I thought a lot about writing this ...
I don't know how beneficial it will be for my professional development, but I don't want to be left with the desire to share this first experience.
It all started helping a girl to develop a website for a company (as a school project), after that she contacted me to propose me a business.
The design that I had implemented in her project they had liked and she needed my help to make another similar and improved one and this time paid because the first time I supported this person I didn't charge anything.
I decided to implement a landing page with a minimalist style, intuitive, and full contact with the customer through messenger (my first proposal was an e-commerce) but they found it too expensive...
so I elaborated the design and presented it with an estimated delivery time of 1 month to 1 month and a half always sticking to spring methodology.
The first mistake was not to generate a contract with the specifications that the client should test and respect during the delivery time because the person I was supporting assured me that they were totally trustworthy and that she had already worked with them before.
Anyway ... once the design was presented and approved I got down to work but the client constantly delayed me with changes he wanted at the last minute and it should be noted that I shortened the delivery time to about 3 weeks or 2.
So I decided to see it as a challenge and not as an abuse by this company....
In the first instance I asked for 50% of the total payment in advance but they refused, they said that since it was the first time they would work with me the payment would be made until the final delivery of the project (at least that's what this person told me) since being their clients they did not allow me to have any contact with them.
So well ... I delivered in time and form and surprise ... the payment did not arrive as agreed .... I told them that there was no problem and that I would wait no problem ... the day arrived .... and the payment ... still did not arrive .... then they told me that next week I would have my money now that they had had economic problems and that now it was a fact but what do you think?
Exactly. the payment never arrived ....
in the last contact I had with them....
they told me that they already had a SECOND PROJECT haha but they didn't mention anything about the money they owed me ...
so I decided to unsubscribe the page ...
and well ... I am left ... with the code .... and my time invested ... and yes .... without money ....
I guess this has happened to more than one of you, I would like to read your opinions about it.
at the moment I am trying to join Workana ... but ... my profile is still pending review ....
if you have any suggestions for freelancer sites I would appreciate it.
and again leave your comments
thank you very much and best regards !
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Top comments (6)
Indeed a bad experience. Nevertheless you got something to learn. It’s really not easy to get into freelancing without a bunch of reviews in your favour and unfortunately this is like a circular reference. No reviews without work, no work without reviews. I’d recommend you host the site somewhere and count it in your projects. Build a few more stuff worth displaying and then get yourself a good portfolio to put everything together. Meanwhile try looking for opportunities full time if that’s something you’d prefer. You can try upwork but then it’s nothing different.
yes, in fact I already have a portfolio and I have already added that project to it, along with a survey project in spring I am about to make an app to do with the MEARN stack, thank you very much for the suggestion!!!
I'd say build something more than a todo app or something more than what everyone else has on their profile. Not suggesting some enterprise level app or trying to solve some unsolved problem but something that's not a clone or a regular student project. Your clients should feel that you're ready to solve real world problems be it design related or business related. For example, when I was starting I made an alarm clock that lets you set an alarm in any timezone. I used to work with clients around the globe and they'd just tell me to get something done in say 9.00 CET or 13:00 IST without sending a formal invite and it'd take me time to figure out the time difference and set an alarm in my local timezone. So I made this interclock.netlify.app/.
Then one day I came across another cool idea to make the timeline in youtube videos searchable and navigable by captions. So I came up with this chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/...
Your idea does not have to be unique but should be interesting and a little bit distant from student projects. Maybe a super advanced todo list, who knows? Just a thought
wow what a great application, it would be great if the entry to select the country, would be located in the country that corresponds once you perform the search, thank you very much for the comment, no doubt you are right. I will look for a topic of interest to develop and leave for now only the dock and landing.
What did you use for your application?
I made "Interclock" in Vue and the chrome extension is a simple JS project with some web scraping with pupeteer. It uses aws lambda to run the scraper.
thank you very much for sharing! and again what a great job, I see that you are in demand, maybe I will start learning it soon.