Free lancing on weekends for Excel VBA projects? Possible? Reality? Legal?

[SachAccess]

Hi Experts,

Hope you are doing good. I need your help about free lancing. I have never done it. I know nothing about it.
Just a random thought clicked to my mind about Excel VBA free lancing on weekends. Could you please help me in below.

01) I am from India. Are there really free lancing Excel VBA gigs available?
02) What type of clients are there in free lancing world?
03) What sort of payment is associated with Excel VBA gigs? And what parameters define the projects?
04) Are there any fake clients too? How to identify fake clients?
05) Is it legal to work on free lancing if I have another regular job?
06) What kind of projects are there in free lancing? Why would the client prefer a free lancer than hiring a person?
07) What are the platforms for free lancing?
08) How do I present myself on Free lancing platform?
09) Do I need to share exact details of my current job?
10) I don't want to mix my current job and free lancing (don't want to cross-share the details), would be possible?

 

[The_Doc_Man]

The forum's membership is from many places, but free-lance gigs usually are very localized. You will have to do the local searches for your area because we won't have a clue about availability, clientele, projects, etc. Here are SOME answers.

1. I am from south Louisiana. Gigs are available in many places but I have no visibility to know what the market looks like in India.
2. Clients? Mostly small businesses, probably a few one-person shops. The bigger the business, the more likely a regular employee would be sought. Fortune 500 companies don't do spot gigs and free-lancing. Journalism and photography have free-lancing even for the big players, but big companies in other fields rarely take on spot gigs except as trial runs to see if they want to hire the person.
3. No clue about payment in your area, but for localized spot gigs, you'll probably be lucky to initially have a clue as to the project. Expect to spend some time fact-finding and be prepared to charge for that time as well.
4. Fakers exist everywhere. You would use the same general rules as you would use if YOU were hiring a contractor. Is the person working on his/her own? If a small business, how long has it been incorporated? Are they willing to offer contracts?
5. Read the employment rules for the regular job to see if they have exclusionary or non-disclosure agreements. Free-lance gigs are unlikely to have either of those.
6. Clients use free-lancers rather than a regular hire because regular employees have higher overhead most of the time; they get various benefits that a free-lancer won't get. Free-lancers can be hired under fixed-price contract that becomes an incidental rather than a regular expense. (Has tax implications.)
7. Platforms? Every kind in existence that supports Excel VBA - which is to say archaic laptops to new, small servers. Find out BEFORE you sign up.
8. The same as if you were applying for a regular job. State your credentials, present a generally neat appearance, answer their questions.
9 & 10: Depends on the current job and local labor laws.

 

[Isaac]

Hi Experts,

Hope you are doing good. I need your help about free lancing. I have never done it. I know nothing about it.
Just a random thought clicked to my mind about Excel VBA free lancing on weekends. Could you please help me in below.

01) I am from India. Are there really free lancing Excel VBA gigs available?
02) What type of clients are there in free lancing world?
03) What sort of payment is associated with Excel VBA gigs? And what parameters define the projects?
04) Are there any fake clients too? How to identify fake clients?
05) Is it legal to work on free lancing if I have another regular job?
06) What kind of projects are there in free lancing? Why would the client prefer a free lancer than hiring a person?
07) What are the platforms for free lancing?
08) How do I present myself on Free lancing platform?
09) Do I need to share exact details of my current job?
10) I don't want to mix my current job and free lancing (don't want to cross-share the details), would be possible?

I have seen a lot of Excel VBA gigs on sites that cater to this type of gig environments. People will post a project and workers will bid on it. I can't remember the name of them right now (easily find on Google), but I remember seeing a lot of people from India on the site bidding on jobs. Some paid by the hour and some by the gig. (I would prefer by the hour) . I left the site quite fast, after seeing
1) most people were not from the USA and were bidding much lower than I would be willing to
2) Too much of a commitment required on too little information given
3) the whole bidding structure annoyed me, as the buyers had no way to know who was really best

I'd personally, if I were you, try to find India's version of Craigslist and use it to get clients. Something local like Doc said, for sure.

Impress the person during a brief phone call where you mention all the types of things you can well do. Impress them by listening and giving intelligent answers about how you would handle the situations they describe.

I miss doing these jobs because the extent of what can be done with Excel vba from one simple workbook is mind-boggling. I once set up an entire Scheduler that ran automatically running hundreds of jobs downloading and uploading stuff to FTP sites using PSFTP.EXE, the end product? One single workbook, a few vbs files and a few windows tasks. What fun it was, I should have used Access to do it but was so deep into Excel it was my only focus at the time.

I fear I've not been of much help to you, but that's what I can offer. I stopped doing gig work a couple years ago to focus on maximizing the impact of my corporate job. Best of luck to you - it can be quite an adventure to do small contract jobs! And quite a learning experience. It also gives you Professional References. do a few good gigs that turn out well, now all of a sudden you have 5 more people who are willing to be a Professional Reference for you - excellent stuff for the resume/CV !

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Oddly enough, I remember doing gig work of a different kind. When I was working my way through college I was a gig worker - as a musician. I played organ for church weddings and the little band I was with played several dances. The problem? New Orleans is a literal HOTBED of musical talent because we had so many great teachers and so many artists. The competition was stiff on a good day and horrendous during lean times. It was a contributing reason for me to enter graduate school because to make any decent money, I would have had to change markets - and change schools in the middle of a graduate degree program.

I had an odd chance to verify this lesson when I was on a vacation with my parents. We drove across the great plains and by chance, went through Topeka, Kansas. Surrounded by miles and miles of more miles and miles - of corn, wheat, and a few other farm large-area crops. We stopped in at a music store to get out of a sudden rain shower and I saw a music book I wanted, so I bought it. To kill some time, I asked if I could try to play from this new book on one of the organs there, and I quick-arranged a pops song as an organ solo in about five minutes. The store owner tried to hire me on the spot, saying he could guarantee me 3-5 gigs a week playing weddings and funerals, and he knew at least three bands in Topeka who would have loved to have had me join them. Topeka WASN'T a hotbed of music - they had demand but no supply. But I was legally a minor at the time and besides, living in the midst of the Great American Grain Belt wasn't my idea of fun. So I passed up that chance.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

So what made you choose data processing?

My choice was ALWAYS on the fringes of data processing, but more scientifically oriented.

My degrees are in chemistry. I learned how to do real-time data acquisition using computers on a PDP-11/15 in "LAB" configuration. In the early 1970s I had code that could take a microsecond-cycle machine to do sampling at 5 KHz, which was very good for my topic. My dissertation research was done on that machine monitoring experiments in chemical kinetics. (For the uninitiated, watching the progress of chemical reactions as a way to derive or infer the molecular mechanism of the reaction.)

My first "real" job was as device-driver writer and material properties advisor because the company's oil & gas pipelines carried various products and we had to monitor their positions at various key points along the 800-1500 mile pipelines we serviced. Our proprietary sensors and software didn't involve a lot of wet lab work but DID involve watching for changes in density/viscosity and a few other properties at stations along the pipelines. We had over 60 pipelines in at least a dozen countries and 15 states in the USA and they ran reliably for many years.

In 1984, though, the oil-& gas industry moved their headquarters from Louisiana to Texas. The company I worked for got bought out. My mother was in a nursing home by that time, in the start of her Alzheimer's ordeal and not really moveable. I was her sole caregiver (Dad had passed two years earlier.) A few jobs were still available and I was pretty much an expert at PDP-11 Assembly language coding, so I moved over to a job with a navigation company associated with seismic/acoustic surveys looking for oil domes on the gulf floor. I became a systems analyst and device driver writer for the new company.

During that time, my nearly ideal job popped up - a company needed a PhD in analytic chemistry to run an agricultural research lab with VAXen and PDP-11 machines all over the place and lots of sensor telemetry plus network-based data sharing. The headhunter who called me thought I was about a 95% fit for the job. But Mom was well into stage 3 Alzheirmer's Disease and I had to turn that down. Later found out it was with Monsanto near St. Louis. But it was not to be.

When Mom finally passed, I had a free choice of going anywhere and answered a blind ad looking for an OpenVMS admin - which I was able to do because both of my prior employers had VAXen. Turned out to be the Navy job in New Orleans and I never looked back. A few years later I met my sweetie and married her. Since she had kids from her first marriage still living in the area, that ended the idea of me moving anywhere and I bowed to the inevitable. But I was able to do the job needed by the Navy and kept at it comfortably for 28 1/2 years before finally retiring.

 

[SachAccess]

The forum's membership is from many places, but free-lance gigs usually are very localized. You will have to do the local searches for your area because we won't have a clue about availability, clientele, projects, etc. Here are SOME answers.

Thanks a lot for the detailed help. You are awesome, as always.

 

[SachAccess]

I fear I've not been of much help to you, but that's what I can offer. I stopped doing gig work a couple years ago to focus on maximizing the impact of my corporate job. Best of luck to you - it can be quite an adventure to do small contract jobs! And quite a learning experience. It also gives you Professional References. do a few good gigs that turn out well, now all of a sudden you have 5 more people who are willing to be a Professional Reference for you - excellent stuff for the resume/CV !

Thanks a lot for the help Isaac. Have a nice day ahead.

 

[SachAccess]

But I was able to do the job needed by the Navy and kept at it comfortably for 28 1/2 years before finally retiring.

Fascinating journey dear Doc!

 

[The_Doc_Man]

on IBM terminals that looked just like a Selectric II typewriter.

Odd you should mention that. At UNO, we had a DEC-System 10 a.k.a. PDP-10 and KA-10, and our computer center head was an electrical engineer. He hooked up a Selectric (which we called "Ol' Ball Head") to the KA-10 through a serial port and we were able to use the DEC "RUNOFF" program to drive it. That is essentially a typesetting program but was also a primitive word processing program. I can't prove it but I might have been the first person at UNO to submit a dissertation primarily generated by word processing.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I have to admit I miss working on VAXen. They were kickin' machines.

 

[Cotswold]

From a business aspect. Why would any business rely on someone who is only available at weekends for their systems and support?
But at weekends they maybe don't want to work, or have a tiny window.
You make a change, it falls over, then they need to wait a whole week before it is fixed. Makes no sense. Maybe a few bad and slow payers would be interested if you are exceptionally cheap. Plus you are reducing the number of possible customers to a trickle. More is better. Either think of a brilliant application and sell thousands of them, or. maybe buy a guitar and go busking at weekends....an ice cream van etc?

 

[Isaac]

From a business aspect. Why would any business rely on someone who is only available at weekends for their systems and support?
But at weekends they maybe don't want to work, or have a tiny window.
You make a change, it falls over, then they need to wait a whole week before it is fixed. Makes no sense. Maybe a few bad and slow payers would be interested if you are exceptionally cheap. Plus you are reducing the number of possible customers to a trickle. More is better. Either think of a brilliant application and sell thousands of them, or. maybe buy a guitar and go busking at weekends....an ice cream van etc?

I've done numerous projects where I mostly worked on them evenings and weekends. Not sure what the problem is?
The most they needed to wait was a day, not a week.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

This next comment is NOT directed at any person, but is intended as a general observation.

In general, if a business owner is looking for a free-lancer to do work for the business, that person already knows the prospective contractor might not be the best overall worker possible. Those who are in business understand the phrase, "You get what you pay for." Considering that free-lancers already cannot expect premium pay, employers KNOW they are in the business to supplement income because they DON'T have a high-paying job that pays well enough by itself for the second-job free-lancer to live on.

I know that we all strive to do our best for our employers, but it is a rough realization that if we are free-lancing because our "day job" isn't that good, maybe we aren't as good as we think we are.

Granted, it could also be because of stiff competition. Granted, it could also be poor timing. It could just be bad luck. But a truth that everyone needs to remember in the world of work is that you NEVER EVER get paid long-term what you think you are worth. You always get paid what your boss thinks your job is worth - including how well you do that job.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

many stakeholders are DIY until they get stuck and they look for the cheap developers to cleanup their mess.

A key phrase for understanding that niche market.

 

[Isaac]

This next comment is NOT directed at any person, but is intended as a general observation.

In general, if a business owner is looking for a free-lancer to do work for the business, that person already knows the prospective contractor might not be the best overall worker possible. Those who are in business understand the phrase, "You get what you pay for." Considering that free-lancers already cannot expect premium pay, employers KNOW they are in the business to supplement income because they DON'T have a high-paying job that pays well enough by itself for the second-job free-lancer to live on.

I know that we all strive to do our best for our employers, but it is a rough realization that if we are free-lancing because our "day job" isn't that good, maybe we aren't as good as we think we are.

Granted, it could also be because of stiff competition. Granted, it could also be poor timing. It could just be bad luck. But a truth that everyone needs to remember in the world of work is that you NEVER EVER get paid long-term what you think you are worth. You always get paid what your boss thinks your job is worth - including how well you do that job.

You forgot the one thing that also could be most likely. It could be because a person simply enjoys doing freelancing!

That was my case for several years, where it wasn't about the money anymore because the freelancing didn't pay super well anyway and my main job paid very well but I enjoyed the variety and the spice that the freelancing gave to life.

Don't down talk about freelancing too severely doc. It seems to me that perhaps even a majority of the best access minds out there ended up freelancing and that's how they started their business.

But I agree in the sense that when it comes to the real serious career changing, trajectory changing type of move, I think the best thing someone can do is get in a good corporate position where they're allowed to use access. Freelance on the side to add variety and spice to life plus when you're freelancing you usually allow yourself to do a bunch of stuff you're not allowed to do at work. Just using psftp.exe is an example that comes to mind for me

 

[Cotswold]

I've done numerous projects where I mostly worked on them evenings and weekends. Not sure what the problem is?
The most they needed to wait was a day, not a week.

It will also depend upon the application. If you are supporting an invoice, or sales order system then I suspect that a rapid fix will be the priority.

Of course in your case it may well have been that your standard of work and ability was far higher that they could obtain from other regular suppliers and they would have been happy to accept delays in your support for that reason.

 

[arnelgp]

most that i know are looking for someone who can work on google sheet (with script).
so they want their sheet available over the net.
plus, if you are very good in making outstanding dashboard in google sheet.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Don't down talk about freelancing too severely doc. It seems to me that perhaps even a majority of the best access minds out there ended up freelancing and that's how they started their business.

In the music industry, I free-lanced as well - as a primary source of funds for books and tuition. I lived with my parents and had no time for a social life. But my own experience was that, because I didn't have name recognition, getting a good gig that would GAIN some recognition was a monster of a problem. It's part of the reason that I became an analyst (both chemical and computing).

I had long talks with folks in the music industry, folks with limited but non-zero name recognition, and they spelled out the life of a not-quite-famous-yet musician whose address is the license plate on the bus. Coming out of college with my bachelor's degree, I still had a choice - but decided that I didn't want to pay the price of living the life of an itinerant musician with no wife, kids, and no long-term stability. I didn't want to live from gig to gig hoping for an adequate paycheck. I opted for stability and now I'm a comfortably retired grandpa, so I got what I wanted.

You are correct that when using free-lancing as part of a strategy to spring-board into something more permanent, it can be a good thing. I simply think that the employment market has a glut of aspiring professionals (wannabees). In ANY field, not just programmers.

There is also the other side of that situation - time. We have a limited time here on Earth. If you really ARE a person who enjoys programming that much, then perhaps it is a form of recreation for you, and I wish you well in that endeavor. I have other interests besides programming and also I remember being a workaholic while my mother was going downhill with Alzheimer's. In that case, work was my escape from being a caregiver. But once she was gone, I wanted a real life and found my way there.

The life of a free-lancer DOES include uncertainty. I guess you could say the other side of the coin is either dedication, determination, or desperation.

Speaking of free-lancing,... there's the guy whose wife usually gave him a rough time, nagging him relentlessly over his inadequacies. One day, he started packing. She said, "What do you think you are doing?" He said, "I've had enough of your negative attitude. I'm going to move to New York and be a free-lance gigolo at 50$ per sex act." She starts packing. He asks, "OK, what's that about? Where are YOU going?" She replies, "I'm going to New York to watch you live on 50$ per month."

 

[Isaac]

Tee-hee
I think there's a dopamine hit for freelancing that comes when someone really likes your work too. I had a guy who was so into my Excel vba jobs that he basically told me I don't care what you charge - charge me whatever you want, these projects are gold. It was a love fest.
But I can understand why. He had a major Amazon store business, and the things Amazon required him to download, transform in the most crazy ways possibly imaginable, and then re-upload ....it was hindering him from becoming all he could become by a long shot. My magic buttons basically made his business work.

 

[Isaac]

It will also depend upon the application. If you are supporting an invoice, or sales order system then I suspect that a rapid fix will be the priority.

Of course in your case it may well have been that your standard of work and ability was far higher that they could obtain from other regular suppliers and they would have been happy to accept delays in your support for that reason.

I think they just flat-out couldn't find anyone else quite exactly like me, who offered automation and database services and was good in both Access and Excel and was willing to put up with their BS back and forth and the pain of requirements gathering. To be honest the ones I am thinking of, I eventually dropped them as a client. They became too difficult and it wasn't worth the $.