Historically companies I've been at have had someone on staff, but we're a small startup and looking to get some UX/UI support. All of my googling has lead me to "gig" websites like Upwork or Fiver and talking to friends in industry (granted salaried UX/UI folks) have lead me to Linkedin or Indeed. Neither feels like the right place for what we're looking for. Does anyone have an suggestions for finding freelance designers we could work with iteratively? Thanks!

Context: Our company is rolling our a new platform out to beta users and are looking to refine some of our platform's interface. Mainly we're hoping to polish up some of the more amateur design elements across the platform and get help designing layout for tools/data presentation. We have done a good amount customer research on what folks are looking for, will be getting active feedback after pushing the changes, and are hoping to iterate with said feedback.

Beginning of next year I am setting out as an independent software engineering consultant. As such I am interested in hearing from others who have already done something similar! I have been working as a developer and team lead for more than 10 years of which the last 5 have been focused mostly on the .Net stack. Now I want to expand my horizons a bit more, preferably with a new domain or another tech stack.

What are some suggestions/advice you'd give someone just starting down this path? Anything I should avoid doing? Anything I should definitely do? I suppose the specifics will vary a bit by country, but are there some general things I should be thinking about?

Oh, if you happen to have a need for a senior developer/tech lead, give me a ping!

In these lean COVID-19 times I feel like a lot of people are trying to make a bit of extra cash. I've been thinking about trying out some freelancing platform to market a few of my skills (apparently people pay for at least few things I do for fun?), and I was wondering what people who've used any of the main platforms think of them. I keep seeing conflicting stuff around the web.

I have just graduated from uni, and am preparing for masters next fall. I'm a humanities student, but have some programming knowledge. Currently I'm looking for literary translation jobs, but should I fail that, I want to find some light freelance work (so that I can spare more time to my studies), and looking at e.g. freelancer.com, Wordpress is still quite popular.

What are some good introductory material for Wordpress and PHP, that preferably does not assume total beginner to programming? How much can I expect to make, for how much effort? I'd be content if I could make $200-250 w/ 3-5hr work per day, or a couple full days a week, that's all I really need and such hours would mean that I could keep on doing such work even when I'm writing my thesis. I'm in Turkey, FWIW.

Wanted to see if we could get some conversations going with any freelancers who may be around. I figured a good place to start is with one of the more commonly discussed topics, which is the online marketplaces catering to freelancers.

These days, Upwork seems to have gobbled up a huge chunk of that market, while garnering plenty of criticism and complaints along the way for how they handle it. The graphic design space seems to have a little more competition in marketplaces, with 99designs being a frontrunner it seems. Truthfully, there just aren't that many platforms to pick from regardless of your specialty. Which can be a positive, as it provides a centralized place to look for and post available work, can increase exposure to the freelance market as a whole, and ensures you don't have to maintain profiles across numerous platforms which can be far too time consuming sometimes. But of course there are many downsides that come along with that.

The standard advice that comes with such discussions is to ignore the online marketplaces entirely because of those downsides. Competing against an international labor pool, as well as an under-experienced labor pool much of the time, in a format that heavily encourages price competition above other factors can be disastrous for your bottom line (and your sanity). These platforms also generally remove a lot of the negotiating power that a freelancer needs to leverage, as it is much more difficult to establish the captive audience that can be built with more personal interactions.

And frankly, that standard advice has continued to be my own, both for my career as well as to others who may seek such advice. But it does make me wonder if there is a better way to do it. Of course as a developer I'm always looking to find a way to solve problems, so I can concede I may be looking for solutions in a place that is misguided to try to fix.

What has been your experiences with freelance online marketplaces? What advice do you give when asked about it? What would you like to change?

Didn't know if i should post this in talk or tech, but my focus is on advice, so i guess this is the place.

I am currently in the process of changing my career to be a web developer. Studied IT a few years ago, dropped out due to finances, and spent the last few years working crappy jobs.

I designated all my spare time towards learning the basics. I'm confident enough in my knowledge of HTML and CSS, know how to use Bootstrap and i'm currently learning the basics of JS. The Udemy course i'm taking will cover NodeJS, jQuery and some more backend next. After that i plan on learning Wordpress and a framework i guess (React/Vue/Angular). Have i missed something here?

My final goal is doing freelance web development. My question is, how plausible is this and what else do you suggest learning to have an easier time finding clients?

Also, how soon do you figure i could start doing some basic work with simple websites (even if it means using Bootstrap / altering Wordpress themes)? My country is rather cheap, so even 500$/month on simple projects will be enough of a reason for me to quit my 9-5.

Guess i'll need a portfolio too though.

Anyways, thanks for reading. Any web devs out there care to offer advice? I'm dedicated to achieving this goal, but i'm somewhat lost still.