TL;DR - Decide who is your ideal client. Identify their 1) common pain points and 2) which online communities they participate in (may or may not be HN). Write advice that will help them with their pain points, and share it in those communities. This will in effect advertise that you know how to solve their problems. Don't be too modest to say you're available for consulting projects, and make it easy for people to contact you.

PS - As someone else suggested, you may want to add your contact info here. There's a big overlap between people who browse HN and people who need and have the budget/authority to hire contractors.

If I had started with the strategy I explained above, I'd probably get the first client much sooner.

- https://www.workingnomads.co/jobs

- https://remoteworkhub.com/remote-jobs/

- https://www.crossover.com/

- https://remote.com/

- https://weworkremotely.com/

- https://getbetterluck.com/ (one of our own internal tool)

- https://remote.co/remote-jobs/

- https://www.workingnomads.co/jobs

- https://remote.co/remote-jobs/

- https://remotive.io/find-a-job/

- https://www.skipthedrive.com/

- https://www.outsourcely.com/remote-business-services-jobs

- https://www.wfh.io/

- http://jobscribe.com/

- http://europeremotely.com/ (Europe)

- https://www.remotelyawesomejobs.com/

- https://landing.jobs/

- https://remotebase.io/

- https://github.com/jessicard/remote-jobs

And here are some companies which encourage remote jobs https://oinam.github.io/remote-teams/

- https://remoteok.io/

- https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?r=true

Anyway, that same "linux" posts also has "UX" and that might be the reason for your result.

Do you remember which post was the one that you got the wrong one?

You are on the front page of arguably the PREMIER network of people with access / need for technologists.

I have a sweet portfolio site, mostly full of personal projects, that's made it quite easy to land remote gigs. My advice: put your 80-20 focus there.

Updated my profile with an email. Don't have resume in order yet. But have done plenty of Clojure, front-end and back-end work, made several iOS/tvOS apps that ship on the App Store.

If anything comes from this, great, but I'm not betting on it, so I'm going to focus most my efforts on the suggestions to give try toptal, upwork, and freelancer.com a serious try for the short term, and to build a network for the long-term.

In another comment you said:

> I've applied for pretty much every remote job from the last HN "who's hiring" post.

You've been applying without a resume? Maybe that's what the problem is....

Also, get a stack of business cards and start going to local business networking events. Look up the local Chamber of Commerce, search meetup.com, and see if your county has any small business development classes or lunches you can attend.

That's my short-term advice. I'm still trying to figure out what to do in the medium- and long-term myself.

I'm curious if anyone has had success with this. I know Brennan Dunn talks about it as one avenue to pursue, so I've been thinking about going to the local business networking thing. I guess I just have trouble conceptualizing going from meeting people who are running local brick-and-mortar type businesses to convincing them that software is a solution to their problems.

But I believe you are thinking in a way that will not help. The point is not to convince them of anything. It is to make what you do irresistible to them.

For example, you could show how a coordinated effort getting a Google places profile, a Twitter handle, a Facebook page, and an Instagram profile all with the same name can help their search engine needs. Or you can to demonstrate to them how quickly they can update their own wordpress site and have it reflected in social media with the right plug-ins.

Sure – most of them won't need you, but the ones who do would much rather pay you to do it for them than do what you show them how to do yourself.

Bear in mind that these projects are 60% about getting people to understand their choices, build a strategy, etc. ... and 40% about coding the site. Except for the ones who are utterly confused. Then it's 90/10.

I've found full-time non-remote work through meetup.com meetups. It wasn't very hard. I'm sure mileage will vary though, especially if the "must be remote" requirement implies significant distance from an urban area.

We used to hire on Upwork regular for bigger projects and it usually was close to a gamble (for both parties). You get > 30 applicants easily if you pay decent wages and the cv's are usually quite non saying.

I would second this. It's not great pay, but OP already expressed they'd take less than market. If you learn which types of jobs to quickly ignore, I think a person could easily stay fully engaged in the $25-50/hr range. There's quite a few clients there that are sick of what they get at the lower end of the spectrum.

There are good groups on Meetup, at least in my area, but you do have to sift through a lot of chaff to find the wheat.

EDIT: "a lot of time-wasting inquiries wanting you to fix their Windows problems for peanuts"

If OP is as desperate for short-term cash as he says he is, Windows problems are another opportunity. Also, when dealing with people who see all these unrelated issues as "computer problems", establishing trust is more important than demonstrating skill. As a result, you'd be surprised how often fixing Windows problems can lead to actual development work, either as your client grows, or through referrals.

When dealing with small business owners, you will meet people who don't have a smartphone handy to fire off an email from. Shoot, you will meet people who do not have an email address.

That's basically a business card. Just a crappy handwritten one. :)

I have a few inch tall stack of business cards I've collected over the years, mostly from people who wanted to sell me or the company I worked for at the time something. When I or my company want to buy something, I go to that stack and can quickly find contact info to reach out to one of the people and get quotes or info.

Your clients could or could not know much about the software development life cycle, and how to evaluate if you have the skills to meet whatever needs they may have. Perhaps you could network with existing freelancers who are too busy to take on new clients.

Spitballing here, but maybe working on or creating an OSS project could give you credibility to those freelancers. Or maybe you could work under a successful freelancer to establish yourself in the space. Maybe the site you built will lend you credibility to others.

Alternatively, if you have business ideas you'd like to try out, you could try working for yourself and creating your own income. Also, it doesn't hurt to sign up for LinkedIn. It might not be immediately beneficial, but once you find your first client, maybe they'll write you a glowing review.

> having worked remotely for the past 5 years has really limited my ability to build a network. I don't have LinkedIn and even if I did, it's more meant for building a network than for finding a quick gig.

Yeah, it's hard to build a network. Time to start putting in the effort. I sense a tinge of can't-do attitude here (but obviously, the tone interpreted in written communication is subjective) -- I don't know if it's the case or not, but a can't-do attitude is not what you want to have for freelancing work. Your lack of a network, or having an expansive one, is ultimately the result of your personal decisions. You have to be willing to give it a shot. If networking sounds not fun, or like a chore and otherwise unpleasant, you're probably better off just working for a big tech company. Personal skills are far more important in freelancing and entrepreneurship when compared to standard full-time employment.

Best of luck. Now go out there and kick some ass.

You seem to have experiences, which is excellent. In the short term, if you're in the throes of an emergency, perhaps get some help from love ones while you get your feet back on the ground.

Looking for a project under stressful circumstances feels like it might create an uncomfortable environment to do good work and sustainably remedying what you're going through.

Good luck, whatever route you choose!

Seriously, keep applying for work. You'll eventually get a break, particularly if you're getting initial interviews just off the strength of an application.

I am in a similar position to OP. I have confidence in my abilities and feel ready to join a team, but so far I have only worked freelance. If anyone is looking, please feel free to check my personal site... https://mfisher.xyz

Email me at admin@affluentconfidante.com if you have a job to get done and money to pay for it.

At best, that is extremely unprofessional.

Or, even consider these phrases from this very comment:

In the past month I only found less than 10 remote jobs

To me that feels like a very small pool in the first place.

maybe I was severely undercut by someone who doesn't have a wife and 5 children to provide for.

In other comments, you've talked about how you don't have a 'public' resume ready, and how you only have two public projects, that you built in an hour or two over the last few weeks.

I'm looking for a job myself, so I understand that it is a hard slog, but seriously, you need to tone down the negativity.

Although that might be hard, I would recommend to reorganize your life such that you can separate your professional life from your personal/emotional life. Don't get a remote job. Move to wherever you can commute to work. Even if babysitting would take a considerable part of the paycheck, pay for it.

Probable not the comment you wanted to read, but I just wanted to address the elephant in the room. This is not about not finding online gigs. This is deeper than that.

My email is in my profile. If you'd like some editing help, reach out. I can't solve your immediate situation, but maybe I can help strip it from your writing.

Because they have no problems getting applicants, they tend to automate the up front coding part. It generally consists of a coding challenge, taking from 2 hours to (I've actually seen) 2 weeks. To get someone to do a phone screen. Its a far more painful process. After I stopped looking for "only" remote work I had 2 very good offers in-town within literally a week, with recruiters breaking down my door. Both of which paid better than any of the remote gigs.

YMMV - remote hiring is pretty cutthroat right now.

https://www.wisecashhq.com/blog/how-to-have-clients-find-you...

More short term, I would definitely try to find a single gig, maybe via some subcontracting or via sites like toptal, just to build some runway and to make sure the techniques described above have enough time to bear fruit.

In my experience, face time matters if you are from place no one knows about. There is a reason most engineering talent is in and around Silicon Valley.

I am not sure about github or other technical profiles as the people who make the decision of hiring you never visit github or understand code. I am taking about the CEO of a small company who will hire you and not the cool SF startup that we read more often.

Companies want to reduce risk, remote increases it because of the unknowns. If I were you, I would again start with upwork and similar freelancing sites. The shady things you hear are distractions and everyone has a different experience. There is a reason the upworks of today still exist and are doing business.

I wish you the best! :)

I've had a few coding tasks completed by Redditors on this subreddit.

For example, $200 to make a website that I can probably whip up in a few hours and put on AWS for them. Or maybe $2000 for a more complicated website that takes 2 weeks. That kind of stuff is what I'm looking for.

Also, I like that labour is spelled correctly.

Building a brand is hard, it takes a long time, but it's worth a lot and is monetized over time.

Paying someone means accepting you're going to pay 10-15% or whatever price to someone like 10x consulting or some other sort of agency to find you work. This can be the right option if you aren't in it long-term or just plain don't want the hassle of brand-building.

So your options are really limited: Credit card debt? Family debt? Low paying jobs?

In the longer run, there is no way around building a network. If you want high quality work, you have to build a network. It's like some guy coming to a big city and want to hit the high-end clubs, meet with high-quality people and get back home with a 9/10 girl to sleep with. Not gonna happen.

He's probably going to fail at entering the clubs (first step) and then blame it on the clubs having bad policies and stuff. If you want high paid work, you have to establish yourself first.

Establishing yourself in a certain market/niche take years of hard work on establishing yourself. It can happen on different dimensions and will depend on your style (blogging? Forums? Conferences? How about writing a book? Contributing to a popular open source project? How about becoming a main contributor of a popular open source project?).

Good luck. Tough times but I'm pretty sure you'll come out of it and it'll shape your perception down the road.

Which of these do you think works the best? In my experience its the former by far (all of the people who have sought me out had the most reasonable and interesting project.) But I do understand that in the beginning you're going to have to grind to get anywhere (share your work where ever you can) which means putting in A LOT of unpaid hours doing research and development for new stuff. It's worth it though.

If you keep working on your portfolio and learning new skills then you will never have to look for work again. Just think of the security that would bring: To know that if anything happened to the company you're working for (or you get fired) you can sign a new contract the very same day. Would be amazing for most devs... But in my experience this can only happen if you specialise.

The problem is, there is too much competition for the skills you listed. As an example, if you were to learn some skills in say - big data or AI then you would be much more competitive. I know that's a big ask but one thing I think is true about the tech industry is that anyone can succeed if they put in the effort. In the end its a meritocracy, so the good developers quickly go to the top and the bad ones are weeded out... Remember companies ARE looking for good developers all the time, you just have to make yourself heard and do something worth showing (this doesn't necessarily mean applying to a company. Get creative. There are a lot of ways to stand out)

Good luck OP

Look at all the job postings for contractors and freelancers and start with those. Build up your portfolio and share your skills online.

What I've also done is track relationships, make notes and pay attention to details using a self-made app. It helps keep me organized. I started off with a spreadsheet but it became too cumbersome and I needed to make sure I maintained relationships with my previous clients while still on contract so I can minimize the time where I have no work.

I was applying to both remote and office-based offers, but only in my location (which suffers from lack of good job offers currently-most of them are dedicated for students with low payment).

It took me 2months to finally land in a new workplace)and it is remote which was my very dream form of working-I've done some remote freelance in the past and loved it)

I've applied to dozen job offers, most from LinkedIn, some from remote portals mentioned by other users in this thread.

In the end I've got a job from a job offer that was on stackoverflow, so maybe check there because I don't see anyone mentioned this as a source of job offers.

Keep on trying, as You can see it won't magically come to You without any action. Good luck!

I really wanted to like Moonlight, but I think it has some issue right now.

If you're looking to be featured more prominently - shoot me an email (philip at moonlightwork.com) and we'll feature you on the next issue of Orbit [2] going out to clients on Monday.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abtHadERzXU&t=27m

[2] https://www.moonlightwork.com/orbit

Now as they've transitioned into a slack community a few months ago, I know that they are nice and well-meaning guys, but they just weren't able to stand up for their (you can say partly implicit) promises. And you can do quite a bit of harm and be a prick by simply not being attentive enough. For example in their case, they have like 10k(!) developers signed up. And to sign up, every one of them (us) had to fill a profile (there go 30-60 minutes, times 10k!) and do a sample proposal (which wasn't clear was just an entry test - maybe it wasn't). Now in the new slack community you can see all the gigs being posted and it's like 1/month or so. For the thousands signed up. Even if they keep working with the same freelancers as much as possible.

This is not the only example, I've seen the same with a few other companies/services, but went into the details with this one, because with them I could see behind the curtains. (With the usual website they just never get back to you, or your proposals just never get answered.) Another similar one is codementor.io, which started out as a programmer-to-programmer mentoring platform (which I do use as such) and who figured out a while ago, that they have quite a few knowledgeable developers, so they could just feed us with projects. Same thing happens: very low deal flow, quite often no feedback after submitting a proposal. (Which is just shitty customer service, of course.) Even though in their case, I do quite a bit of emailing with them (e.g. reporting bugs, suggesting usability fixes, and also sometimes they explicitly reached out for me to help with specific projects/clients in the beginning).

So this shows to me that while there is a huge unserved demand for developers, there isn't such a big demand for freelancers. Which, if I'm honest to myself, kind of makes sense. Most companies will want to keep accumulated knowledge in-house.

But despite the market situation, I'm still a bit angry with all these mediator portals. They should rob the time of everyone and sign them up in bulk. It would be a lot more responsible to say that we have enough developers for now, come back later or leave your email address and maybe a few tags and we'll ping you when there is a substantial chance that we can give actually you some work.

Thus, the excess of developers on Moonlight maybe partly my responsibility. I have made a mental note to look for opportunities to promote them to people who need someone to code for them to try to balance that out a bit.

I do freelance writing through a portal. It is a well designed, well run system and some people genuinely support themselves. Due to my medical situation, I only work very part time and I don't yet make the kind of money I want, but it is trending in the right direction. So I think a well done portal can work. The fact that there are lots of busted ones out there in no way proves this one is also busted or that a portal is hopeless.

I have seen some articles that suggest that gig work is the future and that up to 40% of work will be done in this fashion by 2020. I think the trend is unavoidable. So, the question here becomes "How do we do this in a way that works well for all parties?" I am interested in promoting platforms that work well for all parties, including the worker.

So, I am sorry you have had negative experiences, but I see zero to believe that the existence of multiple terrible platforms in any way suggests this particular platform is doomed to failure. Hopefully the remarks in this discussion will help the founders to focus on upping their game on finding folks looking to hire programmers, since that is currently a weakness.

However, and that's the thing I tried to point out, the market seems to be aligned against this model. AND these sites should at least be aware of that and not take advantage of that. Don't play the martyr :), I didn't mean to blame you, of course, it's not your responsibility to be aware how much deals they can bring in. I just wanted to remind you, that it's not as easy as "they are just too new".

I know that everyone talks about the gig economy and how it keeps growing. But it doesn't mean that ALL kinds of jobs will be 'gigified' at the same rate. Also, the gig economy is not necessarily good for the freelancers/gig workers as long as it's a form of cost saving for the companies.

And that's exactly the reason I think that software development is just not as valuable (on average and in general) when done by freelancers as opposed to in-house devs. Because if it was, then it was just as easy to find gigs as a freelancer as easy it is to find a job as an employee (again, as a developer). But while I get regular contact requests on LI from potential employers and head hunters, it's still not trivial to land a gig as a freelancer. Even if you look through the opportunities, you'll see that there are a lot less serious ones (disregarding the competition).

There is, of course, an opportunity in this, just like any problem, so I'm not complaining, just analyzing the market.

Edit: added a smiley

I fundamentally disagree. I've given some of the reasons why.

No real need to waste more time on this, I think.

Fun story: The contractor who wrote the code for the Moonlight blog was in a similar position as OP. Hit a deer with his car, and insurance didn't cover it. Needed extra money quickly. He signed up for Moonlight and did a project in a weekend to pay for the damage.

Also, I'm curious if you have researched the legal framework around moonlighting coupled with non-competes. My limited understanding was it is very state-based. NY, CT are not permissive while CA is very permissive. If you figured this out, there might be a lot of value to unlock.

Moonlighters choose which projects they want to work on, so companies don't see them unless the moonlighters explicitly want to work with that company.

I suppose that either they have much more developers than contractors, they only work with US people or my skills aren't needed :( (mostly PHP/Laravel backend work with various frontend skills and some experience in other languages)

You're correct - we have more contractors than developers right now. Sorry if you haven't been matched yet - if you send me an email (philip at moonlightwork.com) we can feature you on next week's Orbit [1] email to clients.

The process has largely been manual with spreadsheets until now, but soon you will be able to log in and browse all open projects.

Over half of our projects have been completed by a contractor outside the USA.

[1] https://www.moonlightwork.com/orbit

It's flexible part-time remote work, and you don't have to find clients yourself.

I have something else to add. Once you do get a gig and start on it, budget some time and money to grow your network. There's no real substitute for a real circle of influential and well connected contacts in my experience. Perhaps attend conferences related to technologies that you're interested in, participate on online fora (mailing lists, stack overflow etc.) to help people with their problems in exchange for visibility, get a linkedIN profile, go to local user group meetups (or atleast attend nearby ones less frequently if you're in a city that doesn't have many such groups).

Good luck!

I would suggest you to have a LinkedIn profile and update it regularly and start building the network now.. It is never too late. Meanwhile, for the job which you cannot wait for, there are many remote job portals like remoteok , weworkremotely , remote.co ,remotive, workingnomads, WFH.IO ,dribble etc which you can try .. But I would suggest you check angellist (angel.co) which offers jobs from mainly startups all over the world.

Another tip : Apply to local companies which are offering full time jobs , attend the interview and try to convince them to offer you a work from home based role ( It might work out, you never know).

Hope you find a suitabLe job real soon.

All the best ! :)

Once you pass their screening process, you will get jobs in one or two weeks

What I'm getting at is there's nothing wrong with a site that matches brain surgeons to brain surgeon jobs, unless you'd be chill getting an ophthalmic surgeon gig, where do I go? upwork is famous for posting gigs that would pay $125K in SV but the dreaded "average pay rate" is reported as $9.81 or whatever.

Possibly "top 3%" is meaningless in the sense of "ninja rock star" is meaningless and anyone who can fizzbuzz is by definition in the top 3% of human species programming talent.

[0] http://www.computerworld.com/article/2483690/it-careers/indi...

[1] http://gilvegliach.it/?id=14

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=gil_vegliach

You set the rates, though they'll direct your on what might be competitive. In practice, rates might not be that interesting for SV/NYC developers, but I find plenty of people from other parts of the developed world in the network - and is definitely good for South America.

And at least in my experience, staff is polite and professional. They'll help you build an attractive profile and deal with most of the usual client/freelancer nuisance, including rates and payments. As they handle most negotiation on your behalf, the relationship "smoothness" with clients is above average.

What rates do you get? Seems we are still talking $30/hr with them getting $100/hr. In a 'normal' company this makes sense: all kinds of benefits, office, computer, car, whatever, but for them, for freelancers, it is not all too great for the coders. But again, might have changed. Just think if you are in that top 3%, why do you need Toptal... Every company is looking for you.

... only if you live in NYC or SF.

So prepare for irrelevant questions before get in...

Meanwhile -- can you do canvas/d3/realtime charting type of stuff?