Programming for a living.

[jscix]

I have been teaching myself PHP,SQL (along with dhtml,xml,css,javascript etc) and plan on going to school for either java, or c.

 

I find programming/web design to be very fun/interesting, So I have some questions for anyone who does this stuff for a living,

 

How difficult is it to make a decent salery freelancing?

 

and what advice would you offer a novice interesting in persuring a freelance career in programming?

[Liquid Fire]

I am not sure how difficult it is to make a good living freelancing.  I started my "professional" programming career about 4-5 months ago.  if at all possible I would suggest to try to get a job as an entry level programmer within a company do programming wether they only maintain thier website(s) or design websites for other clients.  I only say this because i have learn quite a bit with the few short months from working here(but it has been mainly MySQL stuff).  Working in a professional environment with other developers that you can learn from is what i think the best place to start if you are lucky to find that type of job close to you.

[ober]

I don't really recommend freelancing to anyone unless it is a supplemental income.  Not only is it expensive and hard to cover overhead, but you never get a day where you can slack off and still make the same amount of money at the end of the month.

 

Also keep in mind that employers pay part of your taxes... and you pay the rest.  If you work for yourself, you're paying both parts.  You also have to cover your own health insurance (in the US at least).  Finding clients can also be an issue and it can be feast or famine.  You could have 10 projects one month and zero the next.  You also have to be salesman, customer support, product validation, programmer, marketing, etc, etc. 

 

There are a lot of perks working professionally for a company that really make it hard to justify working for yourself.

[roopurt18]

Agree 100% with what ober said.  My father tried to run his own (non-programming) business for about 15 years and it was brutal on the whole family.  When he had lots of jobs lined up, he pulled 10 to 14 hour days 6 (or even 7) days per week.  When he had none instead of enjoying himself he had to do paperwork and office-type crap.  You never knew how much he'd make in a given month which makes it hard to enjoy the finer things in life and most of the time we didn't have medical or dental; I went 7 years without a trip to the dentist.  Moral of the story for me: Work for a faceless corporation.

 

Now, having said that, I do have plans to launch a website of my own in the next 6 - 12 months that I'm working on in my spare time.  The goal of the site is to provide some supplemental income for a bare minimum of time invested, but it has potential to take off.  If the site reaches a point where its worth more money to me to devote more time to it than my current job, I'll negotiate with my employer to work contract on the side and run my site full-time.

 

There's nothing wrong with running your own company or doing freelance work, but you shouldn't rely on it as your only source of income until you've learned the science of it.

[s0c0]

Get a job in web development and look for work on the side.  That way on the side you can charge more than you are making at your regular job since you're fine with or without the side job.  I studied PHP / MySQL feverishly for 5 months and was able to land a job in a LAMP shop where my only background was 2 years phone tech support, 1 year network admin, and an associates of applied science in computer networking.  You just have to know where to look.  Of course building websites since I was in grade school sure did help a lot.

 

One of the most important things career-wise is your own motivation somewhere near that is communication skills, but thats my two cents.

[ShogunWarrior]

I've done freelance work for quite a few different people (some businesses, some individuals) and the worst part for a programmer or designer is that there is a lot of managing involved - which you have to do.

A project which should take 30 hours can easily take 2 or 3 weeks if the client doesn't get back to email, goes away, is indecisive etc. no matter how determined and hard-working you are.

 

Recently I have been working in a networks company that don't create or sell software.

What's great is I am an on-hand programmer which means I get to learn new technologies and 3rd-party products all the time, the company pays for books/online courses and because they are not a software company they do not know how long it _should_ take. (That being said I do deliver _fast_)

 

Basically if you can manage and promote yourself try freelancing, but if you can get a good in-house job, do.