4 Great Areas You Can Specialize in as a New Freelance Developer

So you've decided to go the freelance route — kudos! Working as a freelancer has many perks, such as:

A better work-life balance: No more daily commute, unnecessary meetings, and activities that squander your precious time. Once you have systems in place, you’ll realize a much better work-life balance with the freedom to travel more, spend more time with family and friends, and do things you love.

Being your own boss: Being a freelance developer means you have the freedom to make your own schedule. You are the owner of your one-person brand and you have complete autonomy with regards to your working hours.

Freedom to choose who you work with: When you’re starting out as a freelancer, this may not be the case. But as you work on more projects, you’ll soon build up a freelance reputation that allows you to be picky about who you work with.

Work on projects that excite you: Say goodbye to monotony, as you can decide the type of projects you wish to work on.

However, to realize all these amazing benefits, there’s one thing you must do right from the start — niche down.

Why Specialization Is Vital to Your Success as a Freelance Developer

First off, when you’re just starting out as a new freelance developer, generalizing is not a bad idea. It will help you quickly figure out things that you don't like. Try your hand at various technologies like WordPress, Node, Ruby, etc. by doing a few projects for yourself and/or clients.

In doing so, you’ll find your core skills and interests. But once you’re past this initial screening stage, you absolutely must pick an area or two of specialization and focus all your efforts on being the best at them.

Though you might be a jack of all trades in your current full-time role, the road to success in freelancing starts with selecting a specific niche and being a master in it. Here are a few reasons why:

Clients are always looking for quality work and more often than not, they’ll prefer paying top-dollar for an expert over a general-purpose freelancer. Focusing on areas you are passionate about helps attract quality leads, as it communicates your singular interest and focus, thus making you appear more valuable.

It’s easier to stand out in a particular niche than it would be under the broad umbrella term of “freelance developer”, as you’ll have a more defined slice of the market to target.

Picking an area of specialization that you’re good at and passionate about also makes it easier to stay committed to your business and hone your skills over time, eventually helping you become one of the most sought-after and renowned subject matter experts.

Also, consider this — if you’re always building different types of products using different tech stacks then you put yourself in a position of constantly familiarizing yourself with whatever third-party applications the client wishes to integrate into the product.

While constant learning and staying up-to-date with the latest technologies is good, doing so in such an extreme amount isn’t exactly the most efficient and profitable way to run your business.

Besides, you’ll have fewer bugs, better output, and will be able to provide a much higher level of service to your clients if you gain extensive experience in a particular niche.

Simply put, as a specialist, you’ll:

• Earn more.
• Be more efficient as you don’t need to spend hours and hours learning about a new field for each new client or project you onboard.
• Enjoy an expert reputation with inbound clients.

So, the question is — which area to specialize in? While the potential areas in the field of development are endless and ever-growing, here are five great ones you can consider.

1. Freelance UI Developer

A user interface (UI) developer creates user interfaces that are intuitive and appealing to an application’s users.

As a UI developer, you’ll need to have strong knowledge of front-end (HTML & CSS), along with backend development using JavaScript, AJAX, JSON, jQuery, Ruby on Rails, and SQL.

You’ll also benefit from learning design tools such as Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator, Sketch, etc. So if you enjoy coding and design — that is, you’re both left and right-brained — becoming a freelance UI developer is a great idea.

2. Freelance WordPress Developer

Launched in 2003, WordPress is by far the most popular and widely used CMS today, powering over 39% of all websites on the internet. It’s an open-source platform built on PHP and MySQL.

With 34% of the world’s 10,000 most popular websites — such as The New Yorker, Yelp, TechCrunch, Etsy, and more — using WordPress, becoming a freelance WordPress developer can be extremely rewarding.

WordPress Developers are responsible for both back-end and front-end development, including creating WordPress themes and plugins, establishing the CMS architecture, and managing the performance.

To specialize in WordPress, you need to have a variety of programming skills such as PHP, HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, along with some technical SEO prowess.

As a freelance WordPress developer, you can offer your service to big-budget enterprise clients (B2B and B2C) or do short-term projects for individuals on a contract basis.

You’ll typically earn a higher hourly or project rate than your salaried counterparts and have more flexibility to choose the projects you want.

3. Freelance iOS Developer

An iOS developer, as the name suggests, is responsible for developing applications for devices powered by Apple’s iOS operating system. Ideally, a good iOS developer is proficient with one of the two languages used for this platform: Objective-C or Swift.

The average annual income of a freelance iOS developer is around $150,000 in the US — which isn’t bad at all.

And again, you’ll likely earn a higher hourly or project rate than your salaried counterparts and have the freedom to work on the projects you want.

4 - Freelance Machine Learning Developer

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning is one of the hottest (and most lucrative) fields in computer science.

Machine and deep learning is everywhere: music recommendations on Spotify, your intelligent voice assistant, banks use it to predict exchange rates and stock markets, self-driving vehicles use it to avoid obstacles, video games use it to enhance the player’s experience, smartphones use it to recognize objects/faces/gestures/voices — you name it.

To specialize in machine learning, you need to build upon your knowledge of R Programming, Python, Hadoop, Spark, PIG, HIVE, etc. It’s also a good idea to become an active member of Kaggle, the world’s largest machine learning and data science community with powerful tools and resources.

Take Your Pick and Double Down

While it’s great to be a knowledgeable developer who can do a little bit of everything, your true value and earning potential will be far superior when you’re an expert in a few select areas.

Consider the five areas of expertise outlined above based on your interest and skill set, and then focus all your efforts on becoming the go-to person for that specific area.