Status: Completed
Freelance Developer
I did ~ 2 years of freelance and became People Per Hour’s #1 freelancer by revenue
Summary
Before the days of making software for a living I started out by freelancing. I built websites, checkout systems, apps, games, and scripts; serving a mixed audience of connections and users of PeoplePerHour.com, (which has since massively dropped in quality).As of 2024 I am now doing consultancy again, but this time it’s higher level stuff only.
Tagged: Data Acquisition, Entrepreneurial, Freelancing, JavaScript, PHP, SaaS, Web App, WordPress
When did you freelance?
I freelanced for almost two years around 2011. I had already a little network of people who appreciated my talents and gave me an early start. Soon I flipped these as case studies and joined PeoplePerHour.com (which was much higher quality/standard of work options back then).
It took me ~6 months of freelancing to work my way up in revenues until I reached Top Freelancer (in revenue) on the whole site. Back then that equated to £12,000 or so of invoices.
What sort of work did you do?
Now when I consult I focus on strategy, rapid development of apps/WordPress plugins, and I leverage another decade of learning to deliver on a much higher level.
Back then I was younger and fresher and would revel in the challenge of working on difficult/new tasks/technology. So the range of work I did varied quite a lot.
- Web Apps
- Database Architecture
- Data manipulation via logic
- Data acquisition work
- Desktop apps (C#)
- WordPress plugins, themes
- I even made a few games (facebook and web app)
For your enjoyment, while I wince at the wordings, I’ll share some old case studies from that time:
How did you get on?
Generally I did quite well freelancing. They were busy but profitable times. I did have to file a court order for one client who fled the country! But other than that I did some good win-win work, which ultimately lead into EverClients, and many of what would become critical business relationships of my career so far, (Joint Ventures, Co-founding ZBS CRM, etc.)
I also wrote an article for Web Developer Magazine on freelance:
Do you still freelance?
For up-to-date freelancing/consultancy, please see https://woodyhayday.com/consultancy