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parikh_prakash
Community Member

Difficultly for a new freelancer

Hey all,

 

I am a full stack ruby on rails developer with a decade of expereince. I was working remotely with a US based company for last 10 years and now I have started working as a freelancer.

 

I have applied for 12 projects till now and I have received just one interview (In that also they did not hire me because I refused to lower the rates from proposed $25 to $15 (as the client demanded to bring down my rates due to new profile))

 

Now the problem is that everyone wants a person who has worked in the past on the website. So they don't consider prior work expereince? 

 

I have only applied for projects where I am 100% comfortable and that too matches all the criteria for preferred qualification. (Which itself reduces the # of projects I can apply for because most of them wants atleast 1 or 100 hours of upwork inspite the fact that I am 100% confident about doing the task) But how can I get the # of hours if everybody has the same criteria?

 

I am not sure what to do.  If someone can guide. 

 

Thanks

4 REPLIES 4
lysis10
Community Member

I always found that programmers who stayed with the same company for 10 years and never worked anywhere else were only able to work with the company's system and didn't really work well when they were thrown into the fire on a different system. That's why it's better to jump jobs as a programmer. You see so many messed up things and have better troubleshooting skills.

Well reason for not leaving the company was because we were always doing new things. new services new APIs etc. So its not that I know only the old things. If you look at my profile you will understand that I am wellversed with latest systems.

 

gilbert-phyllis
Community Member

I know zip about programming but in general: Ignore the criteria for hours logged on UW, go ahead and bid on jobs you know you can succeed at 100%. Be prepared to shave your rate a little bit in order to get started, but not too much. It's too hard to raise it back to where it belongs if you begin to low. (Dropping it from $25 to $15 would've been too much of a discount imo.) It often takes experienced, skilled FLs many dozens of proposals to land their first gig here. It's a long game that requires patience and perseverence.

Thanks for the reply. I have been very patient my only concern is that I heard few freinds getting suspended for not winning any proposal after few bids hence I am a bit worried else I am being patient I know I have done it and can do it. Its just a matter of couple of projects and things will be better and smoother.

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