HACKER Q&A
📣 khaled_ismaeel

What is your recommended path for getting into freelancing?


tldr: what is your best advice for a competitive programmer wanting to start freelancing (possibly taking it as a full time job even)?

I am a computer science student with a long history of programming and mathematics competitions. I believe I am proficient enough for real life projects and I would like to try my luck with freelancing (I also fancy the freelancing lifestyle, being free and all).

A quick search on Google lead me to platforms such as upwork, freelancer, fiverr, and others. They seem to be too full of spam, however (students asking for homework and tests and similar). I had the feeling that toptal could provide a more serious atmosphere, but my application was refused because I had less than two years of experience.

It seems to me that the freelancing platforms are very hard to penetrate for a student with no work experience. What advice can you give for a person in my situation?

Thanks everyone

  👤 chrisrickard Accepted Answer ✓
If you're proficient in building and delivering projects, that's a great start, but unfortunately (and sometimes surprisingly) not the most important thing. I would say at this point it's sales.

Personally I would build a marketing website showing off your skills, talking about why your the right person for the job, and ideally, some examples of what you have done (these don't need to be live/online, can just be case studies with some description on the problem, your solution, the tech, how it helped the customer etc). A random example I just googled: https://www.fromthemountain.co.za.

But at this stage don't overthink it. Just get something up, something you can link to and point people towards.

Finding projects (sales) will be the hardest thing. Personally I would recommend steering clear of freelancer/upwork/blahblah, as it's all a race to the bottom. Maybe its good to get started, but generally I would first look towards your own circle of contacts.

I started as a freelancer 10 years ago, then levelled that up into a custom software agency, and last year sold to a larger company. I'm (slowly) writing my experiences over at devtoagency.com - whilst they are written more towards a freelancer who wants to start an agency, perhaps some posts would be useful to you, e.g. this one about asking friends and family for referrals https://www.devtoagency.com/referrals-from-friends-and-famil...

Good luck. Going out on my own was the best thing I ever did.

👤 guard0g
Get a full time job, make friends and treat everyone with respect, work hard and do a kickass job in something essential for the company (that other companies also need), then quit and offer to consult for them. They’re your first client, which builds credibility (and eliminates suspicion you left on less than optimal circumstances). Write a blog and/or volunteer in the local tech community, and you’ll be surprised how many referrals you can get. Also, other ex-employees of the company can be wonderful referrals. Good luck.
👤 stevenicr
Would love to see folks add things like where to get free/affordable:

contracts billing software legal advice

I know there's been some goodies posting mainly a couple/few years ago - so maybe those are still the way to go, don't know. Thinking about getting back into this again myself.

👤 mooreds
I wrote a comment up here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29300115

tl;dr: when freelancing, you need to find ways to do 3 things:

   * find the work
   * do the work
   * get paid for the work
Usually the middle one is the easiest/most fun.

Easiest way to find the work is to work with folks you've worked with before, and build a business based on referral.