Life in freelance through the eyes of a programmer

For two and a half months I have been working in freelancing, during this time I have gained experience that I want to share with the public.

entrance

First you need to let you know in big ways that you are looking for orders: speak to friends, relatives, former colleagues, customers of former colleagues, publish in social networks, specialized websites. I submitted more than twenty applications on such sites before I worked at least one. It will take you a couple of weeks.

Difficulties

Bust

One of the gag, oddly enough, is the excessive number of orders taken. At the beginning, such a problem will not come close, but then it is quite possible. For me, 4 orders that I work on in parallel is the limit. Even in this case, I try, for example, to do two orders on one day, and two more - on another.
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The difficulty here is that if you work on one order for less than two hours in a row, time is wasted inefficiently. While you enter the task and achieve a good pace, it will take half an hour. Hence the figure in 4 orders, cyborg can take more. :)

Evaluation

Prepare for the fact that at first you will incorrectly estimate the amount of time and, consequently, the money required to complete the order. For a more accurate assessment, it is useful to divide the task into subtasks, each of which will require no more than a day to complete. And even in this case, it is worth multiplying the resulting number by X, unaccounted features will probably come up, you will have to spend extra time fine-tuning and fixing bugs, etc. Communication with the customer takes its time.

Act

Unlike regular work, where you are paid a fixed salary, where you can in the morning, slowly reeling, reading a LiveJournal, drinking coffee, and getting to work, the freelancer will receive only for real results. For me, a great time - five hours out of eight, spent only on the execution of orders (minus snacks, chatting, reading mail, ICQ, Skype, etc.).

If some kind of sausage starts, emotional throwing - all this should be put off for the evening, when with a pure heart you can get a good heart out. :)

Yes, you also need to rest, just don’t lie to yourself, that I read the news a little more and then I will work, there’s still time for the car. Say that I rest and rest. :)

When working hard on weekdays, you shouldn’t work even on weekends, it’s better to spend this time actively - go roller skating there and other skates ...

It can be difficult to quickly switch between projects; It happens that you delay the beginning of work on an unpleasant task for some reason. Everyone decides this in his own way; an excellent incentive is to regularly receive money. When there is no money, it really helps to work, unless the very cool sausage begins. But then see above.

More - it is dangerous to be lazy. It is better to spend time, to do everything conscientiously, not to leave a single crooked piece that can be done in sane time. And then you get a job just for the money. :)))

Money

I work only with foreign freelance sites (it doesn’t mean that I call for this), I found two options from the transfer of money for myself - MoneyBookers (the European equivalent of PayPal ), where money is transferred to a bank card or account, and SWIFT transfer to bank score. In the end, it all comes down to the transfer, because MoneyBookers has too little quarterly limit on the amount of money to be withdrawn to the card. Accordingly, you need an account in dollars or euros - in the currency that is used to withdraw money.

Another very important thing is to determine how much you want to earn per day, taking into account average market prices and your qualifications. And feel free to call the desired number in the evaluation of the order. At first, this part caused me the most awkwardness, they say, I do such simple things, somehow embarrassing to take money for it ... The melting incomes convinced me otherwise, especially for other people our craft looks very different.

Conclusion

Need to smile and plow. :)