Starting freelance web development in 2021 - Would you suggest for or against it?

what's your offer to your clients?
Do you have enough capital to sustain for at least a half a year without income?
Do you allready have customers in the pipeline or are you just dreaming about getting up at 1pm daily and only doing 1-3 hours of work in your pajamas?
Do you know how much do you gonna charge? hourly rate, half days or value pricing?
Who's gonna do the paperwork? you or do you hire a bookkeeper?

Ummm... I am still learning JS 😬. Please don't go off on me. Let me explain.. I haven't worked in 10 years cause I didn't like the work environment of an MNC (I could just be lazy and too much of an introvert). Web dev got me excited and interested in coding even though I don't know it in its entirety.

I dont have much saved up and I am a hermit, not many contacts, weak at networking.. but I wanna learn to get better at it all cause I like the idea of working and seeing the result right away (unlike my last programming job). Most importantly I found WD interesting and exciting.

@Shilpa The questions above are warnings. Clients are few and have to be located, you will have to make an offer on your own terms, you will have to write a contract and sort out your taxes, and it's near impossible to predict your monthly income.

@Shilpa If you are still learning JS, you probably don't even have the necessary tech skills to do commercial freelance work.

HTML, JS, CSS, xyzSQL, PHP, maybe Python, JS frameworks, image processing, usability, accessibility, server administration, security, legal stuff - just to name a few.

Based on what you have said I strongly recommend getting a regular job within web dev and learn the trade first. Clients don't just sign up with any odd fellow that walks past, especially without a track record.

@Shilpa well based on my experience of being a freelancer, freelancing is not just working as part the. You work with different bosses (customers) which somehow the requirements are demanding and (out of their mind) , don't do freelance of you are not ready (master at least 2 technology ) , do full stack.

Because the you need a gimmick, for web development, why would customer need you ? They have wordpress and wix.com. you need a marketing gimmick to have them to hire you for something wordpress don't have....

Just saying... In the business perspective, everyone afraid of wasting money on some beginner who just know Html or modifying html template. Because they can do it them self in WordPress or wix.com

I do freelancing for nearly 7 years, I built mobile apps , web application , server side app, IOT project, except for ML (I don't do this) .... I would like to say this , if you don't have minimum 2 technology mastered (like you can write the programme from scratch without Google search) , people will most likely ban you for lifetime even after you lately master it ...

Customers are arseholes.... So in freelancing world you don't just doing programming stuff, you also need to do business , marketing and stuff.

So atm just get a job first , build your reputation and skill.

Been freelance for ~13 years with a 2 year "break" in the middle where I was employed at an agency. Went back to being self-employed/freelance by choice but it was still a good experience to be employed a while and have something to compare with.

At least starting out being freelance is just that; you are the boss. That also means you are the one who must make sure the boring parts are being taken care of; project management, time reporting, bookkeeping, sales management so on and so forth.

As your business evolves you will hopefully make enough money where you are able to outsource parts of your business (which as I mentioned consists of much more than just web development and design).

The term "web developer" is also very broad. You need to determine if you will focus on frontend or backend development. (Going fullstack is not really an option until you have at least a couple of years of experience.) In frontend you will also need some graphic design capabilities.

@homo-lorens I think he/she don't understand what it means to do freelancing. It means you are doing business, marketing , etc.... Yourself.
And it means freelancing == working more than one bosses... And some bosses are bloody annoying and bad tempered.

Thank you all for your input. I posted the question so that I have an idea of what it is to be a freelancer before stepping into it. Though I am far from becoming one, I am still learning JS, knowing what I am headed towards would help me tons with how I approach the course that I am taking.

So I appreciate all the comments. Thank you. 😊