I was offered a freelance job. What should I do?

Hi everyone.

Several hours ago I was offered a freelance job. The offered job is interesting, matches my skills and honestly I want to take it. The problem is I never do freelance job so I’m not sure what should I do.


For my background, my parents runs a local retail store (which fortunately quite successful, stable and debt-free) for almost 30 years now and I’ve been helping them since I was kid (stuffs like working at cash register, labeling products, archiving purchase receipts, etc).

Several years ago (around 2010 maybe), as our company grow we realize we need to move from manual to computerized accounting. The problem is at the time POS system is quite expensive in my country. That’s not counting the fee for customizing, installing, training and maintaining the system.

Realizing how expensive (and valuable programmer, at least to my parents) I decided to learn programming. My first program is simple inventory and cashier system using Excel + VBA.

Since that time I keep programming. Sometimes I do it simply as hobby. Sometimes I do it to improve our company’s system. Then after graduating college (3 years ago?) I decided to work full time in my parent’s company, as programmer and store manager (since my parents wants to retired).


(Sorry for long flashback, back to issue).

The main point is my work experience is limited (only at one company) so I don’t know what should I do before accepting the job offer. I’ve read several articles and they said I need to :

  • Specify my pay rates (XX USD / hours)
  • Estimates the project duration
  • Create official contract

Now, my questions are :

  1. How should I calculate my pay rates ?

    As said before, I don’t know the average pay rates nowadays. Especially since I only ever works on my parent’s company.

  2. How to estimates the project duration ?

    So far I only code for hobby or my company, and never for third party. With that said I never need to estimates the duration, instead I could just do it on my own term.

  3. What should be included in contract ?

  4. How does the payment works in private freelancing job like this ?

  5. What happened if I couldn’t finish the project ? Says I overestimate my ability and ended up failing to finish my job ?

I guess that’s all for now. Looking forward to your help :wave:

Hey @RadhiFadlillah!

First off congrats on the job!

freeCodeCamp has dozens of articles on this topic but I think this one in particular will be really beneficial to you.

You should also check out freeCodeCamp’s youtube channel and podcasts because they give a lot of great advice on how to become a successful freelancer.

Hope that helps!

Happy coding!

1 Like

Hi,
Congrats on the job Offering!
For checking the pay rate, visit any freelancer platform, and check the pay per hour of your field.
You should be given the deadline for the project. Try to complete it in the stipulated time as it will help you get an idea about the time required for any project.
If you cant complete the job within time, it will affect your profile negatively.