IT Related Freelance Sites?
I know several marketing professionals that use websites that drive people to them for specific design work - which got me thinking...does anything like this exist for IT? Not talking about taking out a craigslist add or anything like that. Cisco used to have a talent network where I would be contacted from time to time by partners looking for after hours or emergency assistance but this was a long time ago.
CCNP:Collaboration, CCNP:R&S, CCNA:S, CCNA:V, CCNA, CCENT
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Master of Science in Information Security and Assurance - Western Governors University
Bachelor of Science in Network Administration - Western Governors University
Associate of Applied Science x4 - Heald College
Field nation seems to be more networking type jobs.. at least that's what I see.
Work market is all over the place with the type of work they offer. PC installs, Networking jobs, market survey jobs ect ect.
Two down sides I have experienced
1) These sites never pay that well. Typically, these is a really low hourly rate. Now the job could take you that 3-4 hours to complete. It dopesn't matter you still get paid $70.00
2) You're responsible for your own taxes. They don't take taxes out, so you better set some money aside for taxes.
poh yeah I forgot they never factor in the cost of gas to drive to these locations. Now days gas is almost $3.00 herre in the USA.
I'm not try to be negative Nelly, this is just what I experienced.
--Alexander Graham Bell,
American inventor
So it seems like freelancing is a no-brainer.
So I researched upwork for that. I've found a couple of profiles similar to mine. CISSP, experience and other stuff. Those folks put a price tag for their services, ranging roughly from $60 to $110 per hour, which is okay. Looks great so far.
Then... Upwork has a cool feature of showing you the work history of every specialist. You can review what have these folks done and how much were they paid for that. Cool, let's check it out...
So a guy was asked to configure and test DMARC in production environment which took a couple of hours and got paid like $45. What? So, apparently, he deliberately gave up on his price tag and agreed to do a rather complex work with a rather high probability to ruin things if not done right FOR PEANUTS.
Why would he do that? The only reason he would do that is because it is a market situation and otherwise no one would buy his services. It is common on upwork to request higher wage but be content with much lower one.
I'm totally not ready for that and I just simply would not work for that, I typically struggle to find like 15 mins a day for some useful activity, given that I do almost nothing besides working and learning. As an example, I haven't watched a single movie in a year or so. I binge-played just two games in the past year, wasting like maybe 50 hours on that or so. And I make roughly 200K/year working for a single employer, 9-to-5 without OT.
It just doesn't make any sense for me to engage with anything on upwork!
I guess, it's just there's no freelance market for expensive higher skilled talent yet... So I decided that it's not worth the effort and I'd better spend time on my own business ideas that might (or not) take off in the future.
The market probably doesn't need higher skill freelance talent, that's my conclusion.