How do people manage to make so much freelancing?

Question

Freelance

More than once I see in surveys of freelancers that the average income in the Russian-speaking segment is 40 thousand rubles. But if you switch to freelance exchanges, then for a project that will take 3-4 days they offer 2-3 thousand rubles, but then again you need to look for a project, and this is another 2-3 days. Total month comes out 10-12 tr. (the janitor has a higher RFP). We are talking about WEB programmers "middle hand".

Answer 1

Create a news portal with design, adaptive layout and put the whole thing on Drupal for 4000 rubles.

Take the position of the winner. Write down the task in stages, estimate in hours, recalculate in rubles, issue a counter invoice. They can get scared and refuse. They can appreciate the seriousness of the approach and agree.

The young hussar asks Lieutenant Rzhevsky how he manages to enjoy such success with women.
- It's very simple, - he answers, - you need to go up to a woman and say: "Madame, let me kick you!" And that's all.
- Lieutenant! But after all, for this you can and in the face!
- You can and in the face. But I usually screw up.

And you need to own some kind of CMS. What is the architecture, how is it configured, what is in the standard delivery, what are the plugins, where to buy themes? Prepare assemblies for standard solutions. It is possible, in response to a task, to offer a solution using another CMS - sometimes customers are not aware that there are others.
You need to have an up-to-date portfolio, from which it will be clear what and how you do. All completed work regularly add to the portfolio.
Have you tried searching remotely? Outsourcing? (on job sites look for "remote", "part-time", "part-time"). And along the way, take one-time orders on the exchanges.
And there are job exchanges for startups, there are good offers for remote work.
and other resources on the phrase startup team search

Answer 2

I'll make my small contribution.
Firstly, several orders can be processed at the same time. From experience I can say that most of the time is spent communicating with the client. Something like - we worked for a couple of days - we send it to hand over - we are waiting for the next evening. Operational clients meet, but with them the work is completed faster, and they often pay extra for urgency.
Secondly, there is a terrible dumping on freelance exchanges. So the first two months will most likely have to work for the janitor's salary. In fact, the freelancing community is now relatively stable precisely because of the high entry threshold. It is very difficult to see the first serious money before the second month. Here you have to work for prestige, that is, to earn contacts. It often happens that a satisfied client will return, and sometimes he doesn’t even leave - he leaves the project for support. And most likely you won’t have to do anything, and an extra penny will never hurt. Having typed 10-15 projects for support, you can not work at all and receive a couple of janitor salaries.
Thirdly, the time required for the project that you have given is not the average web master. This is a beginner webmaster. In addition, webmasters are dying out as a species. Ideally, when over time you specialize in something narrow - design development, layout from design or back-end programming, by finding other reliable designers or even cooperating in a web studio. Many "freelancers" are none other than web studio client managers. That is, the manager forms the TOR - a couple of hours (or days) of communication on Skype, transfers to the designer who forms the design - a couple more hours (or days), and the layout designer with the programmer typesets and programs - the last couple of hours (or days) =) In my opinion it is obvious that by specializing in a narrow profile, you can significantly speed up your work: familiarity with the tools, thorough knowledge of the field,
However, a constant flow of orders, a well-formed circle of acquaintances of both customers and freelancers, a narrow specialization ... This is all good and cool. But one thing is often missing - discipline. Arrange your working day in such a way that there are minimal distractions and really do your job quickly, really load yourself to the maximum. This is not given to everyone. But this is neither dumping nor how much, nor the crisis. There will always be orders, they will come by themselves, while high discipline will allow them to be completed quickly.

Answer 3

You need freelance orders in order to show yourself. Do it well and responsibly - there are people who will feel it and who are willing to pay for it. after that, orders themselves begin to find you, you don’t know how to get off. To follow this path, the main responsibility for the result, you can advise the customer on how best to do it or do something additionally, which is not so difficult for you but useful to the customer.
Or continue to freelance forever, but for this you need to optimize everything in order to do it quickly - on stream.
"freelance exchanges offer 2-3t.r for a project that will take 3-4 days"
it will take you 3-4 days with your current experience, and for someone it may be 2-3 hours. and they earn not a thousand in two days, but a thousand an hour. If a person has already made a hundred of such projects, then he has a million blanks for this business, he can quickly sketch out what he needs from them, and for example, you first have to delve into / understand / do something from scratch.
experience plus possession of modern tools and ready-made modules allows you to greatly simplify everything.

Answer 4

The main strategy is to have more offers than you can handle, and when you have to choose, you will already be very confident and not afraid to price higher.
In order not to look for an order for 2-3 days, you just need to do it all in parallel, for example, if you make someone else's order, you will be released only on Fri. So you answer everyone on the stock exchange that you are ready to take on the project, but you will only start on Friday, even such a phrase makes you more serious in the eyes of the customer.

Answer 5

40 tr? 40tr!? it's about $600, income for 3-4 days (taking into account the upwork commission and the stick).
I mean the average programmer with a rate of $20 per hour. In a month it turns out somewhere around 3 thousand ye on average. It happens, of course, and 2, but 5 is not uncommon if there is a good project that pays more because they liked the quality of your code, your responsibility and they want to keep you.
Stop working with Russian stock exchanges, let the Turkmens code here.

Answer 6

Build a portfolio, make your own website, even a simple one
Build regular customers
Take care of the quality of service and quality of work, then the word of mouth marketing principle turns on Build
up the customer base
Gradually raise prices, refuse small and uninteresting orders, switch to large, long-term, with a good budget
Constantly learn - courses, books, conferences (you can do it online, now Yandex has a three-month subscription, is everyone up to date?), blogs, forums. Stay up to date with the latest trends and tools.
Keep a blog, position yourself as an expert
Constantly strengthen and expand the offer - just made business card sites, and now + adaptive, + basic SEO optimization, + security, + more convenience in the admin panel (for example)
Raise prices even more - the level of customers will change, small ones will fall off, solid ones will go + your pumped reputation will already start working
Delegate the turnover to assistants - find one permanent and several for various tasks - design, layout, programming - for which there are not enough skills
Study marketing, management, develop managerial skills
Open an IP, start working with large companies, the minimum price tag is not less than 60 thousand for any project
And so on in a circle ...

Answer 7

First, you freelance.
Then he works for you.
The main money is spinning not on freelance, but on regular customers. You need to develop a clientele, choose orders that will develop you, and convenient contacts will be typed.
In a year or two, you already get a certain amount of orders that you receive not through the exchange, but from your own customers who like your work and who recommend you to friends.
Think for yourself, would you give a serious order and a lot of money to a person completely from the outside, without recommendations, or would you first try something simpler with him?

Answer 8

Hey! Simple steps:
1) Focus on several exchanges, in order of importance - ODesk / UpWork (yes, you need English), Elance,
Free-lance.ru maximum ratings (reviews), at this stage you will have to work for a penny (stock up on doshirak :)).
3) If you have a portfolio and work time (from 100 hours), orders may find you themselves, or they may not find you, or maybe you will find a dream customer and leave for another country like my friend.
Good luck!

Answer 9

I have a shitty freelancer friend who rivets shitty sites and writes shitty code in php raises under a hundred rubles a month, looking at the average is stupid there, taking into account schoolchildren, the average will be five thousand. Focusing on shit orders for a thousand or two is pointless if you don’t have the ability to make two such orders a day. Normal freelancers have good salaries.

Answer 10

More than once I see in surveys of freelancers that the average income in the Russian-speaking segment is 40 thousand rubles. But if you switch to freelance exchanges, then for a project that will take 3-4 days they offer 2-3 thousand rubles, but then again you need to look for a project, and this is another 2-3 days. Total month comes out 10-12 tr. (the janitor has a higher RFP). We are talking about WEB programmers "middle hand".

What kind of nonsense?
An average web programmer in Russia earns about 30,000-90,000 rubles, depending on his laziness.
If it doesn’t work on Russian-speaking ones - go to English-speaking exchanges.
There is more possible.
You probably, on principle, take jobs that are too low-paid, too simple.
If some area is very difficult to study, then you can earn a lot there.
If you are unskilled, then you can earn money only by working quickly.
Take tasks of the same type, for which you already have ready-made solutions that can be quickly adapted.
It is quite simple and good income.

Answer 11

My colleague, as you wrote, is an "average programmer" (there are not enough stars from the sky, but with 15 years of experience) earns about 2000-3000 dollars a month, that is, about 120-190 thousand rubles a month.
He does not do anything particularly smart - you can easily master all this.
Another thing is that he is not interested in projects worth 1-3-6-12 thousand rubles. From the word "generally".
How many times have they told the world, but the newcomers do not believe it.
The point is only in your qualifications (well, plus diligence, but qualifications are primary).
The lion's share of freelancers are completely non-professionals, without an offline background. Therefore, they do not earn anything.
You need to go freelancing after several (from 6-8) years of offline experience - then such questions will not appear.
Freelancing is the destiny of EXPENSIVE and PROFESSIONAL.
Everyone else is earning the same pennies.
Moreover, this problem is very acute - there is simply SOMEONE to entrust a DIFFICULT issue to solve. It's hard to find a qualified and freelance freelancer.
All qualified - very busy. Even for a lot of money, they are difficult to lure.

Answer 12

I ordered a project for a freelancer, he did it for a month, received 30k rubles, and, moreover, the download was not 100% there, he did something else to his liking. In total, consider that the same 40 could have come out completely from him.
And here it is very important, do not forget that it will take 2-3 days for YOU and 1 day for other people. Yes, and 2-3 days to search for a new project is too much.

Answer 13

For landing 2 days = 2000 rub. New order - 1 day, on fl.ru so, there may indeed be problems with the rest of the exchanges.
Total per month at least 20k, if everything is super - 30k.

Answer 14

Try to find a remote team (to put it mildly, not easy to enter a serious project alone) job with a flexible schedule (in fact, it will be the same freelancing, but regular), and leave freelancing as a secondary activity. In my experience, over the years, freelancing has become more and more questionable in terms of earnings, especially for beginners. The competition is only intensifying, and the same Indians (or whoever else) are slowly but surely raising their professional level at the same low rates

Answer 15

According to my observations, 90% of freelance projects are rubbish in terms of cost-acquisition. You need to look at the 10% most profitable for you personally in terms of available skills.

Answer 16

And how can you compete on the stock exchange with freelancers who have +70 reviews and even their prices are very low?

Answer 17

patience, striving, fortitude, as the first human characteristics of a person to achieve the goal, in the above case, this is earnings on remote work / stock exchange

Answer 18

First and foremost - do not even look at the Russian exchanges. Then there will be no questions about 40k rubles a month. And there will be a question of how to make 20-30-40-100 dollars per hour (and, accordingly, from a hundred or two thousand to a million rubles a month). Yes, you need to know English and be a pro. But it's worth it.

Answer 19

Many find a permanent employer remotely and work for him for years. Here you have career growth and salary growth, and you can even negotiate for bonuses or paid vacation. Choose the right employers, be a competent specialist and you will be happy.

Answer 20

well, to work for a penny at the very beginning, for reviews in other words, there is no other way, 5 reviews will take more projects, thousands for two +, and so on. there will be regular customers, and choose a different profile, on any exchange of school-layouts and Indians, and with them the Turks, Azerbaijan, etc. according to the list, who are ready to receive 2-3 thousand for 2-3 days of work. write without straining, so as not to burn out, look for really suitable and interesting projects, I myself work for 4 hours maximum, of course, you can work more, but being a student is quite difficult. go to python development, the scripts there are quite unique, and if you write a really good script, then later you can sell it, as an example, you wrote a script (seo ranking), got six for it in two days (in fact, for 6 hours of pure work extended over two days) then three days later they bought it for 7500 and a week later for 23000, that's almost forty for almost a week. you can make good money on freelancing, everything is decided in the ability to negotiate, and if you know how to negotiate also in your direction, then everything will definitely be fine. I summarize, the most important thing is to be patient for the first time and not whine, and then everything will be okay.

Answer 21

More than once I see in surveys of freelancers that the average income in the Russian-speaking segment is 40 thousand rubles. But if you switch to freelance exchanges, then for a project that will take 3-4 days they offer 2-3 thousand rubles, but then again you need to look for a project, and this is another 2-3 days. Total month comes out 10-12 tr. (the janitor has a higher RFP). We are talking about WEB programmers "middle hand".

Average hand - about 100-130 thousand rubles.
And 10-12 is a completely zero beginner, also lazy, working every other day.