How do I like to do freelance work?

[@iPankBMW]

I would take no less then 1500€. We need also to setup all the hosting and domains and emails.. And usually clients are realy bad at providing content and concrete info on what are their requirments...

[@rauchu5861]

i think you undercharged danggg

[@WebDevCody]

This project was for free, so yeah i undercharged them

[@cb73]

I don’t charge by the hour anymore. It’s not great for quantifying urgency. For some clients, their site is worth more to them the sooner you can deliver it. With an hourly rate that doesn’t make sense because you’re being penalized for getting it done quicker. There are ways around that - you could just charge more per hour for higher urgency clients. But it’s so much simpler to charge a flat rate based on the perceived value to the client. It does require a deeper conversation.

[@2k10clarky]

How do you deal with scope creep when charging a fixed cost?

[@nickwoodward819]

Baseline the requirements, ie write what you're delivering and have them confirm. Then you simply refer back to that document

[@luiswebdev8292]

of all youtube devs you're the one I related the most and the one whose videos I more often feel like "that sounds really useful! I should watch it!"

[@abdirahmann]

cody, i love your content, its just you sharing your thoughts without the BS as a dev that's experienced, this will help me very much thank you. You are very calm and the cherry on top is the no music in the background. very chill to just listen to. THANKS ALOT.

[@botherd8560]

This is probably the number one youtuber I have really learnt from ! Awesome work dude

[@bmehder]

How much and when to charge a client was always hard for me to determine. Now, what I do is have the client pay their balance every Friday. Kind of like paying your tab at the local pub. This way, the client doesn't get surprised by a large invoice all at once. If it turns out to be a bad client, and they don't pay, I'm only out one week of work. That's not ideal, but it is something I can recover from.

[@WebDevCody]

Nah that’s why I charge 70% up front. I need to know they are serious before I waste my time. It’s obviously easier to get money up front if you are deemed as trustworthy (my yt channel seems to help build trust)

[@abhiramsatpute]

@@WebDevCody thats a great way to move forward with the money vs time billing once the trust is above a certain threshold

[@cod-the-creator]

Wow man like $3-600 is what I would have charged back in 2005. Definitely not worth my time now. As for WP, the main problem with WP is that you have to be on top of updates for security reasons. Customers likely will not stay on top of updates (even DigitalOcean's auto updates don't do every update automatically since some have the potential to break things), and will blame/expect you to fix their shit when it breaks. Not worth it.

[@AB-md4kt]

I had a question about if do you host the code on github and leave it there after deploying also ? Also what kind of tools do you use to make the invoices and keep track of them ? Thank you in advance :)

[@vitormiguelsilva3025]

3 hours?? that's the time i took to choose the font and colors... Maybe 3 hours if i "copy" from somewhere else....

[@WebDevCody]

I used some premade flowbite components

[@muhammadmasood5121]

You should also make a video on how to find such potential clients...

[@SeibertSwirl]

Gahhhh this is awesome!!!!! Good job babe!!!! Thank you for doing this ❤

[@hamzzak]

babe??!

[@soufwra2396]

yea thats his wonderful wife right there. Love your content as always 🚀

[@peterrose4340]

Love the support you give in the comments. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen you comment on a video.

[@WebDevCody]

Thanks babe!

[@sinki19841984]

Looks like a bootstrap site for a 'family and friends' sidegig I'd charge around 300.

[@iamshanvy]

just for data point, would charge 200-250 in SEA region

[@twometerpeterr]

This website is beautiful! Simple and elegant. I think it's useful in promoting your product. Maybe you could make a tutorial on coding such one page websites?

[@WebDevCody]

Thank you!

[@cody_codes_youtube]

Awesome! I’ve been talking about freelancing a lot and a lot of people do ask about freelancing. I think just to have options in this job market. Glad you shared your process and information.

[@Billy_98]

Maaan, that's the type of content i like to see. Big like!

[@parkourbee2]

Thanks for sharing your perspective!

[@mastertainment116]

WordPress??? Yeah if your client is ok with being hacked 😂😂😂

[@bevik12]

Honestly this alone give me a nice push to see how much more (money wise) I can achieve just being good at coding and freelance a bit. I need to speed up my learning a lot.

[@cerdek9190]

Nice video, probably i will be using your approach when freelancing

[@ardianhotii]

I think too this is the best way of freelancing, especially the communication, I liked a lot that part . Thank you so much for sharing this with us . Keep going

[@farisarx5552]

Man you really helped us with your videos, wish you all the best and thanks

[@unstructuredMeans]

I think wordpress would be the best option for this, almost all hosts auto setup Wordpress and include full email accounts and subdomains in the packages. The point with a silly portfolio/business site like this would be to hand the site off and never think about it again. Now using next etc you will have to likely either build admin features etc or do it for every little thing they want to change that is a hassle. You are better off charging them the hosting for passive and slowly showing them how to manage their own Wordpress site and limiting what they can change if so inclined or handing it over as a whole and any future updates you charge or a maintenance cost passively ontop of hosting fees so you don't have to quibble over having spent 10 minutes updating images cause they are too thick to do it themselves. They pay for the convenience.

[@WebDevCody]

Yeah, or just tell them to use squarespace and then you don’t have to do any work at all 😂

[@PraiseYeezus]

wordpress' ecosystem is hot garbage, personally wouldn't want to deal with their massive bloat

[@biovawan]

Squarespace is awesome well structured and has way better control over selected element. The only missing feature is CMS((

[@unstructuredMeans]

@@biovawan by the looks of it Wix fills that gap. Personally I have only ever looked at Squarespace up to the pricing page and then left.

[@unstructuredMeans]

@@WebDevCody Sometimes not doing the work is a good choice for me, I don't mind getting people set up and charging accordingly given they understand from then on out they can either choose to do what is good for their business and learn to use the tools I provide or to keep spending and ask me to update every little thing. It can be tricky to find a balance between ok I want them to keep giving me money but I also don't want to lock anyone into a system which 1. will require high maintenance 2. requires me to "reinvent" the wheel which essentially means I can't produce 10 of the same thing easily. All good and well if it is an inhouse thing you are building and it works and is flexible but really I might even feel a bit douchy locking people into a static HTML system when I fullwell knew they will want to add new features or simple things like forms and e-commerce options. So sometimes sharing how to fish is a better option for me and they return with other things I can likely earn from aside from setup etc.

[@scottmuangsrichan9423]

Love these types of videos! Thanks for sharing

[@st-jn2gk]

Would be awesome if you could focus a little bit more on acquiring clients. Another video maybe... 🥺👉👈

[@WebDevCody]

Usually they just reach out to me 😅

[@roddy_21_25]

Greetings, I'm going to start selling my services for websites and I liked this comment you wrote: "I usually have them rent their own hosting service and then I'd either ask them to give me access so I can set it up. A simple site like this I just hosted for them on aws and hooked up their domain." My question is the following, and I know it may sound silly :), But here it goes: - Do you create a personal AWS account for your client and explain how payment works and other important things to take into account?

[@WebDevCody]

yeah I'd just use my own aws account and host their stuff on my account and charge them for hosting / maintenance feeds.

[@AbdullahSajjad-p4p]

Amazing Insights. Thanks a lot for sharing. Your content really helps.

[@imyzf]

I actually don't get it! Where the f*** do you guys get that kind of clients?? Cuz I've tried so many freelancing platforms, and yet, all the clients there are sooooooo cheap!! Can someone with a good knowledge in this give us some infos please!!!

[@divypatel168]

Can you make video explaining how to find freelancer work for developing website and apps?

[@gkiokan]

Great Explanation mate, even you underestimate yourself quite and of course it depends on the customer how much budget they have for their Websites. I've seen companies paying 25k for a shitty WordPress page that is build like spagetti.

[@Nurof3n_]

If comfortable sharing what’s your hourly rate?

[@AlleinArk]

you are right, a couple thousand for that industry is normal, I've seen some web developer who work building CMS/landing page charge above 5k for that kind of website alone lmao. but it is really depends on your client.

[@nimmneun]

Same @webdevcody, I'll charge an hourly rate and give a rough estimate per feature. I don't do more than 1 freelance gig a year though and rather work on some own side hustle 😅

[@chubbyBunny94]

I’ve been charging £100 for sites like this 😅

[@laptopuser5198]

This video will definitely help someone make some money. Keep the high quality content coming.

[@alrazy12]

300-400$ including dashboard ?

[@WebDevCody]

No they have no dashboard. Just a single page website

[@vnm_8945]

Interesting, really informative.

[@saudalghamdi5608]

Regarding the hourly rate, I do feel a bit skeptical about it. I mean, isn't it easy to rip off a client by saying that project x took you 12 hours to build while in reality it only took you 3 hours to build so now you ripped him off 4 times the amount? I mean, how does the client even gonna now?

[@WebDevCody]

It goes both ways. You quote for 4 hours and charge them $500 but it ends up taking you 20 hours and they keep asking you for little tweaks constantly and rip you off as the developer. At the end of the day someone will get ripped off unless you are really good at estimating how long stuff takes. I do hourly to let clients know they will pay for every change outside of what I’ve estimated or agreed on for the deliverables

[@hqasmei]

Omg thank you so much Cody for this!

[@and_rotate69]

I never thought about the client talking like that, thats so cool

[@semsomify]

Great insights, thanks for sharing

[@madeinhvn]

Can you tell me what advantages did you get over vanilla HTML, CSS, JS when developing this site? I mean in the end it's a single page site with all of it's sections in one document so yea just curious.

[@audunhilden]

following

[@mormantu8561]

The DX of using a framework and tools like TailwindCSS is quite good in my opinion. He could do it all vanilla, but it would take up a lot more time.

[@WebDevCody]

I used the stack I’m most familiar with which means I can make the same site faster meaning I make more money and spend less time. Using nextjs allows me to easily add in functionality if a client decides down the road he wants something more interactive.

[@madeinhvn]

@@WebDevCody Oh okay so basically future reliability and familiarity made you go for it. Thank you so much for clearing this doubt 🙏

[@madeinhvn]

@@mormantu8561 yes just saw his reply and you're pretty spot on ngl

[@kasper369]

#WeNeedMoreVideosOnDevelopmentXMakingMoney

[@Gabriel-tp8tj]

Perfect vid,awesomeeeee cody !

[@estebanmurcia8451]

Hi, new to dev guy here, why did you use nextjs when react alone was enough? Haven't used next before but as far as I know it's a metaframework that allows backend stuff along with react (oversimplified explanation but this is a youtube comment not an essay lol), given that there was no need for any backend in this project wouldn't react alone be enough?

[@WebDevCody]

It provides a lot of performance features, caching, image scaling, pre fetching, real url based routing.

[@samyakjain4715]

So If you don't mind what's your primary income, I thought it was freelancing, but I think it's not, just wanted to know that because am looking for different ways to earn as a programmer

[@WebDevCody]

I have a full time job working at a software company. I don’t free lance

[@abhiramsatpute]

You said that you share the link with them and just give them the demo and not the code. How does the final deployment and transfer of code + instances/VMs look like though? What about the private keys or env stuff? Would it (ideally) take like 1-2 day or less?

[@WebDevCody]

I usually have them rent their own service hosting and then I’d either ask them to give me access so I can set it up. A simple site like this I just hosted for them on aws and hooked up their domain.

[@bnguyen257]

Thank you for this

[@mute3609]

Great video! Im new to this freelancing stuff. Can you explain how you would manage future costs after shipping the product, like costs for hosting, storing data, maintaining the product, etc..?

[@WebDevCody]

If I’m hosting and maintaining their site, and making minor text changes, I’d probably just charge them a bill for the entire year of hosting. Take how much it’ll cost to run the service for an entire year and times it by some multiplier for your profit

[@easylite376]

Why are you doing it hourly? So if you are getting better and faster, you will charge less for the same page?

[@WebDevCody]

If you get better and faster, increase your hourly rate. The reason I do hourly is to prevent clients from asking for more little tweaks. I can tweak anything they want, but I’ll charge them for how long it took me to make the change

[@serkan_bayram]

out of topic question but at 1:10 I see you go to sections by clicking links in navbar, did you use scrollIntoView for that? and if you did are there big performance differences between doing that or using a links?

[@WebDevCody]

Yeah, I used scroll into view. The nav links seemed to cause issues because next lazy loads images so it would scroll to the wrong offsets of sections.

[@AnthonyLawYongChuan]

Just wondering will you add unit test in your freelance project?

[@WebDevCody]

No

[@mzerone-g6m]

It is awesome workflow

[@Aghegho]

I always wonder about where to host these websites and the ongoing "care". Do you just host on netlify and hand over once funds have cleared? Do quotes include hypercare? Etc etc

[@WebDevCody]

If you’re hosting for them I’d require a yearly payment to cover hosting costs plus any work you’ll need to do on it. Or walk them through how to set up their hosting and deployment

[@Aghegho]

@@WebDevCody thanks!

[@usmanmughal5916]

Bro I have built large ecommerce mern stack apps under 250$ lol .

[@WebDevCody]

Lol why you charging so little

[@usmanmughal5916]

@@WebDevCody I was Beginner and wanted to get my gig going.

[@chubbyBunny94]

Nav items not aligned …

[@WebDevCody]

I didn’t say it’s quality work 😂

[@thadtayo]

Kinda sweet I got referenced in a WebDevCody video lol. One thing with deliverables on freelance work is scope creep. You mentioned most clients you get are just from seeing your channel -- do you ever get clients that don't know about your online presence? Curious to know if you've noticed differences in scope creep tendencies / micromanagement in those familiar with your work vs. those who aren't.

[@lyflfflyflff]

Hi Cody! How did you manage to build this website so fast? Is it just because you used components from flowbite or are there any other lifehacks?

[@WebDevCody]

yeah I used some premade components, and tailwind makes it very easy to just churn out sections