Web and software development
This is the category where a client can verify you without asking. That cuts both ways, and most developers only use half of it.
Front-end, back-end and full-stack developers, mobile developers, and anyone who ships working software for other people.
What a client checks before reading a word you wrote
- A deployed URL they can open right now, not a description of one
- A repository, or at least code they are allowed to look at
- Whether your stack matches theirs closely enough to avoid a rewrite
- Whether you have finished something of comparable size before
A link that opens and a sentence about the constraint you worked under. A private client project you cannot share becomes a paragraph about the problem and the decision, never a screenshot with no context.
This category has the widest spread on the platform, which means a rate in the middle tells a client nothing. Pick an end and make the profile justify it.
The symptoms here
Your stack list is doing the talking
The title and overview read as a technology inventory rather than a job.
A client with a specific problem cannot tell whether you have solved it.
You compete with agencies on price
Every job seems to come down to who quoted least.
You are being read as interchangeable, which is a positioning problem rather than a pricing one.
Nothing in your portfolio opens
The pieces are screenshots, or links to projects that have since been taken down.
The one category where proof is easy, and you are asking to be believed instead.
Before
Hello! I am a senior full-stack engineer with 8 years of experience in React, Node.js, TypeScript, PostgreSQL and AWS. I have delivered 40+ projects with 5-star ratings. I am confident I can help you with this project.
After
Your checkout hangs on mobile Safari but not Chrome, which usually means a third-party script blocking the main thread before the payment iframe mounts. I would start by profiling the page on a real device rather than an emulator, because that difference rarely shows up in Chrome devtools.
Development is the one category where a client can verify a claim before they speak to you. They can open your deployed site. They can read your code. They can check whether the thing you said you built is actually live.
That is an advantage almost nobody uses. Most developer profiles read like a CV, which asks to be believed, in a category where being checked is available for free.
Lead with the problem, not the stack
A stack list is a claim every other developer in the search results also makes. A named problem is not. "I fix Shopify stores that got slow after a theme rebuild" is eligible for far fewer searches and wins nearly all of them, which is the same trade the profile playbook describes in general terms.
Keep the stack. Put it a line lower, where a client checking compatibility will find it, and stop letting it be the first thing that speaks.
Make your portfolio checkable
- A link that opens today. Not a case study about a link. If the client's site is gone, say so and link to something that is not.
- The constraint, not the feature list. "Legacy Rails 4 app, no tests, could not take downtime" tells a client more about you than the feature you shipped.
- One number if you have one. Load time, error rate, queue depth. If you do not have one, say what stopped happening.
- Code they are allowed to read. A small clean repository beats a large private one you can only describe.
Do not show code in the proposal
It proves competence to the minority of clients who can read it and shuts out everyone else, including the person deciding. Save it for the conversation, where they have already decided they want to be convinced.
Where the money actually is
The jobs that pay well in this category are not the greenfield builds. They are the rescues: something already in production, already earning, already broken, with a client who can feel the cost of it every day. Those clients are not comparing quotes, they are looking for someone who has seen this before.
Positioning for rescue work rather than build work is usually a rate increase without a price conversation, which is the mechanism behind raising your rate.
What developers ask
No. The skills list decides which searches include you, so a long one aims you at work you do not want. List what you want to be hired for and let the conversation cover the rest.
Write the problem and the decision without naming the client or showing the interface. "A logistics dashboard that had to work offline for drivers with no signal" is specific, says nothing confidential, and is far better than an empty portfolio.
It helps, and it helps most when it is small and deliberate. Three clean repositories with readmes that explain a decision beat forty abandoned forks.
Not quite your line of work?
Find out what your profile is costing you
Seven questions, no account. You get a score, the three gaps costing you the most, and what to do about each one.