The Beginner’s Guide to Freelance

Minor nitpick, but the author is a she.

But this is a good point. Generally speaking, whenever you're freelancing, you should be aware that "work for hire" is the standard agreement. This means that the work you create will become the intellectual property of the commissioning client unless you and the client agree otherwise. The burden is typically on you, as the contractor, to raise this issue and attempt to stake a claim -- be it maintaining ownership of the finished product, or be it making exemptions for any aspects of the product (for instance, any use of your existing IP as part of the new project).

IANAL, but I have freelanced pretty extensively over the years. I'm not sure what would happen if you entered into a freelancing project without addressing IP status in a contract or statement of work -- whether the IP would therefore be assigned to the client by default. But I don't leave that to chance. It goes in writing.

That said, I don't often fight for IP retention on freelancing assignments. Many of the people I have freelanced for would not have hired me if they couldn't own what I created. That's just the nature of the work I do. Your mileage may vary.

Feel free to drop me a line if you have questions! (email in HN profile).

1) Do something. Make something. A developer can benefit from a portfolio of projects where a prospective hiring manager can see what you are capable of doing. Don't worry about it being perfect, but do try to show that you care about your craft and have good reasons for what you did when asked. This I imagine is required, but tougher for designer types as there are usually more of them trying to get in the door. If you can conceive of or participate in a project that people would be interested in on it's own merits, all the better.

2) Don't incorporate elements from third parties (such as copying and pasting code from Stack Overflow, for example) without having the legal right to do so and without clearly designating the incorporated elements as being what they are. From a developer perspective, I saw more copy and paste code being represented to me as original code in code samples than I would have thought; often times without any original work whatsoever... and yes I checked to see if I could find the code published somewhere. In those cases, proposals/resumes, etc. all were round-filed due to the honesty issues raised. If a project/sample included appropriate/properly documented third party bits along with original work... no problem.

3) Depending on what you do, try to get some specialized domain knowledge in a marketable subject and write about or demonstrate that knowledge in some way. I specialize in boring old ERP type systems, for example. Because I know the accounting rules, the logistics, and operations of inventory centric companies, I have extra knowledge that I can sell compared to someone that has technical skill alone.

The whole point is to show that you are self-motivated, are capable, and have good judgment. True, it's really hard to beat experience and track-record, but you can compete on price until you have reference-able clients under your belt. Also, beat on every door that looks like it might be a potential customer: outside of having contacts on the inside, good salesmanship is the only way to let people know you're there and can make the difference compared to your peers that aren't selling themselves as aggressively.

(for the record, I do nothing but freelance work these days).

Make friends with some local charities - do a little work or make their new website (or whatever you do) for free, or cost. Ask them to publicise it on their site in return.

Similar for local small businesses who might buy your services. Talk to some, offer free or cost price in return for a little exposure.

Use spare time to build your portfolio, just because. Program a few small utilities or design a site for the dog and put them all on your portfolio site as you start to build it.

Since I have a full time job, I turn down a lot of gigs (like "integrate your library into our code," rather than working on the library itself), but I think the strategy in general is good if you chase down all the leads.

If this looks appealing to you, I'd be open to forwarding leads to others if you can make me confident that you can do the job. Send me an email if so.

http://literallycanvas.com/

If I needed $40K per year to maintain my lifestyle and I invented a cure for cancer, would I only charge $40k?

Similarly, if I needed $100 per hour to maintain my style of living, should I demand $100 to someone who wants to hire me as a doorman? He'd never pay that much.

I wrote back quoting the offending paragraph: "Nice try but yeah, no."