This is a tight skillset for freelancers but you can still find your space if you’re deliberate and focused. It’s a crowded field and you face pressure from increasingly DIY solutions as well as low-balling freelancers, so differentiation will be extremely important for you.
It will be critical that you keep your skills up, market yourself, understand business problems, and likely find a niche where you can demonstrate a specialized understanding of the part web presences play in your clients’ industry. But remember not to try to do this alone! Come by the Web Design and Dev group and connect with other freelancers.
Example Freelancer Sites
Primary Contacts (who you should be marketing to)
Founders
CEOs
Entrepreneurs
Demand Generation positions
Agencies
Where to Find Work
Bidding Sites: There’s a wide range of work on these, so you’ll have to comb carefully to avoid low-balling and find the decent prospects that just happen to be lost there.
Cold Contacting: This will be critical in finding good clients, but will also require a lot of active marketing to optimize your chances of finding strong clients. Focusing on a niche will help you use trends and competitor behavior as leverage when making contact.
Other Freelancers: Other freelancers (marketers and writers especially) have good insight into when clients need to make site changes. Connecting with other freelancers on sites like this one, Facebook, and other freelance communities can help you build a stronger referral network.
Guru: This site can have a mix of jobs, but you can find some work if you take the time to search.
Skill Development Resources
DoubleYourFreelancing: This site is good for experienced developers who need to up their business skills. It covers freelancing from a general perspective, but with a bent toward web developers. They’ve got a great podcast and a LOT of free materials, so don’t skip over them.
Tools
Planscope: Project, task, and client management tool, ~$24/month for individual freelancers. (Developed by Brennan Dunn from DoubleYourFreelancing.)
Helpful Info
5 Ways for Web Designers and Developers to Build Trust
Life-saving customer service tips for freelance designers (Millo)
WordCamp: A global organization that hosts conferences for developers around the world.
