I am wondering how the freelancers of you are doing during this pandemic. While I honestly enjoy a little break from consumerism and taking everything a tad slower I can't help but to feel a little worried. I am a senior Frontend developer with many years of experience and before Corona things went very very smoothly. But since January I hadn't had a single project request that went anywhere and all my own attempts to contact companies have been quite fruitless as well.
Am I the only one? How are you doing? What are your strategies to get through this economically? Do you think things will normalize again at some point or is this the end of an era?
Top comments (13)
Nice to see a Berliner here, hallo! :)
I've been getting into the freelance game just recently, about 2 weeks in now (but I used to do it long before). Got into it again because of COVID19. I think what frustrates me the most, is how I am just reduced to what they want me to do. I know I'm capable of so much more, I can build full-stack apps in record time, and product development comes naturally since I've been doing it for a long time now, but in freelance, all they ask from me is to edit Shopify themes, upload images on WordPress or make their Social Media Posts prettier.
I feel like I'm being limited, and there's no motivation to learn new things as well. Just today, I was browsing through Udemy, and I felt... okay, what next? Nothing excites me anymore, there's no passion to learn something cause there's no job that makes you work for it.
Are you doing all these assignments for a single company or for multiple clients? I can imagine that this is frustrating. The first year of my career I had to do a lot of very very questionable facebook apps. I hope I never have to go back there :)
For multiple clients. I mean, I'm trying to wade through Upwork and get some meaningful work, even if it's for competitive rates, but very hard to get someone to the interview stage, even with well written customised cover letters.
Freelance is an "industry" that purely works only with a good network of people who have trust in one another. Just hoping to build on that, more than actually struggling to get clients.
I always imagined Upwork to be a very tough business. You're absolutely right about the network thing. Trust is essential. Furthermore even if nobody had to offer some work to this point, it feels good to have some people on the lookout.
I currently have a local client who found me on google - turns out, they're pretty close to where I live. But before that, I had a 9 or 10-week drought, mainly because most clients offered a super low rate - they saw the pandemic as an opportunity to pay low since everyone was trying to work at home but as of last night, I saw a local company hiring a Vue Js Dev at $10-$20 - which is pretty generous in our country.
So far I didn't even come to this stage... Don't want to be too negative but it might be the next step.
I wish you good luck with the job offering in case you applied! Really nice to hear that there might be light at the end of the tunnel at some places.
Have you tried to search on Reddit? I just landed one now - the client found me on one of my posts!
For me, I'm mostly finding ways to create a sales & marketing funnel for other revenue sources. Along with product development to allow me to scale and handle clients that I do not have the time to take on.
That's probably the smart thing to do. Thank you for sharing!
honestly im okay with software engineering and all but because of this social distancing and all i need to touch and hug somebody you know my social life kinda at the point where someday i will look at google and search how to be friend with somebody
I'm a freelancer but also right at the beginning of my career, so it's hard to know whether things are slow because of COVID or because I just didn't have a lot of momentum. But, I do have a call this afternoon with someone who cold-emailed, so that's encouraging.
Is this the end of an era for freelancers? No, I don't think so. But when money is tight I think people are a lot more careful about who they hire, so as someone else said, trust becomes more important in hiring, whether staff or freelancers.
Can you describe how do you get free lance jobs?
People will not be able to survive for more than 3 months, if the lock down continues for too long. Clients are offering super low rates