The Advice You Need to Become a Successful Freelance Developer
There’s more to freelancing than just coding
One of the common mindsets of people who want to become a freelance web developer is that they just think they have to be good at coding.
WRONG!
If you’re serious about being successful as a freelancer, this is not the right mindset to start with. Freelancing is a business that takes more than just coding to make it grow.
In this article, I’m going to share the different points a freelance web developer has to bear in mind to grow and sustain his or her business.
What do freelance programmers do?
Put simply, freelance programmers write code for clients on a project to project basis. Freelance developers are the foremost problem-solvers. Companies nowadays are constantly looking for people to give them the right solutions to digitalize their business in the most effective way possible. The best part about being a freelancer is, that they’re self-employed, they get to set their own rates and decide who to work with, and they control their time.
With this in mind, the following is a list of skills that will allow freelance developers to separate themselves from the pack (other than coding):
Understanding your client’s business nature and goals
Understanding the nature of your client’s business will help you better prepare for the project and fulfill your client’s needs. Understanding the nature and goals of our client’s business will enable you to give more valuable contributions and solutions.
You can understand your client’s business goals by:
- Browsing their website and social media accounts. Find out their history, products, services, and plans, etc
- Ask them about this yourself. This is a good way to show that you are serious and committed to giving them the best solution possible
Communication is important
Effectively communicating with a client is key to working efficiently and giving timely, effective results. A lack of clear and timely communication can give rise to a series of problems like bad design, wasted money, bad coding, and lost time.
As a web developer, It’s your job to ask questions to help you understand better what your client needs.
Client communication involves:
- Explaining complicated technological concepts in a way that your client will easily understand
- Explaining your ideas and suggestions to the client
- Asking questions for clarification to make sure you and the client are on the same page about the website’s design, features, and functionality
- Negotiating prices and deadlines
- Make use of video calls and face-to-face interactions
Decision-Making skills
From choosing the structure to deciding whether a certain feature is really needed, you’re going to make pretty important decisions that will impact the project’s success.
You’ll often get asked these questions:
- How long will you take to complete the task?
- How much time and money should we invest?
- What is the most cost-effective way to achieve our goal?
Your experience, technological expertise, and understanding of your client’s business, goals, and specific needs will all come into play when you’re making important decisions.
I’ll say it again: As a developer, coding is not your job — finding a solution is. The best solution is the one that achieves business goals sooner.
Time management
Managing your time is huge if you want to stay productive and sane.
As you get more clients and the number of projects increase, It’s easy to lose track and fall into a state of confusion.
Multitasking is a myth. only 2.5% of people in the world can actually process tasks simultaneously. So instead of multitasking, have short bursts of hyper-focused working mode.
So, here are some tips to help you manage your time and stay productive:
- Find a set of go-to websites for your photos, vectors, icons, and etc
- Use tools to help you organize your projects like Trello
Marketing
Before you get to coding, you need clients, and to get clients, you need to start marketing. The word “marketing” is so intimidating to those who have no prior experience in it.
Let me explain.
In the simplest sense, marketing is putting your products and services in front of people who might need it. Marketing is so important for freelancing that you should devote most of your time to it and less time to actually writing code.
To market effectively, try to find answers to questions like:
- Who are your target clients?
- what are their problems that your services can help solve?
- Where can you find them?
- How do you tell your message in a way that will resonate with them?
Marketing is a big industry in itself, It’ll take time for you to understand the fundamentals, but once you understand them, there’s no stopping you.
To know more about marketing and Its fundamentals, visit the link below:
Cash flow management
No matter how many clients you get and how well you do your job, you won’t stay afloat if you mismanage your cash flow.
As your business grows, you need to outsource taxes and bookkeeping to a trusted accountant.
I recommend reading this blog post for more money management tips:
Some things you can do to manage your cash flow:
- Closely track your income and expenses
- Cut costs. spend only on things you really need. The Starbucks coffee can wait
- Have a cash reserve with 3x your monthly expenses
- Stay on top of invoices
Conclusion
I put this article together with the intention of helping freelance developers excel. I hope this article helped give you an idea of what’s it’s like to run a freelance web development business. There are obviously a lot more points, so feel free to mention a few in the comments.
Cheers for now :)
Manvendra
July 2020
