I have been a developer for 10+ years now working for various companies; I have 5+ years of .NET and ASP.NET experience. What I want to do is break away and become my own boss. Ideally I want this to lead into owning my own company.
Where do I start? Has anyone done this recently? Do you have any tips?
Well there are 2 routes
With the product you need a good idea, a little luck and some determination. With #2 you need contacts and to give the impression you are good at your job.
This is where networking becomes essential. (social networking that is)
One question you have to ask yourself is how motivated are you to obtain skills, and keep yourself up to date? As a freelancer, companies won't provide for your training.
I invest a substantial amount of time (outside my time committed to clients) to keep up with new software technologies, techniques etc. (including Stackoverflow, naturally). You also have to take into account the cost of books/learning materials etc. and in rare cases training courses. Not to mention your own hardware (and possibly software - e.g. pro versions of, say, Visual Studio, or your IDE of choice).
Best of luck. I started on my own 12 years ago, and have never regretted it.
I currently work with an individual who freelances outside of his day job and I'm looking at doing the same thing.
I would suggest that you take a look at some of the freelance websites out there like elance and guru and create an account. From what I understand account setup is free and you can begin bidding for contracts immediately. I haven't done this myself, but again from what I understand the way that sites like this make money is by taking a certain percentage off the top of the final contract fee that you set for the job with the client.
I would suggest that you begin slowly by first finding a few contracts, completing them and seeing how it all goes. Then you can gradually pick more clients. A common side-effect from what I understand is that you will find over time that clients will come back to you if they have a good experience the first time around rather than going back to the service where you originally met thus allowing you to build a regular clientele over time.
One thing to try would be to become an independent contractor. You may even be able to contract back to the same company you are working for now.
You will need to have a very good contracting agreement drawn up to protect yourself however.
Another idea is to try freelance websites like www.guru.com and see what types of projects you can pick up.
Hey I have made tons of money, almost twice my monthly salary on rentacoder.com. That's the best one for me so far. Initially you pay them 15% cut on your earnings. But once you have worked with the same client multiple times you can directly deal with your clients and earn 100%. Make sure you are active on linkedin.com. That's a great way to build new contacts. All the best
The three routes that I have seen taken most:
A. An opportunity organically grows from someone you know, either socially or from work. Best advice I can give you on this one is to rub elbows with successfully people who aren't developers. Network, network, network!
B. You or someone you know have a deep knowledge of a business domain that is sorely needing software. This could be something like practice management software for a dentist office or something obscure and crazy. The important thing about this route is to make sure you have somebody who can sell. We (developers!) usually aren't very good at that and much to my dismay...most software won't sell itself!
C. Dust up your resume, cash out your saving, build some example projects, buy a suit, and relentlessly hit the pavement knocking on every door that you can find asking for an opportunity to help them. I know people do it this way....but it is hard, hard, hard! Make sure option A is completely exhausted before going option C! [EDIT] Looks like lots of you have taken this route by the answers...kudos to you!!
Finally - as a note of caution, make sure you want to do it! You will take a pay cut for a few years, you will work all the time, and at one point or another - you will be scared out of your mind! I love my freedom to choose projects, technology, and lifestyle. But while the rewards are many, so are the risks.
Hi Dwayne,
I've been a professional developer since 94, and have been freelancing since 96-97. It's been my only source of income since then, except for two brief jobs from 1998-2000, and in 2003. In 98, I hadn’t really thought about it, and just defaulted back to a job. In 2003, I was gun shy after the post 9/11 work environment.
Basically, in 96, I quit my job on good terms to transition to another technology, which I liked but had rusty skills. After my brief ‘sabbatical’, I ran into my old boss, who offered me a small project ... then another .. then another ... eventually, other people started giving me work, and most kept using me. I currently still have 2 clients who I’ve gotten work from every year for over a decade.
Obviously, you need to be innovative, design good UI’s, understand your customers needs, develop a system from concept to deployment, maintain your own code, and write quality software. But I’d say the reason I’m doing this now comes down to making myself available to do extra projects when any sane person would say no, and accepting almost any programming project.
Also, just so you know what you’re getting yourself into; having a boss breathing down your neck is easy. You pass the prioritization decisions back to them and work 15 hour days till you’re done. But being freelance means you’ll have multiple bosses, which will occasionally all be demanding, and they’ll all be expecting 60+ hour work weeks, and won’t know or care about your other 5-6 projects. This can be stressful, and make you wonder why the hell you’re doing this to yourself!
If you have a good friend or two who share your vision, you might also want to talk about a partnership. Not having others who care about your success and will help you out when you’re stuck on a tech support issue that you have ZERO idea how to resolve definitely sucks!
Personally, I’ve come to the conclusion, that I probably won’t have another job again, but independent consulting isn’t exactly a cake walk either.
Good luck.
PS-Don't ever lower your estimate because it looks too high and you're afraid you'll lose the project. In my experience, you're better of losing the project, than getting it under these circumstances.
Just remember that freelancing is a lot of hats to wear. You're your own sales, marketing, HR, accounting, and tech support departments. Besides being prepared for that, it's also key to have a client base before you throw yourself out on your own. If not, picture what a "door-to-door developer" looks like. As was mentioned previously, network, network, network.
The first step is to jump to freelancetraffic.com and start bidding on project You will start working as a freelance today!
You are the boss