Freelance Web Developers

Freelance web developers can set their own hours. But remember you may be called at any hour. Getting into freelance web design or web maintenance is not impossible.  But becoming a contractor or freelancer will require a bit of work to get established.  Work is not steady so, you should be prepared for slow periods.

If you wish to get into the field, you should create a site or more than one for yourself.  Showcase your skills.  Do free sites for friends or non-profits. Your work and contacts will lead to paying jobs.

Your first task and the most difficult duty of a web designer is to determine what your customer wants.  The customer often has a vision and your task is to walk around in that vision and absorb the key elements.  You must grasp colors, layout and design.  Don’t be surprised if they don’t like your sample pages.  Go back at it and give them what they wanted.

Apart from aesthetics, you should know your craft.  You will gain customers by knowing web technology well.  When a customer tells you she wants to create a site for e-commerce you should know what goes into such a site.  She’s depending on your knowledge to bring her ideas to life.  Each site needs to have a unique feel in order to stand out. So your attention to your customers’ needs is good customer service.  Good customer service brings customers back.  You can’t beat “word of mouth” advertising.

"Someone who wants to be a developer has to have a good eye, think like a programmer and have some graphic design capabilities.  If you only know HTML then you won't get very far and will find that you have a lot of limitations to the types of sites you can build", says Joey Costa owner of The Tek in Cary, NC.  In addition to HTML, you should know C programming, Perl, PHP, ColdFusion and good graphics programs like Photoshop.

You’ll want to find a niche.  Decide on the types of sites in which you will specialize. Will it be e-commerce sites, non-profits, small or large businesses?  Deciding early will help you focus on what will make you successful.

Focus on promoting your business.  We mentioned “word of mouth” referrals from happy customers, but others who haven’t used your services can help too.  Network, let people know what you are doing. 

Find work as a freelance programmer, web designer, copywriter or translator at Getafreelancer.

http://www.getafreelancer.com/rss.xml

Other sources:

Scriptlance  programming projects are posted and interested programmers bid on them

Sologig  find projects