[thelist] A question for freelancers....

[Richard Livsey]

Heres my life story...

I programmed in my spare time for a fair few years, never commercially.
I left College and went to University to study Dentistry, which I dropped
out of after two terms and found myself a job in a local Web development
company.
I got this job by doing a few sample websites for free for charities and
friends - the best way to start IMHO.
After a year of that I had commercial experience and a few sample projects
to show for it.
I am now doing Computer Science at University, doing freelance work to pay
for it - I have a fully paid trip to Las Vegas coming up to meet some people
(I live in the UK).

I get my clients mainly from putting my profile at places like www.guru.com
and have some steady companies from that - who then go on to recommend me to
other people.

The moral being, start small. Do some free work for local people just to get
your name out there and branch out from that. Get your name on a few places
like guru.com and try to get something like an internship at a small
company - small companies are probably best as you have a better chance of
being assigned some decent work as opposed to be stuck making tea all day!

After that I think a lot of it is down to luck!

Good luck :o)

R.Livsey
Freelance web developer
Vibus.net Director
Lead programmer for Tickle.co.uk
m. +44 (0) 7714 757250
e. R.Livsey at Cache-22.co.uk

> -----Original Message-----
> From: thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org
> [mailto:thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org]On Behalf Of Mr Sirio
> Sent: Sunday, February 11, 2001 10:15 PM
> To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
> Subject: [thelist] A question for freelancers....
>
>
> I'm quite young & i've just finished school... now i've decided to try the
> hard way of a freelancer, or better i spend some time in a company to make
> pratice & then i work with my own, now i'd like to know if you have any
> suggestion how to find customers... do you have someone who did it for you
> by a fee?... do you spend money on advertising?... what do you do?
>
> really thanx!
>
> p.s.= don't worry, i will not steal customers to you becouse i'm in Italy
> ; )