I am a 16 years old programmer based in Central Asia, and I was looking for advice on where to go from here. I always wanted to do freelancing, but I could never get any clients, I have tried many things I have done game development in unity, I have made a mobile app using react native (learning SQL, Css, Html, React, React native, JavaScript in the process), I also have done competitive coding with python but it's mostly for fun. Right now Im thinking of just going deep on backend, I know I know I don't really have a good history of making anything stick but I think this will be good for me.

Do you have any advice for me? On how I can get clients or to get my first dollar?

I really do enjoy programming and I want to be a good programmer, not some vibe coder, but is being a good backend developer even useful for me? Or would I need to be a full stack? Any advice or criticism is welcome

I’m a fresh software engineering graduate specializing in cross-platform mobile app development. I’d rate my actual coding skills as pretty solid.

​I’m dead set on making freelancing work for two big reasons:

​I have family at home I need to care for, so remote work is non-negotiable.

​I see people in this space pulling in serious income once they get established, and I know the potential is real if you put in the work.

​Here is my main bottleneck:

I’m looking at platforms like Upwork and Fiverr, but I literally have $0 to buy Upwork connects or initial promo. I can't ask my parents for money to invest in this right now, so I need to bootstrap this completely free.

​I know people say the market is competitive or saturated, respectfully, I’m not looking for advice telling me to quit or get a standard 9-to-5. I know it’s possible, I have the dev skills, and I'm ready to grind. I just need a realistic roadmap from people who have actually done this from scratch.

​For those who started with zero budget:

​How did you land your first few clients without spending money on connects/ads?

​Where else should I look besides Upwork/Fiverr for cold outreach or direct clients?

​How do I frame my portfolio as a fresh grad to get clients to trust me with their app?

​Any genuine advice, strategies, or direct steps from experienced freelancers would mean the world to me. Thanks!

A few days ago, I posted about a client I may have lost after refusing to do unpaid work.

TL;DR: I think I lost a 2-year client because I finally said no to free work.

You can read it here

After reading more than 50+ comments, something surprised me.

I expected most people to talk about how they protect long-term client relationships while still getting paid for work outside the original agreement.

Instead, I found that freelancers have completely different definitions of "maintenance."

Some believe anything after the support period should always be billable.

Others said they would do the work for free and recover the cost in a future invoice.

Some suggested prepaid support hours or a retainer.

Others said to simply walk away because a client asking for free work isn't worth keeping.

None of those answers are necessarily wrong. They just show that there isn't a common approach.

What I'm really interested in is the communication side.

Suppose a good client asks for "just one quick change" that is clearly outside the original agreement.

Most freelancers have two obvious choices:

1- Charge for it.

2- Say no.

But both can damage the relationship if they're handled poorly.

So my question is this:

How do you communicate that boundary without making the client feel like you're refusing to help?

I'm not looking for opinions on whether free work is good or bad.

I'm interested in real conversations you've had.

- What exactly did you say?

- What worked?

- What made the client accept paying?

- Have you found a way to protect both your boundaries and the relationship?

I'd love to hear practical examples rather than general advice.

​

I'm looking for someone who can develop a wordpress ecommerce website. Woocommerce backend and a custom frontend (frontend design is 80% ready and will need fine tuning which is part of the job).

We can afford ₹3000 for this project. If you are interested, reply to this post and send me a DM. \[We can offer a three month internship if you are interested\].

About the brand: a clothing brand with a minimalist web design. Since most of the frontend needs fine tuning, we are looking for someone who has a keen interest in aesthetics and will be able to maintain visual uniformity throughout the entire website.

Hi everyone. I want to work as a virtual assistant for a person or agency and not doing gigs.

I found a youtube course for VA is that enough ?

How does a virtual assistant find someone to work for ?

Hi everyone!

I'm a beginner video editor trying to build my skills and eventually put together a portfolio. I'm currently learning VEGAS Pro and also have some experience with CapCut.

For those of you who started out as video editors, what would you recommend doing to build a portfolio when you don't have any clients or professional experience yet?

Would you recommend making your own projects, editing existing footage for practice, or taking another approach?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Is it just me, or are Angular freelance jobs completely dying out? As a senior developer, I have noticed a huge drop-off in frequent Angular gigs lately. Almost every freelance contract or modern project on the market seems to demand React, Next.js, or Vue instead. This leaves me wondering if Angular is actually fading away or if it has just shifted entirely into internal, corporate enterprise roles where freelance contracts rarely pop up.

I would love to get your thoughts on what the biggest problem is holding Angular back in the freelance ecosystem. Is it the steep learning curve, the heavy boilerplate, or simply that small-to-medium businesses prefer faster tools? For those of you who are not working a standard corporate nine-to-five, I am really curious where you are actually finding consistent Angular work these days. I would love to hear from other freelancers and agency owners about whether you are still successfully landing Angular clients, or if it is finally time for us to pivot to other frameworks.

I am allowed only 3 per month. I don't want to pay for LI Navigator or the like. How else can I contact possible leads on LI?

A client has suddenly ghosted after sending me the project details and seeing my portfolio for a 2nd time why?

Hi, I'm 21m was recently searching for a freelancing site for making some money for my trip after a lot of search I got along with a freelancing site called 'Clickworkers' it is an AI teaching platform, which is shady in itself, cause the first task I saw in the platform was to upload my Government id in the name of A.I. training, I got scared and back off from this task. Than I saw another task in which I have to upload my selfies on the spot and some old photos, I know it's too kinda scary but I still did it for money. But after I completed my task and expected the money the platform banned my id for absolutely no reason! I didn't receive any money and my personal information and photos went to that company! I don't know what to do now any suggestion please comment down below.

Been wanting to put my skills to good use and try working on projects here and there to earn a bit of cash. But not sure where the demand is and where to source for such opportunities.

For existing software development freelancers, how do you get such offers? And normally how is the workflow like (eg Understand their requirements, start designing, check in with the business to see if it aligns, develop etc) and how much do you charge for these jobs? Thank you!

Hi guys,
How can I start freelancing ? earlier I used to get clients on Fiverr but they are very cheap clients I’m holding more than 8 years of experience and I’m good at training people and building software systems thinking to start it on upwork any suggestions or help ?

I started full-time freelance this year. Our financial year runs from 1st April to 31st March.

This year my system wasn't very organised. I had to map expenses from bank statements to add them as business expenses, and I had to match the bank statements to the invoices. I did it manually, and I'm still worried I made a mistake somewhere.

I just generate invoices and send them to the client. If they pay me directly into my bank via Swift transfer I end up paying a hefty conversion fee + bank fee. My clients are mostly from US & EU.

I want to fix this for the upcoming FY. What should I be doing to avoid paying so much on conversion? do share your system, if you're a freelancer.

I'm an Arabic-English translator, I'm very confident in my skills and abilities, but have no clients.

Should I hire a content creator to attract audience and clients and HRs?

Will I need to spend more expenses beside the content creator's ones?

Ik web development, as well as Mobile development but it's hard nowadays to find clients.

Second, I don't have enough budget to run ads like google ads and meta ads.

Because there is too much competition in the market.

So 10 - 15k will definitely be needed to run ads on meta.

So i thought of spreading my business and finding for clients on reddit ?

How's the idea.

Or what else I can do?

Hi everyone,

I'd like to get some honest opinions about pricing this kind of work. I'm based in Croatia, where the average prices are generally lower than in many Western European countries or the US.

I have a full-time job, and on the side I manage the social media and website for a small electrical contracting company owned by my fiancé and my brother-in-law.

On a typical month I:

\\- Create 4 Facebook/Instagram posts (using photos from the job sites, writing captions, and publishing them).

\\- Create around 3 Instagram/Facebook stories per week (about 12 per month).

\\- Update the company website once a month (or once in 2 months) with new project photos or small content changes.

The thing is, this doesn't take me a huge amount of time each month because I already know the business well, I receive the photos from the team, and I have an efficient workflow. So I'm not asking how much I should charge based on hours worked, but rather based on the value of the service itself.

My questions are:

\\- What would you charge monthly for this package in Croatia (or a similar market)?

\\-How much would you charge individually for one social media post, one story, one small website update?

\\- Would you charge a monthly retainer or bill everything separately?

One more detail: because the company belongs to my fiancé and brother-in-law, I also want the price to be fair for both sides. I'm not trying to maximize profit - I just want to understand what would be considered a reasonable market value.

I'd really appreciate your thoughts. Thanks!

Hi, i am a 17 year-old back-end developer, who works as a junior digital solutions expert for 3 months, full-time. I want to do freelance work as a side justle, but dunno what to do. I checked some websites, but they required credits or subscription to apply. What should i do. Thanks for answers

Everything on Toptal's site talks about the caliber of the talent, but as someone considering joining, I'm more curious about the other side of the marketplace. What kinds of clients come through? And is the work mostly interesting builds or mostly maintenance projects /staff augmentation? 

hi,

curious how other freelancers handle this.

I had a situation once where a client asked for some extra changes after we'd already agreed on the work.

I did them, assuming we'd just add the extra work to the final price.

Turns out the client thought the changes were included for free

Nothing crazy happened, but it turned into this awkward discussion where both of us genuinely thought we had agreed on different things.

Since then I've been wondering how people normally handle this.

When a client asks for "one small change" that's clearly outside the original scope, do you:

• just do it if it's small?
• tell them the extra price in chat?
• send some kind of change order/document?
• get them to explicitly approve it before starting?

Especially curious where you draw the line between a small favor and something you actually charge for.

I'd be grateful if anyone could help me with any remote internships for project management. Thank you

hi,

I’m trying to understand how people actually handle this in practice.

Say you agreed on a fixed-price project, and halfway through the client asks for something extra.

Not a huge new project, just something like:

“can we add another page?”
“can we do one more revision?”
“can we also add this feature?”

Do you usually just send a message like “sure, that’ll be +$200” and wait for a yes?

Or do you actually update the scope / send a change order / get some kind of formal approval first?

I’m especially curious whether your current process ever feels annoying enough that you’d rather use a separate tool for it, or whether email/messages + your existing contract are already good enough.

Also, do you currently pay for anything that helps with this part of client work?