If you are going to do some of those freelancing sites, you really can't charge more than $15-20 hour to be competitive And you shouldn't admit to being an eme

If you are going to do some of those freelancing sites, you really can't charge more than $15-20 hour to be competitive And you shouldn't admit to being an emerging developer, people are pretty wary of dealing with "amateurs". You need a reputation before anyone will pick you. My advice is as follows: a) Spend about $500 to get some feedback. Don't get greedy and make all of those large projects. You need to start out with a few small ones, then get a few large ones. Your goal is to have 7-8 "feedbacks" about how great you are. b) At the same time you should bid on other projects, doesn't matter if its big or small, if its a $20 project or a $30 project. Your goal in the early stage is to get a lot of feedback points. c) Once you reach 20 or so feedbacks you'll be able to actually win some of those larger projects. At this point your skills will improve, and you can actually start charging more than the average offshore developer. You can explain the difference by saying you are in the USA and are actually in the same time zone as your clients. Also if you have some free time, make 5-6 websites, that you can point to as your "work". They don't need to be super complicated, but they should look good.