On Monday 31 October 2011 05:42 PM, Vishal wrote:
Hello Everyone,
I have a friend, who's finished his education and looking for work. He
asked me about freelance programming and I had nothing to share with him.
Thought of getting to know this mode of professional programming.
Many people have already given good suggestions here. I agree with most
of them. I'll write my opinion here.
If the person is asking this question, it is best to not get into full
time freelancing.
Since India is cons
I am trying to get a feel of how it is to do freelance programming...in
Python..in India ?
By and large, geographical region doesn't matter. Freelance programmers
from almost every country get enough opportunities.
What are the (good) websites that a person in India can approach ?
There are many - <http://www.scriptlance.com/>,
<http://www.vworker.com/>, <https://www.odesk.com/>. Although, I didn't
earn a great deal of money directly from bidding, I acquired lot of
customers from these websites. I started freelancing part time and
eventually built a business that used these _freelancing_ websites to
win contracts.
What is the usual pay structure (as in you being in India, and the payment
happening in some international currency), share with website etc ?
These websites can send payments to your PayPal account or a cheque
after a certain minimum amount is reached. The commission is around 15%
usually.
How successful have you been at getting projects where Python is required ?
When I was using those freelance websites, I was coding only in PHP.
From time to time, I used to see bids requiring Django skills. I'm sure
there are many python programming opportunities as well.
Suggestions, pointers for nu-bee freelancers etc ?
Jump into freelancing if you enjoy risk taking. The higher the risk, the
larger the reward tends to be. Freelance programming is not just about
programming. In addition to learning programming, you also have to learn
other things like sales, customer service, book keeping etc. There are
many websites dedicated to providing freelancing 'gyan'. From what I've
seen, a tiny percentage of people who jump in, see the light at the end
of the tunnel. This mostly because people give up too early. To measure
your success, you have to pursue it for a few years. At least a couple.
I have heard umpteen number of stories about a new freelancer calling it
quits in six months. Six months is too short for this kind of venture,
to measure success. In these two years, there will be lot of ups and
downs. Don't expect smooth sailing all the way.
Like others have noted, there's a steep learning curve ahead. It will
require reading tons of articles on the Internet, books and many other
learning activities. It also requires motivation and perseverance.
You should be ready to scale this learning curve. Working in a company
is not a requirement per say. A good mentor can possibly replace that
requirement.
Learning to work in a team is an important factor which you can easily
overlook at this point. If you want to take the solo freelancing route,
participating in open source software communities helps.
A few words of advise:
* Get involved in communities
* Start a blog and continue blogging
* Invest in improving communication skills
* Don't give up soon
* Learn to be productive early on. The right kind of habits go a long way.
* Starting a new activity is easy. Finishing an already open task is
difficult. Put your energies in finishing things. This applies to many
things - projects, reading a book, learning a new technology, etc.
Hope this would be an interesting topic to everyone :))
I hope so too.
--
With warm regards,
Sudheer. S
Personal home page - http://www.sudheer.net/about
Tech Chorus - http://www.techchorus.net
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