thanks! Yes, copy/paste "heroes" and "cowboy coders" aplenty, but an area where I think you can really make a difference as a dev is communication - asking the right questions, getting to the bottom of the issues, solving the "right" problems ... that's always where I felt you can stand out from the crowd.
Personally, I've never heard of those two you mentioned -- to be fair, I lost most of my interest in those platforms after my bad experience with Fiverr, but, I'll be sure to put that on the list to give a check!
And totally agree, these platforms were built for a reason and you never know when you're going to need them hahah, so, I'll surely keep them on my radar! Thanks a lot for that resource 🚀
Thanks! ... well, Gun.io is a platform which probably virtually nobody has ever heard of (I'm exaggerating a bit ... but only a little bit), but Upwork is, well, it's like the "500 pound gorilla" in the "freelancing platforms space" :)
But ultimately they're just "tools", they're a means to an end - for me it worked, but that doesn't prove anything, I think there was also a huge amount of luck involved - "being in the right place at the right time" ;-)
Hello, I actually wanted to ask like suppose once we have created and given the software (or any product that we were working on) to the client and also received money from them. So basically our work is done here but you know if we create any software then it also need maintainance and database management etc. and this will be forever till that software exists. Now our work was to just deliver the product or the software the client asked for but if the client asks how to manage it further or asks us only to also manage it for long then what should we do in these both cases? Even if we just explain the client everything needs to be done in order to manage that software, the client still does not have a proper knowledge of it and maybe he/she will not be able to manage it properly and if they'll not manage it, the software will automatically start to throw any bugs or errors and they'll blame us for that. Now if the other option occurs that the client wants us to take care of that software further also for the long run but obviously we can't do that. So how can we handle such situations? How will that software and its database will be managed throughout its lifecycle? And what exactly should we tell the client to do in such situations? (Considering that there's only one person and not a team of many people who owns that business for which they asked us to make the software.)
In terms of maintenance per se, if we promised we were going to deliver something in the engineering planning phase, we have to do it. So, bugs and unexpected behaviors are on our end -- I fix and don't charge anything for it.
Now, sometimes, our clients try to disguise small improvements as bugs -- and those are different things. I usually have a rule of thumb of not charging up to 3 small improvements -- just so we can have a great partnership and the client usually will remember that good faith. If the clients ask a BUNCH of improvements that adds up to some hours of work, than, I think you should charge additionally. After all, those things were not prototyped nor planned, so, adding them at a later stage will impact your costs.
In terms of database usage and infrastructure, I usually try to eyeball the usage/consumption of services by talking to the client and seeing their expectations -- if they are searching for a freelance to create a platform that will have to deal with thousands of customers, you can't put infrastructure costs on your end, but, if you're dealing with a small project, that might be viable.
And lastly, in terms of how to talk with your clients, it's important to remember that they are non-technical people usually, so, try to abstract most of the complexity when talking to them, showing only the high-level overview and the costs each part requires. Here's a quick example:
Instead of saying "It's expected that your customers will use an average of 25 GBs of S3 Storage, and increase the overall CPU usage, so, we are going to need to scale your servers to other EC2 instance ..."
A better way to approach that would be: "Hey, it seems users are sending a lot of big files on our end and it might increase our costs by 20%. Would you prefer that we limit the file size or include that monthly cost (about 50 USD) into your package?"
Na minha visão aqui, o que me ajudou muito a perder parte dessa insegurança no início foi ter algum dev experiente pra me ajudar nas etapas do freela -- então, quando eu orçava, ela revia os valores e me questionava quanto à porque em alguns casos, mesma coisa pra código e outros aspectos.
Isso fez com que eu sempre tivesse a segurança de que, se eu explodisse tudo sem querer, essa dev ia conseguir tocar o freela e entregar, sem deixar o cliente na mão. Nunca aconteceu, entretanto, e no final do primeiro freela, eu descobri que já estava em um nível legal de desenvolvedor sem saber.
Se você já não está no super começo e quer tentar se aventurar sozinho, manda bala! A grande característica dos desenvolvedores é resolver o problema e no final, seu cliente não vai ligar se seu código tiver gambiarras pra funcionar.
Cara, ontem indo trabalhar fui ao seu perfil achar mais coisa para ler e acabei no “Creating a personal brand: How to sell yourself as a developer” no primeiro parágrafo percebi que já tinha lido o texto na semana passada e até favoritado no Chrome, é que naquele momento não percebi que vc era brasileiro, curti mto como vc consegue imprimir sua personalidade mesmo em inglês.
Quanto aos freelas. Boto muita fé que consigo fazer uns projetos legais, mas tenho esse receio em dar o primeiro passo, estou cursando ADS na Fatec SP(estou tendo meu primeiro semestre de Engenharia de software e me identifiquei muito com esse tópico no texto kk), acredito que a exp dos freelas me destacaria para as vaguinhas de Jr. e ainda me garantiria uma renda extra.
Planejo ler seus posts novamente, e pesquisar mais a respeito. Vou estabelecer a meta de me preparar para isso até o final do semestre. Tenho em mente alguns projetos que posso executar como voluntário para ganhar confiança.
Com certeza estabelecer metas pra isso parece ser um ótimo caminho! Espero que você adore o curso de Engenharia de Software hahaha, foi uma das disciplinas que mais me motivou a produzir software profissionalmente -- abraços ao professor Alexandre Cardoso, por isso🫂
Hire a HackerE sobre os freelas, com certeza vão te dar uma experiência bem valiosa pra vagas! Tem uma diferença enorme entre falar pra um recrutador que você já fez algum curso XYZ sobre desenvolvimento vs. criar uma solução pra um cliente real. O segundo realmente traz um peso muito maior ao teu conhecimento e é super visto com bons olhos!
But, in the real life, your customer generally will want just that, a solution -- not a specific technology for that solution. So, if they want a blog, of course, you can use WordPress and solve that problem easily, but, you can also do some pretty cool designs on Figma, make that into React code and add Strapi as CMS -- they're both equally fitting solutions, with the added benefit that the later one is way more unique than the other.
So, yes, there's a lot of demand for custom stuff, and me personally, I've had a few clients that even demanded for me not to use WordPress because of X or Y problem they had in the past with that solution.
And although this is not always necessarily true, generally, when you offer a custom solution, clients are more willing to spend more! This is a great analogy on that too, if you'd like more on that.
Hello! Thanks for the great article! I’ve always wanted to do freelance work where I would write a custom solution, but where I get discouraged and eventually stop is the design. I can look at a Figma design and code that solution no problem, but I can’t design a website from nothing because I just don’t have that design-oriented mind. Do you have any advice on how to get over this? I imagine lots of customers will come to you with no idea of what the end solution will look like and are looking at you for creating something that looks really good.
And yes, a lot of customers are going to come to you with 0 design related stuff. For me, that's not such a big of a problem because I do have a degree in graphic design, but I can try to give a quick summary (and maybe even a future more in-depth article) about the process I go through.
From the low fidelity, create the high fidelity prototype. Use the same brand guideline as the brand itself and follow the 60-30-10 rule (60% primary color, 30% secondary, 10% highlight) that you're going to be fine.
For the second one, you can use the way to learn things you have acquired with programming to learn other stuff too! So go YouTube, forums, etc -- you know how to search for things, that's our specialty. If you don't have a structured guide on that, feel free to check this article I wrote about self-learning.
Oh wow you have done freelancing for 6+ years. Congrats! I have a lot of respect for freelancers because I understand the amount of work that goes into making websites, from planning requirements to designing to coding.
3) How long does it take you on average for a client? How many hours do you work a day? Often times I hear freelancers saying they work 4-5, I find it hard to believe as making custom websites take a lot of time.
Create a low-fidelity prototype in Figma (or a high-fidelity prototype if it's something really small) and validate it with the client -- This usually is a iterative process of create, validate, refine and validate again
This is a great approach because all the refactors are generally done in the designing phase, meaning that you won't have to re-do something because the client changed his mind (since he also agreed with the prototype).
2) I don't have a specific stack, but I do have some choices that I'm more familiar with (and thus, are more frequently chosen). I think here, the whole point is to go with something you know that can solve the problem and you're also familiar (at least a little) with.
3) This varies a lot on the scope of the project, so it's kind of hard to measure. But, to be honest, I think I never did a project that was less than a month, for example. In terms of hours, I generally take something around 3~5 hours when working on freelancing (and yes, that takes a lot of time hahaha, but the point here is, if you keep your client in the process, he's not going to mind if it takes time -- the problem occurs when you keep him out of the process).
3) Oh wow, less than a month. That gives me a bit of relief because I was under the impression that clients expected everything to be done in 1-2 weeks. You make a great point about keeping your client in the process.
I can see that you've put in a lot of effort. I never thought you would mention the client did not pay snippet lol. Websites like Upwork are very saturated in my opinion, because there are just too many people. The best way might be to build or showcase in public and someone might end up getting clients.
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