Hello.
How is web development freelancing at the age of Corona?
Does Corona affects freelancing work?
positively or negatively or just the same before Corona?
Does Corona affects the number of freelancing jobs or money? Why?
And many thanks in advance.
To start off I do not have experience with freelancing before Covid, but in my opinion it seems to have picked up post-Covid. New businesses are flooding the market since people got laid off from old jobs and they need at the minimum static websites. E-commerce is flourishing because depending on your area there are stricter rules.
It also opened up a broader market where people can connect online, for example I’ve been freelancing for a guy who is based in North Carolina while I am in New Jersey. We occasionally FaceTime or zoom and he can see my progress on the site by using GitHub pages to demo the site before I put it live on his hosted GoDaddy server. I hope that answered your question!
P.S. Here is some of the freelance work I’ve done, any tips or critiques are welcome as I am trying to improve my craft 
@dascolt1
thanks so much for the helpful reply. you have encouraged me to start freelancing. I really like your designs and projects. very attractive and I like its simplicity. colors and images are suitable. best of luck on your freelancing work and journey.
could you please tell how much you got for the first and the second project?
and where you got the jobs?
and many thanks in advance.
So the first website I made for him (I didn’t include it because I basically just touched up the design on his old site and converted it from WordPress to regular HTML, CSS , JS but that paid $200. It was my first gig and he’s my friend’s 2nd cousin so like I said it wasn’t much work, I was helping him out and I am still in college so I thought it was a fair price.
The second one (elise construction) was $500, but that I designed from scratch and added a contact form using PHP, so a little bit more involved which is why I chose that price.
The third one (tailored marketing) is a friend of a friend from high school, he reached out about a month ago because he knew I am a web developer and asked me to build him a similar site to elise construction, so again I designed it and coded it and that was $500.
*I should also note that I could be getting more for these sites as I am handling all ends of the development process (design, coding, SEO, and I handle the servers), however I know these people through some kind of an extension, but MORE IMPORTANTLY I am looking at these jobs almost as an internship. My internships got cancelled because of Covid, so I am trying to substitute that loss with these jobs. I say that only because it can be easy to sell yourself short in this business, but if you’re trying to make money and not just side money, then I would recommend charging more depending on your skills, age, etc.
**All of the websites I worked on, I was reached out to build them, but craigslist is a good place to look under the “gigs” section. Also, look out for small businesses in your town or even places that you’ve worked and see if they need a website, as they are more likely to trust you and give you the opportunity versus someone that you don’t know over the internet, especially if you have little to no freelance experience under your belt. Best of luck in finding gigs!
@dascolt1
thanks so much for the detailed reply and sharing your experience. it is really inspiring . best wishes on your journey with programming.
So rather than focusing only on freelancing, I think we have to look at a few more direct factors from the current pandemic to make a few educated guesses about the overall freelance market.
Due to health restrictions more people will find a given business online, or at least find information for a given place online than traditionally
Due to layoffs, more people have started to get into web development
Lots of smaller businesses who could leverage freelancers are hurting due to the overall affects of the pandemic. Some are even just gone forever.
“big tech” has grown stronger due to increased reliance on their services.
So with those in mind I think its fair to say the freelance market has changed, but its unclear if its for the better or worse. Its possible there are more jobs, but these jobs will probably be cheaper due to the influx of “supply” of freelancers looking to do the same thing, and will fight for the same job.
This isn’t true for all freelancing, but I’m really only focused on traditional freelancing. It can be a tough market to crack, and doing it now seems more difficult. Not impossible, but definitely more difficult than when everything is normal.
thanks so much for explaining your opinion about the freelancing situation.
Hope the situation will be better soon.
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