Freelancers, what's it like?

Would you recommend it?
What stacks are must have?
What's maintenance like?
What's dealing with hosting like?
Is it mostly webdev? Is there any market for anything else really?

I'm thinking about going that direction. I've been burned by one company too many. I don't know how I can trust a company again. I also that if I have to really manually earn every last cent, might be the best way to make myself care about my work

I'm thinking about it

From 'burned by companies' to 'burned by clients', but taxed more.

Well, in my country you get taxed as fuck as a freelancer. I don't know about the fiscal regime of your country, but it could be similar.

1) You may be able to optimize your taxes by opening a company and invoicing to that company you own.

2) Consider opening a company in Estonia - lowest corporate tax = more bucks! Any european can open a company there easily, with an upfront cost of 2.5k euros.

3) your country may require you to pay "social security" as a freelancer. But you can waive it provided you have an employee job.

Taxes aside

If you have the connections, you can get the gigs. And such professional connections are like friendships - they bring a comfortable level of trust between the service provider and the service seeker. It's what's working for me.

I work in data sc, not in web dev, so I'd say it's possible. If you're a rockstar you can get good gigs. If you're a junior, it's going to be hard af. You can get freelancing gigs as a Junior, but idk about the moneh.

@brnrdo thanks. I'm in South Africa, so I don't know what the whole tax deal here is. I'll talk to my account. Either he'll know or I'll be getting a new account

Tadaa freelancer here!!!

1. Yes and no. Yes because business and multiple income, No because fucking stressful in the beginning.

2.stacks ? It depending on the project.

3. Maintaining the code or the server everything have to be paid. Usually I do a pipeline or timeline for the next payment for my customer. (To create a scene that there's always I am maintaining it) subscription based.

4. Hosting? It depends. I always love the customer to want me to host for them because they have to pay me a subscription monthly for maintaining the server and keep the server running. If they have a server already , I would do analytics of each data. (Then I will sell those data to them , it's their data btw)

5. The market is huge for mobile app for some reason idk why.

Anyway , being a freelancer it's not just about what stacks to use or what technology to use. It is sometimes about business mind.

Don't overcharge, don't undercharge.

@brnrdo in my country you don't have to pay tax as freelancer if you don't put your earned income in the bank. Just put it somewhere else like ewallet withdraw it and buy gold. (Especially during war time , the gold price will increase higher than my boss's hypertension.)

@Feibrix the worst client , will be the "Karen"

Also sell the source code separately (not all company or client need the code). Another tactic I had 2 years ago still working today is making a company depending on my services, (if they ever stop) the business will stop . An e-commerce mobile app with stripe payment system.

The quality I give them is somewhat the client know what's happening in the app.

For codebase or architecture wise. I don't usually clean code it unless requested. (Will be extra charge for documentation and clean code)

Sometimes they don't need the code , they need the service. It's good to have messy code, while the pay you for maintaining it , you just adjust a little by little , so technically that's how business works. The money they pay you , you must at least do something that can update them there are changes.

You also can target university students from India. i frequently have to create a random project using random stacks for the Indian students' Final year project. They willing to pay you any amount to do a project.

Once I got 30k Rupee from a student from Mumbai, for the project in Arduino.