tldr: what is your best advice for a competitive programmer wanting to start freelancing (possibly taking it as a full time job even)?
I am a computer science student with a long history of programming and mathematics competitions. I believe I am proficient enough for real life projects and I would like to try my luck with freelancing (I also fancy the freelancing lifestyle, being free and all).
A quick search on Google lead me to platforms such as upwork, freelancer, fiverr, and others. They seem to be too full of spam, however (students asking for homework and tests and similar). I had the feeling that toptal could provide a more serious atmosphere, but my application was refused because I had less than two years of experience.
It seems to me that the freelancing platforms are very hard to penetrate for a student with no work experience. What advice can you give for a person in my situation?
Thanks everyone
Personally I would build a marketing website showing off your skills, talking about why your the right person for the job, and ideally, some examples of what you have done (these don't need to be live/online, can just be case studies with some description on the problem, your solution, the tech, how it helped the customer etc). A random example I just googled: https://www.fromthemountain.co.za.
But at this stage don't overthink it. Just get something up, something you can link to and point people towards.
Finding projects (sales) will be the hardest thing. Personally I would recommend steering clear of freelancer/upwork/blahblah, as it's all a race to the bottom. Maybe its good to get started, but generally I would first look towards your own circle of contacts.
I started as a freelancer 10 years ago, then levelled that up into a custom software agency, and last year sold to a larger company. I'm (slowly) writing my experiences over at devtoagency.com - whilst they are written more towards a freelancer who wants to start an agency, perhaps some posts would be useful to you, e.g. this one about asking friends and family for referrals https://www.devtoagency.com/referrals-from-friends-and-famil...
Good luck. Going out on my own was the best thing I ever did.