How to Freelance Now?
I am a senior ML/Dev with top accounts on freelance platforms, but I cannot land a gig because automated platforms have flooded clients' attention, despite being able to for years. Clients also complain that they cannot find a workforce because of the AI slop shield. Imagine, you post a job on Upwork and bots get you on LinkedIn in a few minutes. What do you guys do? How do you search for gigs now?
Wow, I was actually thinking of trying freelance on these platforms. After seeing your experience, I don't feel motivated. I've heard people getting gigs through X by reaching out to people, through networking. I've not tried this myself but I know few who even make reels on tiktok and clients reached out to them. Personally I'm not much of a content creator but I've been on X enough to see it's potential. The only challenge is to be consistent there. I'm thinking of getting back there and make a flow to network because I want to work on freelance projects as I'm not interested in a full time job.
I think in general my best gigs always came from personal connections, so basically just word of mouth. People you know personally know you are good and what to expect. On platforms it's hard in my experience to build trust with someone. Having this personal connection, also often tends to lead to longer-term clients in one way or the other.
I tried freelancing a few months ago and I gave up after visiting a few platforms. The adverts on one of these platforms almost always listed the remuneration in Indian rupees and the amount of money offered was hilariously small for European standards. The asks were also ridiculous as well, some clients wanted what was essentially months of work and offered an equivalent of less than half a day of pay where I live and I don't even live in west Europe.
I’ve had similar experiences with freelance platforms, and as a client, I can confirm what you’re saying. I felt like I was being flooded from all sides, which made the whole experience less enjoyable and made it harder to trust the process. IMHO, the old freelance marketplace model is broken.
Exactly. I don’t think there’s an easy fix. Maybe we just need less noise, not more automation. But when you run into a problem, sometimes the best thing to do is build the solution yourself. A lot of indie products started exactly this way.
use console AI coders with some free/base subscriptions, as your teachers+practitioners - its amazing how they answer questions now and speedup learning.