How do you start contracting?

Finding clients is basically the hardest part.

Not going to lie: Most of my clients come from my network and their referrals. Most of my freelancer friends’ clients come from their network and their network referring clients to them. While it is possible to find clients organically through advertising, it’s much easier if you can build a network to pull from.

You can start by simply contacting people you know and asking if their companies need any help. Let them know you’re available. Then, when they ask, be available and solve their problems ASAP.

It’s actually quite a challenge to hold down a full-time job and to freelance at the same time. You might be lucky enough to find clients who don’t care much about how long it takes and are fine to communicate asynchronously through e-mail at your convenience. However, most clients will want to get on video calls throughout the day and will expect the work to be done quickly. Realistically, it will start competing with your day job at some point. You should decide now how you’re going to handle that.

Whatever you do, don’t use your work computer for any freelancing tasks. Neither party may ever find out, but if you get into a situation where it matters then it’s terrible to have intermingled the two.

Finally: Don’t underestimate how good a stable, big company job is right now. Freelancing isn’t really the easy money that some people make it out to be, especially if you’re not actually free during the day because you have a job. If you’re looking for something different, consider just getting a different job.

Does any other country have the same concept and size of contracting market as we have in the UK?

Here you go to a website such as Jobserve, type in eg “React Contract” and apply to one of thousands of daily rate contracts. (Inventory is a bit low today due to start of the year, but will be 1000+ in a few weeks.)

After a short interview process, typically you will start a contract for 3-6 months, but can often stay for years. The processes by which contractors are hired, onboarded, paid etc are very mature.

In London in particular, many developers will go down this route in order to earn higher rates. There used to be tax advantages but these have been eroded over time.

“Disguised employment” is absolutely rife so the model is under constant attack by the government with our terrible IR35 law.

This is a very common model in the UK. I have only met a handful of “freelancers” here winning their own B2B business, but have met thousands upon thousands of contractors using the above model.

To answer the OPs question. In England you simply start applying for contracts posted publically online. The hardest part is typically that permanent employees need to give 1 month notice, whereas people want contractors to start in 1-2 weeks so you may need to give notice before having a contract in hand. Pull this off once though and you are away.

It depends what you mean by contracting - which can be anything from "an employee who gets no benefits so a bit more money" to freelancing.

If you're looking for ongoing part-time contracting, I have successfully landed multiple contracting jobs by applying to places that were looking for full time work, for whom my skills were an exceptionally good fit, and saying "I know you weren't thinking of part-time remote contractors, but I'm a really good fit, would you consider it?"

Lots of places have just never seriously considered it, but faced with a hot prospect, will do so. And lots of places out there are actually wrestling with the issue of needing extra work, but not having enough to justify the obligation of hiring permanent full time.

When I switch to freelancing, I started with Toptal while trying to build my network. They run you through a standard startup-type interview process, then once you're in, they take care of the finding clients and managing payment part. They sell the client on a rate, you set your rate, and they take the (unknown) difference. The clients went from being put on an existing team to building a team and launching a startup product. Overall it was a mostly positive experience. You can email me (in my profile) if you have questions.

Then, while doing that, I worked my network and found a couple good clients. I also posted in the monthly Freelance thread here on HN. I found two great clients through that!

One thing that I don’t see brought up enough is the different kinds of engagements a freelance developer could target:

I suspect for many of us, the easiest to find would be what’s called “staff augmentation” - basically you get inserted into an existing team in some capacity, except you’re on a contract basis so not tied down, get to negotiate your terms, don’t get employee benefits etc etc

Such engagements are often quite stable and long term (some companies are even willing to make them open ended!)

The downside is that you have less leverage to set high rates (although I’ve been able to get pretty satisfactory ones), you don’t have as much flexibility because you’re expected to be a regular member of the team and work 9-5ish hours, and you don’t get to escape the corporate/teamwork setting as much (if that was what you were looking for going freelance)

The upside is that you have to find new clients way less often, but still have the freedom to switch around as often as you want if you get bored/want to hunt for better rates etc

Now what most ppl think of freelancing is doing a single project and then either finding another one with the client or needing to find another client (eg this is most of the work on upwork)

In my short consulting career I’ve not found such work (tho haven’t been looking either) and frankly am still nervous on whether I can deliver well in such a capacity without the support of anyone else as it may. And obviously you’ll have to hunt for clients way more often with such projects.

If you reply with your email I’m happy to answer any questions or help if I think I can

I contracted for many years, and then with some good hiring, managed to start a successful software development agency., My 2 cents is:

* Finding (good) clients is key to your success

* Ongoing relationships beat new projects almost all the time

* Focusing on a specific niche(s) helps set yourself apart

I write a bunch of articles on this stuff, you might fine some helpful if you decide to take the leap https://www.devtoagency.com

Permy role -> Consulting role -> Contracting is the way I did it.

Although as a lot of people say, clients come from my network and referrals. So build that up first. Also, I started my own consulting gig in the UK, which is pretty much consulting central (I don't know any other country that normalises contracting to such an extent).

Possibly something like TopTal would work if your network hasn't reached critical mass yet. They'll take the pain out of finding clients. But that's never been an issue for me.

I think starting from scratch now might be a bit trickier. I have a Saas that's in an industry that's sort of dependent on relationships. And those are harder to build in today's virtual world (or at least, I'm finding it so). I don't think I have any great wisdom on what to do differently though. My pipeline is sort of an organic subsconscious thing.

When I first started contracting, another contractor said a piece of advice that has stuck.

Your playing a game that you'll never know the full set of rules to and people will cheat anyway.

i've been contracting for over 15years, and I wish I'd started earlier, one of the best decisions that I've ever made.

For me the biggest thing is variety and occasionally being challenged

Contracting is a great middle path between 9-5 salaried employment and full-on freelancing.

You can get paid a lot more than regular employment, but you have to take into account that you don't get any benefits. How much that affects your quality of life depends on your location. For example, I live in the UK and have worked as a contractor on and off over the last 12 years. We have free healthcare so it's been easy. I don't care about other employee perks and in fact, even after paying out of pocket, it's still a lot more lucrative considering the work-life balance.

Freelancing sounds very attractive but what most developers don't realise is that you have to do sales from day one. And we all know how good we are at sales. It's too big a leap for most.

Contracting, on the other hand, is a lot easier to get started with because you can find contract work through the same channels as you'd find regular jobs.

In addition to the mainstream job sites (LinkedIn, Indeed, etc.), there are a ton of smaller niche sites where you can find contract work.

Once you get some experience working as a contractor, it's a smaller leap into proper freelancing. Plus, you can build your online profile, network and most importantly, confidence along the way.

I know in the big tech companies in the US, there's a bit of a stigma around contractors. So I'd avoid those and instead focus on the many other remote work opportunities available now.

I covered a lot of the why, what and how of starting as a contractor in these free videos -

1. Why you might want to become a contractor - https://learnetto.com/tutorials/why-should-you-become-a-cont...

2. How to look for contract work - https://learnetto.com/tutorials/how-to-look-for-contract-wor...

3. How to apply for and get contract work - https://learnetto.com/tutorials/how-to-get-contract-work

Having helped a bunch of people get into contracting recently, I know a lot of the struggles are mindset related.

If you need any help, feel free to get in touch. My email's in my profile.

Hi! I have alternated between contracting and standard employment a number of times over the years.

You should start with one person who's willing to hire you. This will likely be somebody you have worked with in the past, or some close associate of theirs. Ideally, would be a part-time gig so that you don't have to give up your day job. That will let you set up the necessary systems and habits and get a better sense of whether this is for you.

If you don't have that person already at hand, you can instead start work on your sales process, which will likely mainly be a networking process. Set up time to talk to trusted former colleagues. Tell them you're thinking of switching to contract work. Ask them about how they perceive you, and in particular what kind of work they think you'd be great at. Then ask them what kinds of contract work they're seeing happen now, or have heard about happening. Lastly, ask them if there's anybody they know you should talk to, including both contractors and the kinds of people who hire contractors. If you're lucky, they'll say, "Oh, yeah, let me introduce you to Jane."

If you keep this up, you will eventually find somebody who might want to hire you. Then you're into a negotiation and contracting process. There are plenty of books about this, and I'd encourage you to read a few of them, as it's not much like normal job hiring. (The only one I remember is "Getting to Yes", which is very helpful theory, but you'll also want stuff on the nuts and bolts of it.)

My big pieces of advice: 1) Both contract work and payments are much less reliable than jobs. Keep a big cash buffer. Right after the dot-com bust I would have made better money picking recycling out of trash cans than doing contract programming, but I got through because I had saved up. Later that saved me when a client tried to stiff me for $40k 2) For getting future work, it's important to leave everybody with a good impression of you. So do you best to be kind, warm, competent, professional, and polished. 3) Outsource the headache. Find yourself a good lawyer and tax accountant. Consider using a billing firm that just takes care of all the paperwork and pays you on a W2. Focus your energy on the three core things: doing the actual work, managing clients, and finding new work. 4) Don't expect to make more than with a job. You might! But non-billable activities can eat up a lot of your time, and many contractors do it because they like the freedom.

Good luck! Feel free to drop me a line if I can answer more questions for you.

Some years ago when getting started, I did a lot of research ahead of time by reading books and talking to other people who had done it. While there are always new situations and the learning never stops, the single most important thing in my mind is to manage yourself as a business. In addition to doing the work, you have operations like healthcare, retirement, vacation, and services like accountants and attorneys. My wife helps with that so I can spend more of my time on billable activities, but business aspects are still something you have to pay attention to no matter what. When you negotiate with customers and/or recruiters, you're representing your business. Your loyalty resides with your business. Recruiters are an easy way to get started. I asked my attorney to help understand my first couple of contracts (there are good ones and very bad ones) and learned most of what I need to know over time. The more work you do with different companies, the more you can build out your network. As you build a network, take care of other people and make referrals for them (whether permanent opportunities or contracting). Occasionally, people might do the same for you - that's how this thing works. There will be gaps between contracts, which is normal. If you're too successful, the phone will always be ringing and you can work yourself to death - so set boundaries and take care of yourself. Therefore, when determining your pay, you need to consider the operational aspects of the business, gaps between gigs, and how much you want for payroll. BTW, my wife gets a paycheck and benefits too because she is doing work for the business. Then do research on what the market might pay for your services. There's likely a gap between what you need to live and what the market will bear and that's the space you negotiate in. If you take less than what you need, you and your business suffers. One of my early attorneys wisely advised me - you have a right to make a profit.

What type of contracting? There's a wide range, from project based to placements within a team. Placements into a team (i.e: you join a team for a few months) are very easy to come by (just speak to any recruiter on LinkedIn) and don't require any sort of network. A typical rate (in my area anyway) is roughly 2x what you'd get per day as a salaried employee (i.e: 180th of the yearly salary). Generally, this type of work is shit (you're doing the work full time employees don't want to do) but very low effort, low accountability and low commitment. Easy money if you need to sustain yourself while doing something else.

Project based contracting by comparison, is almost exclusively network based. That's the fun contracting. You can try and shortcut it by using a freelance platform like UpWork but they're not great.

I went from f/t to contracting/freelancing almost 15 years ago. I wrote a long-ish article about getting started as a freelancer:

https://typicalprogrammer.com/how-to-start-freelancing-and-g...

(Free, no ads or affiliate links.)

I think the key is to identify a niche (or a few) that gets you out of the low-bid commodity Upwork/Fiverr wading pool — competition is always more dense at the low end.

A professional network and word of mouth referrals work best. Try to establish long-term relationships. An agent who can connect you with customers can also work really well.

I've had a lot of success switching to freelancing by using Toptal and ATeam. You can go full time right away and you don't need to find clients. Feel free to email me at dan@axelby.com if you'd like to chat.

Having done contract work for ~20 years without using any platforms, I would say start locally to find clients. It'll be harder now due to Covid but with no network or online presence beforehand no one will know you exist.

The long haul would be to start blogging about what you plan to do contract work for and build up an audience but this may take years to materialize.

Initially I wouldn't worry about business cards, resumes, paid ads or anything like that. Just focus on things that will help folks make more money. That's really what it boils down to. For a lot of software development related gigs not too many people hiring contract workers care about formal education or certificates. It's a matter of they pay you $X but you return a multiple of $X in value to their business.

For pricing yourself, I think that'll depend on what you plan to do contract work for. For a quick and dirty ballpark you could take your salary hourly rate and add 30-50%. That's because it's usually substantially cheaper to hire contract workers since there's no health benefits or major costs of hiring. Plus you typically go in to address a specific issue so it's efficient to hire a contract worker for let's say 2 months vs a full time salary with yearly raises, 401k matching, etc.. Your taxes are also going to be more complicated as a contract worker if you live in the US. These are a few things to consider when pricing yourself.

One sort of shortcut way to bootstrap this is to find people who do consulting in an adjacent area and partner with them...offer them some incentive to make the introduction, or allow them to be the middleman for a cut until you're more established. That could be something like a back-end expert partnering with a successful solo front-end expert. Or partnering with a successful solo non-software-dev consultant (design, project management, pitch decks, cybersecurity, whatever).

Talk to someone else who contracts and get advice on what a sensible day rate is. Then simply contact recruiters and say you are a contractor and are looking for a contract.

I got into it by mistake when I applied for a short term position without even being aware of the concept of contracting. Turns out getting contracts is typically easier than getting a full time position as there’s less risk on the part of the employer. They can just get rid of you if you turn out not to be good.

Finding your first client is without doubt the hardest part. After that you’ll have more confidence, a reference, and possibly some word of mouth running ahead of you.

A frequent recommendation I’ve heard is to make your current employer your first client. I’ve never been in a position to pull that off, but can at least verify that it’s not the _only_ way to start. I’ve had leads off of Craigslist, though haven’t closed them. I’ve had successful matches from the monthly HN Freelancer thread. Where most of my client contacts have started, though, is conversations within my network—build initially from W2 jobs and helping run a programming language meetup, and then building atop engagements with clients and agencies.

Zach Burt’s “The Software Engineer’s Guide to Freelance Consulting” (https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/software-engineer...) is a pretty good reference; there should be ebook copies out there for a reasonable price.

You start by posting on upwork etc and try to grow out. $10/hour clients or $500 per job clients are simple but abusive and not sustainable. $125 / hour clients are really really hard to get and you gotta get 3 or 4 until you are in a derisked position. Finally, staffing companies are great but require a lot of 9-5 commitment but you can build your portfolio.

Decide who you want to contract as, a developer or a product manager? Then decide if you want to go direct or through an agency. Then get legal protection, insurance and contracts. Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U

Contracting is not easy but it can pay more. I find finding clients the easy part but all the surrounding stuff is nuanced and complicated (as soon as you start contracting you are literally essentially running your own business).

Before jumping ship (if you decide to), pay close attention to the no-compete clauses etc in your current employment contract.

It's pretty easy to get contracting gigs for technical work - development, solution architecture, etc. A lot of companies are super happy to outsource risk. It generally costs more to place a human at a physical desk in an office than outsource to a contractor who brings their own devices and pays their own taxes and has their own public liability insurance. As long as you can show someone a portfolio of work that impresses them, and takes the problem off their desk, you'll find work.

There is no magic to networking. A lot of the finding work process just boils down to hanging out with the right people at the right time. Go to industry events. Cook BBQ's for coworkers. Remember the birthdays of coworkers' past and present. Put yourself in front of people who might need you in the future and make sure they remember you fondly. This is a decades-long process.

Pricing-wise just find your average local wage, add taxes and benefits, and that's your centre point to aim for. Bump it up a bit if you are actually a high achiever.

Honestly whether it's better to be contracted or employed, I think it's a personal preference. I can't stand the corporate buy-in that comes from being an employee, and value my independence. It burns me greatly at times when I find myself broke and scrambling to find a gig, so if it's assurance you're after then full time employment really is a good thing, but for me being able to jot down that I won't agree to my IP being owned by the company that's hiring me today is a pretty powerful incentive not to become a standard employee.

I got my first projects via online job/project boards. Wrote a bunch of application emails.

It's not that hard. Just remember that you go for 4-6 month projects. That way you only need 1-2 projects a year and waste lass time with applications.

After you did a good job for a few clients, they will refere you and new clients will start applying to you.

Bill what you need for the life you want. If your total compensation is 100,000 and you want to keep earning that but working half as much, bill 2x your hourly rate.

In reality you will spend your free time lining up the next job, so maybe work a third as much for 3x the money.

If you don't feel comfortable charging that, why bother. Keep the desk job

I have a whole channel dedicated to this topic, it's UK based but a lot of the pricing stuff still applies: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheFreelanceSoftwareShow/videos

I started contracting at about the same point in my career. I'd been at four different companies, two of them pretty big places where I took on mentorship roles. Over time I'd built up a list of colleagues (a rolodex, if you will) who would come to me with system design and architecture questions, both for work and for side projects. Eventually, some of those side projects grew serious, and I transitioned to freelancing gradually during a period when I was otherwise taking a break.

I've never done sales, and I'm deathly afraid of the need to do that some day. But my colleagues and friends keep hiring me and keep getting promoted, so we're good for now, I guess.

Not sure if I have any concrete advice beyond: take those coffees every time,and keep in touch with talented colleagues.

If you don't want to go the whole way where you have literally your own shop, are trying to hunt for your own clients, market yourself, etc. going to a platform is something to consider. I don't love Upwork but some people have good experiences there. Toptal is sort of midrange and then there are some more niche ones like tribe.ai (which I can vouch for as being great for talent having worked there for some time) and there's also braintrust which has an interesting story about the community having more ownership but I don't have insider details on how it's really run

be very honest with yourself about your current hourly rate before you leave. as a full time person, you mostly do things you already know how to do, and you may or may not 'work' every day. as a freelancer, you only get paid when you do work that delivers value

freelancing is total BS unless you're good at negotiating and have a deep network in the thing you're trying to do

it can also be valuable if you're trying to create influxes of cash every few months to break even on finances while taking a year off to start something

but it can also be an awful distraction that kills more momentum than it adds runway

I’ve being doing this for about a year now (part time, while keeping my job), so take my advice with a grain of salt.

I also work in electronics, which is in a very weird place right now, and I’m a bit concerned that I might be taking some risks here, but it is what it is.

I was contacted for an interview, and I told the company that I wanted to work on my own, but I’d be willing to consult and work for them as a freelancer if they wanted.

After that is just a sequence of problem solving specific steps that will depend on where you live, your situation, etc..

I have been a contractor, on and off, in past 15 years. Finding new clients, especially those that can pay monthly retainers, requires more work than the actual task at hand.

One way to secure clients is to get into partnership with individuals from other domains (marketing, business dev, finance etc) that can cross sell software development. I am always open to that :)

My freelancing story:

Worked in digital agencies. Met a lot of contacts. Started taking on side projects. Produced good work. Kept on getting referrals. Quit my full time job and freelanced for 5+ years. Wasn’t always easy but I kept my costs low and steadily increased my rates.

Easiest way to start? Freelance for an agency or a consultancy. They always need someone, like right now, to work on a project.

Where are you? In some countries it is common to use a broker that pair clients up with contractors.

There are brokers that connects IT contractors with clients (or clients with contractors, I guess)

The “who is looking to be hired?” threads on HN has worked well for me. To position and price yourself: I’d start with looking on UpWork or similar platforms in your geo and position yourself competitively (I checked on Malt, a french Upwork alternative).

If you are in the US, take a look at Dice and Indeed to get a sense of where the market is and what is the rate per hour. As others have said, networking helps but I started my contracting journey through Dice and Indeed. Good luck.

When I started contracting I just applied for a contract role - they're loads in London when I first looked and now find remote pretty easily. Have you tried a job board like Indeed?

I've done that before, and it can be nice, but I think the 'side project'/micropreneur/indie hacker space is more interesting. You only have so many hours of your time to sell, and if you're not working, you're not making money. Having a side project that makes a bit of cash even when you're asleep is a good feeling.

An exception might be if you have some super-deep expertise in a particular area, so that you're not really selling your time as a worker, but selling the ability to waltz in, look at something, do a few things that fix a problem someone has been stuck on. That kind of thing is pretty rare, though.

I'm currently considering the same, does anybody have good advice (or resources) for doing this in Germany? (or maybe EU in general)

Join a contracting agency for a couple of years to see how contracting works, then you can decide to contract directly by yourself.

Don't bother contracting. In the United States almost all software contracting companies fall under two categories:

1.) Money laundering of some sort or another. 2.) Groups of people who have figured out they can create fraudulent projects and then contract them out to "friends". These are the worst as they are gaslighting festivals where you're forced to buy from certain places or people start purposely breaking software until you pay up.

If you dig deep enough you'll find out exactly how fraudulent most contracting companies are. It's almost all illegal activity.