A little story about my first paid project as a freelancer back in 2008 - 2009 Find a list of my latest Udemy courses at: traversymedia.com 💖 Support The Channel! / traversymedia
The most important things I wanted to get across are: 1. Have clear requirements that you and the client agree to 2. Good communication 3. Don't get discouraged if you have a bad client experience 4. Learn from your mistakes 5. Take jobs that you can handle (Not a frigging social network before you even learn a programming language lol) Also, sorry if the lighting is too bright 😐
Detailed instructions for freelancer: "I would like you to create a project on GitHub called x, and within that project I would like you to create a .php file called x, and I would like you to start the file with the following tag:
I believe that most of your 1.53M subscribers will agree with me when I say, "I am so glad you didn't quit!" Thank you for sharing your experiences with all of us! You've helped me gain a lot of confidence as a developer.
My first freelancing gig was for my cousins business. I had not idea what I was doing and she had not idea what she wanted. That should tell you how it went. Family functions were awkward for a while after that.
Hey Brad. I'm all the way from South Africa 🌍 and I have to thank you so much for changing my life and learning development. You are a blessing to the world 🙂
Actually, it is awesome to see someone who learnt a lot from his mistakes. Mr. Brad, at that time, you only had experience with HTML and CSS and really basic PHP but now, just wow, god bless you and thank you so much!!
Great customer service will give you a lot of rope to play with. With great customer service your client will be much more forgiving of your mistakes. Be honest and upfront with your mistakes with the clients. Too many companies default to public relations BS when they screw up. You can have a good product/service but if your customer service sucks it's going to cast a shadow over it all.
I just went through the same thing, after a month of work the client loved the site and then I never heard from them again before I was paid. Now I've made an agreement for half down as a deposit so I know they are serious about a site.
Listening to you talk about your mistakes only reminded me of mine and how they were similar. I started freelancing around the same time with HTML and CSS knowledge but not much else and then formed a company in 2010. I remember doing eight-page WordPress websites for $2-300. We(have 6 staff members now) still have some clients from those early days and have done 3-4 re-designs for them since the early days and have charged more(50-100% increase) each time with not much complaint. That workflow you create and those templates you mentioned help tremendously with production accuracy and efficiency. We've had a few run off with the website and had to eat it. I recommend that every developer include a copyright section in your contracts where you own the copyright until it is paid in full. Makes it easier to do DMCA claims and at the very least get their site shut down at their hosting if they bail on payment. Progressive payments are a great idea too on larger projects. Have a lawyer look at any contracts you pull off the web to use because some sections are invalid in certain states but there are a lot of great examples to use out there.
Thanks for sharing. Walking into a fist always sucks. Everyone in IT has this story. I even know hardware guys with similar stories, where a favor turns into a 3-day nightmare. The first client may not have been an ahole. He may have been confused too, not even knowing what he was asking for or how much work he was asking for. It was probably his first purchase of a service like that and the spend probably freaked him out because he was buying an intangible "machine" he knew he wouldn't be able to operate. I can tell from the story he knew less about what he was doing than you did. In my opinion, you did the right thing taking that job because the lesson was so valuable.
Thank you for sharing, it meant a lot. We need to hear the negatives as much as the positives so we don't quit, thinking it's just us and we aren't meant to do this. Perseverance, learning from/through mistakes and knowing that even those ahead of us just had more failures than us but still fought through it.
Unique and informative topic. Eye opening to hear about these things, as I plan to one day follow a similar career course. As for now, I’m learning everything I can!! Thanks for continually sharing your perspective and experiences with us all.
You are an inspiration, Brad. I just got my first interview in full-stack, and most of my knowledge is from you. I still use your projects as a reference when doing new ones. Thank you and all the best
My first freelance gig was a massive success. I built a full stack IT system for a company single handed, and they are still using it today, 4 years later and they have had around 1000 users in total. I would not have been able to do so if it wasn't for your 6 hours MEAN stack course that I watched back in 2017. I went along and built the boilerplate they you walked me through, and by the end of the course I was able to extend with features that the company needed. I got paid and they were happy, and I even think that I got hired at my current job because I was able to include this freelance gig in my portfolio. So many thanks to you Brad!
One of my best friends put me through the same thing. Vague brief with the assumption that all the bells and whistles would be included as standard. I threw in a CRM and SEO which he never even noticed or used. You're absolutely spot on Brad. Most important thing is to help clients work out out what they need, or else they'll all end up being ass holes. We are the devs, we shouldn't expect clients to know what they want/need and we need to coach them through their journey to understand how much time and effort extra features require - especially when adding a 'simple extra' requires a complete redesign. I wish I'd met someone as straight to the point as you when I first moved from personal projects to commercial contracts.
Hey Brad Thanks for sharing this stuff, I have also started my freelancing career with quite the same story. Where I was not aware of project management. I think that it is very crucial part, knowing your potential at the beginning and put client and yourself at the same page. Try to bring some more tales Brad 👀👈👉
I just came across your channel. You're awesome, Sir. I'd love to have been a fly on the way hearing the conversation between a Red Sox fan and an Aussie. Keep it up, man, you're rocking it!!
Thank you for sharing your story! I am not good with people either, and hearing your story inspires me to get better at talking and dealing with people. I really want my own company one day, but dealing with clients is what scares me off.
Hey Brad can you please do more videos like this. As a new freelancer stories like this make me feel like less of an idiot. When someone like you also went through issues like this it makes me like less of failure when I am starting out. Thank you so much and keep up the great work you rock
Excellent video Brad. Thanks for sharing. My opinion is to challenge and document non-functional requirements. Manage customer expectations from day 1. They often have some very strange expectations.
Just started a WebDev bootcamp and I can tell I'm going to have to dive into this headfirst and essentially learn most everything completely on my own, haha. I'm excited, though, have the IT support background, so that helps. Thanks for your vids, they have been extremely helpful!
Wow. Feeling calm after listening your start. Now I can imagine that I can also be Brad. That is really great. I also got client when I was finding work right after finishing my short course, who need social media. but i refused him. But definitely I'm still making mistakes. Thanks for sharing your experience it boost up my energy level. Thank you
I literally just completed a couple of first freelancing projects for my clients a week ago and whatever you've said - I literally can relate to it all.
If you charged enough for the project, you might be able to outsource the difficult aspects on fiverr; find someone with a solid rating that doesn't charge too much. That way you can get your project done and learn from it too. Hope this helps!
Brad, thanks for always giving us such professional and amazing content. Whoever does not learn from your videos is crazy. Thank you sir for always sharing your experiences and giving us something to think about. Well done. Wish I could give you a Five Star rating now but a Like will have to do. Take care.
:D Very nice video. Resonates so much with my personal experience. Next to not being able to figure out a bug; vague and unclear requirements have to be the most pain that you can experience as a developer
Man this video is so good and helpful. Just highlights a key thing: starting and improving - you don't have to know everything perfectly to start. Another takeaway: you don't need to know the 13,000 JS Frameworks to make money freelancing 😂and I can't believe the $250 budget... 😂
this is good content Brad , i will never forget my first contact with laravel was with you Brad , was so hard and i toght always to give Up but now am able to do things 2 years ago was not possible to me doing .....Keep it up!! we are tecnology lovers we apreciate everthing you do in this Channel..when i listen to ur story i gt expire.. i live in third 3 world and now i know if you want work,work hard and have patience you will achieve greatness.By de way i live in Angola and english is not my strong language Thank just kwnow we are !!!!!
Inspiring video as all the content here! Will you please do a video if I may ask on using AngularWithStorybook? It seems like the area where lots of folks are familiar with in my team and they have docs, mostly catered to React/Vue, but not specifically for theWorldOfAngular!
Thank you for sharing this. My first gig I didn't get paid either, it was few months ago, the guy had me create a site for him but never paid me till this day. I realized that I should have had a contract agreement between me and him, and a certain % of the down-payment for the work I was going to do, so that even if he does not pay me at the end I should not work for free. It's always frustrating, and honestly I partially gave up on that, but recently got a Job as a Software Dev, I'm planning to go back again to freelancing and starting my own Software Dev consultancy once I have a lot more experience working as a Developer, Thank you for this.
As a building contractor I can say this is good advice regardless of what industry a person may work in. Much of this is having the confidence in knowing what you can and cannot do and making it clear in written(contract) form what you are and are not responsible for.
I am at almost the same position as your story. Now I don't really have a good approach to create these documents. It would be a great help to have a series or even a course that teaches you how to create these fool-proof documents. And thanks for the insightful story.
