I am having a problem understanding the following ...
I am an okay web developer. I am not great. But I want to make money from my skills.
Having said that, when I go to websites like Freelancer to search for a project to work on everyone is asking for an exceptional developer and they pay very little. I don't know how are average joey's make it in this business.
What is your take on this?
Hello,
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I am of the opinion that you can't really make a decent amount of money as a web developer just with "average" skills. As you point out, "average" freelancers are a dime a dozen on sites such as Upwork and Fiverr, and there's not really a meaningful way to stand out unless you have a specific niche and you dominate that niche from a marketing standpoint. e.g. You can be the go-to web developer for mom-and-pop shoe stores, and, with excellent marketing skills, carve out a reputation for yourself such that anyone in the shoe industry knows you're that guy.
The thing is that everyone and their mother has a Wordpress blog these days, and it's so easy to create websites with free platforms such as Wix. My personal opinion, and, again, this is just an opinion, is that you're just a commodity. And the only way to sell a commodity is with a creative and unique marketing spin.
I also just want to add that my response is strictly a response to you stating you have "just okay" skills. I am not basing my response on whether I think you actually are or aren't a stand-out developer.
Many can write code , even an LLM can , but to understand the needs of each project , choose the right architecture and built an app to meet all the needs isn't something that anyone can do. My advice would be "build your brand before freelancing", witch means create your own projects that are great and don't sell just code , sell understanding and expertise. The first thing that will be gone when LLMs will be better than their current state that is "first day programmer" is the freelance jobs. If the demand is "write me a plugin for WooCommerce that adds a mark X in each product" than yes an LLM will do it , I will struggle because I have no idea what WooCommerce database structure is ( I have ,,, and is painful but this is for another thread ) and how to integrate to its administration section. Find your niche. You live somewhere , make something that is cool there , make something that makes value for the visitors , don't mind about investments, probably you will only pay for one server at start. So to summarize , prove your intelligence along with your skills with a real web app
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