Diary of a hi-tech Gig-Worker in India 1

A small number of highly skilled professionals have taken to online gig platforms to look for international opportunities without relocating or moving. All they need is their skills and ability to market themselves along with basic equipment – laptops with software and high-speed internet access.

Here is a story of one such entrepreneur.

Experienced software remote workers who do highly skilled niche stuff can earn that much because they earn in dollars and charge prices of $100/hr. Be a skilled DBA or write assembly, embedded code where there is lack of skilled developers and you can charge way more.

I freelance and charge $7/hr for very basic frontend stuff and it is literally considered a steal by American standards. I make decent living, get to learn a lot and that keeps my clients happy. I might increase my prices sometime later. My rate is way above the market price for what junior frontend developers make in India, and that’s still below the American minimum wage. With a bit of experience one can push prices to $20/hr or more and can still find work if one’s portfolio and rapport with clients is good.

I picked up a few niche CSS frameworks, static site generator frameworks (can’t list them here, will disclose my identity). These were fairly unexplored on the site (20 gigs or so at the time) and hence I had good visibility for people searching for these things (straight to front page in search for these terms). I landed first few gigs with that. Underpromised, overdelivered and maintained good communication and converted the gigs into glaring 5 star reviews.

So here are a few tips

• The trick is to start low and cheap on Fiverr (like $10/page on a website cheap).
• Offer work on niche frameworks which aren’t very popular around the site. If you are lucky then you will land your first client or two.
• There are a number of gig-worker platforms. For me, Fiverr works best because there’s no bidding system. You just make a listing of what you offer. Fiverr pushes your profile to potential clients searching for specific work and if they like what you offer then they pick you and make you an offer or straight up purchase your gig.
• On upwork it simply doesn’t work out. You are bidding on projects that 20+ experienced folks also are. There’s no way they’ll pick you over them. Also there’s a significant bias against Indian folks and hence your profile with 0 reviews and no work experience simply wouldn’t get any work.
• Your Fiverr gig offering being niche is extremely important. If you offer yet another WordPress/PHP/Bootstrap gig then nobody will hire you when there are thousands of other people with 100+ reviews. Why would they give you a chance? Make a gig offering a niche, follow that up with a brilliant write up describing your service and why it’s good.
• Mention the technical reasons why the website you build (or service you offer) is faster (or better). Describe the technologies you use in a way that demonstrates your understanding of the same. Explain tooling, code quality, etc. Anything that demonstrates that you actually understand what you claim in your gig title.
• Once you have a few reviews (especially from American, European folks) then more people will be confident hiring you (nobody wants to hire yet another Indian person with 0 reviews, we are a dime a dozen). Indian freelancers very often lie and scam and hence trust is hard to establish, especially on Fiverr.
• You can then convert the clients into your own clients if you are smart in contacting them outside (very much against TOS, hence need to be smart). Then you can move them to Upwork and work with them there gathering reviews there. This helps you have a backup in case Fiverr misbehaves with you and reduces your rank (happens fairly often, Fiverr is a shitty site and always sides with buyers in case of a dispute. They will take your money and will delete your profile, they suck).
• Repeat on Upwork. Underpromise, Underprice, Overdeliver. Get glaring reviews. Then bid on projects to find more work. Upwork is a lot more convenient and open than Fiverr. You can freely share contact information and take contact outside without getting strikes, ban as long as keep essential communication within Upwork and make payments through them. They are a mature site and understand that most development work happens outside the site on Github, slack channels, etc. With Fiverr, you are technically only supposed to share fucking zip files. This works fine for creative work, but sucks for development as real work happens on Github (or similar), Skype, slack collaboration.

Don’t

• Don’t fucking brag. I can do this, I can do that. I have experience, etc. No, those are serious red flags for a new profile. Nobody will hire you. They are hiring solutions to their problem. Not looking to get their daughter married. Tell them solutions, not how good you are. People do that fairly often and it sucks.
• Use proper written and spoken English – fake accents are a fucking turn off for clients, just don’t.

I’ve build some stable clients so far and have been getting consistent work. The key is to actually be good at what you do. Good quality code, timely deliveries, literally perfect communication

It’s not easy to start but once you get going, it’s 100% worth it. You just need to know the tech and should deliver good quality and timely work. Ditch your life for a few months if required and do nothing but study, code and don’t get disappointed when you don’t find work. It’s akin to establishing a business. Do not expect it to be easy.

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