Post: #1

Location independent lifestyle sounds good on paper, but it's hard to get it to work in real life. Where to get the income from?

Starting an internet business, is easier said than done. I soon realized there is more money in making websites for others, than running a website yourself. Especially if you don't have the capital to spend on initial marketing.

At least while trying to set up internet businesses, I learned to code websites, php, javascript and so on. I could probably work as a freelancer. This seems to be the most straightforward way of realistically becoming location independent for income. The problem is, as you move farther from your end customer, you get a smaller piece of the pie, and in the end you may receive no more than 15% of what the end customer pays, with several middle men between you and him. On freelancer.com, there is competition with indian freelancers who will do a website for a bowl of rice. The freelancers I've met were living off 700 euros per month income, it's not enough.

Since I speak a few languages, the other option for me in the immediate future is to get a business development job, with a focus on the area that I want to explore. The problem with this option is that when you are travelling on your employer's resources, you are expected to show results to your boss, you don't decide so much where you go. Often you stay only one day in each city that you visit, which limits gaming options to one night stands. Business travel is often Airport - Meeting - Hotel - Airport with no time to even visit the place you're in. Not to mention that with skype, travel is eliminated whenever possible.

I'm interested in any insight on how to make it as a freelancer and / or making the most out of a business development assignment.

Post: #2

If you have design skills you can definitely make a living from freelancing. But you have to:

-Position yourself as a premium offering, not just another "hey me too" guy
-Steer clear of obvious "races to the bottom" i.e. Elance, Freelancer, etc (although even there you see some western providers charging $30+ per hour - Indians can beat you on price, but you can beat out Indians on a number of fronts)
-Go niche. Be the go-to guy for "Websites for wedding photographers", for example.

I know for a fact that certain service professionals will pay $1000+ for a simple several-page Wordpress setup with a blog. The key is getting in front of them and winning their business.

I'm not saying it's easy, it will probably still be hard. But you could have a tough time and make 700 euros, or position yourself better (and still have a tough time, because it's freelancing) but make 2-3000 per month, conceivably.

Post: #3

If I were to go the freelancer route starting from scratch this is what I would do:
- start offering my services for dirt cheap or even for free to build a portfolio and build a client base. To do that I would go onto the Warrior forums, make an ad there stating that I would take 5 clients free in exchange for an honest feedback. This is where you would ensure your work is top notch as these reviews would make or beak your bizz.
- once you've done a great job overdelivering in quality and you have your positive reviews from these people, you can expect 2-3 of them to hire you, either directly or indirectly by referring you to their friends. These could in turn become an ongoing basis to do their web designing jobs. Which is ultimately what you want to achieve. Much better and profitable to have a few stable and good on going clients than always fighting and hustling for new clients or jobs/projects.
- you can start looking for these starter clients for whom to do your initial few jobs for very little or free either on the Warrior forum or even here as there are a few guys in here who would need a good and reliable guy to handle their web designing needs, me included.

Post: #4

Thanks for the advice.
I worked mainly with Drupal CMS, and I can do anything from blogs to ecommerce sites. I also built a web scraper in Perl for affiliate marketing purposes. So I’d rather be interested in more ambitious web projects that require custom coding and functionality. For a marketing showcase site, I believe wordpress + 20$ template works, no need for a web developer. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Offering some free work to build a portfolio, it would have to be very basic stuff to keep time investment manageable from my side. From experience, free customers are often the most demanding... I did a simple content site for friends for free, and I still need to do some security updates for it. A more personal project I worked on is a web application for aspiring writers. It helps organize the worldbuilding (characters, places, and so on) for a story.

PM me if you're interested in links to websites I worked on.

No one works in business development on the forum?

Post: #5

Yeah I agree with you that the free customers are in fact, some of the most demanding and worst to deal with. I just threw that idea out for someone wanting to start from 0 to build a portfolio and get some clients. But if you already have a good background and or a nice portfolio already, then no need to do that.

Nice avatar of a young Chirac! T'es français?

(03-31-2013 03:35 PM)MisterFresh Wrote:  Thanks for the advice.
I worked mainly with Drupal CMS, and I can do anything from blogs to ecommerce sites. I also built a web scraper in Perl for affiliate marketing purposes. So I’d rather be interested in more ambitious web projects that require custom coding and functionality. For a marketing showcase site, I believe wordpress + 20$ template works, no need for a web developer. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Offering some free work to build a portfolio, it would have to be very basic stuff to keep time investment manageable from my side. From experience, free customers are often the most demanding... I did a simple content site for friends for free, and I still need to do some security updates for it. A more personal project I worked on is a web application for aspiring writers. It helps organize the worldbuilding (characters, places, and so on) for a story.

PM me if you're interested in links to websites I worked on.

No one works in business development on the forum?

Post: #6

(03-31-2013 03:54 PM)Vacancier Permanent Wrote:  T'es français?

Oui. et toi?

Post: #7

Oui aussi. Sympa de voir un autre français ici!

(03-31-2013 04:03 PM)MisterFresh Wrote:  

(03-31-2013 03:54 PM)Vacancier Permanent Wrote:  T'es français?

Oui. et toi?

Post: #8

Sorry for intruding your thread. Thing is I studied IT. But haven't really worked with it since I left college.

Would you care to recommend me a few books about web development?

Post: #9

(03-31-2013 04:24 PM)Vacancier Permanent Wrote:  Oui aussi. Sympa de voir un autre français ici!

Ouais. Ils sont fous ces américains!

(03-31-2013 05:30 PM)Pete Wrote:  Would you care to recommend me a few books about web development?

For advanced:
"Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software".
For Drupal : "Pro Drupal 7 Development".

For basics, I say learn by doing. Get WAMP or better rent a server. Watch web dev tutorials on youtube.
start your own pet projects. when you're stuck, search stackoverflow.com. Much faster than reading any book.

Post: #10

(04-01-2013 04:07 AM)MisterFresh Wrote:  

(03-31-2013 04:24 PM)Vacancier Permanent Wrote:  Oui aussi. Sympa de voir un autre français ici!

Ouais. Ils sont fous ces américains!

(03-31-2013 05:30 PM)Pete Wrote:  Would you care to recommend me a few books about web development?

For advanced:
"Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software".
For Drupal : "Pro Drupal 7 Development".

For basics, I say learn by doing. Get WAMP or better rent a server. Watch web dev tutorials on youtube.
start your own pet projects. when you're stuck, search stackoverflow.com. Much faster than reading any book.

Thanks!!

Post: #11

Mister Fresh, what languages do you speak (fluently) besides French and English?

Post: #12

(04-01-2013 04:52 AM)Pete Wrote:  Thanks!!

As a warning though, anyone can learn to hack together a site in a few months. Even easier with a CMS and templates.

However, if you want to position yourself as a well-earning programmer, you need to know about best practices, performance optimization, object oriented programming, all things that take years to learn and divide the hobbyist from the pro.
This puts me somewhere between the hobbyist and the pro, by the way.

I always thought web dev was perfect for remote work, but actually what I noticed is that most successful web agencies were located right in the center of Paris, where rent is the most expensive. This seemed stupid, but I found out, if you are serious about making a decent living from it, you MUST stay close to the end customers.

Otherwise, you will be lumped in with the indians and bulgarians for low cost work, and it will be tough to make more than 700 euros per month from it. At least that's what I understand.

Post: #13

(04-01-2013 05:50 AM)youngmobileglobal Wrote:  Mister Fresh, what languages do you speak (fluently) besides French and English?

German, Hungarian, Russian