Ok, lots of good points here... I'll address each below.
Quote: (10-24-2015 01:02 PM)Beyond Borders Wrote:
CleanSlate, I wasn't trying to single you out specifically - more the overall direction of the conversation, which I admit I didn't take much time to read through because at first glance it seemed like the same old complaints I've heard forever.
I get that, you've been at this a lot longer than I am. Again, I was only making observations on what I'm seeing myself.
Quote: (10-24-2015 01:02 PM)Beyond Borders Wrote:
But since you are talking about coding...I won't say I've never been wrong, and maybe I am wrong right now, but I don't believe you're doing enough to set yourself apart. Ignore those aholes - they're not your customers.
Oh, I know that I'm not doing enough to set myself apart. But I don't know HOW to do exactly that. I've been working on it, tweaking my profile and my cover letter, even going so far as to imply that I'd be better to work with than most of the bids they get, because I'm a native English speaker and that I'm reliable, etc.
But I feel it is not so much what you say in your cover letter as it is how much your portfolio sells.
Yes I'm a programmer, but ironically, I have been winning more writing bids than coding bids because I have a bigger writing portfolio.
I can talk about how I'm the best programmer in so-and-so language until I'm blue in the face, but if I have no work to back it up, then I got nothing.
I'm even going so far as to code my own programs on my own free time JUST to have something on my portfolio. It's hard work and takes a lot of time. I think I've said it before on this thread (or my lifestyle thread) that writing is easier to break into than coding, not only because of the time factor but also there are hundreds of different programming languages and new technologies appearing each year.
Quote: (10-24-2015 01:02 PM)Beyond Borders Wrote:
Trust me, people say the same thing about the writing markets. They always have and they do about these particular sites right here in this very thread. And even after all these years I still get that wtf sinking feeling when I go to do a run of bids...because, yes, it looks like a cesspool at first glance.
But every time I prove myself wrong by just taking action. And as for being established, well, I helped one newbie with some bids recently and he went and landed articles for over $100 a pop even with ZERO previous feedback on his profile.
With zero feedback on his profile? How did that happen?
I was bidding on 50+ different jobs (both writing and coding) with zero feedback on my profile, experimenting with cover letters till the cows came home, and I got nothing. I was about to quit on the site, when a friend found me on the site and gave me a job. When I finally got a five star feedback on my profile, the gates opened wide.
Quote: (10-24-2015 01:02 PM)Beyond Borders Wrote:
Back to coding, Hell, having hired many Filipinos and Indians myself over the years, I can already spot one very simple way to stand out without me even knowing an iota about coding.
Have you ever hired these people before?
Because I tell you it's no fucking picnic to work with them (no offense to any Filipino or Indian players on the board, but it's generally true from a Western perspective). And that gives you a HUGE edge for standing out.
I haven't hired them, but I'll take your word for it
Quote: (10-24-2015 01:02 PM)Beyond Borders Wrote:
Yes, you'll scare a lot of people off, but THEY ARE NOT YOUR CUSTOMERS. it's like that book "Models," where he talks about how you have to be polarizing to attract women, and how everything that's attractive is also polarizing. Well, if you don't polarize enough to scare half these dipshits away, you won't be appealing enough to the big or even mid-range fish.
Because those with the budget WILL pay for better communication and less hassle. Do you really doubt that's true? And sure, you may have to make more bids to find them, and you may have to get rejected more. But the payout is bigger and the clients are longer-term and easier to deal with, so it all works out in the end.
There's one simple way to figure out if others are making cash coding on these sites though. Dig through your competitors - you can look through the profiles in different skills and see who is making the most money.
Are there ANY Westerners on there marketing themselves a different way and clearly getting higher rates? On some profiles, you can even see what they made last year.
No I don't doubt that's true, but I'm sure my way of finding clients is a little bit off. Is there a specific search criteria that you use to get the best clients? Like how many jobs they've hired, their hire rate, at least an X feedback score, how much they've spent, etc.
For me, I've been shooting for the $50-$250 fixed price jobs within the keyword I'm searching for. I do skip over jobs that ask for 10 x 1000 word articles for $50, that's fucking slave labor.
But I've got to start somewhere. I'm more convinced that once I have a full and deep profile of my work, I would be able to raise my rates and do less work for more money.
I'll take a closer look at my competitors. I've scanned them before for a few minutes... they charge a wide variety of rates, some have small number of feedback but excellent, others have large number of feedback varying between 3.5 to 4.9 stars. How much they charge probably depends on where they live, so it's hard to make a full assessment. I'm not a market intelligence expert by any means, though.
Quote: (10-24-2015 01:02 PM)Beyond Borders Wrote:
What one man can do, you can do...
All that said, I don't want to sound too arrogant, and you're right...I don't have experience landing jobs in this particular area.
So email me and I'll help you try a different approach.
I'm not going to help you build your entire business, of course, but show me your bids and profile, and I'll see if we can't get a new angle going and try something different.
No charge for my time (offer just stands for these coding and web dev jobs).
I appreciate that man, and I probably will take you up on it. Plus I'm not arguing with you, and I'm sure there are some things that I can do better.
But I think it comes down to how full and deep my portfolio is. The top coders and best web developers have hundreds of jobs in their portfolio, and I only have a few.
Quote: (10-24-2015 01:02 PM)Beyond Borders Wrote:
Of course, there's always the chance that you're right and I'm wrong and coding is just a rates wasteland. I do still doubt it, but if it is the truth, man, do something else.
To be honest, I am worried that some of the languages I know are dying markets, or commoditized. In fact, I've been spending time taking courses on languages that I don't know very well because I think there are high paying markets for those... like javascript, which won the entire internet. Almost every website uses javascript.
I'm also pinning my hopes on the new iOS programming language, which is only a year old, but is supposedly the wave of the future. I've been really delving into it these days, but again, I need to build a full portfolio on that. I have 3-4 apps in the pipeline for that, so I should have those on my portfolio by the end of the year.
Quote: (10-24-2015 01:02 PM)Beyond Borders Wrote:
And I didn't want this to morph into a thread about just the freelance bidding sites, but there's still that common advice of just reexamining where you market your services. So you could always find a completely different way to get on the radar of those better clients.
Exactly. I don't think I'm doing a very good job of marketing my coding services on Upwork. Oddly enough, I'm better at marketing my writing services on the freelance website, but I do better at marketing my coding to people OUTSIDE of Upwork.
I feel like I need to really niche down into a specific subset of coding / web dev. For example, I probably should market myself as a "front end web developer using Wordpress" or something. Or an app developer for iPhones, rather than just a "programmer".
Maybe I could shoot you a message so you can examine my own marketing efforts to see where I'm going wrong. Plus, I'm curious as to your thought process on specifically how to screen for the best clients, especially on a freelance bidding site.