How to Become a Full Time Freelance PHP Developer and Consultant
by Vincy. Last modified on May 25th, 2022.
When someone, simply affluent, could be smart enough in hiring you for the skills and imagination that he probably doesn’t possess, what stops you from being smart for your own good? Perhaps you would have been waiting for a push. If yes, this is it.
Having stuck in an insipid workplace with passion and creativity in opulence, you would have contemplated a lot on going freelance. That’s indeed cool.
I am sure each one of you would bear good reasons to consider freelancing as a full-time work. Even if there are none, that doesn’t break the fact that you are the best in what you do, which is why you are contemplating on being your own boss in the first place.
Despite your prospects as a full-time freelance PHP developer are quite promising, what possibly blocks your ideas from getting concretized is the lack of clarity in placing and demonstrating things in an order.
This sort of psychological interruption is nothing other than a natural reaction of us who have been programmed to just program.
Enough of milling. Here is a clear way of showing those puzzling clouds away and getting started. Which I call the A, B, and C to be dealt with before diving in as a freelance PHP developer.
- Arm up
- Bear out
- Circulate
Arm up
Right now you might be an employee or a freshman, but with your plans to create a freelance consulting career of your own, you are expected to be a professional’s professional for which you need to arm yourself up.
Besides the basics of Html, CSS, and JavaScript, you shall be the perfect choice for all kinds of web clients if you could equip your skills with PHP, the most wanted scripting language for long, for now, and for a decade in future.
PHP seems to be the promising language of web development for at least a decade in the future. Don’t worry if you are unaware of in-depth language features. We will pick those on the way.
To start with, just pick up some online basic courses to make sure that you are up-to-date. Don’t ever opt for any full-time long-term courses which would plausibly slither away from your valuable resources like time and money.
Becoming a PHP developer is simpler than learning a huge enterprise application development platform. Just with a couple of days of effort, you can build a decent website and launch it.
Your creation will be on the web. Then you can master PHP step by step. If you are already a PHP developer and working in an organization, then you are already set and jump to the next step. Just prepare yourself for the freelance consulting journey.
At once when you feel your foundation to be strong enough, put your skills into action and build an eye-popping virtual office, which is nothing but your own website. My dear friend should keep in mind that it is with your site and of its contents shall you be measured by the percipient.
Rather you doing it, make your site speak for you. In short, your portfolio must prove your might. Such ought to be your equipment.
Bear Out
Once armed and fit, you need to bear things out and get secured. By security, I’m not just referring to the financial backup, but to the psychological face of it as well.
It’s indeed true that your passion and creativity are ripping, but still, there are possibilities of you getting affected by some unpaid bills probably on the third month after the dive. And there is nothing odd about it, after all, we do belong to the category of mankind.
But actually, we don’t need such things to affect us. Want to know how? Well, take this seriously. Along with your monetary savings for the initial months, you need to go down the lane and make sure that you get some passive income to cover your basic bills so that your passion remains unperturbed. Cut your EMIs first. This is a key step to becoming a successful freelancer.
The bare minimum requirement is that you should not have any loans. Your minimum requirement is just your food, your dress, and your accommodation. You should not have any other pending loans. Before jumping into the freelance consulting wagon, get rid of all those. This will make your journey lighter.
Next level of luxury is passive income. Think of developing a mobile application, a game or anything of such kind that would benefit you in the long run and get down to work on it. Maybe you should start a blog and get some ads on it.
Some fixed deposits with interest for you. It can be anything and it depends on how much you have in your pocket.
Don’t ever be hasty with your decisions. Stay calm, launch the tool which is about to back you carefully, and then step on. In a nutshell, just being armed could not take you higher. You need to look ahead and plan things beforehand. Take time to prepare for the journey.
Circulate
With you now being professionally equipped and stably backed, all that has to be done is to circulate the information of your emergency. Host your website and claim that you are a freelance consultant. Promote your thoughts with Facebook, Twitter, and other social media.
Most importantly blog your discoveries, your app or software updates, your upcoming projects, your challenges and so on.
There are numerous PHP developers out there doing there and you need to compete with them for your slice of it. Showcase your AJAX skills, and also some add-on knowledge like your expertise in jQuery.
Most importantly it is better to showcase your skills in popular platforms in PHP, example WordPress. Just being a core PHP person may not be enough to be a successful freelance PHP developer and consultant.
On the other hand, promotion need not necessarily start and end with your computer. If your communication is good you might even get your previous employer as your first client.
Utilize tools like Quora to establish your competence. Answer questions related to your work, interact with your readers and build your network. Yes, there is Stackoverflow, showcase your prowess there. Build your reputation.
Always remember that your promotion must just promote and not boast. Promote your thoughts by accentuating your skills.
Furthermore, you need to be thrifty in choosing your initial projects within your mastered skills so that the testimonies of your clients shall boost your business. How to choose a PHP freelance project is a skill by itself and I will write a separate article for it. That’s it. You are all set.
With such a systematic foundation being laid you have nothing to hold you back from diving into the freelance career. You will never regret this journey. It is like sitting in the window seat of a train and watching the rain as the trees behind pass-by. Come on. It’s time to take off.
Written by Vincy, a web developer with 15+ years of experience and a Masters degree in Computer Science. She specializes in building modern, lightweight websites using PHP, JavaScript, React, and related technologies. Phppot helps you in mastering web development through over a decade of publishing quality tutorials.
Hi, I'm Vincy. I help build websites, grow businesses, big and small. If that is what you want, contact me.
I'm currently available for freelance work.