What Does a Freelance Software Developer Do?
A freelance developer makes client websites, apps and software. He must also maintain those sites and applications over time as updates are always required and bugs appear from time to time.
How Much Can a Freelance Software Developer Make?
A typical freelance developer can expect to make between $40 – $250 per hour. Of course this depends on many factors such as what frameworks or languages you specialise in. It also depends on how good your networking skills are and how much real world freelancing experience you have.
Now, if you’re based in Africa or Eastern Europe these hourly rates may look insane but they’re based on people hiring in the first world. If you are based in a poor country then you should be looking to find work outside of your borders!
Why leave all us devs in the first world to take the cream? You can easily get some too!
How to Learn Coding to Become a Freelance Developer
First and foremost you need to love building things! Development is all about creating your clients (or your own) dream product. If you don’t like building then you won’t last the course. You should only be a freelancer in a subject area you love.
The next thing you need to do is learn how to code with good architecture principles. What do I mean by this?
Well there are many, many ways you can learn to code but they are not created equal! Many teachers will teach you very bad habits (me included about 10 years ago!).
Those bad habits cause you to write bad code with many strange bugs, and this will ruin your developer reputation.
If you’re just starting out then find a decent course provider that has a good reputation among senior developers. Ie, ask a senior dev, “If you had to learn from scratch, which course would you purchase?”.
How to Find Clients as a Freelance Developer
There are 2 places you can find clients:
- Your network
- Job sites
The absolute best place to find paying clients is your network.
Your network is basically those people who know you, whether personally or through other people. A network client is much more likely to hire you, but if you’re a beginner then this may not be feasible at first. Therefore, go to the second option….
Your second option is to apply for one off jobs on sites such as Upwork. As you get started you can expect lower rates as these sites are very competitive. For example you may be competing with some guy in India offering $10 p/h and the client offering the job doesn’t know the difference in quality between him and you.
How to Win Jobs on Freelance Developer Sites
At this point everyone thinks that being a good developer will win the job. News flash: your clients have no idea what a good developer looks like, so they instead choose the developer based on 2 things. Understanding and rapport.
Therefore you need to sharpen your listening, thinking and rapport skills.
Here’s one little trick that will do all of that in one go, putting you ahead of everyone on these platforms:
Offer a free consultation over Zoom so you can understand their needs.
NO-ONE on these platforms does this and it blows my mind! Perhaps it’s because they’re a bunch of developers with zero people skills, I don’t know. This Zoom call approach works because it’s one of the principles of good sales – people buy from people they know.
Once you talk to someone over Zoom, you’re now more familiar than that Indian applying with his generic email messages. In fact you’re even seen more favourably over a professional company!
Yes, this will take a lot of your time (because you also need to prepare for Zoom calls) but just one good client is worth weeks of trawling through this process. Over time that client could be worth $100,000 so do the work now so that you may live like a king later.
My final tip is to respond to clients email instantly. Business conversions go up by more than 10x when replies are within a minute of the enquiry being sent!
How to Create a Freelance Developer Portfolio
More often than not, your potential clients will ask to see previous work. If you’re a beginner then you have none! This is one reason why you must LOVE building – because your first portfolio will be things you’ve built for yourself.
There is ZERO difference between your personal portfolio and a client based one. So take some pretty screenshots of your creations and get them on a website. Use WordPress or Wix or any other platform to show them off.
Once you have a portfolio then copy it to social networks such as LinkedIn.
Being on social networks (especially LinkedIn) helps to make you legitimate in the clients eyes. Remember, a client is always looking for any reason to not hire you and not being present on the internet is just plain weird these days!
Do You Need an LLC or Company to Start Freelancing?
I would say absolutely not. Having to register a company, get bank accounts etc will just slow you down and you may never start. instead of putting procrastination roadblocks in front of just get started on finding clients!
After 3 or 4 clients you can start running your freelance jobs through a business, whatever structure the latter takes. This is a good idea to protect you from personal liability!
Freelance Software Developer FAQs
Here are some of the most common questions I get from beginners.
How Hard is it to Become a Freelance Software Developer?
It’s not hard but the most important thing is to be passionate about building! For example, I loved Lego as a kid so coding is perfect for me as it’s just digital Lego building!
Once you start learning you should love coding – if you don’t then please don’t choose this as a career.
Are Freelance Software Developers Wanted?
The whole world is moving to digital and those things need to be created and maintained. This always requires a developer as the average worker cannot do it. Therefore demand for developers is going up all the time.
What Skills Make You a Successful Freelance Software Developer?
It goes without saying that you need to be able to code and have good software architecture skills. This keeps your code bug free and well organised. What most people don’t realise is that you need to have people skills too! Freelancing starts with marketing yourself and convincing a prospect that you’re the man for the job.
Which Programming Languages are in Demand for Freelance Software Developers?
There is no right answer to this question because is depends. However, you cannot go wrong with the classic and always in demand languages. These include JavaScript, Python, Java and PHP.
With each of the above languages you should also learn an associated and popular framework. For example React or Angular with Javascript.
Can a Freelance Software Developer Make 10K a Month?
Absolutely you can! If you market yourself everyday by hopping onto Zoom calls you’ll eventually be the guy to go to for all your clients. The next time they have a big project (or their friend has) then you will the one stop shop.
At this point you can start to increase your hourly rate for new clients and jobs. Just keep raising it until people start saying no – then you’ve found your ceiling. My rates are $125 p/h but I usually make $250 p/h as I have experience and can code much faster than many devs.
For perspective $250 p/h is $10,000 after only 40 hours, that’s just 1 week of work!
Fun fact: My record is $1,200 p/h as the work was much easier than I had anticipated!
Finally, if you have any questions then leave a comment on one of my YouTube videos: https://www.youtube.com/@IAmDevtube