Freelancing after 30

Question

Freelance

Dear forum users!
Preamble :
I am 31. In September 2012, I was made redundant. 13 years worked in a large percentage of the institute. Engaged in technical support of a structural unit (about 100 PCs). In a word - enikeyshchik. I performed my duties conscientiously and all users were always glad to see me. The reason for the dismissal, as they explained to me: "they cut down the forest - the chips fly." But it's all lyrics. Thanks to my parents and wife for their support. In November 2012, he got a job in a large company. stability, social warranty. confidence in the future. BUT - low salary. Now I am engaged in monitoring of fiber-optic communication lines and RRL. The first months were interesting. I got it, I got it. They promised to teach, but apparently by that time, I will have time to figure it out myself quite well.
Situation :
At the moment I have a lot of free time during the day. There is an irresistible desire to learn. I take courses on Coursera, codecademy, edx. In a word, he was deeply engaged in self-education. On weekends: admin in a small company. It is problematic with finances - paying off a loan and feeding a family is just coming out ... The administration takes away one of the 2 days off. There is practically no time left for the family.
Question:
What is required to receive the first "freelance order"? Which area to choose? (So ​​far, the choice fell on the layout, as an opportunity for a quick start).

PS Ready to listen to all advice and answer your questions. Thanks in advance to all who respond. Thank you so much.

UPDATE (5 months later):
I ended up quitting and getting a job at another big company in tech support.
I am now engaged in "putting things in order" and organizing the work of the 1st line.

Answer 1

I myself am now at the same age and I am also thinking about freelancing. So a few of my thoughts. The truth is, unlike you, the situation is not so stressful for me.
Self-education is good, but it is better to concentrate on a particular area. Choose the cost not based on money or speed of start and development, but based on personal preferences. In fact, in the long term, 2-5 years, it is better to spend a year learning something difficult, but interesting for you personally, and then do the remaining 4 years. On the one hand, it is certainly difficult to make a choice among many technologies, until you try you will not understand, but it takes time to try. Therefore, look at the community on topics that interest you.Do you like this community? Would you like to do what these people do? Are you interested in talking to these people? In fact, money can be earned in any direction, both in layout and in programming, etc. when you become a pro.
How to choose?
Just answer the question for yourself: Are you ready to spend your time every day studying and doing something for free during the year? If so, then this is worth looking into.

Answer 2

Another option is to find permanent remote work on work sites. I do not advise you to work for free, ask for at least 10 bucks, do not disturb the global balance :)

Answer 3

This layout was given to you - you will spend a lot of time on "fixing the button here ", and the customer will not pay for the hours spent, because " well, what is there to do, move the button by 2 millimeters, any student can do it ."
Do something that pays by the hour and that does not seem insignificant in the eyes of the customer.
I don’t know if you have enough knowledge for this - offer your services for setting up VPS in the clouds, learn how to work with AWS services, all sorts of balancers, clusters, backups, replications, routings ... All this is magic for the customer, they have no idea how it works and they will be ready to pay you for the setup. understand that they will never do it themselves. This is not the case with layout — most of the tasks in layout do not critically affect the cash flow, any programmer can do it in his spare time. And not every programmer will be able to set up a cluster of a dozen database nodes.

Answer 4

layout is hell, in the sense that you start from the bottom, and hell from the bottom. You will not earn any money at all, the competition is wild. I poked Codecademy what they offer in html, css, it's about nothing, it has nothing to do with reality.
It is not easier to use the knowledge that you have now, you have worked as an enikey worker for 13 years. There are a lot of companies, all of them have a fleet of computers, all of them need to be serviced periodically, it makes no sense to keep an admin for them, why not be an outsourced enikey worker, I think the message is clear.

Answer 5

You don’t need to go to the layout, there are now a lot of people, especially at the very bottom, literally crowds of beginners, most of whom will remain there. It all seems too simple from the outside, but in reality, on money orders, there is a living hell. And if this is not only layout, but also a front-end, where JavaScript and an avalanche of millions of libraries, plugins, technologies and other know-how for JS or jQuery covers us, then you don’t need to meddle in this hellish mixture at all.
Indeed, take one of the programming languages, preferably the one used in mobile platforms and study, at least everything is quite strict there, and it will always be clear where to go next, what knowledge is still lacking. And there, in addition to the main job, maybe parallel earnings will be on the sale of applications in app stores, etc. stores.

Answer 6

1. Master JS, jQuery, CSS 3, HTML5. Be sure to master jQueryMobile. (if you plan to make mobile GUIs in the future)
2. Place screenshots of your work (layout pages) in your portfolio. (it is desirable to have working samples)
3. Collect many simple and cheap orders and "exchange" them for positive reviews for projects. (reputation)
4. After gaining some experience and increasing the work in the portfolio, take more complex and expensive orders.
5. Move on to complex templates for popular CMS.
6. Work with a good designer.
7. Make interesting templates with beautiful animation and effects - sell them.
8. Open an office and work in the field of stylish and high-quality GUIs for various devices in a team with a designer and programmers.
The main areas of freelancing: design, templates for various CMS, mobile applications, texts, complex programming of portals, integration.

Answer 7

If you are in the process of searching, then I would advise you to develop for iOS or Android, Android is probably even preferable. This topic is really rushing now, a lot of orders, good money. True, in order to learn something, you need to devote time accordingly. For several hours a week, nothing will come of it. The more serious you take, the faster you will receive the first order.

Answer 8

Regarding freelancing, just recently recorded a little intro
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPeM8rKkreE&feature=youtu.be
Which area to choose? —> The one in which you are best versed and the work is a pleasure.
If you're a good administrator, then setting up/maintaining servers is a good start. Writing Bash scripts is helpful too.
If you have basic knowledge of OOP, then Android development is a good option. It will take 3 months to study, and then work.
What are your preferences? Programming, design, layout, ...? How did you choose layout?

Answer 9

I am 30 and feel very good as a freelancer.

Answer 10

To get the first order (as well as all subsequent ones), you need to “individually” (pardon the word) approach each. For God's sake, do not repeat the mistakes of 90% of applicants and do not write "Ready to take!" under 30 orders at the same time. I’ll tell you a secret - you are not the only one so ready there, and no one will choose from you. They will work with those who caught the answer, namely, they said hello by name, gave examples of work performed on this topic (here you may have problems, but this can be solved) and shared constructive information about how, in what timeframe and for what money proposes to solve the problem. In other words, offer a solution to the problem, and do not impose another one (the problem of choosing from a bunch of two-word replicas).
“After 30” is not a diagnosis. I myself am 30, for example.
Well, learn, yes. Layout is now generally much easier than before. Tons of CSS frameworks, full fledged stuff like Twitter Bootstrap and Foundation. Modernizr, jquery, etc. Is that the lazy will not master.

Answer 11

You need to understand what you like, because the situation is stressful, and if you go freelancing, you will spend more and more time on it, and this time is free from work, and only your favorite pastime can replace rest.
If you liked support, then you can also find it on freelance - enikey or on-call administration, setting up and maintaining servers on VPS. There are also separate specializations like DBA.
On any exchange, the algorithm is simple - always be attentive to the customer, do not be stereotyped, earn a reputation with cheap orders and gradually raise your price tag.

Answer 12

If you know English, then go ahead to odesk and elance, take the tests :)

Answer 13

It was rightly suggested here that layout is not the best option for a start
. I would recommend trying Android. Programming for Android does not have the same entry threshold as programming for IOS (no need to buy a mac book or mac mini).
To do this, first try to learn Java, this can be done in parallel with simple examples for Android.

Answer 14

If you know English well, now I regularly come across vacancies for remote work - to do client tickets in the DC in the north.

Answer 15

Hello,
in this post To whom is the htmlacademy promo code for intensive? I told in the comments how I started freelancing, read it.
In short, I started with layout courses and a couple of very cheap, almost free orders.

Answer 16

I myself am now 34, but now I work as a web developer. But in parallel I study related areas and programming languages ​​Python, Ruby, Haskell. But more and more drawn to mobile development and Android. I'm thinking of going there in the future. Since orders are growing, and the average app price of 25.000 is especially encouraging. Although, of course, then there will be the same competition as now on the web ...
Start studying theory, do test tasks and examples. Share some and add to your portfolio. And sign up for more freelance sites. Orders will gradually increase...