First of all, going independent is not for everyone. Accept that fact now and that it may apply to you before you start. Cash flow ebbs up and down. You are prejudiced against when you try to get loans because you don't have steady, bi-monthly pay stubs. Learn to deal with it. You have to pay for your own medical insurance and your own retirement planning. On the bright side you can write off a lot of expenses too. Talk to a CPA. You have to protect yourself from lawsuits and liability. Your taxes become more complicated. You may have to take a client to court because they haven't paid you. You have to look at is as a business and accept the risks. Often freelance developers don't like being businessmen so they go back and get a comfortable job. That's OK, sometimes that sounds really good to me too.
Sometimes you may just be a hired gun on an already-established development team, or more often than not the you're sole developer. You have to be able to take full responsibility for your work. There's nobody to lay blame on, and you'll sometimes take other's blame since consultants are easy targets for scapegoating in highly political environments.
You have to play more than one of all of the roles of software development: architect, business analyst, developer, QA, project manager, sysadmin, DBA. You're a one-man ISV. The more of these roles you can fill the more valuable and hire-able you will be. If you're just a coder or just a sysadmin your opportunities are more limited. Businesses want providers that can provide entire solutions, usually not just specialists though there is demand for that too but it's more limited. The point is the more skills you have in delivering an entire solution the more work you will have. That's been one of my great successes, I can develop code, host sites at my co-lo, tune database performance, interview and help hire their IT staff, help them decide what hardware/software to buy, train developers on new technologies, etc. almost any software IT need be it technical or strategic. This variety is one of the most rewarding parts of the job. On the other hand know your limits. I'm not a good graphic designer so I hire out graphics to freelance designers.
As far as being a Rails freelancer, it seems there are more Rails freelancers than there are Rails projects. There are a lot of developers working on Rails apps, but they're mostly home-grown Web 2.0 dreams-of-fortune projects, or small, in-house projects initiated by the in-house developers instead of CxOs with budgets. There aren't many going to the market hoping to hire a handful of Rails developers, but that's starting to change. In the meantime just take whatever work you can get to pay the bills but if you want your specialty to be a Rails developer keep posting to your Rails blog or your Rails project. Which leads me to my next point.
As far as getting work, all of the things you mentioned are great. Network. Create a blog. Write a book. Contribute to OSS. Create a community. All of these things will help you "show off" and create a fan base that will cheer for you when you need them. These will show you are an expert and you've accomplished something meaningful. But nothing is more powerful than a personal reference or relationship sending business your way.
Also, enjoy what you do. Some clients are not worth having and can really bring you down. Get rid of them. Finish the project and don't work on version 2.0 for them. Or just raise your prices so they don't call you back, or if they do, make sure the hassle of working with them again is worth the price.
As far as getting started, keep your day job and freelance part-time at nights. Once you build up a small clientele get ready to make the jump full-time.
The good news is that there is lots of work out there now. Go get it while the gettin's good. There will eventually be a slowdown and the good ones with a broad customer base will make it through the hard times. In latter 2002 I went almost 2 months without work and I never want to go through that again! Look at it this way, with a job you have 1 employer. As a freelancer you have many. With a job, if you get laid off you have 0 jobs and $0 income. As a freelancer going from 10 clients to 3 clients may still be OK, as long as you don't extend yourself with too much overhead like a fancy company car or office space.
Get a nice notebook, good net connection (I have Cox Cable modem and TMobile WiFi for when I'm out and about) and a mobile phone and you've got 90% of the equipment that you need. I highly recommend doing all of your development on your notebook so you can visit clients and work there with them side by side on your notebook instead of trying to keep a desktop and a notebook in synch. Backup your files often to an external hard drive. Have a backup notebook in case yours dies you're not out of business while it's being repaired or replaced.
That's all of my $0.02 for now...
On 9/12/06, Nick Zadrozny <
[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
So I'm starting to make myself more available for freelance Rails
work. If you have or know of any projects looking for a developer, I'm
happy to hear about them.
My question to the list is how exactly does one go about getting
started in finding freelance work. I'm sure the strategies are as
diverse as the people on this list, but please feel free to humor me
with some sage advice. I think it'd make good reading, too.
For you freelancers: how much of your work is created word of mouth?
Do you ever get random emails from being listed on the Rails wiki? Do
they ever lead anywhere? How about leads from someone who has seen
your existing work? Leads from people who read your blog?
Inquiring minds want to know. :-)
--
Nick Zadrozny
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