Do not work as a freelancer, instead work with your programming knowledge into IM.

If you want to make some money every now and then just go to elance and/or odesk and try to win over some jobs. Don't get me wrong here, freelance is great, but competition for online freelancing is huge and due to the high diversity on communities doing it, the range of price/quality is huge as well and until you build your own image, its not so simple to get good recurring clients, it took me a month to build up my profile/portfolio at elance and get recurring clients until I realized that I was mainly developing tools that I could have done and monetize myself.

If you want to make monthly incoming out of programming either JV with someone in need of a programmer or start developing bots and related stuff that may be useful to IM and that you can either sell for a fixed prixed or monthly fee.

It really depends on wether you can or cannot build recurring clients really.

If you check out odesk for example they are like the cheap service of freelancer you will find stupid prices for work that 1 person would take a long time to complete.

However most of the people at those websites are either big companies or outsources so they can present a really low pricing even if they also present with a terrible quality and at odesk at least what I have noticed is that people go there to find cheap prices regardless of your quality so I moved on to elance.

elance is great and I feel more confortable work at elance as you can receive from both fixed and hourly rates without hassle like odesk where on fixed rates you have no guarantees of getting paid.

Then again on elance there are people that outsource and lots of companies and even individuals that at first glance you would think they are individuals but they are in fact outsourcing or a company branch in order to allow them to pick more jobs.

So in resume getting a job is not a easy task, you have to build your profile into something presentable (not hard should take a few minutes), then you need to grab some initial work to build your reputation so others will feel more confortable to work and select you and this is what takes a bit of time if you are on a competitive area of work.

Once you get out of the initial part it youre already used to how it works and have some ideas on how to present your proposals and all but still not easy until you build your recurring clients.

Why ? You still have competitors, you will still have to spend time evaluating the job and making a good proposal, some people take a whole month to choose some one for the work, some pick right away. While youre making your proposal and posting the job could have already been awarded to some one else.

As my own experience working on those websites for over 4 months now, I've done a good money but looking back at all the things i've developed, I could have made a lot more money doing those for the IM, and that is what I am aiming right now

SIDE NOTE: If you can build a good list of recurring clients you can get a good monthly amount but I choose to come into the IM as I believe it will be more profitable overtime and less overall work in regards freelancing.

You may be able to get a good monthly incoming as freelancing but keep in mind that the payment will vary from work to work and keeping your average earning will mostly depend on how much you work/acquire clients or get your current ones to send you more work.

Zannix,

There is plenty of people that will pay a good programmer for work. I have been working full time from my home for the last 6 years.

I program mainly in PHP, JQuery, HTML, and use MySQL backends.

You can create websites for people who want custom work with data driven backends.

You can learn how to create WordPress Plugins and Themes.

But the most lucrative is to create products that Internet Marketers need. Do Product launches, Build a List and sell to it.

I am a new freelancer too. Please help us gurus.

One more thing I just developed a auto blogging software for blogger. How can I market it. Can anyone hep me.

I've been freelancing for 4 or 5 years now, and though it was difficult in the beginning, it has become easier as my reputation has grown.

I've used Elance for most of my work as the clients there appear more professional than other sites (like freelancer.com).

Hitting $1k month will be a stroll for somebody who is committed to the work. I've made some excellent money freelancing and I haven't even been smart about marketing my services.

- don't have a portfolio site (except elance profile)
- paid $200 in advertising in 4 years
- don't have a blog
- don't network on twitter/facebook
- haven't built a network of clients
- haven't tried to leverage existing clients
- outsourced some work unnecessarily
- undercharged too many times

My approach towards the marketing and business side of things has been amateurish. Yet I've produced excellent work and I've developed year on year, and my reputation is a result of that.

What I will say is don't focus on WFH section too much; I've commonly found minor tweak jobs. Get registered on Elance instead and start working on how to effectively submit proposals. You could even stay clear of the freelance sites altogether and focus on other forms of sourcing work through your blog, or social networks.

Zannix,

don't let yourself down... Many people are saying that you are going to fail. Many says this because they are not able to do something (they failed to do something, it doesn't mean that you will too), or just because they think it is hard.

Being a freelancer is not easy. After ten years of building sites in partnership with somebody, I have decided to go on my own way. Believe it or not, but since May this year I have LOTS of new clients from all over the world, and I am making so much more than the $1K which is your target.

In order to succeed you need to be: professional, keep the agreed deadlines, make your clients happy... they will come back again and again.

Success!

You can make money freelancing if you get out there and work at it and at selling yourself. There used to be a day when $75 to $150 per hour was common.... but not so anymore.

I think at first you will have to go in low to build your reputation. After you have done this you can start targeting the larger companies for the larger money.
I believe what you will find hardest about freelancing is trying to decide if your potential client is a high end client or a low end client.

I believe you will find that with smaller clients you may charge $200 for a task. Where with a large company you may have to charge 10 times that or they will just think you are a fly by nighter. YUP! It is easy to underbid and get left out of the running because you appear cheap and look as if you are just trying to underbid everyone else. Keep mid to upper range in your bidding if you want to attract high end customers. If you want k-mart shoppers, then bid low. I have found that the ones on a tight budget are not worth wasting your time on. They will needle you to death.

Good luck!

JL

Hi All,

I am a freelancer too.
My core skills are,
PHP with MVC and JSON.

Please let me know if I can be helpful to anyone.

Regards
Shru

I am freelancer Programmer ,
right now I am with oDESK ,
I love PHP and my job is on PHP programming ,besides it I do HTML,Flash and CSS.

Nice thread - some good info here. I've done freelance jobs in the past, mainly through word of mouth.

The best thing is to go deep niche, and find a specialist area not many people know. I used to do FileMaker > MySQL/PHP conversion stuff.

You can make $$$$ on oDesk - I hired some translators and they made a very decent hourly wage out of it. I hired them because they looked the best and they'd obviously worked hard to build their reputation.

Yes, reputation on oDesk is very important. However, one can not base the judgement solely on it.
In my case for example, I have 20 jobs in the last 6 months, all of them accomplished in a very very professional manner. For all of them I have received glowing references, and of course 5 star rating. Excepting one, where I have 3.5 rating, which brings down my overall rating to 4.69.
What is annoying in odesk is that if something unfair happens, then you can't really do much. This 3.5 rating I have received as a revenge from the client's manager, because for two months he was keep promising me that he'll pay me tomorrow (once the job was done)... until the point I have searched the internet for his name, and found warning that his guy has already made this trick with others too. I have sent that link to his boss, and expressed my disappointment. The boss sent the money right away, and his manager closed the project right away... with 3.5.

So that is my experience with oDesk. Overall, I think that it is a very good system and it worth to work via oDesk. You have instant access to lots of employers and/or employees, depending what you are searching for

Buddy you should never be disappointed.. believe in yourself and always try to maintain two things:
1. Quality
2. Timely delivery

You are going to rock....
All the best

Wow thanks guys, I had no idea this thread would get so much response, I guess a lot of people can pick up some solid advice here...

I sure did. Unless you guys are all computer geniuses who never get out of the house and hack pentagon in your spare time, I think I have a fair chance to succeed as well.

Thank you guys,
Zannix