I’m planning to start freelancing a year from now (just small JavaScript/CSS projects to get some real-world experience.)
Would you say it’s beneficial or more professional to have a business name and approach potential clients as part of a business (even if you’re the only developer behind the scenes), or is it better to promote yourself as an individual with a resume and engage with clients directly that way? Or does it make no difference at all?
I actually have a business name, logo and domain name registered for when the time comes, but I’m just wondering if it would give me an edge over just emailing from a Gmail/Outlook account and interacting as an individual?
Getting a job is the thing to do. It gives you experience w/ people and a company before freelancing that is crucial. I am NOT the one who said that (Kevin Powell said, google him, he’s a great YouTuber).
If you’re going to freelance, start a limited-liability company (LLC) if you’re in the US, to avoid losing all of your assets etc if you get sued. Having a business name is far more professional by appearance even if you’re the only developer. There are tax implications to running a business, so look into that.
I agree with @Tech though, getting a full-time job will give you far more advantages. If you’re looking for a job where projects change a lot, consider applying at consultancy shops.
As far as getting a job, you can enjoy extra benefits that you’d otherwise have to pay for yourself like dental, vision, etc, and established companies will have an easier time getting clients. Plus you’ll have other coworkers to ask for help/advice etc.
The reason remote freelancing work appeals to me is:
lack of commute
lack of office politics
flexibility
Ultimately, I would like to work as a remote freelancer but, if I need to start out in an office to get the required experience, then I guess I’ll have to do that at the beginning.
In contrast to what other people here are saying, I started out freelancing and used that experience to later transition to working at a company. So I think either way can work. I would say that it’s not hugely important whether you market yourself as an individual or a company. What’s more important is that you have a good portfolio and/or previous clients that can vouch for you. lacking either of those things, cold calling and going door to door to local businesses could also work. Personally, I got a lot of jobs through Upwork, but the pay was meh.
How long did you study before you felt confident enough to look for freelance work? I’ve heard of people jumping in after 9-12 months. My goal is 12 months of hard graft then seeing what I can get.
What skills did you have under your belt when you started freelancing?
I’m planning to study as much as I can of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Django and Python in 2020. How’s that for a starting point? I have a remote job now, so I think I can do maybe 6 hours of study per day on average.
What was the main motivation behind your moving from freelance to working at a company? Was it too much hassle always having to look for your own clients? Lower pay? Less learning opportunities?
How long did you study before you felt confident enough to look for freelance work? I’ve heard of people jumping in after 9-12 months. My goal is 12 months of hard graft then seeing what I can get.
That sounds about right.
What skills did you have under your belt when you started freelancing?
Basically all the front-end skills: HTML, CSS, JS, React, and various other JS libraries and frameworks. Of course if you’re more interested in backend, you could focus more on backend languages and frameworks. Laravel seems to be very in demand these days for freelancers. Django, Go, or Node are also good options.
I’m planning to study as much as I can of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Django and Python in 2020. How’s that for a starting point? I have a remote job now, so I think I can do maybe 6 hours of study per day on average.
Sounds good.
What was the main motivation behind your moving from freelance to working at a company? Was it too much hassle always having to look for your own clients? Lower pay? Less learning opportunities?
Actually I learned a lot freelancing, and it definitely teaches you how to be self reliant but yes the pay was too low and there’s also the lack of benefits and PTO. That’s not to say that if you have a good business sense and the right connections, you can’t pull in a good six figure income doing freelancing, but personally I find it annoying to have to spend so much time tracking down clients, negotiating with them, explaining technical details to them, etc…
only reason to choose between filing as a company vs individual are the tax benefits on things like gas and work related things that can be tax deductible. if you live in the US an S-corp is generally the best choice for a freelance developer
Knock me when your company established/or if you need any help/developer . I am also interested to work this kind of remote company. Feel free to visit my personal profile: https://coder618.github.io/
True, some of the freelance hiring companies pay really low and it is hard to survive by that alone but I wonder how some freelancers are raking in so much income by just freelancing alone and that too remote freelancing?
Either by getting contracts with major companies that are willing to shell out a lot of money for good talent or by building a personal brand and charging a lot for web pages for small business, often using a CMS like wordpress, which minimizes the amount of actual coding that needs to be done, and allows you to increase the amount of projects that you can take on.
9-12 months can mean a lot of different things.
If you do some tutorial copying 3h per week, then 12 months lead to around 150h of tutorial copying.
If you do some engineering from scratch 30h per week, then 12 months lead to around 1.500h of engineering.
Big difference in quantity AND quality of learning.
