Exploring Freelancing: The Idea of Freelancing
This is a chapter from my book on Exploring Freelancing: https://rudrank.gumroad.com/l/freelance-journey
I still chuckle when I think about it. I have talked about this in numerous podcasts about how I started with iOS development in the first place.
2018, sophomore year of college. I was enjoying my sleek MacBook Air, feeling like the coolest kid on the block. That was until some classmates decided to have fun at my expense. “Hey, bet that fancy MacBook cannot even run a single game our Windows machines can!” they teased. Well, maybe they had a point. But my ego got hurt anyway, and I considered that a challenge.
Instead of sulking, I thought, “What could this MacBook do that their Windows machine cannot?” That is when I stumbled upon iOS development and an Udemy course by Angela Yu. The more I got into it, the more I felt like I had found my thing. An escape from reality instead of boring college courses. Writing in the Swift language felt flawless. Late nights were spent exploring the courses and tinkering with baby apps for the thrill.
I bumped into this senior who was doing something called as freelancing — someone whose Google Chrome had numerous tabs with the names of sites like Fiverr and Upwork. He was hustling, making some good dollars on the side by offering his Alexa skills. For me, he was living proof that fun hobbies could also bring in the money to help me get my next materialistic need: a MacBook Pro.
That was an eye-opener. My MacBook might not have played games as theirs did, but it sure played a different kind — a game that could potentially set the stage for my future!
The Learning Curve
When I first dipped my toes into iOS development, I was lost. The course I started with was comparatively easy initially, so I stopped going to college and binged the videos, locking myself around the four walls. A lot of code and mistakes, and nights where I would find myself staring blankly at my MacBook screen or a single error mocking me for hours. Syntax ones, logical ones, you name it, and I probably made that mistake. So much banging my head on the network calls and APIs, UI constraints, and everything in between.
However, every time I felt like giving up, I remembered the jests of my classmates. Call it spite-driven development. Each hurdle taught me something new; with every mistake, I wanted to improve at making apps.
Did I feel like giving up? Absolutely. More times than I would like to admit. But you know that the thing about hitting rock bottom is that you can only go up from there. Each setback became a stepping stone, each frustration more of a lesson.
If I wanted to freelance like my senior, I had to persist, and I realised creating apps for Apple devices was fun if I was paid handsomely for it.
Tapping the Resources
Angela Yu’s Udemy course was my starting point, but I slowly moved to more books and courses to explore. I picked up “The Swift Programming Language” by Apple Inc. It is the bible for Swift language used to develop Apple Platforms. Easy to understand and direct. I can spend hours crafting a better solution or search on my best friend: Stack Overflow. Someone there solved it, so sometimes it is not worth reinventing the wheel.
The Reality Check
After setting myself on many different freelancing accounts, I found myself mostly glued to the screen instead of college assignments, mindlessly refreshing the screen in anticipation of that first gig offer after applying to endless contracts. It felt like standing in a virtual auditorium, resume in hand, waiting for someone to call me onto the stage.
Except no one did. The days turned into weeks, and there was not a single offer or even a message.
The reality sunk in: the freelancing world is less welcoming than I had imagined. I had zero experience. The dreams of echoing my senior’s success seemed to drift farther away from me every day as I started giving up hope. Now that I look back, it is obvious that it was a loop of no experience and no offer and no experience because of no offer and no offer because of no experience. Still, I was foolish enough to let doubts and impatience cloud my thoughts, and finally, I decided — freelancing was off the table.
It was a hard pill to swallow, especially after witnessing firsthand someone who had turned it into a profitable lifestyle.
The Internship Insight
It was around this time when internships caught my eye. Unlike freelancing, where the vast sea of competition can be disheartening, internships provided a more structured environment for honing my skills. Plus, there was the appeal of steady income and mentorship, which felt like a safer bet for a still-green developer like myself.
I applied to a few places, leveraging the projects I had built while following Angela Yu’s course and other tutorials. One of the college seniors reached out to me as I was the only iOS developer around, and soon, I found myself interning at a small start-up working on some cool iOS projects. As it was a small one, I was their iOS intern and the iOS lead, starting two iOS apps from scratch.
It was not freelancing; I did not control my time or the project, but it was something. The income was mediocre but enough for my materialistic endeavours. I remember the joy of unboxing the new headphones I had longed for — bought from my internship earnings.
Though my jump start into iOS development took a different turn with internships, the idea of freelancing did not entirely leave me. The internship experience was a good step toward becoming a more experienced developer. Working with a backend developer, an Android developer, and a designer as a team gave me a more rounded skill set. Despite the initial hurdles and missteps, it confirmed that iOS development was the right track for me.
While my MacBook may not have been a gaming powerhouse, Xcode (Apple’s IDE to develop apps) became a tool for my ambition and dreams and a game I was more than willing to play.
If you liked reading this chapter, checkout my book on Exploring Freelancing: https://rudrank.gumroad.com/l/freelance-journey
