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2021 is a great time to start freelancing 🚀

Julian Krispel-Samsel on July 12, 2021

DISCLAIMER: This is a little bit of a rant, albeit a positive one. I feel optimistic because this year has brought good things, now that I'm back t...
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Bernardo

Good motivating article. What stops me from starting is mostly client-acquisition strategy. How can I get clients in an efficient and repeatable way?

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Julian Krispel-Samsel

Great question! I'm writing a large piece on this, will publish here and on my website jkrsp.com/

Imo the key to client acquisition is being found. There are different ways to "be found" - but the most sustainable one imo is to create content. Write a blog, make youtube videos, make tutorials.

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Rob OLeary • Edited

I am still grappling with this. I think looking for key areas and targeting what you do is important also. What kind of freelancing gigs do you do? I look forward to the follow-up

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Julian Krispel-Samsel • Edited

@robole In my experience - the more niche the better. Find a corner of software development that is less occupied than the rest and focus on that. Ideally something that you love doing. For me that's building text editors for the web and it took me a while to get it.

Think of it this way: The more niche your area, the less competition you have, the easier it is for potential clients to find you.

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Rutkat

Do you have a content creation strategy? I can suggest creating content and posting it to many industry-related platforms.

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Matt Curcio
  1. I like your second point, "pay structure" argument. I would go one further and spell out what you implied. The purpose of a company is to not only limit pay but reduce it as much as possible, almost insuring that one will not get rich.

  2. As for your fourth point, for well written software and its value, you are correct again. I would say that the job of a company owner is to maximize the profits or determine how much value is being added by the service.

BTW, I love using numbered lists and do not understand why they are not used more in discussion as they are in C.S. ;)

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Julian Krispel-Samsel

Great feedback thanks Matt! Much appreciated 🙏

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Tanzim Ibthesam • Edited

How do I start selling my services on Upwork??

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Travis Fantina

As someone who has used Upwork a few times I would advise against it. I just don't find you get that many jobs, there is so much competition from people who are willing to work for almost free. And it seems like the people who get the most jobs are the ones with the most completed jobs/hours already worked on Upwork which puts people who are new to the platform at a huge disadvantage.

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Tanzim Ibthesam • Edited

Well yes there is competition everywhere there are also people making a living. If you just do logo design and drag n drop there will be competition. Anyways i want to gain some real life experience at first if you have suggestions on how to decorate portfolio how to write cover letters do that these things excess competition people workinh for less have existed since decades. Finding direct clients is always not easy. I have even seen jobs for languages like Java .Net

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Julian Krispel-Samsel

My advice would be - get a job before you start freelancing. Will follow this up with a post 🙏

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Tanzim Ibthesam

I absolutely dont get this if you dont have knowledge its fine but why are you even telling to get a job before freelancing? Whats the purpose of your blog?

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Julian Krispel-Samsel

What I’m saying is that it’s a lot easier to freelance successfully if you have some experience under your belt. Experience that is best gotten in a safe low risk environment where you can learn from others - A job.

I know this may sound counterintuitive but in my experience - full time employment with a great engineering team is the best foundation you can get for a freelance career.

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Tanzim Ibthesam

Well i dont think so if you have a good job sepcially remote you dont need Freelancing but Freelancing teaches you a lot of things jobs dont. Its all about how skilled you are at the end of the day and a matter of choice.

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Julian Krispel-Samsel

Totally agree. Using upwork or similar platforms is imo the opposite of what you want to do if you want to earn more and work less 😅

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Tanzim Ibthesam

Well its still the best freelancing platform out there and if you want the way you are saying you should do a business rather than Freelancing there are Freelancers who earn from 50 to 100 USD per hour in Upwork.

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Julian Krispel-Samsel

I don't know, never done it.

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Welly Tambunan

great one.

the hard things is maintaining the pace because the flexibility, we might lost our discipline and routine for the people that starting from enterprise culture.

and we should be able to manage our own cash flow so we don't get burn when times get tough. it's really difficult to think when our stomach is empty.