I’m an aspiring web developer with some small job experience and have good comprehension of the technologies. Right now I’m in school full time and don’t have time to fit in a part time job but I would also like to keep developing and stay on top of everything, so I figure freelance would be the way to go. The only down side is - I’m not much of a designer. I know illistrator and photoshop enough to pull and optimize images but as far as designing from scratch I have pretty much 0 experience.
I was wondering if anyone knew of any good websites to advertise skills and maybe gain projects or find designers to collaborate with to make a little money while I’m in school.
Well… You made me reminded my own story. I would say, try to make your profile on some microjob sites like fiverr(dot)com. I started my freelancing this way! Best of luck!
search for freelance or freelance jobs in jobs category, on the left side or in advance search you can define what exactly you are looking for, beside this you can join freelance groups for more opportunities
Best create your own online portfolio of sorts. Then create profiles on different freelance job sites like fiverr and odesk and link to your main portfolio. If you ever land jobs through those job sites, make sure you add them in your 'folio as well. A well-made LinkedIn profile would also work wonders to start you off. Good luck to you mate!
At first you can learn very then create some portfolio. Then create an account on oDesk.com. Complete your profile 100%. After giving some tests about your work you can hope that you can start work on oDesk successfully.
I would say you may have to do a number of ‘freebies’ to get you started. Push Social networking such as Facebook and Linked-in. You would need to get a nice little portfolio together and get it out to the masses.
I echo the sentiments of earlier posters. I’m having good success with freelancing sites such as Elance and Odesk. There are tons of coding jobs out there that won’t require design skills. Fixes to websites, optimizations to scripts, that sort of thing. Have a look and see what you can find!
I’m surprised. To be honest, I’ve never had any success with such a sites because it is a case of pricing and you can’t compete with countries like India or China where living and any other cost is so much lower that you can work almost for nothing
I think the tide is turning. Every other job I’ve picked up at Elance has been a case of a client who needs to be bailed out because their Indian or Chinese contractor has either a) done a poor job or b) not done the job at all. Although, I’ve found that ignoring the other bidders (within reason, of course!) is a good tactic, too. If I see a $500 job that I want, with a low bid of $100, I go and put in my $500 bid anyway. Quite often I pick up the work simply because I’m based in the UK (and can communicate in understandable English.)
I started my career by creating sites for my family friends for free, then when it turned out to work ok i asked for a % from what they sell using a website. (it was a simple email form but it was still selling).
I think a while ago I’ve read a free eBook called something like “Guerrilla Freelancing” which really helped me with my startup, but basically, it suggested working hard with the bare minimum.
Now, to answer your question regarding sites on which you can advertise your skills / find clients, I’d say to go for any good freelance job board such as Elance (personal favorite), Guru, or Freelancer.com. This should suffice, especially if you are only going to do it part-time.
He has already mentioned that his speciality is web design / development. But regardless of the speciality, all you need in order to freelance successfully is (in my opinion) a decent set of skills and lots of marketing work.
I think the tide has turned long ago, if there ever was one the other way to begin with. I was doing that and more 7 years ago. As I always say in these kind of threads, low bidders do not matter, they are fluff, an annoyance to the buyer. Try posting a project on one of these sites and you will see. Communication and ability to sell is all that matters, other bidders, especially low bidders - not so much.
But I think most freelancers get turned off all too quickly by low bids and don’t place their own bid at all, or place a generic one with no expectations and get no jobs - rightfully so. If only more serious freelancers took more time to craft their offer - that’s what would bring the real competition up.
