Ultimate Resources for Freelance Developers

Last Update: 20.04.2017. By Jens in Developers Life | Learning | resource tip

It all started a few years ago that I felt stuck in my career as a software developer. For years I’ve been following the typical way of learning and dabbling with new technologies, mainly in my spare time or on occasion on the day job. Tech was fun, and I always love learning new things. However, when I felt stuck I realized that my previous ways did bring me so far, but they do not take me any further. It doesn’t matter if you’re an employee, freelancer or owning a small agency. At some point, there’s a glass ceiling for money and the kind of work you do.

Last Update: September 2017

So, my journey of exploration started. In this article, I want to share with you some resources which helped me the most and got me reflecting on what to change and where I could go. Most of them are paid at some point, but they also offer a lot of free content which is IMHO valuable. Usually, I start using the free content, and for some I even paid; was well worth it.

I curate the list as I walk my journey. Feel free to recomnend yours.

Software Startups

Selling software or building a Saas are probably the first things in a developers mind. But it is not that easy.

• Start small, stay small Learn the steps to bootstrap your software business
• Single Founder Handbook helps you to get started and going with your bootstrap software business as a one man/woman show. Covers also the mental state of working alone.
• Marketing for Developers Focuses on market validation, audience finding, and marketing. All the thing we should do before building anything.
• Design for Founders UIs made by developers can be ugly; this book helps you to create a good UI without hiring a designer during your starting years

Product Creation

• Just Fucking Ship as the title says. A method for actually shipping your product in a short timeframe (like 24h) She also offers a course of finding the right product for an audience. 30x500
• Creating eMail courses and Copywriting great resource for learning to craaft good email courses. His free course is a superb starting point

Learning

• 10 Steps To Learn Anything Quickly a good process for learning things quickly. It astonished me that it’s pretty close to the way I learn anyways.

Freelancing/Small Agency

If you are already freelancing or own a small agency you might be locked under the glass ceiling and even don’t realizing it. I think it even works when working as an employee.

I noticed the glass ceiling while being an employee and also with freelancing buddies, but I had a hard time pinpointing to a reason. The following resources gave me explanations and show me ways out.

• Double your freelancing Helps you doubling your freelancing rate and a way to fix the underlying issue that you are a commodity.
• The Positioning Manual for Technical Firms shows you the problem of being generalists and helps to specialize your services. It is targeted at tech businesses.
• Hourly Billing is Nuts explains why trading time for money is no good and shows a way out of it.

Coaching

No, not agile coaching. However, even you do not want to pursue coaching at all; I think you can transform what they teach to your situation.

• Akira Iguchi Personal development and also teaches how to build a coaching business and the lifestyle you want
• Christian Mickelsen teaches you a way of building your coaching business

What resources do you recommend?

Now it’s your turn to share what helped you :-)