Freelancing and projects

So as of late I've been considering freelancing/self employment. The issue is I know how to code, but I have no experience. Is doing a portfolio of personal projects considered experience?

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JDMurray

What personal coding projects do you have posted in your sourceforge and github accounts? Those are the public portfolio sites for programmers.

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JDMurray

Connor2kwik said:
From what I been told by this guy on reddit he was telling me personal coding projects don\t count as "experience" when you're trying to build up a client base.

He doesn't speak for everyone looking to hire a programmer, or does he? Only look for work offers from people who do consider any example of working, well-written programs to be "experience." If I were hiring a programmer, I would want to make sure that any code given as a reference of the programmer's work was actually written 100% by that programmer. Many professional software apps are written by many programmers over time and you can't tell the skill level of a specific individual programmer from that.

yoba222

You can have a look around on fiverr.com to get an idea of how others approach freelance coding. The problem with that kind of freelancing work is that you're basically competing with the rest of the world and a good chunk of freelancers seem to be from developing countries and willing to work for pennies on the dollar.

SteveLavoie

We don't know what is your day job, but I would consider targeting something related and coding, so your knowledge of the other domain could make you more valuable as a coder. By example, if you work with plumber, make an application useful for them, that will make you unique. Otherwise you will compete with people from developping countries and "waste" your time with generic project.

DatabaseHead

Connor2kwik said:

JDMurray said:

What personal coding projects do you have posted in your sourceforge and github accounts? Those are the public portfolio sites for programmers.

From what I been told by this guy on reddit he was telling me personal coding projects don\t count as "experience" when you're trying to build up a client base.

I tend to agree with this. I've designed some scripts and dashboards and it hasn't brought me much success. I actually removed them from my resume and it seemed to help. How embarrassing......

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SteveLavoie

Connor2kwik said:

SteveLavoie said:

We don't know what is your day job, but I would consider targeting something related and coding, so your knowledge of the other domain could make you more valuable as a coder. By example, if you work with plumber, make an application useful for them, that will make you unique. Otherwise you will compete with people from developing countries and "waste" your time with generic project.

Well I dont have a day job for one and I'm looking to do web development as a freelancer in order to make money. And before you say anything I refrain you from saying "just go out and apply for a web dev job". There's a reason why I want to go this route

Freelancing without some experience will be tough, but I am hoping for the best for you

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