Ask HN: Freelance work for a "semi-skilled" designer/coder.
8 comments
Look through Odesk and Elance to see what people are putting out there for jobs. It's a decent place to start. Keep in mind it's like any crazy market, there is everything from the ridiculously low paying to high end.
You know a lot more than you think you do. Whatever skill level you have, there are people who are worse who are winning the same sort of projects you would be bidding on. The absolute worst are those who never even start on the project (and possibly run with a down payment,) so you can't be worse than those people if you at least give it an honest effort. ;)
Outside of that. It sounds like this is mostly going to be a side thing for you. I would try not to deal directly with the "end clients" if possible. That's the true "business end" of web development and just because you have skills doesn't mean that you are going to be good at that side of things without putting in your dues. What I would do is look for other developers to help out. Look at developers / designers sites and see if they post jobs. Look at job aggregators. Another awesome source is Twitter, developers post there all the time looking for help.
Main thing. Have excellent communication. Let your clients know what's going on, even if it's bad. Bad news is far better than no news at all. They just need to know how to plan things.
Good luck!
You know a lot more than you think you do. Whatever skill level you have, there are people who are worse who are winning the same sort of projects you would be bidding on. The absolute worst are those who never even start on the project (and possibly run with a down payment,) so you can't be worse than those people if you at least give it an honest effort. ;)
Outside of that. It sounds like this is mostly going to be a side thing for you. I would try not to deal directly with the "end clients" if possible. That's the true "business end" of web development and just because you have skills doesn't mean that you are going to be good at that side of things without putting in your dues. What I would do is look for other developers to help out. Look at developers / designers sites and see if they post jobs. Look at job aggregators. Another awesome source is Twitter, developers post there all the time looking for help.
Main thing. Have excellent communication. Let your clients know what's going on, even if it's bad. Bad news is far better than no news at all. They just need to know how to plan things.
Good luck!
Without a portfolio it would be tough to get a project. If you don't have a portfolio I would recommend making some stuff up. Take a popular site that you feel you can do a better job designing and do it. Everybody on Odesk or Elance has a large portfolio.
luck!
luck!
This is assuming design work, but it sounds like the OP is stronger in backend dev. You don't need a portfolio for that, but a list of projects on Github or something like that would help.
[deleted]
In terms of my level of design skill, it's tough to say... I don't have any live projects at the moment to show off, but I'd definitely say I'm an above average designer.
What are some of your recommendations?