#Seeking Guidance on Landing Freelance Gigs or a Full-Time Role:Junior Developer

21 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

shrewd vigil
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Hey everyone,

I’ve been actively applying for jobs and looking for freelance opportunities, but I’m struggling to gain traction. I’d love any advice on how to improve my approach whether it’s refining my outreach, improving my portfolio, or better positioning myself in the market.

For context, I specialize in full-stack development with the MERN stack and have experience working with AI agents, Tailwind CSS, and DaisyUI. I’ve built several projects, an AI-powered stock tracking app, and an interactive quiz platform. You can check out my work here:

🔗 Portfolio:
www.justin-portfolio-ten.vercel.app
🔗 LinkedIn:
www.linkedin.com/in/jjaje

If you have tips on where to find freelance gigs, how to improve my job search, or feedback on my portfolio, I’d really appreciate it! Thanks in advance.

crystal cloud
# shrewd vigil Hey everyone, I’ve been actively applying for jobs and looking for freelance op...

Hey Justin, I'm a software engineer professionally, but honestly I think of myself as a glorified juior dev. You can see why in my #👋🏽introductions message.

That said, I do think I have some idea of the professional climate since I've worked at a software company for 6+ years and then for its parent company after their acquisition for the next 7+ years.

One thing that strikes me about your portfolio right away that would be easy to change also, is that I have to create an account to actually see the apps in action, which discouraged me from doing so right at this moment.

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If you provide credentials to a demo account on your resume site, that might encourage people who don't have a lot of time to spend on a single portfolio to take a closer look, especially if the demo account is populated with some data and saves them the additional effort of having to set anything up once they're logged in.

night cypress
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We dont use the J word here. 😆

night cypress
tired notch
# crystal cloud If you provide credentials to a demo account on your resume site, that might enc...

Yeah, this is always great advice. Make it as easy as possible for people to view your projects. You're lucky if someone clicks your link, let alone makes an account.

@shrewd vigil I'd also recommend looking into codestitch.

https://codestitch.app/complete-guide-to-freelancing

The guy that made this guide has a very successful freelance business. He's also super nice and very responsive, if you hapoen to have any particular questions.

His guide describes how he set up his business, techniques for getting clients, and a bunch of other stuff. I think you would find it helpful

crystal cloud
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Definitely bookmarking this one to finish reading in full later.

tired notch
# crystal cloud That guide looks great. I think building payment processing with tools like Stri...

I agree, stripe is not bad to get setup. He is open about his lack of JS knowledge but that's totally something I'd do myself.

Glad you enjoyed the resource, i feel there is a ton of good advice in there. I came across him because he would give great responses on r/webdev and this guide is all those comments laid out nicely. I do work as a dev fulltime but his story inspires me to get a side gig going.

crystal cloud
# tired notch I agree, stripe is not bad to get setup. He is open about his lack of JS knowled...

I have had that dream also, but I haven't really taken the necessary steps to get jobs, and have such a hard time asking for fair payment that I have shied away from it after a history of long, hard jobs for low, flat fees.

Unfortunately it has become my reality nonetheless as my full-time gig laid me off once I completed all their foreseeable development needs, and now I am working for them per contract since in reality they still need my help, just without any job security or predictable income 🙃

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but that's why I am here looking through these resources, and doing the Odin Project and Cloud Resume Challenge to up my game and hopefully find a better full time dev gig

tired notch
# crystal cloud but that's why I am here looking through these resources, and doing the Odin Pro...

That's a bummer. Sorry about the job 😦

I feel ya, money is always a bit of a tricky situation. Just remember you worked hard for the skills you do have! I'm sure it also gets easier after you sell a few sites at a specific price.

Freelancing seems like a hustle and getting the clients is the hard part. My idea is to browse local small businesses that have crappy sites and go in and talk the owner and show them what I have to offer. Using an SSG like Astro you can create super fast sites that you can basically host for free. I believe small businesses will like the monthly payment model so they don't have to hand over 3k for a site.

I still need to look into it but Decap looks like a great CMS for static sites as it's "git based" and can be hosted with serverless functions. This will keep your hosting costs super low so you can make more profit.

If it helps at all I actually started my coding journey with the Odin project and got hired at my current position with no degree.

crystal cloud
# tired notch That's a bummer. Sorry about the job 😦 I feel ya, money is always a bit of a ...

Honestly, that's great to hear! I was encouraged by the fact that they have a course specifically on finding and landing a job at the end of their curriculum, much like any paid boot camper course one might take would have, and honestly I'm finding their material great. I love how there are very few videos in the curriculum. I had looked into paid boot camps even though I really don't have the funds to spend on something like that especially now, and almost all of them had really terrible reviews. Dev Mountain is one I have seen advertised that I read a little bit about, and apparently while the first half of the course is okay, it is taught entirely by Dev Mountain graduates who couldn't get real jobs in the industry and openly admitted that, and the second half of the course covering more advanced topics is just a pluralsight subscription with like a half hour of time with a supposed expert a week 😬... And then they take away the PS subscription at the end despite initial claims that it would be available for a year and despite the fact that the course cost $8,000 and PS is $300 a year 😬!

crystal cloud
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As far as the applications I'm selling, they are to my former full-time employer, rather than to other clients. And rather than finding people that need easy web pages for their businesses, I am making full-fledged full stack applications, WordPress plugins that are also Stripe integrations and process orders and set up recurring payments, and most recently started work on a simple work order submission system for their vendors that is also a PWA app - so it has to have an entirely JavaScript front-end but can be installed as on any platform via Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, and the coolest part, can be submitted to Google Play store, Microsoft store, and Amazon app store as-is (plus Meta Quest but that's hardly applicable for this app), and the IOS app store can also be published to, but they require a native app with a web wrapper.

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I am currently making this for the low low price of $800 😬 but honestly it's kind of worth of the learning experience for me, plus there is another update they're going to want I'm going to charge another $800 for, and I'm charging $100 an hour for any training as well as more hours at the same rate for actually publishing it to any of the app stores.

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But I guess the TLDR is that I am working far too hard on far too complex applications for far too low of a cost for it to really be profitable in the long run or even repeatable unless someone comes to me asking for basically the same thing.

tired notch
# crystal cloud Honestly, that's great to hear! I was encouraged by the fact that they have a co...

I'll never hate on anyone for doing a bootcamp but I always tell people to be careful of them. It sounds like you already have experience so I would totally just focus on free resources even if it was in your budget. Some people need to spend a bunch of money to be motivated enough to learn to code. If you can do it for free or significantly cheaper that's a win.

Totally sounds like they're taking advantage of you. I'm sure you already know but I'd get out of there ASAP lol. The market is tough but even I've been getting interviews and recruiter calls lately.... 2 YOE and just a highscool diploma.

crystal cloud
crystal cloud
crystal cloud
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What I have really needed thus far was a junior development gig, so that I could go into it with confidence, since I am not willing to take on a job that I am not confident I can do well... But hopefully when I have completed the Odin project and then completed a few AWS Lambda/CloudFront and Azure Functions/Front Door serverless apps, combined with my pretty extensive experience with just about every other part of azure and aws, I will feel confident in taking a good job offer.