Freelancers, what are your biggest challenges when looking for projects?

Jobs / Freelance
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When looking for projects, what tasks are tedious, repetitive and/or challenging? Provide description, tools you use.

Here are a few examples:

Visiting multiple project-market places everyday (which ones?)
Tracking multiple-leads, from various sources, in a single place (Trello, Notion?)
During lead calls, taking notes, summarizing, analyzing (worth pursuing? next steps?)
Keeping in contact with leads (so they don’t forget you or your offer?)
Calculating projects price estimates with vague requirements (fixed price, hourly?, what to charge?)

Plenty more I’d bet.

Thank you in advance.

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Interesting question, @dhm4me, and I wonder if the biggest challenge isn’t the “simple” act of navigating the minefield that both sides of the Bubble landscape (freelancers and the folks who hire them) have become.

Take, for example, the new project marketplace that was just posted this past week. The site’s owner “forgot” to make it clear that freelancers had to pay a monthly subscription fee in order to submit proposals for projects. Then, someone popped into the forum to say the projects on the site were fake and the site was a complete scam, and the whole thing was punted into oblivion as fast as it had appeared. Fun, eh?

I’ve made this comment before, but I feel bad for anyone who is trying to navigate the Bubble landscape these days for the purpose of finding work or having work done for them. If you are a freelancer, the projects look pretty awful (to me, at least), with the majority of them being scams, completely uninteresting because they have been done to death, or you are taking over someone else’s dumpster fire of a Bubble project and trying to make sense of a convoluted mess of data types, elements, workflows, and conditions that should just be taken out into the middle of nowhere and left for dead.

If you are looking to hire a freelancer, well, may god have mercy on your soul. Everyone is a self-proclaimed Bubble expert these days, and if you post a project, you will be inundated with replies from folks who don’t know a custom state or a backend workflow from a fork or a rake, and you will most certainly be pounced upon by the representatives of the almost half-a-dozen or so platforms who all have the best Bubble developers in the whole wide world ready at a moment’s notice to blink your project into existence!

If you’ll forgive/overlook the rant-like nature of my reply, I do speak from experience here. I have dipped my toe into the Bubble freelance waters a number of times, and I have always removed said toe from said waters, dried the toe off, apologized to it profusely for having dipped it into such foulness, and said never again. I’m sure the experience is different for other freelancers, but I wonder if there is anyone out there who’s got their Bubble freelance freak flag flying full time (ah alliteration) and is truly loving it. Oh, and I’m not talking about coaching, either. Hell, that stuff is fun, and that’s why I do a lot of it via the forum for free. I mean making a living grinding it out as a Bubble freelancer doing project work. I just don’t see how that could be an enjoyable experience these days.

Anyway, this reply isn’t at all what you asked for, but it is certainly the biggest challenge I see… so, well, there you go.

Best…
Mike

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Hi Mike, really appreciate you taking the time to respond. I do agree with your sentiment for the most part (I’ve had a few positive experiences and outcomes). I figure it’s a natural consequence of how accessible no-code platforms have become to non-tech folks and wonder if this will improve over-time.

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Good post mate. That’s why we should get some official Bubble certification in the future so there is an actual world-wide confirmation of what you’re capable of.

Cheers!

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No idea how it can be solved, but as someone who often works freelance and helps clients onboard other developers too, the number of people who just blatantly lie about their experience (years/sites they actually worked on/capabilities with responsiveness etc) is crazy.

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Almost every conversation I had/have with clients, ends up being a developer overselling their skills or completely ghosting them. On the other hand, developers are constantly preaching speed which equates to two things: a client that thinks everything should be done within a day and the butchered logic and project. Coming into an already frustrated client with falsely delivered expectations is tough waters to navigate. So definitely feel your pain.

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Another thing I have noticed is that a lot of clients are looking for extremely cheap development. Now, i dont say that trying to find inexpensive resources is a bad thing. But the problem lies in the fact that they are willing to pay less because they think that No-code is a piece of cake and no-coders do not actually have to work hard (or work at all, they just use a magic wand, lol).

One reason may be that nocode has enabled just about anyone to launch a startup with very low costs. Since these clients do not have the technical background (or very little of it), they are not aware of the ecosystem and costs/prices. And on top of that they expect a newbie inexpensive (and relatively inexperienced) developer to deliver the same quality of work as someone who’s been in the field for years. Just because it’s called no-code, they think that there is no skill involved and all nocode work is of equal quality because there is no code involved.

One problem that I see with Nocode community, esp agencies is that almost all of them have the same pitch that goes like this:
Build with No code
X times Less time
X times Less costs
Scale as much as you want

Now all of these are true but they are half the truth. So basically we developers/agencies are educating our audience really badly and taking them into a direction thats totally opposite of how we want the market to evolve.

We need to make it clear right on our landing pages that nocode is a great way to start fast. Time and money involved are less than coding route but skills and skill levels are still a thing. And that it still takes hardwork to build something in no-code. Lastly, nocode doesnt mean that the nocode developers should be charging any less than coders. The cost savings come from less time needed to build, and not from the “No” in No-code. It will still cost them something, and the phrase “The more the honey, the sweeter the drink” still stands true when it comes to quality.

It will take time for non-tech clients to understand what goes into no-code development. And I am hopeful that it won’t be very far in the future.

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Hi @deejay.shani , interesting point of view there. How much would you consider as the minimum hourly rate for building a project with bubble?

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The rates are subject to a lot of factors. Developer’s location, skillset, experience, background, personal preferences, developer’s assessment of his own work and of his time’s worth.
You can get good but rather inexperienced developers for $10/hour, and really good ones for $100 as well.

My point is just that no-code developers should be charging (and be paid) as much as coders, if not more. If a Coder of a certain skillset with certain experience from a certain location is being paid $40, the nocode developer who is doing the exact same job and has the skill set to build the exact same project of the same quality should be paid equally. The cost saving in no-code should come from fewer hours clocked, and not from paying a nocode developer less than coders.

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Talking about myself, I did my first solo project (a B2B inventory management and e-commerce app with external API integrations) at $10/hour. That was a long time ago but any starting point is good as long as you feel that it add value to both parties equally. The lower the skillset, the lower the prices, and vice versa. :slight_smile:

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@mikeloc 100% agreed

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Very interesting ideas!! Speaking as someone more on the client end now, though I used to have a “coding” and data integration firm (and was briefly a full stack coder like 20 years ago) I think you’re 100% right here.

The other selling point is that clients won’t be pulled into costly devops activities - this saves:

  • slow starts, as you point out
  • miscommunication frustration (because alpha product is built faster)
  • precious decision-making energy
  • total time spent
  • money wasted / unpredictable costs

I’m here because I have a side project I’m building in Bubble. My friend really wants me to build it in Python. But I really don’t want to f**k with localhosting let alone deployment let alone database-curation let alone version control let alone caching let alone X, Y, and Z. Never again will I push, pull, edit, commit.

And your clients, though they may not realize it, don’t want that either.

Lastly, nocode doesnt mean that the nocode developers should be charging any less than coders.

That’s 100% right, the point of nocode like Bubble is minusing out devops so you can focus on software development, but it’s still software development.

There’s no upper (or lower) limit to the value a software developer can create and that should be reflected in your pricing.

It will take time for non-tech clients to understand what goes into no-code development. And I am hopeful that it won’t be very far in the future.

From your comments, you already know this and have commented on this - but it bears repeating: this is also a you problem, not just a client problem. And an opportunity.

So another way to frame this is: “it will take time for no-code software developers to communicate their actual value to their audience. I am hopeful that through practice we’ll learn how to do this soon”

Because unfortunately non-tech clients aren’t sitting around asking each other, "Hmm how can we better understand our contractors, from tax consultants to office supply companies to no-code developers?"

It’s true that the market will eventually come to understand that no-code developers can be just as valuable as script-code developers, but you’ll gain an advantage by communicating that now.

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@rowan1 You are absolutely coreect. I do not exclude myself from the nocode developer community when it comes to educating clients. We all need to our part. I was just speaking generally from what I observe.

P.S if your friend loves to have alphabets involved, you may be able to convince him to go hybtid route where you build in bubble and use serverless cloud functions for more complex tasks. I hope he will be fine with this much code :joy:

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If you are great and passionate for what you do, and you possess unique skills, then clients eventually start coming to you (for the most part, economic downturns and / or other factors are no ones fault).

However, one thing I’ve always found annoying is when clients ask me to create trial / sample material for them. Even if they pay me, I gotta be honest, it’s just annoying. Just look at my portfolio / let’s do any interview and that’s it. Don’t try to take more time out of my schedule :rofl:

Unrelated to freelance, the absolute worst is when applying for a certain position (as an employee) is the nonsense IQ tests and extremely long forms to fill out. Give me a break :rofl: :rofl:

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Do certifications work? I work with Scrum. There are a variety of certifications given by various bodies. The Scrum Alliance has a hard one to get. It means little in the way of helping you identify a good vs a bad Scrum Master. Believe me, I was (am?) a bad Scrum Master after getting certified.

This is an age-old problem that every industry suffers. What we need to do – both as freelancers or hiring companies – is to be quick to do fire / end contract. Find a good working agreement where it’s not based on predictive planning but empirical view. Don’t promise you will do stuff by that date, be transparent with your velocity.

No client wants to hear “I don’t know” after asking “when”. However, it’s better than lying.

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Well we could also say that bachelors and masters doesn’t give you anything though still a lot of people achieve them :slight_smile:

I haven’t thought about it deeply but in my opinion if you’re given the right material to learn from and then as an exam you create an application with use of best practices and some “bubble defined quality standards” it’s still better then nothing at all. At least people will have a benchmark for their skills.

Cheers!

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A note here…

There is a difference between being a No Code Developer and Building Your Project Faster from the mind of the prospect.

Correct…

No Code is synonymous with cheap, and people who gravitate towards cheap are generally cheap.

Just try selling something on FB Marketplace and get ready for people to debase themselves to get you to lower your price $5.

SPEED or PROPERLY on the other hand is valuable to people with money and the desire to spend it.

Then No Code becomes the bridge from where they are to where they want to go as quickly as possible.

If you are legitimately good at this stuff, or you have the strength of character to haul ass and learn while you fake it until you make it, then nowhere at no time should the words “less expensive” come out of your mouth or be on your consulting page.

That’s crack for Bargain Hunters.

Speed, fast iteration, etc. etc.

Now your hourly rate works out to $200 or more an hour because you charged half as much but got it done in 1/10th the time.

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this turned into a rant about getting good bubble devs or projects (i get there are problems but my experience has not been that bad) but the question was imo more about painpoints of freelancers

Basically the best way to get leads is through a quality network and your own content.
Before you set that up you need something like the bubble forum, fiverr, upwor or malt.
Or friends or events.

Tracking leads is not worth it if you are alone. Just say no or yes quickly after lots of short calls.

Taking notes on onenote or word doc.

Keeping in contact with leads - I am not an agency so no.

Estimates are vague if you do not ask the client enough questions or prepare. Just double the time you think you will take and add 30% and that seems to get you good estimates.

I have no trouble finding quality leads. Same with my friend.
Just be fast at identifying if the client wants to pay a lot.

If you cannot find leads, join an agency. They are looking for devs. Especially if they have leads.

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