“A man wearing a black backpack and baseball cap, staring at work related documents on the office wall” by on rawpixel.com Unsplash Freelancing can be a great way to get experience as a junior developer, especially if there are no great full-time jobs or internship opportunities where you live. However, you need to apply to the right types of projects or you might end up wasting your time on projects that are either , , or totally to the things that you really want to master. too complex too simple unrelated First of all, you need to define what your goals are: What technologies are you trying to master? What’s the right project complexity for your current level of experience? We have used Freelancer.com and Upwork.com to find real examples of projects that you should apply to. However, similar projects can be found on almost any other freelancing platform, and the “reasoning” is the same regardless of the platform. By the way, if you want to see a list of real examples of , we also published another article with some examples and the reason behind each recommendation. projects that you should avoid This list of examples assumes you are an who is familiar with CSS, HTML and JavaScript, you have built some basic websites, and you are your frontend skills. This is the situation where most of the students are when they begin our . entry-level web developer looking for some more challenging opportunities to improve training program for remote software developers Finally, we are assuming you have selected the right skills for your profile, so you can use the “Projects with My Skills” option in Freelancer.com. We recommend that you look for both “Fixed Price Projects” and “Hourly Projects.” Even though each model has its pros and cons, both of them will work for you as long as you know so you can determine if the “Fixed Price” is fair or not. how to reasonably estimate the scope of a project Project #1 Why you should apply The problem to be solved seems to be and the . Even though they don’t tell you where this code lives (big web application or simple website?), it seems like something small that you can probably debug and . Even if it took you longer than that, you will probably and at (something you will have to do if you join a large company at some point). Additionally, the minimum . If you manage to fix this in a couple of hours, you would be making almost $100/hour. really specific scope is small fix in a couple of hours get better at debugging working with existing applications budget is not bad at all: $192 Project #2 Why you should apply This is a tough one. The and it’s actually quite interesting: you will need to build some , and, as the client puts it, work on the “Surprise and Delight” factor, which seems to suggest . However, there is also a requirement to allow users to sign up and sign in so you can store historical search data. This last point would development. If you are comfortable working with some backend language/framework, then that shouldn’t be a problem. If you are not, you can still use some serverless service (e.g. Firebase). scope is well defined responsive pages integrate an API the client cares about the user experience most likely require backend However, and this is the only negative point of this project, $10 — $30, really? You should apply to this one, but you should definitely bid with a price that is out of the suggested budget. I took a look at the list of bidders and many were bidding something in the $200-$300. Don’t be afraid to bid even higher. If you bid, let’s say $200 so your bid is competitive, and the client ends up accepting your proposal, make sure you . Suggest for that and focus on building and getting paid for the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) that doesn’t require a backend. the budget is ridiculously low: talk with him/her about the scope of the backend development creating a separate milestone Project #3 Why you should apply Sure, the payment is terrible (around $4/hour), but if you are just looking for a few simple projects to start , this seems like an easy one. The employer has 106 reviews with an average rating of 4.8. They are probably , and that’s a very important thing to consider if you are not going to get paid a lot. Remember, you’re maximizing your learning and investing in getting a strong portfolio, so you can increase your earnings later on. getting some positive reviews and projects in your portfolio reasonable and easy to work with Project #4 Why you should apply The budget is low, but if you are looking for and working with HTML and CSS, this is the type of project you should start with. The way to find these types of projects in Freelancer.com is really simple: just category. experience building responsive websites filter by projects tagged with the “PSD to HTML” Project #5 Why you should apply If you are already fluent with a backend language or framework, you should start applying to more complex web projects that require frontend and backend development. This specific project is not very well specified in the Upwork.com offer. However, it says it’s “Fully specified” and they are open to using Laravel (PHP) or . Ruby on Rails Our students at Microverse learn Ruby on Rails somewhere in the middle of the program, so this is the type of project we would recommend that they take. It’s also interesting to see that the client has specified that he/she needs to hire 2 freelance developers. This seems to suggest that and are open to invest in its development. they can appreciate the complexity of the project Do you need help finding, choosing and managing freelance projects? We run a training program for remote software developers where you can with other students from all around the world. work on freelance and open source projects while doing pair programming

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