Is it possible to become a freelancer and program online, or is your only chance to become a programmer to work for a company at a physical office? Let’s talk about that today.
The question was as to whether it’s possible to build a career online as a freelancer, or whether your only chance to become a programmer is to work for a company at their offices. Well, the good news is that there’s lots of people who have already built a career as a freelancer online, and they’re actually generating an income and in some cases a substantial income. So the short answer is you can certainly do that.
There’s certainly lots of opportunity, and I would estimate tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people are already doing it. One of the reasons this scales so well and there’s so many opportunities is because of course the internet is a global thing right across our planet. So in the past like for example when I started out as a programmer, I had fairly limited options. I was in a small country town, and if I couldn’t find someone who wanted some programming done in that local town, that was more or less it. I didn’t have any other opportunity unless I was prepared to travel and even finding whether there was opportunities was quite hard back then. So these days we’re largely spoiled.
There’s websites like upwork.com, being perhaps the biggest one, but there’s freelancer.com is another one. And these websites are there to basically link between a person like yourself who’s perhaps looking to become a freelancer and a client who actually wants some work done. And I’ve been on both sides of the fence with companies like Upwork. I’ve been the contractor, so the person who’s, well the freelancer I should say, and I’ve actually done some work for another client. But I’ve also been a client when I’ve had programming projects that I’ve wanted to get done and I haven’t had time to do them, and I’ve hired programmers on upwork.com.
Again, that’s just one example website. So you can do it but keep in mind that to get started one of the things you’ll find is it’s very competitive. Because it’s a global market you’re going to be coming across people from all parts of the world, and depending on where clients and so on, you might find that the amount of money that people are bidding for particular projects might be insanely low in your opinion. So in other words you might be looking at a job and thinking look there’s now way I’m prepared to work for that hourly rate. And that will happen because that’s global competition. But bear in mind that it’s not all price related, and I’ll go into more detail about that in a future video.
But this video above is just really talking about whether it’s possible to do it and absolutely, yes, it’s possible to become a freelancer and be able to build a living online because many people have actually done that. But just be prepared for when you’re starting out to perhaps have a very low rate just to get your foot in the door. Do some projects build up your reviews, because it’s just like buying a book on Amazon or a piece of equipment that has reviews, and you find yourself as a freelancer on these websites. The client the person who’s basically paying you, can leave a review for your services. So a great way to build up a profile is to do some jobs, just bid for a job and get a job in at a very low rate.
Obviously, you want to make sure that you can actually do the work. But assuming that’s the case get the job done, get some good ratings, build up your credentials, and that can then catapult you into future success. And just as another tip though before I end the video, that can also be a great way to basically be used for a resume or on your resume for a perspective employer down the track. If you’ve done some work for clients, and have left a very good review, well again, that’s something you can add to your resume. You know that’s something that a future employer would be very interested to know. Because they’re trying to assess whether you’re a good fit for their company. And if you can show that you’ve already got some programming experience and you’ve done a good job, that can stand you in good stead as someone who can perhaps really complete that job for them in the future.
So freelancer, absolutely yes, it’s possible to do that online. I hope that helped. If you’ve got any questions feel free to leave a comment, and I’ll get back to you.