How freelancing negotiations work...

Very exciting news, just thought I’d share.

I was a computer engineering student before I left school to have my first child (and then second, third, and fourth).

I stayed at home for five years, out of necessity, not by choice, and struggled to get back into tech.

I eventually stared freelancing Wordpress sites, because in a small town, I didn’t have any other opportunities.

When not doing that, I took online classes and did side projects, mostly in Javascript.

This summer I got an internship at Mozilla through GNOME Outreachy doing python work.

It’s completely unreal to me...but I have been offered a contract-to-hire position with Mozilla.

After years of feeling like I would never succeed, I have my first real programming job.

Ridiculously awesome benefits and pay...

Holy fucking hell.

You have done a great job!! Thanks for delivering the project on time. It is exactly what I asked for. I will ask for no changes and I will pay you right away.

Said no client ever.

This one guy wanted a website to sell illegal drugs or something. Oh and he only offered $20 for it. Obviously I didn't take it.

There was another guy who wanted a calculator in Python. I'm not sure why, but I think he was a student who wanted someone to do his homework. He offered $250 so I took it. Once it was done, he didn't pay and blocked me.

I quit freelancing about two months ago or something since I was sick of it. Most clients are disrespectful.

This was my first freelancer project. Just dropped out of school, i think i was 17. No money, no proper hardware, i had a very old laptop & stolen wifi from our neighbor. I lived in a very small room at my mom’s flat, she wanted me out as soon as i turn 18. At the time my plan was to work on freelancer stuff and make my own games. “It will be fine, fuck school, who needs school? 😂“ I haven’t really finished anything back then, so i only had a few wip hobby projects to show ppl as my references. I saw a freelancer job posting. The task was to make a simple quiz game for mobile, it paid 350$. Back then that was a lot of money for me so i took it. I met the client, he said “2-3 week tops, i send you everything, you do the code” Cool. I finally had a “job”😃. The 2-3 weeks turned into a 8 month blur of all-nighting and just implement one more thing and its finished. I did not really have any experience on how to deal with clients and i really needed this project to finally have something on my porfolio. I motivated myself with “if i can finish this i can finish anything”. I think the story of my most definitive all-nighting was 3 months into the development. I finally got everything from the client so it was like just put it together and its done. The client wanted 300 levels, beeing a noob i was i started making all the 300 unity scenes by hand, aligning the pictures, the ui, testing each level, making adjustments to the code, etc.. after a really long night and a fuckton of caffeine i was done. I sent it to the client at around 9 am and gone to sleep. When i woke up i checked my emails to saw this: Cool! But can we do hints? (wich needed a fuckton of rework of my code) I think i had my first mental breakdown while working on the project. After that he wanted more modifications and because i made every level by hand i had to remake all of them like 10 times 😂
But in the end it turned out positive, he really helped me to start my carrier, we became sord of friends and the project gave me a lot of confidence and experience on how to deal with stuff when shit goes wrong because everything that can go wrong in a project gone wrong. It was the most valuable developer lesson. Plus it sounds so cool to say “i was born in development hell, b*tch!”🕶
I attached a pic of the laptop i worked on 😂
Thanks for reading 😃

I used to do some freelancing and one of the main clients I worked with had a project they hired me for that used Drupal. I fucking hated it. I thought it was bloated (and slow as fuck), unnecessarily complex, and just all around a horror to work with.

Even though that was many years ago, from other devs I've met, it seems like Drupal never really got much better. One devops guy who worked at the previous company I was at told me about some benchmarks he had done on Drupal in his previous work. The performance results he got were an absolute joke - awful concurrent performance and just a brutally slow CMS.

Needless to say, since that freelance project, I've never used Drupal again and never will.

After spending a few months on this site, what strikes me the most, is how unhappy a lot of programmers are.

It kind of makes me sad to see so many of you struggle with office politics bullshit everyday.

I have a confession to make.

I've never had a programming job, or freelanced, yet I have made a very comfortable living with programming and marketing for the past 20 years.

I make my living by finding niches where there is shit software, and creating a better alarm clock.

The first 5-10 years of doing this, I worked my ass off (throughout my twenties)
But during most of my thirties, I barely had to
work to keep it all up. I get residual income still
from stuff I did 10 years ago.

I'm curious if anyone at all would be interested in learning how to do this, quitting their job, for example, or, just having the freedom to write your own code without answering to anybody but your own customers. Many of whom you never have to talk to, they go to your site, they buy, and rarely ever send emails (if you do it right)

Everybody here has knowledge that is so bankable, yet they seem to just surrender to
asshole bosses and clients. It doesn't have to
be like that.

If you'd be interested in this, please ++ this.

I'm thinking of creating an online course about creating and marketing your own software, specifically for programmers like you guys. and girls.

I genuinely just want to see if there's interest. I hope that's ok.

>22 year old college student
>Apply for a QA internship
>Interview goes well,they see I have plenty of experience and doubt it's real
>Hard questions are thrown
>Answer them and they admit the position is for manual testing

I honestly don't care I need the money, plus manual testing doesn't usually strain me.

>A week goes by
>A month goes by
>Call them
>...Sorry we were looking for someone with less technical and dev experience.

My fucking face when I don't have a title, still overqualified, fighting with WordPress devs on freelancer.

How the fuck did clients convince themselves they can have a developer build an Amazon, booking.com, Facebook, Airbnb or site of the sorts for 500 bucks on FUCKING WORDPRESS?!

My freelancing horror story?

I remember like it was yesterday. It was late at night and I was doing some freelancing. (You know... the good stuff...)

All of a sudden the light began flickering, it got really cold and I felt like something was watching me!

OMG! SOMETHING JUST TOUCHED MY SHOULDER! I TURN AROUND AND...

...nothing. Nobody was there.

"I really need some sleep", I think to myself and turn back to my monitor.

Wait a second, what's that?
"10%..."
"20%..."
"60%..."

Oh my god...
How could this happen to me?
Those bastards got me after all!

I just witnessed...

A WINDOWS UPDATE!!!

The end~
______________________________

I don't feel responsible for pants that need to be washed now.

Received a website from a developer in my freelancing job today.

Everything rolls. Literally everything. Text, images, links every GOD DAMN THING HAS A ROLLING ANIMATION. WHAT THE FUCK

The inevitable happened, the user that I've answered tons of questions about freelancing deleted his account, thankfully I took backups and will recreate it [together with a killed joke] in the comments below (should've just webarchived it, meh)

I'll keep adding questions & answers I come across to make this a useful resource for people that want to get into freelancing, want to ask me something in the comments, you name it.

Might compile it into a better searchable resource eventually (some sort of blog with TOC), but right now neither do I have the time nor will to do that.

Wish I could have taken over the link that has been now posted a lot, but every post has an ID and I doubt it's possible, will tag dfox to clarify though and also floydian and devtea, that have been so nice to always post a link to that one rant.

Dev: So tell me some specs about the app you want.
Client: something like facebook.
Dev: you know facebook has too many features for even having a price tag?
Client: what? Will I pay too? I have the idea.

....

I'm a freelancer, what about you

Freelancing be like

Experiencing it right now.

As I type this I am sat in hospital having lost power to my hands over the weekend.

I work a day job, I have my own startup that I’m working on and I’m also freelancing on another startup.

Just been diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome. It sucks. My hands feel about as a strong as a particularly weak 4 year old girl.

How to get your long time pending payment?

I stopped the website and then client told me that website is not working and asked me to check what's wrong.

Me: Your cloud server has been disturbed by the recent cyclone, and I won't fix that until I get my pending payment.
Got all the pending payment instantly.

Freelancing website be like: I need a Rolls Royce with high-quality leather and with perfect temperature control. I will also need a mini fridge for my champagne bottle and two wine glass holders. I don't think there's a lot of work to be done in it. It's an easy job.

Budget: $30

I decided to go back to freelancing.

But there's a lot more devs than before, and I almost forgot how difficult it was to attract clients.

Oh, and I can't believe I forgot about their shitty attitudes. I don't think a nice client even exists.

FUCK YOU! YOU PIECE OF SHIT CLIENT!
I work my ass off for a month and deliver you the best possible design for your problem and a great booking system and you open up a dispute on the order stating the work I received was poor?

GO FUCK YOURSELF :@ :@ :@
Everything is working beautifully, I uploaded it on a test website to even demonstrate it. The only problem is he is getting the error of mysqli class not found on his fucking potato server, that is not my fault! Even then, I am willing to install the php mysqli extension on his dick server so the fucking "script" works.

Some people just need a fucking reason to get away with good work done without having to pay...I will leave freelancing if the dispute ends up in his favour.

Fuck this shit. At least I get confirmed payment for what I work for 8 hours a day if I do a fucking job.

Another client who knows what he wants..
😂😂

I'm currently freelancing abroad.
I don't get the UK Salley but I don't pay the UK prices.
I get to travel, see the world and support myself.
Much more valuable then any high end wage to me.
Freedom.

A guy wanted me to convert his Unity project from Android to ios.

He was offering less than 50$....

It dosent end here....

He sent me the files in a zip on Google Drive.....

Also the project size was around 3 gb......

😢😢

After my college I was about to start freelancing.
I met a client and had a chat with him about requirements and all.
He was really nice guy. Then he asked me "What will be the size of the website?? A4 or Bigger??.
On the next day I started looking for full time jobs.

User removes admin access to himself and complains why he can't perform admin functions...

When I charge hourly.. lol ( I don't use sublime text for Java tho)

Best current career choice:
Quit to become a Freelancer.

OH BOY did I sleep bad directly after that decision - no contracts, no sales running.

Oh BOY do I now 2 days later sleep like a dam relaxed, happy baby :) - My network for the win!

The days before handing in my resignation I really looked forward to just leaving, but the actual task again was scary. Why? Cause until then future for me was bound to income, job=stable income = happy me, happy wife, happy child.

Now? Just 4 days later, If all goes to plan I'm already overbooked twice. Truth told!: Couldn't have done it without the network that I built over the years where I was employed. Let's see how this works out :)

I stand up with a huge smile each morning: Just a great feeling!

Request: I don't like the way the page looks. Make it better.

Question: can you give me some more info? What is it that you dislike about the page? You approved the design, the mockup, the HTML version...and we just finished implementing the backend. Can you be more specific?

Response: make it more like this *gives link to completly new layout from a theme on themeforest*. Why does mine not look like this. Make it like this!

Reaction: *fuck this shit, never freelancing again...* Well, then do it yourself. I'm done!

// best feeling ever :)

Client: I want you to build me a website.
Then makes an order on freelancing website.

Me: Okay, Sir. Can you send me your specifications, please?

No reply.

2 days later

Me: Hello, sir....are you still interested?

A week later
Me: Sir.

Me: Sir.....

No reply

2 Weeks later
Me: Sir......

No reply

Client: Oh, sorry.(Then gives some lame excuse) Okay I will send you the specifications.

Me: It's Okay. Waiting for it.

A week later
Me: Sir, you forgot to send me your specifications.

No response.

#Life of a freelancer.....No stability or security or decent clients.

Shortest freelancing horror story :

No Jobs.

> Amazon like website - 9 dollars
> Webdev homework. - 50 dollars
> Spelling mistakes. - have no price

Freelancing can be so bizarre, I'm 50 bucks wealthier now tho.

Met a girl on internet ( because I don't have a real life )
She: So what are you studying?

Me: Currently learning about Deep Learning but I also do freelancing in website development to pay my bills.

She: Okay so tell me what is a COMPUTER

Me: ....
She: ......

Me: umm... it's a... mmm.... actually it's a..... basically a.....
(thinking really hard)

*30 seconds later*
Me: It's an electronic machine

She: seriously? I expected much better from you

Me: I'm sorry!

So, I'm going freelance in a couple of weeks. A bit nervous about it but sometimes you just have to make a leap of faith.

Bonus is that I'm going to be freelancing myself back to the company that I'm leaving for 2 days a week, working out at only £100 a month less than what I've been paid working full time!

That's garunteed until the end of this year - so at least I know that I can pay the bills while I spend the other 3 days building up clients.

Wish me luck!

Why... What has freelancing come to

>be me
>drop out of uni studying civil engineering
>"self-taught" "web programmer"
>start freelancing in 2010
>Make money, feels good man
>clients keep me busy, feel important
>Code just for the fun of it
>be 2019. Married, code to make ends meet
>lose all interest
>mere sight of the ide makes me want to bash the screen
>have zero motivation
>never get any projects done
>become broke af
>look at old friends on fb. They are "Something".
>look at real software engineers and programmers with education
>realize I am an imposter
>start dropping all projects and studying theory
>become more broke
>start taking "motivation pills" to just start working again
>lose all motivation and pissed at all the real programmers and engineers for their success
>be me on May 20, 2019 at 2:56 AM
Yep, this is the end.

I'll keep it short:
My nastiest freelancing horror stories contain shitty clients who dont pay, the nastiest fucking legacy code you can imagine, and expectations as high as trump thinks of himself.

The lesson is simple: Choose your freelancing clients wisely and always expect partial payment in advance. Even from family or firends!

I'm freelancing and there was a guy who needed help with JavaFX. He gave me code only to his view class so I don't steal the rest... It was around 5k lines and it was full of compilation errors because of missing classes. While checking the code I realised something is really wrong with his model classes. So I asked maybe he could send me this one model class that was suspicious. So he did and it was around 10k lines long and had around 200 fields... ALL OF THEM FUCKING STRINGS except 3. You know what the rest of 3 were? 2 Lists of strings and a boolean... It was his "main" model class, he was using it for everything. It had setters for all fields and empty default constructor, so he would just instantiate the object and would set the fields that he wanted to use. Need new functionality? Just add 5more String fields and set them!

When your client wants you to build complete amazon in a week.

Wish me luck, ranters. Tomorrow I start working in an IT company for the very first time. Hope I don't get fired very soon, freelancing is hard. And I still owe >1300€

~ Freelancer.com Week #1 ~

Project: I need someone to debug an application's code and review it. Budget 30 bucks.

Bid: I am an experienced developer I can probably review it in an hour.

client: Hi, need you to check if app is contains virus [link to scam website]

me: sure, download supposed "social Bitcoin miner" and run some AV tests...8+ positive flags for a Trojan virus.

>Me: It's a Trojan virus mate it's not legitimate😟

>Client: Can you remove the Trojan virus so that the legit not stays?

Me: Umm there is no bot mate it's just a virus 😕 I wouldn't open it outside a sandbox

Client: But here it says Bitcoin faucet bot [links shitty how-to youtube video]

Me: 😒 it's not real dude you are about to get scammed, I can test it in a VM if you. . .

Client: I opened it already, it's working

Me: 😮 r u sure?

Client: yes, can you install VM for further testing?

Me: sure, in your computer?

Client: yes

Me: just download the windows image and text me when it's done

Client: My disc is full! Only 3 gb left

Me: 😑 call me when you clean it

Client: [ offline ]

Got my first job on UpWork, and I think I got scammed already :(

I was just browsing for freelancing jobs, found a NodeJs one that didn't sound like crap.

> Plz download attached project description

Ok *download and open PDF*

>Comic sans all over the place with blue and purple font color

NOPE!

Just curious, how is it like to work as a developer. I mean, as a profession and not a hobby or freelancing.

From devRant, so far I know that you work in an office, the managers and bosses are assholes, and people always write unmanageable and undocumented code.

What else is it like? Do you get to work alone or do you have to work with people? Do you stay there all day long?

I know its still going to be a while for me, but I want to know how it will be like.

Client: Everything is perfect but few small changes to be done.

Me: Wow, that will be easy.

*Client lists 100 points*

Client : Those are small changes. I guess it will be done in a day.

* Yeah sure I am Superman * :/

this.isRant === True
Salute to everyone who can handle clients (the dumb ones).
So the client I'm freelancing for gives me this website and asks me to scrape entries out of it. It had about 45 items. I did that sent the file. Next day he says my file had the wrong data. He wanted data which satisfies X but the URL given was for Y. The least he could have done was to let me know in the first place instead of giving random URL to scrape and then blame me.

almost always the case here in India while freelancing 😢

Today I left my job in which I spent these last 5 years.

My boss wasn't very pleased with me leaving the company today. But well, it had to be done

Now it's time to focus in freelancing and my own startup. Surely my work will be paid more accurately than these 5 years, one of the reasons I left.

So, my UpWork account request is rejected, with a reason that
"already many freelancers with a similar skillset to yours".

In skills I entered
"AngularJS, ASP.NET MVC, .NET Framework, C#, jQuery, Semantic UI, Bootstrap"

Then I resubmitted the request with by adding blockchain and Ethereum.

Again rejected.

What should I do 😫
I guess I never can start freelancing.

Guys guys guys. Conversation had right just now. A PM from the company I’m freelancing for just said

“We need to move away from SQL server and shift all the data to MongoDB. I don’t want it to take more than a month tops”

Verbatim. No context. Nothing. The website is for a small time supply chain software that’s been chugging along for a decade now with spaghetti code everywhere.

How do I even respond? The other guy who works with me sent 😂😂😂 to me privately and now is offline lol wtf

when people post work requests on here instead of rants. this ain't no freelancing website lol

One time I applied for a contract position for a company and get an email the next day asking for an interview two days later which I accept and attend. They want someone to convert their website from Wix to WordPress while keeping the same look, I would have about a month to do it (then after that create an e-commerce page). So far I can do that. They email me 2 hours after the interview asking for a 2nd interview on the following Monday which I accept and attend. There I meet one of the founders (I guess) and he really asks me about SEO and what keyword tool I use (they didn't ask about seo keywords in the job posting or at the 1st interview) then he tells me that the website needs to be converted over in 4 days (instead of the 1 month I was told 2 days earlier). Then he asks what I quote. I gave him a number (less than $10,000) and he looked at me like I had 3 heads, I then said I needed some time to come up with a quote. He said no problem, email the guy who 1st interviewed you the quote before the end of the day and if we like it you will start tomorrow.

I then went to a nearby restaurant and thought it over then made up an email telling him that I wouldn't take on the project. There were so many red flags, and the fact that they want it done in 4 days would have meant working at least 12 hour days. A couple of hours later I emailed them to say no, they didn't reply and their website is still on Wix today.

If something needs to be done quickly then know it's going to cost you (and tell someone your budget in the 1st interview).

That moment when clients employees comment on your working hours and the amount of work you do...

Fun fact: I'm replacing their jobs with applications.

My websites contact form got a submission from some "manjeet" offering me his freelancing services, together with previous projects, where he apparently delivered and... has a login backdoor that he advertises to others to check out?.. with credentials etc.

Also got flagged with "It contains a suspicious link that was used to steal people's personal information. Avoid clicking links or replying with personal information."

Freelancing sucks. "A good developer told me this should take a couple hours." Or "I need an Uber like app with built in payment and social integration. We have a $50 budget and it shouldn't take more than a day or two to build." Or "I need a simple game built. Should work on Apple and Android. No budget but we could work out a share of profits." Really wish I had a real job...

Had a talk with my mentor and the CTO today.
They made very clear that they'd want to keep me employed after I finished my bachelor and briefly asked about my plans.
I am happy and this kind of gave me some more peace of mind concerning job security.

Thing is though, I don't know yet what I want to do in two years from now. There are some possibilities and of course I don't know how my private life will develop.

If I stay there, I could finish my bachelor and then do a master halftime, like I do now with my bachelor - or I could stop at my bachelor and start working full-time again.
I rather want to stay there - though I strongly dislike the 9 to 5 job model, the work would be in a field I'm interested in. My colleagues are a nice bunch of people and I respect them a lot, especially the team I work with.

On the other hand, I always thought about freelancing and was researching possibilities during the last year. My skills are not so easy to translate into a freelancing job, though, if I don't want to do at least 50% software development.

Or I could get a job somewhere else which would have the charms of starting from scratch. Many new experience, much new things, wow.
Maybe also a better salary though if I'd be doing the job for the money only, I'd probably have worked elsewhere.

...

I'm usually quite relaxed about my future plans but some of these things were on my mind for some time now, also, I'm not sure whether I can "define" my future just yet.

Also, I'm overthinking it, yes.

I will have another talk in about a month.
No pressure, right?

After moving, I don't have DSL yet so I have to use mobile data to get internet access. Additionally I had to finish a freelancing job. In Germany you have one of the most expensive and least reliable mobile networks in europe.

I had to upload my develpoed software to a remote server

So I suddenly was sent back in time. A single call would have disrupted the download (I can't use internet and phone at the same time, might be a phone issue). While my phone has "high speed" volume left and showed at least HSPA, but I still, the upload rate was prehistoric:

In India a standard WordPress website with 10 pages and blog functionality would cost you as little as Rs. 2,000-5,000! That's $314-$784

And a few "agencies" do make a decent product for the amount

But in general the product is not maintainable at all. I once handled the upgradation of a client and her referrals has been giving me projects ever since!

Pro: I have got my first client. 😄
Con: most of his multiple websites use WordPress. 😥

Fucked!

I have got my cyber security exam tomorrow morning and i just got a call from a client to make some urgent changes to his site.

To add to it, i already wasted around half an hour becoz GoDaddy Plex somehow decided to block my own IP in the firewall.

And now I am on devRant.

Crap. I am fucked!

The day I discovered I have a limit to the amount of crap and abuse I can take. The following day I handed in my notice at a place I had worked for 7 years. That was 3.5 years ago, have been happily freelancing ever since.

Did a freelancing project... Hosted the project and gave the client credentials with the invoice. She changed the password and there is that

I might have got my first freelancing gig. It sounds like a really simple thing, might just take one hour or so.

So comes the eternal question from the freelancing noob: how much should I charge?

I'm thinking approximately the hourly pay I get from my full-time job. Does that make sense? Even though it might just take one hour?

So my wife got laid off from her job aaaaaaand that puts me back again in the hunt for freelance bs to cover up her income until she finds something decent........dis is gon suck bad man.....

How does GDPR affect you as a freelancer in mobile/web development?

I'm asking because I eventually plan on freelancing but I have no clue how to deal with these stuff.

Useless. Was freelancing while still in high school and after graduating got a job immediately after moving out to other city. Was studying just because my parents wanted me to. Was studying there for a half the year, then dropped out and focussed just on my job. After a year moved to the Netherlands to study, because my parents didn’t like that I dropped out. Guess what? I dropped out after a half the year and got a good paying job there.

Perhaps the only thing I got from studies was some friends I am still keeping in touch with. And also it gave me good pretext to end up where I am now, otherwise probably I would have stayed in my home country, that I must say, hate living in.

I've been cooking for 4 hours straight, will be eating for a whole week.

If only freelancing worked like that...

Started freelancing on PeoplePerHour and I'm already doing damned well after a fortnight. C# was the right language to learn.

The posts about love coding interviews and low paid freelancing work just reminds me how little anyone know about process of using code to solve real problems.

If someone wanted to give me a JavaScript test then I'd point them at Fivver where there are tonnes of JS devs available for minimum wage.

No one is paying me for my ability to write code. They are paying me to solves problems that businesses have that are likely to involve software.

A few years ago I was working in a startup where the designer was given way too much decisional power (he was friends with the owner).

He had a tendency to keep editing parts of the design during the development phases, so when we had to work on a new big section of the application, before starting the tront-end development, I asked him to confirm that the mockups were final.

He confirmed the design was final and was not going to change.

10 days later, of couse, he sent a new, completely different, set of mockups. The startup owner expected the new design to be implemented without moving the deadline.

(I left that startup shortly after. The issues with the designer were just the tip of the iceberg.
The owner tried to keep a payment hostage to "force" me to sign a new 1 year contract. He backtracked when he thought I was recording the call. I got my payment and left.)

As a freelancing student my customer (CEO) asked to build a project management system.
I was like: we can smoothly get to know each other by setting up a simple .xlsm
ENGAGE™.gif

On 2/3 of project, shareholder comes in: make it like office. I want the same as ms office but built by you.

Me: sure. Why not. I'll a have a little chat with friends being experts on this.
FuckThisRage.webm

Who does he think he is. What does he believe one single human is capable of. What a jerkTard

Forced a high expense allowance and gave them some gibberish copy pasta, sealed .xlsm containing 3 languages all but macro

#peaceout

1. Freelancing as a Rails backend developer
2. Client wants a job to be done in 2 hours
3. -_-

If your client doesn't know what the fuck he wants to see on his website even with all text and images included - don't take this fucking job.

They will let you choose a template and you end up switching it 5 times. "Oh we don't like it. What else do you have? Oh, this looks better." Next day "We don't like this theme anymore. We want to switch to what we had before."

If people can't draw their home page on a paper I tell them go fuck yourself straight in a face. I always put these people on my reference list so my future clients know I'm straightforward, not lazy, not low skilled, but honest with dumbasses like some of my previous clients.

You are asking for a basic website with 5 pages, you have a shitty budget and then I have to customize the entire theme and tweak every fucking possible element in CSS, HTML and PHP. Go fuck yourself. All you get for your money is WordPress with 15 min consultation how to copy paste your shit and save it. Never do fixed budgets, never work on projects like this if it's under $500-1000. Meet with the client to understand him/her better and see if he is a jackass-perfectionist or a chill person who won't be picky.

That's my memories of being a freelancer, trying to get any job for any budget just to build my portfolio. Never going back to this, at least not for small businesses with less than $5,000 budget. Reading people before you start working with them is a good thing.

Hi! I'm new in freelancing. I've created a program that scrapes data from a website, parses it, runs DB queries, and emails the prepared data to the customer for whom I've created this program. The whole program is written in PHP and uses a MySQL table. There's almost no front-end, it's just like an automated background process that runs with a cron job. I've bought and set up a domain and hosting for them (my cutomer paid it all). I got the core part of the program running after ~2 days, and it took me ~a week to complete the project including adding features and the testing phase. Now, I'd like to know, how much does this kind of project cost? The business operates in Silicon Valley.

Hey everyone, I want to start an IT company that focuses on web and Android applications development. I along with my teammates have planned to take freelancing projects from various websites in the beginning, I was thinking if you guys could guide me or give me some tips to jumpstart my career and the tips may help me in the long run.
Thanks in advance.

PS my team is fairly experienced since we've been working on local projects since 2014.

I am turning 16 in 3 months and I want to start freelancing then. I want to earn money and get some experience .

I will still go to school until I have my a levels so I can go to university later.

Do you have any advice for an absolute freelancing beginner? I will probably make websites with HTML and CSS (of course, what the hell else) and react. Nodejs and mongodb for the Backend.

What should I do in these 3 months to prepare myself?

I want to build a portfolio website and learn more about node, especially how to do safe authentication in these 3 months, anything else? Also which websites would you recommend me?

when stalking can be a profession

Sometimes, I ponder whether I am jobless or freelancer without work .

Freelancers should be considered genies at this point.

Wanting to start freelancing but being terrified.

I can't stand talking to clients on the phone!

One of my first freelancing clients used to talk to me for an hour at a time. I really wish I could have billed him by the hour, it took him twice as long to explain anything and then I'd have to get back in the mindset for what I was working on. The phone is just so disruptive.

I'm so much happier working for a company where the project manager deals with the client's and product managers.

So today I was offered a job at the company as a junior frontend developer. Digging a little deeper I found out that they don't have any other frontend devs in house.

So the job offer translated to:
- senior skillset
- senior workload
- junior wage

Best part is that I was freelancing for them in past and was helping to establish some of the workflow a year ago for more money they offered now.

Thanks, no thanks, I guess?

To the freelancers.

Do you offer web-hosting? What are your experiences? Where do you rent servers? What do you charge?

Thanks in advance

The very first sentence in my profile on many freelancing and networking sites is "I am not looking for a full time job at the moment!" I still get fat to many job offers from recruiters, who apparently cannot read.

I want to program everyday for a whole year because I want to use the programming knowledge that I learned and use it in ways that will make me think outside the box. Hopefully, I can grab freelance work as a Web Developer, which has been in high demand these past few years.

I'll be documenting the process on my YouTube channel, which I'll share when I publish the first video.

I will NOT procrastinate... I WILL DO THIS!!

How do you generate/ write your invoices? Please, recommend me your favorite tool/ procedure.

A recruiter presented me to a Company for a 3 months Freelance Position. Unfortunatley I got rejected, however I kept Contact with the Company and i asked for a fulltime employment, they were fine with that and i got a tech Interview Next Week with them. Now my recruiter contacted me and Knew already about everything, they kept asking me what they should negotiate with them. I told them i will negotiate myself as I am looking forward to a full Time employment with them, they tell me it has to be under their name, eventhough it has nothing to do with the agreed freelancing position.. are they allowed to do that ?

I have a Devrant tee shirt and stickers. Everyone knows I like 80s Rock and metal. I hope know figures out my identity. Never mind I don't care. I am freelancing.

So, there was this guy where i worked, who was doing some freelancing.

He asked me to do some front-end stuff for him and i said ok.

After some gigs, my boss found out about him working as a freelancer and got really pissed, because, according to him, it was forbidden by company policies (though i never saw it on contract).

After that, the boss started talking to me about shit that the guy did on the past, like stealing, liying about been sick for months, bad mouth the entire company to others companys, etc. Some really bad shit.

End of the story, the company fired that guy, threatened to do the same to me, made me go on record about that shit in court, and that fucking motherfucker didnt even payd me for my last work.

I hope he rot in hell, fucking piece of shit.

Sorry for the long text, but (today) i find it as amusing story.

I'm in a situation here, I had an idea for an app and I started coding it. Since I'm a front end developer I find it not amusing to do the backend part. I then started to share the idea and such with good classmate (not a coder). I then made him join me on this adventure. After a lot of coding he said he wanted to contribute with something since I'm coding all day and he's not. Then we agreed freelancing the back end part.

Some time later we got a pretty good deal on some Indians doing the whole app. I thought to myself "this feels kinda good!" so we went on with the freelancer.

Days went to months and we finally got the app back. I did a mistake of paying him all the milestones without testing the app in its wholeness, later finding out that one part of the login system didn't work. That lead to a deeper debug to find out that the core function of the app was commented out.. I then wrote the freelancer back with minimal and slow response.

Now the deadline of the app is like in 2 months. If not we miss a whole year.

My classmate knows about this and he's the one who played for the freelancing. Now we have talked about me doing the whole backend myself.

The only issue I have now is that I feel like he's just sitting home doing nothing other than flashing money around and me busting my ass of writing code that I really am not good at. (basically learning more than coding)

But he played a lot of money for this.. So I feel kinda bad for him.

Rip life.

The best type of client

@dfox and @trogus I was just wondering how do you support yourself and devrant? Do you have a day job or are you freelancing or is devrant making money to sustain you and itself?

Is it me or freelancing jobs at Freelancer are incredibly vague.

Jobs titled "build me a website" with descriptions like "I need an expert dev to work on a python website".

How the hell can you put a price and time to it?!
Am I missing something here? I'm totally new at this and it's kinda baffling.

When I was freelancing and still studying 60 hrs a week.
~20 hrs. bread-and-butter job
~20 hrs. for University
~20 hrs. writing a full-stack application for a startup

I did that for about 3 months, afterwards I luckily had no classes left.
Only, the thesis is still open. But on the other hand, the freelance work for the startup was a pretty good reference for scoring an actual, well-paid position which made me leave my old job as well as freelancing.

Now I work roughly 40 hours a week with nearly as much freedom as a freelancer but less paperwork.

I worked a few times for free until the client decided he doesn't need anymore that product so he doesn't need to pay me.
From that moment i started to ask for advance payments, but a lot of times I calculated incorrectly the real price of my work miscalculating the number of hours it will take, ending working for less than 3€ per hour...

I love freelancing, but I'm really bad at evaluating my work.

Sometimes I wish I could just quit everything and start freelancing....but it's easier said than done....

So I had this client who wanted me to develop a brand new website for his company. When I asked him about the money he'd pay me, he said he'll pay me whatever it takes.

So I started coding JavaScript day-in-day-out, trying to show him different designs. He saw them and was pretty impressed by the progress. Then he fucking asked me to code sitting in his office so that it gets finished faster. I even do that!!

After 3 months of grinding, I asked him for my payment. That fucker stopped returning my calls and emails. He didn't even use my website. Then a month later I found that that fucker had called in a cheaper web developer and got his website designed JUST LIKE MINE!!!

I fucking hate freelancing!!

My freelancing horror story was not getting paid. And having to deal with Turdpress.

Ok I know there have been a lot of similar rants to this one, but now I have to write one by myself!

Fuck freelancer.com or whatever that shit is called. I once started using it when I was in school because I thought it was a convenient way to earn money on the side without fixed work times, so I could adjust to how much time I have. But soon I realized that wouldn't happen. It is easy for me to make a website, I have written some css templates from scratch and can apply them, but when will these cocksucking assholes learn that $25 for a website is not only a joke, but a fucking insult? Or a logo for 4? In his video on fiverr, pewdiepie has a point on the thing where he said that you can shit out a logo in 2min and make an easy 4 to 5 bucks, but I like doing things more properly and I bet those fuckers will give you shit for not designing the perfect logo. I once accepted a job where I ended up busting my ass 3 days log for $100 and I thought that was the normal mess at the beginning, before you have former customers rate your profile, but I got perfect ratings and still didn't get or even find any proper jobs. Most are complete shit, like write a fucking book for me or design a fucking Website or pull a logo out of your ass, but some projects are just rediculous. I once saw a project where they wanted some engineer to do the layout for the pipes in a huge processing plant. Yeah, because engineers are so poor and unemployed, even when they are entrepreneurs they dont go to those shity sites. Since I am actually qualified for such a job, I applied just to see if I could land a job that is actually not shitty, but of course it turned out the person had no idea what he was talking about. It is basically a platform where people can pay you in exposure. And the absolutely fucking worst thing about it is that they get away with it. There are always a ton of people, mostly from countries where cost of life is significantly lower, who flood the freelance market with cheap, presumably horrible logos, mobile apps, websites, texts and apparently pipeline layouts. I haven't found a similar platform but where there are only high quality biddings. But that is something that I would love to use.

Sorry for long rant, no potato.

I am thinking to start freelancing with PHP. I need more money besides my actual job and I just love to code.

It will be my first time developing profissionaly.

Any tips?

About to start my first ever freelance job. The problem is I think I've overestimated myself and under quoted for the project.

Hoping for the best and I'm any case, this will be a good experience in terms of learning about the freelance world right?

Looking for some advice
Does anyone do freelance work on the side? If so how did you get the work? Whats it like freelancing?
I'm looking to try and earn some extra cash

Yesterday I had a discussion with a freelancing developer

Me: You're already earning good, why are you freelancing?
He: Freelancing is my hobby.
Me: !! Why don't you participate in some open source development? I do.
He: How much do you earn there?
Me: In terms of money? few bucks as donation for 1 coffee in a month.
He: few bucks only !!!
Me: Opensource development can be good for your career. You can get a good job or promotion....
He: I believe in certainty.
Me: Hmmm

Today, a guy contacted me on upwork to fix his iOS game which was crashing.

So I asked him to put it on github so I can clone it and push the fixes.
For some reason he said it was not possible for him to put it on github,so he uploaded it on Dropbox and sent me the link.

How the fuck am I supposed to fix that 700mb project and send it back ? Again upload it on some cloud ?

AaaaGhhhh !!!!

I was just browsing some projects to bid on and I couldn't believe my fucking eyes.

"I need website - Wix"

I just can't believe it, can we sink any lower as a species?!

what the fuck did i just read

It's time to look for new job thinking of doing freelancing

Got contacted by a potential client whose job I had bid on. Spent a couple of minutes frantically studying his specification and preparing my discussion.

Turns out the job was fake. He wanted me to create a new profile, verify it with my white European identity and then let him use it to approach Western clients.

The best part? I'm as Asian as he is, and all my profile pictures bear witness to that fact.

Some people smoke some really special stuff...

> do you feel sorry for freelancing contractors
> whose previous client abandoned them
> they ask you to help them fix some trivial bugs in the shitty code
> you believe you can change the world by going overboard by also improving the code quality, along with fixing the bugs
> initialize an empty file where you'll translate the shitty code into a more organized one
> start creating variables and generic functions which can be used in a modular and organized fashion
> meticulously document the first function you write
> realize this is not worth your time
> insert some glue code into the original code which fixes the trivial bugs
> glue code has hard coded values so it adds to the shittiness of the code
> submit the work
> get $$$

By now I'm about a month into my first job, and I've gotta say: working full-time kinda sucks. Even if I'm enjoying what I'm developing, 8 hours is still way too long to try to focus on one project. I could get more done in a productive 4 to 5 hour stretch than I've been getting done in the whole 8 I'm here. I guess that's part of the allure of freelancing though.

I'm so done with indeed and jobstreet. I couldn't find an office job that I passionately love. Most are looking for PHP devs, ASP.NET devs, Java devs or effing fresh graduates with 5 years of experience. I guess it's time for me to learn freelancing.

Been a freelancing for quite a while now and forgot what's it's like to work in a company. Have you got any tips that I could benefit from? Got an interview coming up this week and want to impress them. BTW I'm a Web developer.

Any former freelancers who decided to move to traditional employment?

I have been doing freelance since I finished University. 8 years now. I really liked the flexibility and opportunity to work on different projects and people, but my enthusiasm is wearing thin. I'm currently updating my cv and setting up my LinkedIn profile, but it's hard to "prove" my experience, and many projects I worked on are private.

I am not sure if I can mention the companies I worked for, or how do to it... Feeling lost and doomed to keep freelancing.

Anyone made this transition before? How did you do it?

I think I'm gonna start freelancing until I'm out of college

Wrote CSS for a website.

Tested on all current major browsers, works like a charm.

Everyone in the agency I'm freelancing for tested, works like a charm and approved.

Client tests the project and points out some template errors.

We try to reproduce and see nothing wrong.

Then, during a talk with the agency, I have a "brilliant" idea:

- Let's try with Internet Explorer...

Nailed it.

🤪

Freelancing multiple projects for a single client (an agency)...

"Dude! I need you to work on this part of project B right now, client's bugging me..."
"But I also have project A to finish, there's tons of things to do..."
"I'll negotiate with that client, do project B now!"
"Ok..."

~ two days later ~

"Dude! Is project A finished? The client needs it now"
"But you told me to work on project B and you'd negotiate..."
"We need this, NOW"

FUCK YOU, FUCK YOUR LIFE, FUCK YOU SIDEWAYS AND DIAGONALLY!

A Bible app for Android called Tour the Bible. It uses the Google maps API to put a pin in each location as you read so you can follow along and virtually "tour" the Bible.

I had a basic version built but then I switched to Kotlin then I pretty much completely rewrote it to use an api for the Bible content instead of plain .txt files. I still try to work on it in my spare time but with a family, full time job, full time school and part time freelancing I don't get much spare time.

I think some of my co-workers see me as real life human version of Google search engine.

Hope they would understand that just because I'm little bit more up to date in tech knowledge and an accidental Google nerd doesn't make me a know it all..

But i understand their tendency to trust my recommendation over their googling skills

They want me to find

1- best freelancing website
2- best platform or service for someone who wants to do online teaching

Results that I'm aware of:

1- freelancer, guru, upwork
2- YouTube, udemy, Pluralsight, skillshare, thinkific

Any other recommendations?

How many devs here never joined a college and now are in good place in a company or freelancing? How did you get your job?

I hate UpWork and Freelancer.com fees and policies about the privacy (or lack) for your projects. But I grudgingly admit they offer protections against fraud. If you're a freelancer, or if you employ freelancers, and do so without the fraud protections of these types of services, how do you guard against being taken advantage of by clients or freelancers? I mean, anyone can write and sign contracts but in the end they're just paper promises not worth anything if the people you're working with or for are "dogs on the Internet" who can simply disappear.

On Holiday break from work, and get a morning email to do some freelancing. Yeah, sure i !will do it today.

HOLY FUCKING COW! :D

Last year I had the best 4 months, professionaly, working on a startup here in Brazil. But due to management changes, I was laid off.

Since then I spent this time freelancing and doing odd-jobs, stressing myself and almost losing hope for good things.

Just now someone told me I was invited to an interview and return to the team again! Due to some indications! 😆✨

I couldn't be happier! But also really afraid of this interview!

But, oh boy! If it goes well, at least I'll be off the reds for a while! 😝 I'm SO happy because of that!

Going back to the team is also great! 😎

I never understood how people have any problems with getting paid for freelancing work, when middleman/escrow platforms like upwork exist, just don't be retarded when applying for a job. I am so sick of those shit ass stories from people telling me "my client didnt pay meeee 😭😭😭" ITS YOUR FAULT. I never had any client not paying, if you don't have the option of escrow, then just fucking put remote execution via "update" system in for fucks sake or give remote control to the client while monitoring it, there is so much fucking ways to secure yourself, just don't be retarded and many clients instantly show their character when talking budget and turnaround time.

Okay, had a freelance JavaScript gig (with Three.js 3d lib). Usually I put the code on github so I have easier time switching between Desktop and laptop during work, unless I have to sign an NDA or something. Today at 5 AM I got mail from freelancing site support that client reported me for having code on public repo (but it's not like it is a proprietary software, it's based on threejs editor). I made repo private and went to sleep. Later I'm reading through messages, guy was cursing me, threatend to sue me etc. Ended up dropping the client. Did I do something really unprofessional? Unless I'm told not to, I want to show my code and I don't believe in not showing it by default. What do you guys think?

Please tell me more about how you're desperate for me to start this project but don't want to sign a contract or give me money up front.

Go away... I'm new to freelancing but I'm not a mug

For all freelance Devs out here.
How do you get clients ?

Because am planning to begin with freelancing but am afraid that i won't be able to get any clients.

I wanna rant about a freelance job but I can't. Tell me your freelancing horror stories instead :D

FREELANCING should be renamed to COSTLANCING. Many people thinks that freelancing means free of cost.

Should I start building a portfolio in a spare time now? (student, can't imagine myself in an office)

My freelancing horror story? They wanted me to make use of php...

I just asked a client if he wants a contact form instead of just writing down an email address on their contact page.

Now I'm trying to explain to him how building a full blown CRM is outside the scope the business website we agreed to build.

Lesson Learned: Never make suggestions.

I am currently a freelancer and I get most of my work from forums and existing clients. I never had any success at those freelancing websites which basically devalue the developers.

How does it work for you? How do you get your work?

freelancer

!rant, need advice

I have no idea where to start with freelancing.

My girlfriend's been wanting to get some stuff but due to some issues hasn't been able to and has been extremely hesitant about bringing the topic up.

So to surprise her, I decided it'd be nice if I could freelance on the side and rake up some money so she can get the things she wants and I can spoil her (she's been through things and honestly deserves it).

So if you guys have any suggestions on where to start freelancing, that'd be great. I can do graphics and web design and just set up an anonymous Fiverr account but never had any luck with it.

What are your thoughts about leaving the full time job to start freelancing?

clientDesires:
I want this
goto clientDesires

How do you guys manage the stress of freelancing?
The work is never up to their standards they say, you have to deal with all your life, academics and procrastination...
Wish I get hit by a truck or something...😞

This is a general question to freelancers or devs who works on only projects, is this worth only £100 pounds:

A survey website with 19 pages. Questions changes based on previous answers. Must have drag and drop, mix and match functionality. It must be mobile friendly as well.

And we have to parse the data we get from survey to a nicely rendered webpage so the client can see it.

The deadline is 2 days

Fuck, is it worth learning PHP and WordPress to actually get freelance jobs? Everything I find is in fucking WordPress and I just need to make some fucking money

Do you earn a lot more if you're working freelance instead of beeing a bootlicker?

SHORT: BEST 1st WEB DEV LANGUAGE? READ FOR CONTEXT

So my gf became even more of the girl of my dreams last night by confiding to me she wanted to learn web development like actually learn it and do freelance work, this evolved from just wanting to start a blog. (We have a dream of being digital nomads and traveling the world together)

Now I am but a simple innocent C++ dev not trying to start a flame war buuuutttt... What web language would be most beneficial for her to learn as her first main language? And Why?

She's done some simple html is the past (not myspace), she took a web design class in high school years ago. Thank you for all the help! 🖒

So was freelancing for a guy and I know him pretty well or so I thought. Turns out he is a corrupt prick who leaked one of his support staffs phone number to all the customers because she wasn't online for two days. What the fuck is wrong with some people.

My job in company to developed e-commerce website as a full stack developer.

History of that project.

Company paid 300,000 INR to the local web development firm for developing previous website and they developed website without bootstrap/SSL/Even save information of high profile client in plain text.

I am not angry on that web firm ,I am laughing on my company because such client never trust on independent developers who work hard ,code day and night to complete freelancing projects.

I hope my work will make differnce in their selling.

@linuxxx I'm about to found a start-up.

In fact me and my buddy with some freelancing contracts. And we are in need of a dedicated server.

Our plan is to host the clients inside docket container.

Technology would be dotnet core and either react/angular/Vue.js, if that matters.

The host will run on arch, because I feel in love with it! 😍

Do you have any suggestions for a provider for us?

Budget between 100-125€
Location: Germany.

Thanks in advance!

Can't decide if I should join this nice internship or let myself enjoy this summer and rest a bit, as I burned out a bit this semester with studying and freelancing.

Why is it so difficult to decide..

The internship is at cool place with nice tech and I feel like its a nice opportunity to grab, but I feel like I need the rest too.

And I have to decide tomorrow. I guess I'm terrible at decision-making sometimes Ffs..

Currently trying to start a freelancing career and deal with rly bad anxiety and depression at the same time... Not quite sure how to motivate myself to move forward and get some jobs and cash..

What's a better freelancing medium than upwork.com? The competition there makes it very difficult to land anything with a good price if at all.

Opinion question: When is one prepared to freelance?

I wanted to make some extra cash so I decided to do some freelancing. Gotta do it in style though haha

Might be good news, maybe not.

And.co was bought by Fiverr and the platform's software was made completely free.

I'm suspicious of Fiverr and every other freelancing platform out there, and am wondering what's the whole point of buying a SaaS and letting people get its services for 'nothing' in return.

What are some of the worst problems, faced by you, as a freelancer?

I live in a country that is blacklisted on freelancer.com, therefore I don't even have a chance to try freelancing. Fuck, there aren't many things I hate more than this so called country.

Sorry if this isn't very dev related:

Does anybody know any good freelancing websites for artists, illustrators, ui/ux designers, etc. ?

I've seen upwork, but they're so uptight they don't accept everyone.

Hey guys! Can anyone help me with coping up with very low savings? I have been looking for freelance jobs, but I haven't gotten any clients. Any tips or advice that may help me get myself out of this pinch.(BTW I live in India/and am a college student. 21yo.).

!rant
I just watched a video(from "Android Developers" channel) about "android developer certificate"

For those that dont know: its a google exam that costs 150$ and u got 48h to finish the tasks

So the question:
Is there something like that for free (i dont need that certificate). I just want to test my skills and possibly start freelancing

Laptop getting outdated and beginning to malfunction and no money for new laptop..
fuck all freelancing now...

December, the last month of year. I made big plans to finish 2016 with a perfect ending.

Few places to travel, startup, freelancing and many more...

But first I need to pass my exams which are not based on programming. 😕😑 I am just not able to concentrate, my PC looks at me and I look at her. But trying to focus on the study. 😕

Client from hell (if you've read my past rants) came back asking for information that he had provided me months ago.

I'm not your Google Mr client from hell, search it up yourself.

That's what I said, only in my mind though.

Unfortunately, I went to be his Google. Am I too kind? Should I just reply with a nicely worded "I don't know".

Everytime I consult with senior devs on how to transition from my sysadmin job and get my first dev job they always tell me to get a CS degree.

Look. I will get that fucking degree eventually. But I want to build up dev skills and learn from a company before killing myself over math crap for 3 years. But it's like a vicious cycle. Every junior position I apply to rejects me because I have no degree.

I'm fucking frustrated and depressed.
What should I do? I want to break from the IT meme and get a dev job.

In the meantime I'm doing small projects and freelancing in my very little free time. But I feel I'll never truly be a developer until I work as one professionally.

Early on in my freelancing career I learned something important. Even with seemingly tame nerdy stuff, sh*t can get real, real quick. This story describes the very start of my career in web development and hopefully will serve as a warning to newbies out there.

A young teen, I had just learned some basics of wordpress, I was confident I could hack together something that worked and looked okay with minimal effort and knowledge. One day I was approached by a guy who wanted a job board board site. Knowing there were already clones out there I figured this would be an easy gig, man was I wrong.

In addition to the fact I didn't know about contracts or the scope creep from hell, I had somehow gotten myself involved with a criminal business front.

These guys operated a scam business to rip off investors. Me and my designer buddy were used to make the business look legit. What they would do is hold job fairs where people are supposed to pay to rent a booth, but instead they would give everyone a booth for free and then lie about what all businesses were coming. They would then show this info, along with the website and marketing materials to investors. They would take the money from the investors and launder it for drugs.

The real story starts the day of one of the worst hangovers I had ever had. I was at a random friends house sleeping for most of the day.

Apparently one of the guys who was operating the scam business was about to strike a deal with one of the investors when something on the website didn't work (it was working as designed). This guy, Manny we'll call him, had been blowing up my phone all morning. I check my voicemails and there are threats on my life; saying I will be sleeping with the fishes, or if they ever find me, they'll fuck me up. Needless to say this really freaked me out, either way I decided to head back to my dorm.

When I come back home, my designer buddy tells me that some guys were in the house looking for stuff. Apparently this guy hired two nerds to "break into my computer and steal the website", fortunately they didn't know what they were doing.

After a while I got another call, Manny wanted to sit down and "talk things out". Being naive I accepted and we met up. The two nerds were there with one of his body guards. He said he wanted to have those two nerds take over the project. While this was going on, his bodyguard flashed his gun at me several times making eye contact. I agreed to, but I still wanted to get paid. I asked about getting paid and he said we never signed a contract and that he owned the host and domain. I was pretty much screwed.

This is where the story should end, but I wasn't a very smart guy back then. I gave up the site but I created a back door into it. Every week or so, they would get "hacked". Because the two nerds didn't know what to do, they ended up coming back to me for help. This is when I finally got paid. Totally not worth it.

Clients are total assholes, we all know it, just sharing my another depressed instance.

> be me, freelancing.
> client sends in an image of a webpage
> le me gently ask "What is the functionality here since this has a form?"
> Client explains
> OK let's do this because I have other stuff to do as well.
> Sends in demo
> Client: "Numerous typos, send again"
> Okay, sends again.
> Client Rages: "This still has typos. I thought you were a good developer. You look like a has-been.

I promptly quit the project and tried to explain to him the difference between a "demo" and a finished project. He was supposed to check the functionality of the fucking form, which he didn't.

Got a call to finish the project, him explaining nobody is working for him for given budget, he can't afford anybody in this town (literally), and I am not going back.

* Don't abandon projects
* Read a bit every day
At least one chaper of a normal
book and one volume of manga
that's written I a language I still have
problems with
* Learn to write better code, better software architecture
* Fly to japan
* Get a driver license
* Rise again in Osu!
* Tell everyone I use Arch Linux
* Get a job or start freelancing
* watch the animes I always wanted to watch
* Find more awesome musicians and genres to listen to
* Build a desktop pc

Maybe I'll comment some more if I can think of some

Many of you commented on my previous rant regarding my first ever freelance gig that I would definitely be back with even more to rant... here I am.

What was supposedly a 1 to 1.5 month long project became one that is stretching beyond 3, if lucky, else 4 months long. Requirements and scope evolving more complex and with variations more intense than pokemon evolutions.

I fucked up. I signed a contract that nobody would have. I didn't plan or protect my ass enough to prevent such shit from happening. I severely underestimated and hence under quoted. This is one of the nightmare situations a freelancer could be in (in my opinion). I mean it could only get better... Right? I'm preparing myself for one hell of a payment at the end of the project. Brace yourself, payment is hopefully coming as fast as the number of seasons it took for winter to come in GoT.

On the bright side, I'm currently working on a new project with a client that is indeed much much better than this first. I mean he is a nice person and communications thus far has been nothing short of great.

I guess it's good to start with your expectations rock bottom, that way nothing else can be worse, I hope.

Does someone here have experience with "freelancing"? I heard about it and the little I was able to find sounded promising, but I have no idea where to start, if it's good, how to get more information, etc.

Thinking about freelancing, any freelancers here who can help me get started?

I have a bit of experience freelancing being a designer but not yet as a programmer. Im currently a student but have made a few programs.

What do you guys think?

!rant

What are the chances of working as a freelancer using these freelancing web pages and making enough money to cover my expenses (ex: 800$/month).

I am a web developer.

M a good developer.. clients are very happy.. But very bad at negotiating quote for project.. 😔😔

Clients on Freelancer.com: $200 for a php website with 100 pages plz :)

I really want to try freelancing but I’m terribly terrified at the thought of working with a client and ruining the whole thing or not doing a good job 🙍🏻‍♀️

Okay, this is quite hard to explain properly, but I'm actually scared of my personal future.

In about a year, I finish school and I don't have a straight plan of what to do next. I want to work independently, preferably as a game dev, but I imagine that to be a hard task. I have thought of doing a bachelor's degree in game development, but the university I prefer to go to costs 20k€, which is a huge sum and I don't even know whether it would be actually worth it. The university states that 20% of all their graduated students work independently afterwards and they even offer you a flexible "loan" (not sure if it's the right term) you can pay off while you start working, but I fear I won't be able to pay it back, I cannot imagine making this much money any time soon after I start working independently as game dev. Additionally I fear I won't be able to keep my motivation up, since I struggle doing so already, on the other hand my lack of motivation could be caused by this toxic environment I live in.

I've also considered doing freelancing, but when I'm scrolling through the requests made, I never find something I am experienced in, I don't know what request is best to get started with freelancing.

I just don't know what to do in the future and I'm scared and considering to go to this university is probably pretty stupid already and I consider it as me ranting myself, because of my nonexisting self-esteem. So I don't know what to expect from this post, I just needed to share.

I've just started freelancing on PeoplePerHour. I'm in talks to secure a job migrating a C# webapp to a desktop scenario using HTML5 embedded within WPF, but I've never done this as a solo project before. What sort of price is sensible to charge for this? I'm working in GBP

So I feel confident at least in my front end development skills to maybe start freelancing in the near future. Does anybody have any good recommendations for where to start? How to draw in remote clients? Etc. I honestly dont know the first thing about remote work other than what I've researched.

Have you ever used Timecamp for time tracking? I am trying it right now. I think I like it.

All the stories I see about shitty clients makes me want to try freelancing 😶

client has no clue what he wants and keeps changing the requirements of the projects; wants to deploy "to a desktop app like electron but faster, but also as a lib for developer to use on a server like a CMS" 🤦🏻‍♂️; takes two hours in a call and literally tells me that he want to "hear himself speak" so he can clarify what he needs...
me: NOP

I want to do freelancing for software, especially mobile. Where should I begin?

For you freelancers out there, I've been working on trying to make some income with it locally, making single page static sites for some local businesses and restaurants so that I can get a couple hundred for making the site and a little over the cost of hosting each month residually, offering like one free menu change per month, but all redesigns and support being hourly.
I want it to be accessible pricing cause like 5 of my favorite places to eat have defunct sites that I think weren't worth the cost anymore, and I'd love to be able to see up to date menus and hours and I'm certain others would too.
Basically, I'm trying to figure out what hosting would be best for this and if I'm being realistic enough with pricing. I like the idea of surge.sh, but I feel like 12/mo for a custom domain SSL, which is good for SSL, is higher than some of the other alternatives for a lightweight one sing page site.
Any help would be great, Have a great new year guys!

Hello ranters, I'm looking for advice in regards to a freelancing job which I haven't been paid.
In summary, I got a freelancing job in like March 2018, I had to do a simple platform with an administrator section, simple but "long", it had to be fully customizable, so I did it. I then got another project, which I also finished, both by December. I added some functionality not on the requirements and also some other asked by them, I also deployed both of them, tasks not included on the "contract". The problem is that I didn't sign a contract (my fault), it was all verbal. Since I was "friends" with them, I asked them to pay me with a motorbike (of around 2300 USD) and they agreed. Then they gave me another project which started wrong, they asked me to finish it within two weeks with a language I didn't know and other tools I also didn't know, I told them about this and agreed that could be a delay, besides, the requirements weren't totally clear and they were clarified three days after the project "started". After this, we had a discussion about how I later realized I was totally underpriced, that I hadn't been paid yet and how the dude that was like my main contact for the project told me that "my code was all nice and cool but was useless" because he clearly thought that an excel could be used as a database and din't know that I had to parse it and upload it to Firebase, which in total were about 4 million documents and this obviously took time. To not make it longer, I delivered the project 1 week later and they told me that they had to "assign" a full team of 7 members to do it from zero because I didn't deliver it on time and because when he asked me to "help them" I laughed. I first delivered like the 90%~95% of the project and he was been condescendent, he also blocked me from everywhere (hangouts, slack) and told me to "deliver what I had" to at least have something to prove that I did work. His team of "7 members" was stupid enough to not be able to at least run an npm install and npm run, they were also stupid enought to not understand what a GET request was an all and when he realized this, he asked me for the database dump and for the 100% of the project, so I also delivered it. We agreed that we were not going to work together anymore, so I asked him to pay me at least what had to be paid of the other two projects and he agreed, he also purchased a computer for me which I was paying him and was going to be discounted from the total payment. In the end, I was going to be paid 1430 USD. He asked me for my bank account and like my tax ID, for whatever he needed it. Since then, almost two weeks, he hasn't paid me, replied or even seen my messages. He also had a "partner" which was also "my friend", the huge motherfucker isn't even replying my mails or anything, so, since it was all verbal and they are being such motherfuckers, I don't know what to do. They are being such motherfuckers and I think I can't proceed legally, since there is no written contract. So what should I do? I was planning on going tomorrow but I pretty sure they won't even open the door or will tell me to wait or whatever. I seriously wanna cry, I don't get how people can be such dicks and unfair fuckers. I believe in karma but I don't think karma will give me that money and time back. :(

Not starting to work on internships and big projects in my second year of college,I had the skills but I was afraid that my academics would suffer :(
Atleast I would have earnt some cash one year early

(Mobile) Devs, how important do you see joining a company before starting your own Business? I have been into android for a year now and freelancing for 6 months. I want to start a company and sell some apps B2B. My girlfriend however says it would be better to join a company first and get enterprise experience, I dont see the point becausw nowadays there are countless of blogs and videos in the internet that teach you anything you want to know. Opinions?