My typical advice is to do everything you can to avoid the big online freelancer platforms. In my experience, many (not all) of the clients on those sites want a ton of work for little pay, and don't understand when you say things may take longer than they expect.
Instead, the most important thing you can do is "become a visible expert in your space". That could be a blog, ebook, conference talks, etc - but have something that you can point to online when clients ask what you've done before.
For me, that was writing an ebook about React. It took about 2 months of concentrated effort, but after that, it was like a cheat code for getting new clients. I could reach out to businesses that I knew were using React, and when they ask what I'd done before, I'd show them the book. After that, conversations became very easy. "Oh! you wrote a book on React... you must know what you're talking about" was the common sentiment.
It takes time, for sure, but it's possible! Good luck everyone :)
That's a piece of very good advice - become recognized as an expert or 'authority' in your field, and it won't be hard to stand out and get clients. A little bit of a practical problem that I personally have is that I tend to be a generalist, dabbling with a lot of technologies. This makes it a bit harder to follow your advice, but even then it's a great idea and one that I've been contemplating recently.
Yes, that does make it a bit more of a challenge - but perhaps you could also use it to your advantage? If you are a generalist, then you could write an ebook like "How to be an effective generalist programmer" (or something like that :) ). Good luck!
True! I would be telling a different story, but it could still be an interesting one, and clients need that sort of dev too.
(for all the time and effort I've spent on front end dev over the last years - JS, React, Vue, Webpack the whole shebang - I'm still being drawn time and time again by backend dev - yeah or maybe it's "fullstack")
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My typical advice is to do everything you can to avoid the big online freelancer platforms. In my experience, many (not all) of the clients on those sites want a ton of work for little pay, and don't understand when you say things may take longer than they expect.
Instead, the most important thing you can do is "become a visible expert in your space". That could be a blog, ebook, conference talks, etc - but have something that you can point to online when clients ask what you've done before.
For me, that was writing an ebook about React. It took about 2 months of concentrated effort, but after that, it was like a cheat code for getting new clients. I could reach out to businesses that I knew were using React, and when they ask what I'd done before, I'd show them the book. After that, conversations became very easy. "Oh! you wrote a book on React... you must know what you're talking about" was the common sentiment.
It takes time, for sure, but it's possible! Good luck everyone :)
That's a solid piece of advice! Thank you!
That's a piece of very good advice - become recognized as an expert or 'authority' in your field, and it won't be hard to stand out and get clients. A little bit of a practical problem that I personally have is that I tend to be a generalist, dabbling with a lot of technologies. This makes it a bit harder to follow your advice, but even then it's a great idea and one that I've been contemplating recently.
Yes, that does make it a bit more of a challenge - but perhaps you could also use it to your advantage? If you are a generalist, then you could write an ebook like "How to be an effective generalist programmer" (or something like that :) ). Good luck!
True! I would be telling a different story, but it could still be an interesting one, and clients need that sort of dev too.
(for all the time and effort I've spent on front end dev over the last years - JS, React, Vue, Webpack the whole shebang - I'm still being drawn time and time again by backend dev - yeah or maybe it's "fullstack")