How much must one know before they can start as a freelance bubble developer? Are skills from a beginner level bootcamp enough?
Learning the theory is a great start, but it’s not until you have some experience building apps from end-to-end that you should be charging clients, IMO.
There are a couple of ways to get a bit of experience:
-
Build and experiment with your own apps. Don’t underestimate this. Try to push yourself as much as possible and make sure you can handle all of the key elements of building an app.
-
If you don’t know what to build, you could offer your time for free to do this experiment phase with someone else’s idea - just be upfront with your skill level. But in my experience (also true in my own case). The first app you build is probably going to be a throwaway, but it’s a necessary step in your journey.
But the absolute key skill you need to learn is how to problem solve when you encounter issues. Early on you will spend most of your time trying to figure out in practice how to do things and solve roadblocks. I see so many people posting questions on the forum asking for answers after probably spending hours trying to solve an issue through trial and error, and it’s clear they haven’t done any of the following steps before posting for help:
- Looked at the Bubble manual
- Searched the Bubble forum for a previous thread on the same topic
- Searched Google / YouTube
99% of problems have already been discussed in detail between those three methods, and there are loads of great videos on YouTube, yet people are too lazy to try and answer their own questions.
This might be ok if you’re building your own app. But if you’re committing to timelines and budgets with clients, depending on your charging model you’re either going to short-change yourself or rip off your client if you can’t efficiently troubleshoot problems.
I’m sure some may disagree, and apologies if I’ve been too direct. It’s just how I see it. I get so many clients coming to me pulling their hair out after investing time & money with a developer who really hasn’t yet grasped how to build an app in Bubble. I really think people need to ensure they can crawl before they walk re: freelancing. And the good news is there’s SO much great free / inexpensive content around that will allow you to build those skills and it really doesn’t take a huge amount of time to get competent skills, but you’ve got to put in the work.
Josh @ Support Dept
Helping no-code founders get unstuck fast 
save hours, & ship faster with an expert 
on-demand
I post daily about no-code and Bubble on Twitter 
2 Likes
@josh24 has pretty much covered it there. One thing I’d add is about the level of competition out there, from agencies (large & small) to individual freelancers. There’s a lot.
Worth thinking about how you stand out (once you’ve got the skills).
From memory, Josh offers build-it-with you coaching as well as a performance review service. They are both things that are different to the norm so help him differentiate.
I’ve seen others that specialise in building plugins. Or have various themes on the marketplace to prove their skill set etc. etc.
Anything that gives you an edge over the bulk of the competition (that’s not price).
1 Like
Thank you both for your input, I’ll really put it to good use
1 Like
Great advice!
Josh @ Support Dept
Helping no-code founders get unstuck fast save hours, & ship faster with an expert on-demand
I post daily about no-code and Bubble on Twitter
So how can I go about volunteering to gain some real world experience? Do you have any resources, possibly free ones you can recommend?
1 Like
To start with - Fix problems that people post on the forum needing help with. Mock the solution up in a publically available editor, do a video or whatever. Maybe even go so far as creating an organized portfolio of solutions like @NigelG has done here https://buildingonbubble.com/ so that they are there forever as a resource.
2 Likes