A note to starting freelancers: Stop using these sites as soon as possible. Build your portfolio and figure out how to get your own clients. Giving someone else 20% for finding work is not in your best interests, especially for repeat clients. If billing is too difficult for you to handle yourself, you might want to reconsider freelancing.
People echo this every single time. Let me give a counterpoint. I use oDesk.com for freelancing and I don't have to worry about billing at all. I just log my hours and go on about my day - at the end of the week oDesk automatically pays me, no fuss.
Sure if you live in a first world country find your own clients, but for the rest of the world finding your own clients is not only hard but really dumb. Why work for someone locally for peanuts when a client online will pay you 20 times more?
Anybody who lives in an area where the typical oDesk client will pay "20 times more" than local deserves some respect for merely eking out a living, considering the typical oDesk client pays peanuts for a "first world country."
http://OnSite.io doesn't charge any percentage, it's completely free for both sides. When it does start charging it will be on a SAAS basis for the hiring side.
I don't know how else I'd be able to find work aside from freelance websites. If there were some way to find tasks to do then I'd be more than happy to jump ship, but so far nothing has come up for me outside of freelance sites and I'm not sure about how to "market" myself.
To add on this -- 20% is the least of your worries. I've never had a good experience working with people who I had no connection to. Someone ends up being flaky or tries to take advantage. Referrals are the way to go.
#freelance #css-lance and ##php-lance on irc.freenode.net where people hang around for chat, if they are for hire.
I often hire for small problems by IRC chat. Just join the right channel to ask some challenging question. Thank those who helped, and pm them, if they are for hire. They already showed that they can do the job, so I only need to convince them to solve my little problem for good money. Instant hire to solve my problem, instead of an official advertisement that I'm hiring, and being flooded by hundreds of application mails.
Co-founder of YunoJuno here. I thought I'd chip in on a general point (I
won't attempt to answer specifics here as I think that's probably inviting
trouble for someone like me, with skin in the game.)
What I would say is that we at YJ feel very strongly that the future of
work is freelance. We've (literally) put our money where our mouth is on
this belief (not to mention our careers), and so we, and I'm guessing the
others in this space, really want to work with the freelancer community
to make this happen.
I've been a freelancer (developer), and a hirer (as CTO at various companies),
so feel reasonably in touch with both sides of the market, and frankly, neither
side functions properly. You (as freelancers) shouldn't be paying 20%, and
employers shouldn't be wading through the cr^p that traditional freelancer
recruiters put them through[1]. We're all working on making this better.
Whilst we're doing our thing, there are some great competitors in this market,
and hopefully they would agree with me when I say please don't give up on us
- the world of work is changing, and we're all trying to push it along
in the right direction.
Oh, and one minor rebuff - the very best employers in London, certainly,
are using online services, whether that be YunoJuno or any of the other
sites listed - and whilst the names on the list may change, the migration
to online services is inevitable. This is your future, get involved.
[1]There are exceptions to this - some recruiters are good guys - but they
take a lot of finding.
I decided to answer the question, "What kinds of projects do I want to work on?" I am slowly building a small suite of applications around the answer. In my case, I prefer backend, systems and "thick client" application development using C++ and/or python. I have an interest in moving into finance, so I'm focusing on two projects related to that. I have no idea if/whether it will work.
Regardless, it's pretty clear to me from the numerous times this sort of topic comes up around here and my own experience that the real important question isn't "what kind of portfolio do I need?" so much as "who do I know?". Short of being far less introverted/shy than I am and thus attending meetups, cold calling, or the like, I'm not sure how to overcome that.
I got my first and only gig from the French equivalent of these sites. The time you spend looking for contracts, the time not billed, is what kills you. I was looking for a long term thing, and I was lucky to find a client who shared my point of view.
My client was smart to ask for exclusivity to be removed a year from then. A year later I transitioned to them, getting a 16.66% increase (which is just under the full commission I think).
Anyway, a dev portfolio can be an extended CV where you describe in details what you did on your previous assignments, the technologies you used. This is what I was asked for by the various HR shops that were trying to place me. No github account needed.
Creator here. This is something I wish had existed a couple of years ago when I was starting to get in to freelancing more seriously. I spent a lot of time googling around for sites looking for work.
- I contacted the first trough oDesk and we work together for 1+ year
- A client saw my personal website when searching for Django developers in my region
- Another client via LinkedIn
Which are the best sites for e.g. product managers, rails devs, etc to list themselves on? (Not asking you to tell me, asking you to design the software so I don't waste time listing myself on e.g. 10 sites). Think more of a curated experience than a directory.
That is a great question that I would love to have a solid answer / expert system for. There are so many variables to consider, many of which are hidden/private. It's something I intend to keep thinking about.
I know the signal-to-noise ratio is REALLY high, but I have some great, repeat freelance clients I found through Craigslist. Some are local and some are remote and they pay market rates.
I'd suggest (especially if you're just starting building a freelance portfolio), create some IFTTT alerts for the type of gigs your looking for in the dozen or so CL cities near you. Obviously, avoid the equity/profit trades and min. wage gigs.
Thanks for this. I got accepted into Gun.io, looks pretty neat! The clients there have some good budgets. Looks like it's time for me to start getting paid properly for my freelance work vs. what you get on the tragedy that is Freelancer.com
