Web - What do I need to know before starting to think about freelancing?

Career Advice
1

Hi all,

One of my goals, besides my interest in coding, is to be able work in some freelance projects the future. Say I would want to be able to build a website, what languages or skills do I need to know before I start to look for some freelancing jobs?

Just want to have some directions. Thank you. :slight_smile:

2

it depends on which direction you’d like to go? read these two articles to undestand what you’d like to do:
https://www.codementor.io/@celyndavis/front-end-back-end-mean-stack-full-stack-developers-yxz9kfttg

3

If you want to freelance you’ll have to get clients first. That’s the hardest part because the industry is swamped with competition

4

Hi there!
With just HTML and CSS you can build modern and beautiful webpages. This will allow you to start doing small freelance projects while you study more.

5

Depending on the complexity of website you want to target, you will need to know HTML/CSS/JS, for more advanced websites, say an eCommerce store, you will need to know more JS than anything. Further, if you want to get away from jobs that can be done using CMS or WordPress, you will need to know back-end technologies like nodejs and a database technology. You also should know enough about security to not get your clients hacked, SEO so users can find your client, and enough ops to handle deployments for your clients.

This might sound like a lot because it is. Obviously you can drop out parts of this stuff if your just starting out, but it does mean you lose out on jobs due to not meeting the requirements. None of these are actually the most important skill.

The most important skill is actually getting clients. This can be done via marketing, and business sense. Heck you might even end up doing a job for free, just to get experience. Even offering your services for free, wont get most jobs. Simply put the market is saturated by a lot of people trying to freelance, breaking into the market is very very hard. Throw in the fact your competing with people across the world, who have no problems getting paid minimal even for hard jobs, freelancing is tough.

Alternate approaches is to freelance locally in your location rather than online. This cuts down on competition, but forces you to be more proactive. Find local businesses, build a physical relation, and do stuff that way.

Good luck, keep learning and keep building!

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