If you’re an experienced web developer looking to go freelance, or just line up a few solid side gigs, there’s a simple shift that can make your life much easier: stop targeting upwork / individuals / mom-and-pop shops, and sell to businesses. Focus on clients who already know how to work with developers and have long-term needs.
The typical local mom and pop coffee shop / gym / yoga studio might sound like a great client: they’re nearby, they need a website, and they’re impressed when you mention your design and development skills. In reality, these clients often lack the budget, project management experience, or long-term need for software that makes them worthwhile.
Your best bet for reliable, steady work is either with design, marketing, and interactive agencies on one end, and small-to-mid sized software companies on the other end.
Agencies (or businesses) are just better clients.
Agencies are designed to work with freelancers. They often need extra development help on short notice. They’ve done this before. They have project managers, creative briefs, timelines, and client expectations. Most importantly, they typically have ongoing work, and when you deliver well on one project, they come back with more.
Even if they don’t have something for you right now, most agencies keep a vetted list of freelancers they can call on when things pick up. Getting on that list is often the difference between feast and famine in freelancing. Case in point: Since incorporating last year, I've frequently worked with a few solid designers on an ongoing basis, and have a few developers who I reach out to whenever I don't have capacity to take on more work.
You might not even need to specialize in front-end design work. Agencies need backend help too: building custom CMS or integrating with external software, building internal dashboards, handling weird deployment setups, getting multiple applications talk to each other via APIs, and so on. Your Rails skills are so, so valuable in that context, and more so if you’re comfortable working alongside a front-end designer or handling both sides of the project.
Target bigger businesses. In addition to agencies, consider reaching out to mid-sized companies, especially those that have a dedicated marketing, communications, or software team. These businesses often have budget for freelancers, but aren’t so big that they require going through five rounds of interview rounds.
Look for companies where your Rails skills can help automate, integrate, or modernize something, and where the person you contact will understand what you’re offering.
Target companies who already know how to work with developers and have repeat needs. It takes just as much time to land a $500 marketing website from a local coffee shop as it does to land a $20,000 integration project from an agency. But only one of those turns into repeat work, referrals, and long-term relationships.
The goal is to have repeatable, steady work. If you want freelancing to work, you need a client base that’s reliable, professional, and worth your time. Agencies and mid-sized software businesses are perfect clients for software / web freelancers.
It’s not glamorous, and it may not get you a large following on Twitter. But if you want to get paid to write Rails, learn by doing, and build a reputation, this is a really good way.
And it beats waiting around for someone to choose you from hundreds of thousands of other profiles from Upwork / Elance.
