I'm a freelance web developer and I normally work on small to medium sized websites, 9 out 10 times based on WordPress and 10 out 10 times with a limited budget.

8 out of 10 times the sites content will be updated by someone with at best casual knowledge in website management.

Say what you will about WP but it's my bread and butter and it works great for just these kinds of websites; where the cost is a dealbreaker and the end product should be as user friendly as a standard word processor.

No, you probably wouldn't build a control panel for the next space shuttle or an online bank in WordPress, but I rarely need to concern myself with those kinds of projects so that really doesn't affect me.

Pretty much the same reason I have a Kia car even though I wouldn't win a Formula 1 race with it.

I for one am grateful that there's an open source tool available to my clients that more than adequately meets their needs (that's also fun to work with and build custom solutions on for me as a developer).

When I was in college in 1996, one of my roommates had a “Web 101” class. At that same time, the office of a government agency I was working for had asked me to publish a website to let the public know what they were doing. Prior to that I had bought an HTML 1.0 reference and had been fiddling around with some things. I got excited about it all when I realized that just within 2 weeks of using the book I had passed up the entire class my roommate was taking and apparently knew more at that point than the professor. I published the agency site, then went on to build sites for the Uni and freelance clients, and then to apply to teach a more advanced class in the Continuing Education courses the Uni offered to adults in the community. All of that got me a job at a startup which led to the rest of my career. That was pretty dang exciting to me.

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.

(Keep in mind I am 16 and I have never had an internship or a job)

I have a potential internship that I can partake in over the summer. It is a mainly front-end job and it is paying 15-20$ an hour. However, the one catch but they use WordPress to code all of their client's sites. I have tried to use WordPress before and I have not had much fun. I feel it is more confusing than it has to be. Should I try again and relearn it to get some early job opportunity and expand my portfolio or should I try freelance work instead?

If you vote WP could you link some good ways to learn it?

My first freelance project.
My wallet was almost empty, but I got a 1 week project (YAY!), but paid after completion. Obviously, it didn't work out well. Feature creep followed me into the second week, I didn't get paid, I was out of money. When I asked for payment, their accountant was on vacation, and they told me they would pay me when everything is completed.

Went to stackoverflow (one of the sites that relates to freelancing) and asked about this dilemma. Was advised to move on unless they pay me. When I told them that I want out, because of money, they quickly found that accountant.

But even after that, ODesk (now upwork) was only pain. I was too fast for it. I demanded like 30$ per hour, which nobody wanted to pay, but when someone did risk it, they got too much for it. I ended up living paycheck to paycheck because it's so hard to convince people that you're good enough.

That site is only good for people in countries with very low living cost, that are OK with spending 4 hours per day trying to convince people of something.

Freelance developers, how do you get clients?

I am developing apps/websites with a friend and so far er have found our clients mainly on project-listing sites (sites like freelancer.com). My experience is though, that it always becomes a price-race, and with many projects only being small static websites, it just doesn't seem that this is the way to Go.

So if any of you have suggestions on how and where to find larger/more serious clients that will be much appreciated - it should be said that we already have quite a few projects to show in our portfolio, so I think we are ready to take on some larger projects

Where is the best place to pick up freelance work that actually pays a realistic amount?

I’ve been on sites like o-desk where there are folks looking for pretty big jobs and they have a budget of $100.

Not a rant but sort of a rant.

Getting REAL fucking tired of the corporate rat race.

Thought Bubble ...

{If I quit this stupid job I could do freelance sites}

Then I realized that I have no idea what skill set it takes to be a freelance developer. I only know my one little corner. Once I commit my code it goes off down the assembly line for others to worry about testing, deployment, hosting, security and other things I have no idea about.

So tell me freelancers, is the grass greener? What additonal skills do you have to have the us enterprise folks would have no idea about?

Or are you making huge bucks where you overcharge for Wix sites that do not suck?

Could a freelance dev let me know how they find clients? Not just the ones from sites online and such, but the good clients, 3-4 month projects, proper prices?

I was studying a lot the last year, i learned a lot about Machine Learning/Deep Learning, Data Gathering, Data Analysis, ETL, Model Architecture Design, Training, Fine Tuning, Backend Development, DataBases, API Development, ORMs, Rest, GraphQL, OAuth, CI/CD, Docker, Deployment to Production environments like Heroku, Git and more stuff i dont remember while writing this. I built and keep adding stuff to my Github Portafolio.

Im not able to get a job. I started looking for jobs as Data Scientists, no response never. I take a look at freelancer sites, nothing seems to fit my skills. And when there is a minimal fit, they always want a Full Stack Web Developer, i dont know Frontend Development, i dont like do it.

Dont know what to do or how to land any job.

My options aeems to be:

1.Learn Frontend Dev and work as Full Stack in underpaying freelance jobs

2.Keep applying to Remote-Only startups, but they still wants people with 3+ years of experience.

i cant work in my city, here are not any company startup hiring no one, we are 30 years in the past here.

What you do in my place?

Im having a sort of dilema. I recently started taking freelance work for web developement (and design ack) and Im uncomfortable with the state of the industry. Ill explain: Say if I bid a client for a simple 1-3 page site w contact form (a new page, not migration) My suggestion is to use djangocms, django, or just static html/css/js (ie bootstrap), which produces clean, fairly secure, and fast sites. Of course I can throw a templated unoriginal wordpress site together in a few hours 2 days latest, so I offer that option as a sidenote on the bid, charging almost 2x more. For some reason I dont understand they choose the wp shitshow. I explain all the reasons that not the way to go( which I wont list, if u dont know, u never used it. google up) but they dont care abt the details, they rather pay more for shit job. OFC I reluctantly deliver what they want, but as a result my portfolio is full of unoriginal shit Im not happy showing off. I have a few sites Ive done on the side my prefered way, but they not deployed and sit in my github for all intents n purposes unviewable to potential clients.
I want to be proud of my portfolio, and it to be a representation of what Im capable of. BUT, I gotta eat, and work is better than no work.

There are so many "wordpress designers" oversaturaring the field and it lowering the overall standard of what we are capable of. I just begining my dev journey, but if I cant have a body of work Im proud of, theres no way I can see doing this the rest of my life, and that makes me really sad. My love of developing, coding, and IT/computers in general drove me to change careers from audio engineering to web development, and the fact that this fucking mr. potatoe head of a CMS is slowly turning that love into hate really pisses me off. So Im ending this !rant looking for hope.
Your thoughts?

Okay, so this is more like a question, than an actual rant, but what site(s) do you freelancers use?
Lately i have some serious free time, and thought, why not try to make some side-money?

So, I'm about to be up shit's Creek. I need a new source of income, ideally either a new job or becoming a freelancer. I have been making intranet sites with ASP.NET for a while now, and I can tell two things:
1. It's too corporate minded, so I'll need a fucking degree
2. It's too corporate minded, so I'll be stuck with people like my boss, who still use tables to align content despite the project having bootstrap.

I need to do something more fulfilling, but I probably will have to leave my job by December anyway due to some major fuck ups in my life, do I need to get something lined up. I have been brushing up on my HTML, CSS, and JavaScript skills, but when it comes down to it, I suck at design so my "portfolio" is blatant clones to learn CSS and shitty Spartan things.

Basically, I'm anxious, terrified, and unable to figure out what comes next. Do I keep sending job applications and praying to whatever deity will listen, it do I start figuring out this freelance thing? If freelance, then how do I get into it? I'm terrified and desperate.

I’m from the UK, should I go freelance?

Last few weeks I’ve been feeling really bored with my job. Like mega fucking bored. It’s basically just meetings 7 hours a day, 4 hours planning and then 3 hours of talking about how everything didn’t get finish (I know. I keep saying it’s the fucking 7 hour fucking meetings).

Pay is pretty decent, we have a few juniors, not exactly great code base, kinda cool idea, pretty unique, business will defo work or be sold by corporate owners. (Start up owned by corporate)

I just feel really flat and bored. Mega bored. Keep wondering about going solo and being more of a consultancy or my own little agency? I’ve tried before but I suck at marketing and freelancer and similar sites never provided enough income.

I guess my questions are (if anyone wants to answer):
- What’s this new IR35 or whatever? Is it now pointless to be self employed?
- how would I boost my leads?
- should I do a bit of contracting to get used to it maybe?
- should I just stay where I am and deal with the feeling of not really feeling like I was hired to do anything?

I do also have a little side business I started that I could also work on whenever I have free time, it’s not taking any money at the moment though, early years I suppose?

I’m really sorry if anyone feels offended to read that I’m fucking bored and don’t have a clue what to do with myself. Please don’t reply with some sarccy comment. I really cba to have an internet keyboard troll fight about some stupid opinion we’ll all forget about in a few days. This now counts as a rant. So fuck you. It’s a rant. And I’m rant about the possibility you might comment on my post not bring a rant coz I can’t tell what category I’m posting on. I live in the 5th dimension. Deal. With. It. Or just ignore and scroll on 👍🏼

honest question: if I know ReactJS, Golang, Python, Typescript, and a bit of Postgres and living in Costa Rica, what sort of freelance services could I promote on the net?

I used to freelance on sites like PeoplePerHour, doing projects of 1 month in 3 weeks or less, but I would like to do that again in my own website under my own terms, sort of speak.

any recommendations?

Hi!, Greetings fellow ranters,

I got into thinking this past few days. Because over the years, i really wanted to start my career as a freelance web/mobile developer, i'm not planning to quit my job(yet), but i want to slowly but surely build my freelance career. I just need some advice from you on how i should optimally or best approach this goal, and where/how should i find clients or what sites should i find clients, i know freelancer.com but I've heard other freelancers who had nightmares with it, upwork is also kind of overcrowded.

Hello fellow devs, first post here but absolutely love this community!

Has anyone got advice for doing casual freelance work alongside a day job? I'm currently looking at sites like Fiverr and Upwork and would love to hear your advice/experiences/opinions.

Sometimes, I just think owners of freelance sites like freelancer dot com are the ones taking all the big chunk project for themselves.

Because I can't really wrap my head around over 200 bids in a second...

Freelance fav sites?