[thetabyte]

First, advice:

Like many people here, I agree that there is nothing more important than building things that you can show people. However, the process of getting to that level of capability can often be somewhat mystifying. There are a few tools I recommend for that. First of all, interactive tutorials, like those at Code School, are fantastic introductions to web frameworks, if you're just getting started. I first learned Ruby on Rails with Rails for Zombies. However, these tutorials will not give you the skills to actually build anything—rather, they are a good primer. From there, find a good book, preferably one that focuses on actually building something, like Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial. Finally, I really love to use screencasts (a la Railscasts) for picking up domain specific information for particular tasks. Hope that helps!

Second, a relevant question:

I've just recently started freelancing myself, and I see a variety of advice. "No Rails developer should make under $75/hour!", "Take what you can get, work your way up slowly!" "You probably charge too little!", etc. How do you actually evaluate how much your skills are worth as a freelancer? How do you match with clients who need and are willing to pay for your particular skill level? If anyone has any links to relevant advice, those would be great to.

[TamDenholm]

Your skills are worth what someone will pay. "How much are you worth?" It depends on how you frame the question. Consider the following scenarios for the same question.

If you make yourself available on oDesk or similiar, your client is looking for a cheap code monkey to do usually, crappy work. You'll maybe get $10-$15 an hour.

If you get yourself a permie job at a small agency in Edinburgh where i'm from, you'll get maybe £28k a year.

If you become a contractor and work in London, you'll command £450 a day.

If you position yourself as a technical business consultant that provides a piece of software that allows an international car manufacturer to sell more cars every year, you'll earn millions.

All of those things can be true for "a rails developer". It depends on a lot of other factors that have nothing to do with programming and are often overlooked by developers.

[nthj]

> How do you actually evaluate how much your skills are worth as a freelancer? How do you match with clients who need and are willing to pay for your particular skill level?

They are worth what a client will pay.

Trick: if you show a client “this will make you $20K in 6 months for this, this, and this reason, as I have done for this, this, and this client”—they don't care how much you make an hour. Bid $8K for the project, even if it only takes you a week, and they're still crazy happy.

[ciclista]

How do you get to the place where you can give clients numbers like that though? (this will make you 20K).

Past clients would be reluctant to tell how much a new site has made them I would imagine (and it can be hard to pin down for certain markets).