How to Freelance; how to be a starter small businessman

10 - 07 -2025 advice written on codecademy forum by me - Applies to all

When you decide to do freelancing by learning a new program or programming language. These advices are for you; it doesn`t matter if you do freelancing for engineering, or for art, it applies to all.

. Learning will never end. After you learned general things of python, start bidding on small projects. Small means: pricing small and amount of work is small. Or in other words do not bid at first on rocket science projects. In freelancing, ask some advice, you will seriously need them. I have few but get some new ones.

You start immediatly bidding, because you will not land a project straight foward, some time will pass (prepare for few months) In the mean time get into mid level python courses learning.

Freelancing means owning the smallest possible company, And this means think and act as businessman! A business requires some time to get trust from the surrounding customer, until you establish it time will pass. And do not get stressed about this time, it is normal.

Prepare yourself to write some attractive bids.

Which freelancing website do you plan to use? This is also important. According your location some freelancing website efficiency varies, and some other are international.

For example Linkedin.com has some freelancing options and it is international.

The last and not the least thing to tell; what is your strategy in freelencing. I can tell you some of these few strategies that I have seen people applying:

some people use freelancing job to make a network, and to land an employee job. It can still be considered today as freelancing, because hybrid and remote works are longterm freelancing contracts. Freelancing is a contract, the duration term of the contract may not change the structure of the contract.

some people use freelancing to work on their own; I have seen some graphic designers working like this. Your rapidity in your work is important in that case. Because at the ened of the month the freelancing job should help you pay partly or entirely some bills. there are long things to tell here, but it will take too long.

And last one is freelancing work as team, in 2000`s many Indian coders was working like this. It is really good strategy, this requires you to create a team, and to manage this team. Everybody in the team should accept this as being a businessman and not being an employee: this means nobody will get a fixed salary at the end of the month, but the amount will vary according the landed jobs, the finished jobs, customer being satisfied or not and etc etc…In this system at least one person is constantly focused on bidding and customer relations, other at least one person is doing the error handling, and the other at least one person is doing the coding. This is a team work. Not every country worker can afford it, and not all age people can afford it.

2nd last and not least: competition and rivalry is everywhere; at school, between employees, and naturally in business owning works. As being in freelancing since 2004 and owning my own legal company at 2021, I never stopped sharing small to mid range info with anyone. Because according to me;

Hiding information will not surely get you to the top: some people do it. Ok but, you can never be sure why some are on the top, maybe they succeeded because of their network strategy and not because they have hidden info.

Sharing information will make you have network. And this network is not allways the customer but also the mediators, and also some coders who may enter your team. When you share info, the customer, the coder, the mediator trust on you. Do never forget that trust based on money is like a thing glass vase it can be broken with small things, but trust based on feelings is like carbon steel with xyz, iridium mix; to brake it you must really try hard. Base your business (freelancing is a business) on hard trust and not on money.

3rd last but not least - you are always an amateur, but this may never stop you to make a step forward. Because even after 25 years of experience I see myself as an amateur. And this is absolutely normal: technology changes, customer changes (the generation of customers giving me work 25 years ago are now old or passed away, now I wok with customers from generation Z or Alpha) You must always be ready to change. Your co-worker must be ready to change.

4th last but not least: some older people are very good. The youth and old people mix in team is always great. Older people can handle tension stress easily while young people get easily stress bomb. Young people are quick, old people are slow, but the second one may make less mistake or make previsions of the future by experience. And in coding it happens, it can be very useful Making forecasting, prevision, ahh my advie can never end..

Other bulk advices: Prepare always to bend your mind, accept that you are entirely or partly wrong, you can be a bad manager or good one and thousand other advices….

Final note - important repetition: freelancing is being a businessman, do not think like an employee but like a businessman. In freelancing take advice from businessman, businessowners, small or big are all welcome.

I wish you success, if you can share your options of freelancing website, it can be great