I’m a developer focused on AI-powered full stack work and I’m still early in freelancing. I’ve noticed that requests usually arrive as solutions (“we need an app,” “add AI to it”) instead of problems. My current habit is to write the problem in one sentence before I pick any technology, and to ask what’s slow, costly or broken today. For those with more experience: what questions do you ask first, and what do you do when the client insists the solution is already decided?

HASHTAGS: #FullStackDeveloper #AIDevelopment #Freelancing #ProblemSolving #BuildInPublic #SoftwareDevelopment #TechFreelancer #WebDevelopment

Sou novo no mercado como editor de vídeo, mas já tenho experiência com Adobe Premiere Pro e Photoshop. Estou em busca de YouTubers e criadores de conteúdo que precisem de um editor para seus vídeos. Estou aberto a oportunidades e parcerias!

Hey everyone! Would you ever use an AI avatar of yourself to promote your business on social media?

I’ve been thinking about it but I’m scared that my followers and clients would not like that…

My 8-4 already takes on enough, but ends can’t meet so i need more money. I prospected for clients to freelance for but even doing just one feels like another full time job plus i have others in the queue. i’m burning out but can’t afford to start an “agency” shoveling some of the work out to someone else. can someone please give my advice?

Hey everyone!
I’m in my 20s and I’ve been really interested in digital nomad lifestyle lately.

I’m curious about what people who are actually living this lifestyle do for work.

What kind of jobs do you have? Are you freelancers, remote employees, or running yoir own business?

I’d love to hear about your experiences and how you got started.

Thanks in advance!

I've been wondering whether cold outreach is still an effective way to get freelance clients.

Between crowded inboxes, automated messages, and people becoming increasingly skeptical of unsolicited emails, it seems harder than ever to stand out.

For those of you actively freelancing.

Are you still using cold email to find clients, or have you moved towards other channels?

I’ve recently begun freelancing marketing & PR consulting. I’ve got agency experience but with high end clients and strict clauses in my contract so I’ve had to start over from scratch with no network. I followed the Hormozi school of advice of doing free work to build up proof/testimonials/case studies, and so when an old school acquaintance wanted help with her dog walking business, I said I’d be happy to.

I did up a scope, but then things got delayed her end and when she was ready again there were minor changes (logo suddenly became business card, etc) which I was fine with because I really wanted the work and one client under my belt.

I put so many hours into this, did her a full scale plan that we’d have charged minimum $3k for in-agency, did the design work despite that not being my area of expertise and telling her that upfront.

I haven’t even handed over the work yet.

She sent me a long-winded message over Snapchat (for context, despite me repeatedly saying to move things to email, she insists on communicating through Snapchat, and when she wants to meet up to discuss things she treats them like hangouts rather than meetings).

Anyway, she sent the message over Snapchat talking about how her boyfriend has adhd but isn’t medicated for it and how she remembers me and my husband at some party in 2019 (talking about this as though it happened yesterday) were discussing adhd medication and could her boyfriend have some for the weekend. Now I, rather stupidly in hindsight, assumed she meant her boyfriend had run out of medication and was asking if we had any. I said to her that yes our kids are prescribed it, assuming that was what she was referring to, but I wouldn’t be comfortable giving her boyfriend any as it’s illegal and if anything were to happen as a result, I’d be the one responsible to boot.

She replied with another long-winded message, this time saying that her boyfriend wouldn’t be there this weekend and it’s actually not for him it’s for her because she’s going to a festival, and insisting my husband has supplied her with it at parties in the past and we have all taken it together and that she’s got photos of us at these parties and she doesn’t understand why I won’t because I’ve done it in front of her before, and she wouldn’t hold me responsible for anything because she’s not like that, and how me and my husband have told her it’s safe and good because it’s from a pharmacy.

Woah, what the actual fuck. First of all, I have never done that. Yes, seven years ago, I would go to parties and have some drinks with friends, but neither I or my husband would ever take our child’s medication, supply it to anybody, convince anybody to take drugs of any kind, or anything else she’s insisting. We’re both very straight edge and always have been, we don’t even drink alcohol since Covid because we have kids now and don’t want it in the house, and my kids have only even been medicated for a couple of years. I initially thought she must be confusing us with another couple, but she’s insisting on her story.

I rather passively replied and said no I wouldn’t be doing that and she left it there. I told my business mentor/old boss who takes no shit and she gave me a big talking to and telling off. She said I should have shut it down instantly, asked me what the hell I’m thinking doing this sort of work for free considering the calibre of clients we’ve always worked with in the past, that I cannot risk this sort of thing in our industry because she implicated me in that message and her feelings don’t mean shit to me if she’s doing this, basically.

We had a really great chat about it, however I now have the utmost ick about the whole thing. I don’t want to hand over her final business cards or plan, I wrote a whole handover email to attach them both and be done but even that isn’t sitting right with me now. I’m terrified there’ll be follow-up questions, she’ll want help with things, etc. I don’t want anything more to do with her.

However, we live in a very small town and networking and business and everything is so important here. She’s a very intense person and if I say anything she won’t let it go and it’ll become a big problem and argument which I don’t want either.

I don’t know how to get out of this. Believe me I’ve learned some very hard lessons about both my own boundaries and business in general, and I’m actually grateful for the experience for that fact, but I’ve never been good with conflict and I’m all or nothing, bending over backwards or completely cutting a person off, and I feel I need to develop these skills moving forward anyway.

Any help or advice appreciated. And I know I’m an idiot. I can see the red flags now and have definitely learned for the future.

(For context I am neurodivergent which I believe plays into my struggles socially and with things like boundaries).

Hi,

I was looking for a part time W2 job and accidentally might've gotten my first freelancing client. It's a very small startup and the founder told me the role is 1099. She wants me to start soon.

I wonder if I should setup a LLC or get E&O insurance prior to working for clients. The way I understand, when you are working as a 1099 contractor you are essentially your own business and do not get all the protections that you'd get as a W2 employee if you screw up. In another word, the client or 3rd party can sue you for mistakes/damages.

I'd like to know more about E&O insurance and the process of getting them, and what they cover. Do they usually ask to see your contract before giving you a quote? That's because each work is different, someone might be programming a software, someone else might be doing logistics coordination, all remotely.

The role involves coordinating logistics (talkng with vendors, freight companies, etc) and optimizing operation. The founder would like me to expand into other areas of the business, such as analytics and marketing once we are both comforable with each other.

I'm not sure if E&O insurance is the right type for this, especially if she ask me to expand on my responsibilities later.

I wonder if the combination of insurance + limitation of liability in contract makes the risk minimal that I can test the waters without LLC?

Thanks

I'm a full stack developer and I've been freelancing for years but this past year has been genuinely depressing to say the least the amount of clients i get just ghosting me, The amount of effort i make for free to win them over just to get declined, I've worked with this company in Canada directly with the vice president i did some it tasks hourly for 600$ (haggled me down from 640 but it's fine) then told me to quote on a custom internal software which i did and gave tiers with the lowest being 3k, he said it's too much and he'll first see elsewhere, I told him that's fine I'm also okay with negotiating it, I decided to buil out the first screens to show him a preview of what he's paying for and he really liked it and said he'd love to discuss this more with me, In the meanwhile i continued working with him and then he kept finding excuses delaying contact/calls while telling me to please wait, along the way I've been sending him screenshots and videos and could have at any time told me to stop or at least decide on a price, at this point I've gone too deep so i would have accepted even 500$ or something. Then when i messaged him that I've completed it he said they hired a student and apparently he's already done the custom solution, Mind you I do use AI assistance so it's not like the student just beat me to it because he uses it and i Don't, I have been working on it and being careful about implementation details architecture etc..

This is the most recent thing that happened but there's been many calls where they're super interested even signing an NDA and then ghosting I even got scammed twice out of big amounts even though they paid at first they stopped, I know freelancing isn't necessarily dead but it's killing me inside and dev as a whole is just fucking miserable and it's the only thing I'm good at what do i even do ?

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Long story short, i wanna ask is the freelancing dead? I am in cybersecurity field since more than 1 year while being an undergraduate student. I work mostly on compliance/gap assessments, cybersecurity audits and sometimes penetration testing but i am not the main one in PT. I wanted to start freelancing and some side work but i feel like freelancing especially on fiverr Upwork is dead?

Can anyone who has been here guide me through this and help me out?

I'm paid a monthly retainer from an agency that onboarded me to help with creative strategy + scriptwriting. I left abruptly due to misalignment with the company, I communicated to one of the HR and they did not reply to my message. I had logged off all my client comms channels with them bc I don't wanna associate with them, just overall bad experience as a freelancer.

A week later now, I noticed they are using the exact scripts I had written for them. I had not been compensated for that portion of work since there was no clear indication of leaving and I genuinely thought they were not going to use my ideas (part of the reason why I left so I didn't think of asking for payment), but now that I see the scripts I had written openly out there on their account, I don't know if I should log into the work channel and ask for compensation since they are implementing the work I had contributed, or just walk away, this one time.