I’m writing this today as a word of warning and caution to anyone who is thinking about getting into the freelance web development game: you are not a special little flower.

The web development market is getting flooded with the explosion of overseas outsourcing and the avalanche of free reference materials. Now anyone with a text editor and a shared hosting account can get into the game and try and turn a buck. The job market is flooded with people that can most definitely work for cheaper and maybe even outperform you.

All Is Not Lost

It’s not all doom and gloom though. Even though the competition right now is as fierce as it has ever been there are steps you can take to set yourself above the rest and make a decent full-time or part-time living from freelance web development.

The days of getting freelance gigs from job boards is over for anyone in an English speaking country. You just can’t compete with the pricing that’s being offered from the Europeans and Asians. Thankfully, there are other ways to use your skills for profit that outsourced work isn’t as likely to interfere with.

Work Local

Most of the businesses in your local area haven’t even heard of the term outsourcing before. If they’re looking to get a project done and you’re fresh and new and looking to expand your portfolio this could be a perfect match. Just beware of long hours for low pay as local clients aren’t appreciative of current freelancing rates.

While this is a great method for anyone just starting out it’s not something I’d recommend to a veteran web developer. Local clients are usually pretty time intensive and people with larger client bases aren’t interested in the hassle.

Work Niche

This has been my own personal tactic for several years now. I found an industry that had a need for quality web development work (in my case, professional minor league sports) and built a quality product (in my case, a content management system) to match the need.

I stumbled into my own little niche mostly by accident but sometimes that’s the best way. If you do a job for someone and think there’s a broader market for the same businesses do some research and give it a shot. Once you become a known face in that market you’ll start seeing more work come in through referrals and word of mouth.

Work Passive

The easiest solution is to just not work at all! When you have down time between clients try and develop some projects that generate passive income. That’s what I’ve tried to do with Fore Score Golf Stats and all of the news aggregators that make up Jack’s Sports Report and so far things are going great. I’m generating money each month with sites that are basically hands-off propositions.

It’s A Big Garden Out There

Let’s put this lame plant metaphor to rest. Even if you are one of millions there’s still ample opportunity for you to succeed. Just remember to try and narrow your focus and worry about competing in small markets and not against small prices.

The jobs being outsourced aren’t jobs you would really want anyway. They’re being presented by people with big ideas and big demands that they can’t meet with their small budgets.

The MySpace Developer Platform is beginning to be rolled out now. It’s currently in a limited beta that they’re calling a “sandbox phase.” Developers are limited during this sandbox phase to only three installs of their app. If you’re interested in learning more there’s tons of information available at the developer site.

The MySpace Developer Platform relies on OpenSocial to operate. OpenSocial, for those of you that don’t know, is basically Google’s common API that lets people run applications across a variety of social networks at the same time. So using OpenSocial I could write an application that runs on MySpace, Orkut, etc. while my application on the Facebook Platform is limited to Facebook only.

I’m Not Sure I Care

When the Facebook Platform launched I was sort of interested in the ramifications and even started looking for resources to help me build an app. In the end, I just couldn’t find myself all that motivated.

A quick run through the Facebook Apps listed at my site Web Auctions Daily reveals the junk and spam game that the Facebook App scene really is. Everyone and their brother is pumping out tiny little applications with no user base and selling them to the first person who’ll throw a handful of cash at them. That’s just not something I want to spend time to get involved with.

So how are the MySpace/OpenSocial applications going to be any different? They probably aren’t. If anything things might be even worse on this platform because it’s more widespread.

Monetizing a MySpace Application also seems like an uphill battle because their demographic seems to be even younger than Facebook’s. And the only way to get money out of a younger audience like that is probably with spammy trickery. Again, not something I want to get into.

So I’m going to take a pass on building any social network applications for now and continue to focus on my little pet projects instead.

On Monday, Google announced that some of their applications had been upgraded on the iPhone and iPod Touch. I finally got a chance to check out the new version of Gmail this morning on my iPod Touch and it’s probably one of the best iPhone specific sites I’ve seen yet. The only thing that closely rivals it is Facebook on the iPhone.

Joe Hewitt is the man responsible for Facebook on the iPhone. Fortunately for the rest of us he released the JavaScript and CSS he used in developing the site. The package is called iUI and is available under the New BSD License. You can get a feel for just what iUI can do by checking out some examples on its Google Code site.

Creating a mobile version of a site is probably one of those projects that most of us get all excited about and then immediately place on the backburner. How much longer can we put a mobile version off? The market share of the iPhone is exploding and tools like iUI can make it easier to get a mobile site launched than ever before.

I have a handful of posts on this site about tech support problems I’ve solved for clients. I write these posts because I usually have a hard time finding the solutions to the problems online and hope that maybe it’ll be easier for the next person who has trouble to find help. These posts are actually some of the most popular on the site and they receive a lot of visitors coming from search engines.

What’s that got to do with being a Web Developer?

It’s important to remember that just because you know how to build web sites does not mean you can or should fix any of your client’s computer problems. I promise you that the second you fix one of their problems with a printer, an email client or whatever they’ll be on you every time something goes wrong in their office. That’s fine if you’re charging them through some kind of service contract but never do this kind of work for free.

People who work for free get taken advantage of.

There’s definitely an urge to fix small problems for free or to go that extra step above and beyond what you originally agreed to with a client. I understand that and I’ve certainly done the same before but I know through experience that once you take on the two-headed role of Web Designer and Go-To Tech Support Guy your life will become miserable.

The only support requests you should ever handle are ones that are directly related to any of the programming or design work you’ve done for the client under your original contract. Extra support requests come at a huge price concerning your time. This is why I recommend against providing hosting solutions for clients as well.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the benefits of building Facebook Applications. I find the whole thing pretty interesting and I might be building a simple app to tie into Fore Score Golf Stats this year. Here are a few sites for those of you thinking about developing your own Facebook Apps to check out :

The Official Facebook Platform Site

The most obvious place to start developing Facebook Apps is the official website at http://developers.facebook.com. There you’ll find the essentials for building an application. You’ll find documentation with details of how the Facebook Platform works. There’s a resources section with code samples, client libraries and more. There’s also a Tools section that allows you to prototype your Facebook application in real time with user friendly test consoles. You can keep up with the latest news about the Facebook Platform as well.

Best Facebook Applications & FaceReviews

Best Facebook Applications posts profiles and reviews of some of the newest Facebook applications. FaceReviews also offers application spotlights and includes an Application Development program for those of you looking for help developing or marketing your Facebook Application ideas. You can use these two sites not only as inspiration for an application idea but to also keep an eye on competition your future app might have.

How to Develop a Hit Facebook App: 29 Essential Tools and Tutorials

This awesome list at SoftwareDeveloper.com contains 29 links to important articles and lessons for anyone looking to get into developing Facebook Applications. There are links for people getting ready to build an app, developers who are in the thick of things and creators ready to market and grow their apps. There are links for everyone in each stage of development. It’s definitely worth a bookmark.