Ask HN: Is freelance web development still a viable path in 2019? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is freelance web development still a viable path in 2019?

4 pointsMathCodeLove2 comments

With the advent of wix, squarespace, and other code free forms of website developement, it seems as if the demand for custom built sites are at an all time low.

The little demand left is shared among a seemingly never ending hord of aspiring freelance developers, many of whom are willing to work at prices far below that of what their skills had once demanded.

With a market such as this what place, if any, is there for new developers who wish to break into freelancing? Is there any hope at all for these developers? Or have the days of freelancing been put to an end by abstraction and oversaturation?

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The kind of website that Squarespace can build for you is definitely a commodity. What isn't a commodity is custom full stack application development, which I have been doing very well with for the last 8 years and see no sign of slowing down. I specialize in Django on the backend and VueJS if needed on the frontend. I've found amazing clients who pay high rates (currently I get $125/hr) for good work, and am able to work part time on that while working on my own business ideas.

I most enjoy working with very small 1-3 person companies so I can be the go-to guy for someone's business. Those jobs tend to be very sticky, and of the 4 clients I currently work with, they've been around for 4 years, 5 years, 1 year, and 8 months respectively, with none of them showing any signs of wanting to boot me.

There is a very high skill ceiling for this kind of work, and I don't think it's getting commoditized anytime soon. The best way to get these kinds of gigs in my view is to network one on one and build relationships and tell people you are available for work.

So, it will probably always be true that there is a need for web developers, who can be well compensated. However, it will always be for people who need something that hasn't been automated yet. So, you have to be able to develop in something beyond standard html or wordpress, etc.

Another idea, and this is more speculative not something I've done personally, is to specialize in helping out organizations who have built a hairball of Wordpress plugins, which they now can neither maintain nor live without. In other words, assume they will try to live without a well paid web developer, and will only come to find you once that has not worked out, and they need rescuing. I believe there are a lot of organizations like that, and more being created all the time.

Lastly, the key is making sure that your customers are happy with you, so you need to be able to talk to people, and gently help them to better understand their own technological needs, rather than assuming they will come to you with a well defined problem. There are a lot of organizations that know they have a problem with their web presence, but don't know enough about that to understand exactly what to ask for; if you don't have patience or ability to help them sort that out then freelance is probably not for you.

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