Freelance Programming Jobs for Beginners You Should Try

Are you looking for freelance programming jobs for beginners? Maybe you are just fresh out of school and would like to pursue a career in programming. Or maybe, you’ve decided to make the switch to becoming a freelance programmer because it’s a pretty lucrative career—according to the freelance website Upwork, programmers earn around $60-$70/hour (and that’s the average rate!)

The good thing about freelancing is, you can always start from scratch. It doesn’t matter if you graduated college or not or if you have been working in a different industry. What matters is you have the skills and the drive. Of course, if you want freelance programming jobs for beginners, you have to start at the bottom. Don’t expect to earn the big bucks as soon as you get your first gig. You need to work at it.

At the same time, you don’t want to get into advanced work right away. You need to build your skills (and your portfolio) if you are serious about a career as a freelance programmer. Just think of it as starting a career as a carpenter, do you make a house right away? No, you start small, repair fences, or make a desk first. The same goes for beginner freelance programmers, you can’t launch a full-on multiplayer online game, you make simple ones first. Ready to get started on your building blocks?

Check Out Freelance Programming Jobs for Beginners

As much as you want to impress clients or want to challenge yourself, you need to start with simple jobs first. Even if freelance programming jobs for beginners seem small, these are actually very helpful for both freelancers and clients. It’s part of the big picture, a tiny block for a humongous project, and a small step towards your freelancing career. Below are some freelance programming jobs for beginners that you might want to try out:

• Data Analytics

The world of programming is always progressing. Before it seems like all you need to do is to learn how to make and run a program. But now, data analytics come into the fold. Data analytics now require you to have a background in a programming language to be able to “mine” information and simply understand these.

A client may ask you to do data analysis for their websites. For example, you need to check how long a typical viewer spends their time on the website or which products or links are mostly clicked on. You need to make sense of these data analytics so that the client will know, which parts of the website they need to improve on.

• Web Redesigning

Another task a beginner programmer can do is redesign a website. It’s not as tough as making an entirely brand-new website from scratch. You just need to improve on certain aspects of the website to make it better for the client and their customers. So, maybe if you have done data analytics for a client, you can also offer web redesigning.

This can be as simple as just resizing images on the website, changing the background, making sure the font is easier to read, etc. Again, this isn’t very challenging for some but it is very helpful.

• E-Commerce Store

If you are ready to level up but still in the beginner’s arena of programming, you can try setting up e-commerce stores. You can test out your script game by designing one that can follow a product page as well as adding elements like a shopping cart and checkout.

More and more e-commerce stores are popping up and you can offer your services to clients who are also starting out. This way, they might ask for simpler e-commerce stores, something that your skills can easily handle as opposed to those who are looking for something bigger or more complex.

• Web Scraping

Data extraction from various websites has become a very important job. It’s a bit tedious but still something a beginner programmer can handle. It may also not be a job that is too suitable for advanced programmers, making it an ideal freelance programming job for beginners.

This is basically just gathering information and a client may request you to do it for their own sites or even from their competitor’s sites. Once you have done web scraping, you may also want to offer data analytics afterward.

• Website Responsiveness

People nowadays use so many gadgets. You have your laptop, you have your smartphone, you have a tablet. The trouble with this is, the websites from the past are just designed for regular desktops. So, when you view it on a small mobile phone, everything is just off.

That’s where you come in. It’s a simpler job and can definitely be handled by beginners. Making a website responsive to different screen sizes is a typical job for programmers. Of course, the more complex a website, the harder it will be. There are still a lot of websites that require responsiveness, and updates may be needed on a regular basis.

Tips for Beginner Freelance Programmers

Now that you know the type of jobs you need to be looking out for, here are a few tips that can help you through your freelancing journey.

• It’s all about growth and the experience

Don’t be too focused on finding the perfect freelance programming jobs for beginners. After all, freelancing is all about surviving and thriving in whatever environment you may be in. That’s one of the best things about freelance work, you know that you will grow or at the very least, gain experience because of the things that you will accomplish.

Maybe the freelance programming job offered to you is “boring”. It may not be the gaming programming that you were looking out for. But because of this “boring” job, you get to learn how to work with a team. You might even find a mentor here or a group of fellow programmers who may want to collaborate with you in the future.

• Find your community

It can get lonely being a freelancer, let alone a programmer. But that doesn’t mean you should be alone in every job you take. It’s actually very helpful to find a community that you can be a part of. Why not join a Slack group that is solely for programmers? You can also check out groups on social media that have a passion for programming or a love for the freelancing lifestyle.

Once you find a community, you’ll be able to tap into resources. This can be anything from getting new information on programming techniques to even finding out where to score gigs or get clients.

• Try out new things to help you learn

Don’t be afraid to get out of your comfort zone. Maybe you are more inclined to handle websites, redesigning them or making sure they are responsive. If a client asks you to start web scraping, you can simply be honest that you haven’t done that before but you are willing to give it a try.

Freelancing is all about growth, and how do you do this? You grow by learning and you can get it from many sources. Try reading a new programming book, watching an expert programmer’s vlog, joining a boot camp or just trying out your programming skills in different languages.

• Don’t forget your “soft” skills

You might be too focused on Python, Javascript, or other coding languages. And these are all very important, but you need to work on soft skills if you want to make it as a freelancer. You need to learn how to communicate with potential clients, market yourself online, and get freelance work without any experience.

Conclusion

There are many freelance programming jobs for beginners out there and you will need some guidance, a bit of luck, and a lot of hard work to start your freelancing journey. There is no shame in starting at the bottom. You can’t expect too much from freelance programming jobs for beginners. Just make sure that you learn from your experiences and give every job your 100%, no matter how small or simple it may be.

Post written by:

kosmo on February 17, 2023