4 ms·

Freelancer does much, much worse things for your business by dint of using Freelancer than any of the problems you have written about above. You're tolerating

by patio11 12y ago

Freelancer does much, much worse things for your business by dint of using Freelancer than any of the problems you have written about above. You're tolerating a 50%+++ discount to your easily achievable potential rate every day. Next to that, $25 is nothing. You're optimizing your business to churn out $X00 projects for clients who are, out of the universe of consulting clients, pretty bad. Your projects are, structurally, not going to leave you with any impressive accomplishments which you could take to other potential clients to justify your newer, higher rates. You're overwhelmingly going to be stuck doing the most boring work possible with your skill set. You're tolerating a higher than average amount of "patholgoical customers" in your client pool -- people who have no business managing a software development project, with unreasonable expectations, poor managerial skills, and the ability to stiff you for virtually any reason. You should start prospecting for clients yourself. You'll have a minor hit in billing efficiency while learning how to do this, but then be able to start selling days/weeks at a time of availability at actual professional rates rather than competing with people charging $10 to $20 an hour. Turn some of those clients into referrals and some into recurring engagements / retainers / etc, and your business will be much, much more stable, more lucrative, and less stressful.

true_religion 12y ago
Where are you supposed to find clients if you're just starting out, and have no reputation?
- jcmurrayii 12y ago
  There are many many many places to find clients. patio11 talks about it some in his writings/podcasts/etc. Brennan Dunn talks about it heavily in his Consultancy Masterclass. But here is a tidbit for free. Join your local chamber of commerce. Set up a small seminar on a topic closely related to what you do. Invite local business owners to it (do it for free if you can, or charge a small amount..depends on how well established you are). GIVE THEM ALL THE INFORMATION THEY WOULD NEED TO DO WHATEVER IT IS YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. Pass out your email address, and let business owners contact you. You will have stablished your knowledge and authority, and even though you gave them a 4 hour speech on how to do internet marketing (or whatever), they wont have the time or comfort level to do it themselves...but now they will know one person who can. Just one way to get started.
  - jmacdotorg 12y ago
    Strong agree on there being many places to find clients. I began my own freelance career by browsing http://jobs.perl.org http://jobs.perl.org and responding to the more interesting requests for contract work. That was like 7 years ago; pretty much everything I've done since then has been through referrals. It's just a question of getting yourself kickstarted. There's plenty of great clients out there who need help, and aren't using crappy lowest-bidder sites (because they care about good work and are willing to pay for it). Good luck... you can do it.
- patio11 12y ago
  It's not like business owners will stop talking to you if they find out your Klout score. Can you identify a business in your town which has previously purchased software development services? If not, go to a meetup, ask the people selling software development services who they have previously worked for. An alternative: to a first approximation, any business with both millions in revenue and which pays for any professional services can also purchase software development services. Learn to estimate the revenue of a business from the outside (great life skill for consulting). One simple heuristic is "White collar employee count times $200k." Can you identify a business in your town which has 5+ white collar employees? Great. Let's say you have a financial adviser firm in your neighborhood which has 8 white collar employees. Can you describe how a financial adviser makes money? If this isn't obvious to you from a lifetime of reading the Wall Street Journal, the answer is Googleable. Find the guy at the firm who would have the authority to hire you. (At a firm with 8 people, "owner" is a fairly strong bet. You can identify him pretty easily, since he's plastered all over their website.) Talk to him. At a financial adviser firm, since his primary job is going to be sales, talking to him is really easy. You call them up and say "Hiya, I'm a software developer living in town and would like to speak to Bob. I read about him on the Internet and want to talk about financial advising." I predict a 98% success rate at successfully speaking to Bob. You then talk to Bob like two business owners who each can learn something from the other. You can learn a lot about Bob about the financial advising industry. Bob can learn a lot from you about e.g. wild and whacky things computers can do these days, like email people. After you have learned from Bob how his firm works, you say "That's great, but there exist ways to make that even better with a bit of elbow grease. Let me outline how I'd get you more rich clients, directly increasing your revenue. It gets technical but the brief description is [pitch project here]. Interested in talking about this further?"
  - cdr 12y ago
    So basically "find work locally"? That seems to ignore that (AFAIK) most people use Freelancer et al because it's remote work, because they live in a less developed country or rural area with poor-paying/nonexistent local work.
    - 12y ago
- keslert 12y ago
  FreelanceInbox.com can help with the finding clients and some of the jobs are small enough you wouldn't need a large reputation to successfully land one. Without a nice portfolio though you would need to work on a polished pitch. Completing personal projects is also a good way to pad your portfolio and show you're passionate about development. *Full disclosure: I'm the founder of FreelanceInbox.
- 147 12y ago
  I'm in the same situation and I've written a few blog posts on my experiences so far. How NOT to get your first freelancing client: http://christopherdbui.com/how-not-to-get-your-first-freelancing-client/ http://christopherdbui.com/how-not-to-get-your-first-freelan... That post contains things I've tried that have all been unsuccessful, like buying ads... Don't waste your time and money on that stuff. What I learned from Brennan Dunn on Freelancing: http://christopherdbui.com/what-i-learned-from-brennan-dunn-on-freelancing/ http://christopherdbui.com/what-i-learned-from-brennan-dunn-... This post talks about the lessons I've learned from Brennan Dunn via reading his content on freelancing/consulting. Talks about how I went to meetups and got a few leads. Although, the two leads I've gotten from the meetups haven't turned into anything. I should write an update on that. Hope sharing my experiences helps others save time not making the same mistakes.
aantix 12y ago
+1 for patio. The quality of client is generally correlated with your rate. Learn to hustle and find the very clients that need your services most. This skill will serve you well the rest of your life.
- at-fates-hands 12y ago
  Better yet, find a niche market that needs your talents the most. If you stay in a niche, word gets around a lot faster than trying to focus on everybody. If you do good work, eventually the business will come to you instead of you having to hustle for it. Once you own your niche market, rinse and repeat as necessary.
  - busterarm 12y ago
    Very much this. Many, many, many years ago when I made my living doing freelance tech support/AV for hire, I lucked into a well known recording artist as a client who needed some help with the computer equipment in his studio. My rate was already $80/hr before working with this client but word quickly got around and I had more clients than I could manage. I upped my rate to $160/hr and coasted on this for a couple of years.
carlchenet 12y ago
I fully agree.

by patio11 12y ago

true_religion 12y ago

Where are you supposed to find clients if you're just starting out, and have no reputation?

jcmurrayii 12y ago
There are many many many places to find clients. patio11 talks about it some in his writings/podcasts/etc. Brennan Dunn talks about it heavily in his Consultancy Masterclass. But here is a tidbit for free. Join your local chamber of commerce. Set up a small seminar on a topic closely related to what you do. Invite local business owners to it (do it for free if you can, or charge a small amount..depends on how well established you are). GIVE THEM ALL THE INFORMATION THEY WOULD NEED TO DO WHATEVER IT IS YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. Pass out your email address, and let business owners contact you. You will have stablished your knowledge and authority, and even though you gave them a 4 hour speech on how to do internet marketing (or whatever), they wont have the time or comfort level to do it themselves...but now they will know one person who can. Just one way to get started.
- jmacdotorg 12y ago
  Strong agree on there being many places to find clients. I began my own freelance career by browsing http://jobs.perl.org http://jobs.perl.org and responding to the more interesting requests for contract work. That was like 7 years ago; pretty much everything I've done since then has been through referrals. It's just a question of getting yourself kickstarted. There's plenty of great clients out there who need help, and aren't using crappy lowest-bidder sites (because they care about good work and are willing to pay for it). Good luck... you can do it.
patio11 12y ago
It's not like business owners will stop talking to you if they find out your Klout score. Can you identify a business in your town which has previously purchased software development services? If not, go to a meetup, ask the people selling software development services who they have previously worked for. An alternative: to a first approximation, any business with both millions in revenue and which pays for any professional services can also purchase software development services. Learn to estimate the revenue of a business from the outside (great life skill for consulting). One simple heuristic is "White collar employee count times $200k." Can you identify a business in your town which has 5+ white collar employees? Great. Let's say you have a financial adviser firm in your neighborhood which has 8 white collar employees. Can you describe how a financial adviser makes money? If this isn't obvious to you from a lifetime of reading the Wall Street Journal, the answer is Googleable. Find the guy at the firm who would have the authority to hire you. (At a firm with 8 people, "owner" is a fairly strong bet. You can identify him pretty easily, since he's plastered all over their website.) Talk to him. At a financial adviser firm, since his primary job is going to be sales, talking to him is really easy. You call them up and say "Hiya, I'm a software developer living in town and would like to speak to Bob. I read about him on the Internet and want to talk about financial advising." I predict a 98% success rate at successfully speaking to Bob. You then talk to Bob like two business owners who each can learn something from the other. You can learn a lot about Bob about the financial advising industry. Bob can learn a lot from you about e.g. wild and whacky things computers can do these days, like email people. After you have learned from Bob how his firm works, you say "That's great, but there exist ways to make that even better with a bit of elbow grease. Let me outline how I'd get you more rich clients, directly increasing your revenue. It gets technical but the brief description is [pitch project here]. Interested in talking about this further?"
- cdr 12y ago
  So basically "find work locally"? That seems to ignore that (AFAIK) most people use Freelancer et al because it's remote work, because they live in a less developed country or rural area with poor-paying/nonexistent local work.
  - 12y ago
keslert 12y ago
FreelanceInbox.com can help with the finding clients and some of the jobs are small enough you wouldn't need a large reputation to successfully land one. Without a nice portfolio though you would need to work on a polished pitch. Completing personal projects is also a good way to pad your portfolio and show you're passionate about development. *Full disclosure: I'm the founder of FreelanceInbox.
147 12y ago
I'm in the same situation and I've written a few blog posts on my experiences so far. How NOT to get your first freelancing client: http://christopherdbui.com/how-not-to-get-your-first-freelancing-client/ http://christopherdbui.com/how-not-to-get-your-first-freelan... That post contains things I've tried that have all been unsuccessful, like buying ads... Don't waste your time and money on that stuff. What I learned from Brennan Dunn on Freelancing: http://christopherdbui.com/what-i-learned-from-brennan-dunn-on-freelancing/ http://christopherdbui.com/what-i-learned-from-brennan-dunn-... This post talks about the lessons I've learned from Brennan Dunn via reading his content on freelancing/consulting. Talks about how I went to meetups and got a few leads. Although, the two leads I've gotten from the meetups haven't turned into anything. I should write an update on that. Hope sharing my experiences helps others save time not making the same mistakes.

aantix 12y ago

+1 for patio. The quality of client is generally correlated with your rate. Learn to hustle and find the very clients that need your services most. This skill will serve you well the rest of your life.

at-fates-hands 12y ago
Better yet, find a niche market that needs your talents the most. If you stay in a niche, word gets around a lot faster than trying to focus on everybody. If you do good work, eventually the business will come to you instead of you having to hustle for it. Once you own your niche market, rinse and repeat as necessary.
- busterarm 12y ago
  Very much this. Many, many, many years ago when I made my living doing freelance tech support/AV for hire, I lucked into a well known recording artist as a client who needed some help with the computer equipment in his studio. My rate was already $80/hr before working with this client but word quickly got around and I had more clients than I could manage. I upped my rate to $160/hr and coasted on this for a couple of years.

carlchenet 12y ago

I fully agree.