Top 7 Educational Resources For Freelance Web Developers
These resources will help you level up your freelance web development game
There are a lot of courses out there on improving your web development skills. There are even some courses that show you how to become a freelancer.
But, the courses you showing how to become a good freelance web developer are few and far between.
This article is for the intermediate freelance web developer. You’re looking to take it to the next level.
I’ll show you the best free and paid educational resources that I’ve found targeted at freelance web developers.
Let’s get started.
1) The Complete Freelancing Bundle
This is a course bundle of various resources by Kyle Prinsloo. It says it’s everything you need to master freelancing as a web developer.
It includes a plethora of written resources. There’s an ebook on freelancing and another on web design. Access to a Facebook and Slack community is also included. Lastly, there’s a lot of templates like proposal and contract templates.
Here are the different areas that the course will help you with:
The most important are the following:
- Positioning yourself
- Creating income streams
- Writing proposals that close
- Handling client projections
- How to price your services
- How to sell your services
- How to get paid more.
The combination of resources you get with this course bundle will teach you all those skills. You can learn more about The Complete Freelance Bundle here.
Click here to get access to this resource up on Gumroad.
2) Pricing Freelance Projects
Tom Hirst is a freelance WordPress developer with 10+ years of experience. He’s working on projects for companies like Facebook, BMW, TGI Fridays, and more.
He’s created various freelancer-focused resources from all the knowledge he’s learned over the years. This is a resource focused specifically on how to price your freelance projects.
You’ll learn which pricing methods work best, what to charge for your work, and how to get paid what you’re worth.
What’s interesting about this book is that it started as a Twitter thread that gathered over 37K likes to this day.
It costs $19 and you can find the book here on Gumroad.
3) The Personal Website Playbook
This is a video course by Tom Hirst who shows you how to leverage a personal single-page website as a modern-day CV.
You’ll use it to leverage more freelance leads along with other income sources.
The biggest lesson is that when your website is good, you need less traffic than you think. You can use your website as a way to start gathering freelance leads.
Many times you get an opportunity to send some links to a client when you’re first reaching out to a project. There’s an opportunity to send your page there. This video course will show you how to make it good.
It costs $99 and you can access here on Gumroad.
4) 10 Steps To Becoming A Better Freelancer
The third one in a row by Tom Hirst, but this one is a free resource. Technically, it shouldn’t be included here in this article but I’m doing it anyway because it’s good.
He covers 10 different topics in about 10K words in this ebook. So it’s succinct enough for you to read in about an hour or less.
Here are the ones I think you’ll benefit from the most:
1. Refine Your Position
2. Make Yourself Known
3. Understand Pricing Deeply
4. Do A Good Job, Hone Your Skills, and Stay Relevant
You can download this resource here on Gumroad.
5) Becoming a Freelance Web Developer — The Complete Guide
This is the best course that I found on Udemy that’s focused specifically on freelance web developers.
As of the time of writing this article it has 944 students with a 4.3 rating and 148 ratings. It’s also been updated as recently as last year in 2020 so it’s taking into account the recent situation.
The instructor, Alexander Oni, has over 50,000 students on over 20 different courses on multiple platforms.
You’ll learn skills on how to find and manage skills, the guidance to take on a web development project, skills for becoming a web developer, and even other income methods.
Click here to sign up for the article and get started with the course.
6) Double Your Freelancing by Laura Elizabeth
Double Your Freelancing by Laura Elizabeth gives you a free 9-lesson course all about how to improve your freelancing. Here’s some of what you’ll learn in the course:
- How to frame the way you present yourself to clients
- How to clearly communicate the value you produce
- The questions you need to ask potential clients
- A framework for pitching on value and winning deals
I’d say that in this free email course you’ll probably learn more than all the other paid courses combined.
Double Your Freelancing was previously run by Brennan Dunn, Laura’s husband, who’s been through all the trenches of freelancing. He started as a freelancer and then went on to running his agency making millions before starting double your freelancing and now finally shifting his focus fully to his company RightMessage.
I’d recommend this free course of 9 lessons wholeheartedly.
Click here to check out Double Your Freelancing’s free course.
7) DSR’s Medium Posts
I’ve probably written over 150,000 words on the topic of freelancing specific to web developers here on Medium.
There are posts on where to find jobs, how to format your cover letter, what to write on your resume, how to create your portfolio, and much more.
Also, I’m currently compiling a new educational resource, The 100K Developer, that will teach you the most important things when it comes to this freelance web development topic.
You can sign up below to get updates and also get notified of when the book will get released.
Conclusion
My recommendation is that you get started with the free resources here on this list. Those are #7, #6, and #4. If you’re really enjoying one particular author then you can look more into their paid resources.
Do you have any other recommendations, either free or paid, that you feel can benefit remote freelance web developers?
Please leave a comment here on this article.
Thank you for taking time out of your day to read this article. See you next time!
— DSR
