How to get started freelancing? Asked and answered

Hacker News has become my go-to source for interesting tech news. It surfaces a much wider variety of interesting content than Techmeme, with a focus on programming-related content. The community is intelligent too, and comment threads are remarkably free of trolling.

I noticed a couple of good blog posts that hit the front page by one Eric Harrison. Perusing his blog, I was struck by how open he was to helping and corresponding with fellow programmers. Exhibit A: his mentorship program, whereby he’s offering to take a new programmer or two under his wing and show them the ropes. I’m probably not in the best position to submit myself for that, but another link caught my eye: Ask Me Anything, right in the sidebar. I was under the (mistaken) impression from his PHP post that he was a freelancer, so I submitted an anonymous post asking how to get started.

The form directed to a virtual black hole. Did it get through? Would I get an answer, and if so, where? I was very happy to see a response… and a very thorough one, at that!

A lot of the tips he offers are going to be really tough to execute well, especially given my current time constraints. But I like this one in particular:

Bonus tip: Make friends with small design shops. I’m good friends with Jake Stutzman over at Elevate. He’s primary a designer, but often has clients who need to have designs and development. Being friends with him (and making sure that all the work I produce makes HIM look good) has the potential to land me as much freelance work as I could ever hope for. This sort of interaction between you (the developer) and other shops (designers, etc) is crucial to building a successful freelance business. If you have clients that want design work to go with your development, pass that business along to your designers. This way, everyone wins.

Read the rest here.

There’s a whole cluster of good tech & design firms in the area, the most visible of which are the folks associated with Gangplank. The only reason I haven’t made inroads already is my own introversion and lack of initiative.

But now is as good a time to start as any. Any designers that need coding work? I’m a coder that needs design work. I’m affordable. Let’s talk.