A short bittersweet story.

Ever since I quit my previous job a couple of months and started working as a freelancer, I haven't felt the need to visit devRant.

Everything that's rant worthy is essentially my fault.

Hah, can’t blame anyone now can’t you? Jk, maybe @joshbent rant can help

Tell me please how to start? I've already looking at freelance sites and most of them only hire for rated guys. How come the beginners start with ?

@Highwind Can you share some of your experiences, please? I asked here before, but didn't get a helpful answer: https://devrant.com/rants/1870195/...

There's always clients to blame.

@dev1410 @Fabian Super late reply! I don't use any freelancing sites because they're always a race to the bottom. The cost of living in my country is too high for me to be able to compete with freelancers from countries with lower costs of living.

What I did before going into freelancing was to develop my professional network. Essentially becoming friends or acquaintances with everyone I've met in the design and development fields. The more people know about you, the more often you'll get work via referrals, recommendations, word of mouth, collaborations, etc.

I've been extremely lucky as all the work I've gotten is by word of mouth. I've also become the default developer for an acquaintance who's a freelance designer. Pretty much every 2 weeks he asks me to make him an estimate for a new project. He's been a freelancer for 10 years, so I get to meet a lot of people from his network and get to grow mine.

There are also RFPs (requests for proposals). Usually, larger companies and the public sector don't go by word of mouth. An RFP is a document a company puts out that lists services they need, budget, deadline, etc. To solicit potential suppliers to submit business proposals. It's a bidding process. Those are usually harder to come by as a freelancer. I don't have recommendations for those yet.

Hope it helps

@Highwind thanks so much for the advice!

I'm available if you're out of hand 😁