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Blaming macroeconomics, politics, "society," platforms, etc. will get you nowhere. Those things have nothing to do with your individual success (or failure) as
by gregjor 2y ago
Blaming macroeconomics, politics, "society," platforms, etc. will get you nowhere. Those things have nothing to do with your individual success (or failure) as a freelancer.
Since you mention Upwork, if you call that piecework auction site "freelancing" I think you misunderstand freelancing. That site caters to and represents the low-end, the race to the bottom in both price and quality. Few people can make a good living from Upwork and Fiverr, and even fewer who live in high cost of living countries.
I have not noticed any downturn in freelance jobs in the last few years. In fact anecdotally I see more freelance work available than a few years ago -- layoffs always create opportunities for freelancers. I also see a lot more people (some of them recently laid off) trying to get started as freelancers and flailing with that, which will appear to make the field look saturated and too competitive. That happened after the 2000 internet bubble popped, and after 2008 layoffs.
Successful freelancers bring more to the table than a list of tech skills or a "stack." They have experience and deep business domain expertise, sufficient marketing, sales, legal, and accounting knowledge to find, sell, and keep their clients. Probably most important they have good professional networks, because freelancing mainly comes down to reputation and word of mouth. No serious freelancer I know or have worked with uses site like Upwork.
I can't tell if you want to get freelance work or develop a complex theory to explain how the world doesn't work as it should. If you want to freelance I would focus on the necessary skills and connections rather than trying to make sense of the confusion of memes and factoids you included in your post.
- anovikov 2y agoWell, i have made $15M+ worth of business from Upwork and from people who i met there (over 15 years, but peaked at almost $3M last year). That certainly isn't/wasn't an insignificant thing. I am not sure i can agree with your statement that it only represents a race to the bottom kind of thing. Right now it appears to be true but wasn't at all true just a year ago. And i can't think of a way i could do it in any different way.
- nextts 2y ago3M for a team I presume not for 1 individual?
- anovikov 2y agoYes but this is offshore, hard outsource - team expenses are not that significant.
- nextts 2y agoThanks! That make sense. I found it hard to imagine you land a 3M IC revenue on that site but leading a team it makes sense, and sounds like you are raking it in.
- anovikov 2y agoWell i kinda did. Not anymore. It ran dry.
- nextts 2y agoNot surprising. People find these arbitrage opportunities.
- owebmaster 2y agoSo it was a race to the bottom
- chistev 2y agoHow do you find clients?
- NewUser76312 2y agoThe real question right here. Actually getting work done is trivial compared to finding work in the first place, in my experience...
- gregjor 2y agoNot my experience. Plenty of work out there. I see a lot of freelancers with very narrow skills or specialization, a fragile strategy in the software field. I also see freelancers who only have commodity skills (React, Wordpress) to sell, making them another fish in a crowded pond. Competition always most fierce in the shallow part of the pool. The main advantage one can get as a freelancer comes down to adding business value. That comes from listening to the customer, then identifying and solving their problems. It doesn’t come from telling customers what they should do or using them to practice with your own preferred languages and tools. For example a majority of my customers came to me because other consultants refused to (or couldn’t) work with and debug an existing code base and infrastructure. They proposed an expensive and risky full rewrite, which rightly scares customers away. Once I can demonstrate some real value and understand the business I can propose replacing things, and by then I have no competitive bidders to worry about.
- gregjor 2y agoI know it sounds like boasting, but I don’t. Customers find me. Referrals, word of mouth, reputation work best and the successful freelancers I know get their customers the same way. I also cultivate long-term relationships so I’m not spending a lot of non-billable time looking for customers. For the last ten years I have worked through an agency that connects me with customers. That particular agency represents people who already have a customer base and reputation.