I finally made the time to bring this site and blog out of its long slumber and hibernation. When I started working for a small web development company, I never spent time on this blog. I had so many things to write here – but I never made the time to do so. Now, as I am back in the freelancing world, I have decided to bring it back to life.
When I started my career as a freelancer a few years ago, I did not have many clients. I realize now that I was not confident enough to quote the right price for the projects that came my way. So, I had very few projects that did not pay well.
So, eventually I was frustrated and decided to take up a job at a company. As a front end web developer, I really loved the variety of work that came my way – simple and complex WordPress themes and updates, working with different content management systems, Magento and Drupal themes, hacking plugins, building jQuery modules etc. As much as I liked all that work, I always felt like something was missing. I wanted to be more than a front end web developer. I have a very good knowledge of PHP, jQuery and JavaScript. So, I wanted to write custom plugins and do both front end and backend work. This prompted me to quit my job and start freelancing.
I admit that I was scared to take the step and was not sure if I would do any better this time. But, I stuck with my decision. The first step I took was to attend the WordPress women’s meetup here in Seattle where I met Morgan Kay. That was the best step I took. Morgan is a fabulous web developer who specializes in custom WordPress themes and plugins as well. She passed on my information to many people who contacted her and gave me a good recommendation. So when I got emails from a couple of people asking to talk about projects, I was more than excited. When I went to meet my first few prospective clients, I was a nervous wreck. I kept telling myself not to blow this opportunity. I am now happy to say that I did well and now have a bunch of projects in my hand keeping me busy and my clients seem very happy too 🙂 A very big thanks to Morgan who helped me with the first step of my freelancing career.
In the past one and half year of being a freelancer, I realized that I like all the work that comes with freelancing – like finding clients & marketing as much as I like to sit and hand code websites. If I am continuously writing code for the sites, it feels monotonous after a while. Now, I have to focus on a variety of things during the course of the day which includes making calls to clients, taking care of finances, keeping up to date on latest design and web development tools along with actual designing and coding. It made me realize that I am a very good project manager.
So, as I go further along in my freelance career and make my presence known through this blog, I plan to write more about my experiences of being a freelancer and also about WordPress, CSS and jQuery. So, be sure to come back and check out this space!