Any Freelancers in the House?

yhack · 22 Oct 2013 at 10:42

Hi,

In the interests of contingency plans, making sure that there's always a plan b, I was wondering about freelancing to make some extra pocket money. I am registered with oDesk and have since done a slavery job for 10c to get my first feedback, but I'm wondering about the worthwhileability of freelancing to make money.

From all of the jobs I have had a look at, there seems to be an infinite amount of Indians willing to write a thousand works for price of a packet of Monster Munch. Does being English give us any bonus points, or is it all a numbers game?

Is freelancing a viable way to make money, is there a certain way to go about it? Is it worth continuing? Any tips or tricks would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,
yhack

AJK · 22 Oct 2013 at 10:54

What do you do?

ikillbears · 22 Oct 2013 at 11:00

^ Ha, agreed. Freelancing as what ?

yhack · 22 Oct 2013 at 11:07

Would be web development, mainly PHP, and possibly writing articles and content.

shifty_uk · 22 Oct 2013 at 11:26

Client side, agency side or both?

I don't really see a big freelance market for PHP web developers anymore, I'd say you were better off getting a salaried position. IOS and general app development seems to be where money and demand are at these days.

zyfar · 22 Oct 2013 at 15:08

I started off as a Freelancer on oDesk.com 2 years ago, I did the same, I was working for pennies but I got my foot in the door. Eventually after a few projects that didn't really make me earn much I had some good ratings and a portfolio. The first couple of projects on these sites, typically will be hard to acquire because your A) against cheap indian workers under valuing a saturated market and B) you have no testimonials and feedback to land you a job.

Once you get over that first hurdle it's easy sailing. I was fortunate enough to strike lucky, I had a client who recognised I had good quality work and was able to liaise with him effectively, something which us westerns have an advantage over (generally speaking). I got repeat business off said client, he was one of the best finds I have ever had on a freelancing website, he came from oDesk.com and I still work with him to date on various projects.

It's like a needle in a haystack, I find that I rarely get a decent client, (however i'm fortunate enough to turn down freelance work off potential clients who I think will be a nightmare - ie. rebuild me facebook for $200!). But sometimes you are able to strike lucky and if you manage to build a good business relationship with someone all the better.

I'd just like to mention I started freelancing during University to get me some side income, so the risks of going down this path was little to none. I don't know your position but if your reliant on it for an income it may be a little harder.

Th3M8dH8tt3r · 22 Oct 2013 at 18:25

Freelancing is not easy. But, if you go at it with a good sales approach as if you will succeed. Freelancing is all about doing many different people's roles at the same time. Sales, marketing, support, the actual development work...list goes on.

englishpremier · 23 Oct 2013 at 12:27

I've done some freelancing work via elance.

There seems to be loads of Indian and Pakistani based companies applying for every job they can at bottom dollar. So you can't compete on price, it has be on quality and communication.

I'm in email marketing, social media, and quantitative research. I wish they'd add an option to filter job by country.

Th3M8dH8tt3r · 24 Oct 2013 at 12:13

englishpremier said:
I've done some freelancing work via elance.

There seems to be loads of Indian and Pakistani based companies applying for every job they can at bottom dollar. So you can't compete on price, it has be on quality and communication.

I'm in email marketing, social media, and quantitative research. I wish they'd add an option to filter job by country.

Number of clients I have that have come from an Indian developer and have been done out of several hundred quid...you wouldn't believe. They're not even cheap when you see the final result.

GravyMonster · 24 Oct 2013 at 14:43

Th3M8dH8tt3r said:
They're not even cheap when you see the final result.

Do you mean that the results are good or bad?

Tripnologist · 25 Oct 2013 at 01:29

Spunkey said:
Do you mean that the results are good or bad?

I think he means that they're not much, if any cheaper, once you account for the time you'll need to spend going through their work and sorting all the mistakes and sloppy coding out.

Th3M8dH8tt3r · 25 Oct 2013 at 10:47

To clarify - this http://www.eclipselegalservices.co.uk/ is a WordPress site that cost £300.

Ignoring the God awful **** poor excuse for a design, the way it's built is truly shocking and unbelievable. The developer, in India, claims to know WordPress inside and out. How they've built this is to change the name of the default 2012 theme and make their own stylesheet and just use the actions from the 2012 theme to get content from the database.

It's a diabolical excuse for a website. Half of the links don't work, the sidebar has been hardcoded and not used the wp_nav_menu hook...absolute joke.

This site while it works, just...can't be delivered to the client.

Now, if I were to build this, for a professional, current design following current design principals and theories and developed to work, be stable and expandable (can be added to easily in the future) would cost perhaps £700.

To fix this site...impossible. It needs starting again.

That's my point. And this is one of several equally bad sites I've seen in the last 6 months. Indian developers should be taken to court! I'm yet to see a single piece of work which counts as good.

GravyMonster · 25 Oct 2013 at 11:12

Good, thats what I was hoping you meant. Was checking before I wrote a war and peace length rebuttal

I've inhertied a few outsourced sites which the client has spent £500 on, and then give to someone else to 'fix'. The standard of the code is shocking. It's no real surprise if you check the HTML/JS/CSS sections of StackOverflow from 7-11 most mornings.

Th3M8dH8tt3r · 25 Oct 2013 at 16:08

Spunkey said:
Good, thats what I was hoping you meant. Was checking before I wrote a war and peace length rebuttal

I've inhertied a few outsourced sites which the client has spent £500 on, and then give to someone else to 'fix'. The standard of the code is shocking. It's no real surprise if you check the HTML/JS/CSS sections of StackOverflow from 7-11 most mornings.

Definitely not trying instigate anything here...so far from trying to or meaning to, I'm clueless as to the possible offensive interpretation of my comment. lol.

One of the best ones I saw was template files in the main the WP directory.

It really is beyond me sometimes, how they even get the thing to work. I say work very loosely, WP really struggles to deal with the mess the code is in.

yhack · 26 Oct 2013 at 16:03

Thanks for the replies so far.

If people will pay £300 for something that bad, there may be some good money to be made for quality work.

GravyMonster · 26 Oct 2013 at 19:02

There is

You need to build up a reputation and portfolio first though.

Th3M8dH8tt3r · 26 Oct 2013 at 22:14

There is money to be made, just got to find it. People still think a website isn't that important and some rubbish will do the job.

LACKERKNACKER · 29 Nov 2013 at 22:14

I'm having a similar problem, I'm looking for a reliable freelancer to do some work on a site I've messed about with.

Www.prison-governors-association.org.uk

Looking for someone one to freshen it up etc, but don't know where to look? Any ideas?

ikillbears · 30 Nov 2013 at 00:01

maybe in here ?

edit : out of curiosity, how much do you chaps charge as a day rate. I understand on the web design world its usually more a on project basis.

suarve · 2 Dec 2013 at 10:51

In one word, avoid outsourcing offshore like the plague. I client asked for for a quote on a very bespoke site using Wordpress. I quoted £2995.00 - lots of planning, development etc. They then decided to go with a quote they got from an Indian company for £250.00 +vat. Of course bugger all worked on it. I'm not saying I'm a coding god, but some of the code produced was embarrassing. I wish people, well clients, would take a step back and expect to get a naff result when they pay peanuts.