career.fork(): how to thrive as a freelance developer: Professionally written, real-world guide to going freelance

career.fork(): how to thrive as a freelance developer

Maker

Hi there - I'm the author of this book, which I've just given a front-to-back, top-to-tail re-visit and update for 2018. I'm a long-serving freelancer/contractor and wrote the original version after ever-more staff devs kept asking me the same questions about life 'on the other side'. A few years down the line, it's been really gratifying getting messages (or randomly finding posts on Reddit, etc) where people have bought it, read it, then made the leap to freelancing -- and found the advice in the book helpful. ❤️ That's basically exactly why I wrote it! PS: AMA!

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7yr ago

Steve Jalim

career.fork(): how to thrive as a freelance developer

Maker

While I think about it, the book was primarily/originally published via Leanpub.com and I recommend their writing platform and bookstore wholeheartedly. The entire experience is very author-focused, with great support, and they even help generate versions for upload to the Kindle Store, etc, even though it seems to not be in their direct interests. They are fantastic.

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7yr ago

Abadesi

Hustle Crew Academy

@stevejalim Wow I'm sold, must check it out. I used Amazon Direct Publishing which I thought was pretty straight forward. Thanks for hunting the book. How do you structure the content so that the advice you share is actionable for everyone who reads it?

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7yr ago

Steve Jalim

career.fork(): how to thrive as a freelance developer

Maker

@abadesi Hi Abadesi - thanks for the question! After doing my initial research, crowdsourcing questions via a Google Form and pooling some ideas/tips based on my own experiences, I then mini-crowdsourced the overall structure of the book using a few trusted freelancer colleagues and a 'card sort' exercise (as I sometimes do when working out the IA of a client's website) using https://www.optimalworkshop.com/.... From the groupings they suggested, I picked one with a series of topics/groupings that logically build on each other as you go through it. I also ran the full book past those colleagues to identify any obvious gaps (there were none by that stage ;o) )

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7yr ago

John Papanastasiou

If you're thinking of going freelance/contract, this book will answer most questions you may have about the process and give you confidence in making that step. It's a great book that's easy to read and will help you cope with the details of working as a freelancer.

Pros:

Well written and thought out. Easy read. Comprehensive coverage of all things freelance.

Cons:

None.

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7yr ago

Darian Moody

MunchDB

Steve, this book helped me out a lot many moons ago as you well know! I see it got an update recently, what are your plans for the future with it?

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7yr ago

Steve Jalim

career.fork(): how to thrive as a freelance developer

Maker

@djm_ Heya - thanks for noticing :o) This 2018 review was a start-to-end check that the advice is still current, including some updates (such as a section on everyone's favourite acronym: GDPR). All existing owners of the Leanpub version got the update for free -- and will get all future updates, of course. Now I've made the book available on Kindle with this release, I'll be doing the same for those readers too. However, in order to keep new additions to the of the book 'chunky' rather than small/noisy, I'll be putting new content first into a blog (at www.freelancedeveloperbook.com, which is currently a redirect to Leanpub, I know...) before bundling it into a new release of the book. Fingers crossed for new stuff every few weeks!

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7yr ago

career.fork(): how to thrive as a freelance developer

Professionally written, real-world guide to going freelance

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