WebDev Indie

I received an email from someone recently:

… someone just contacted me about a consulting gig. It would be a 1 day thing of teaching and the like followed by an hour or two here or there. What type of rate should I charge for that kind of work?

An actual dollar amount is hard to arrive at and has a number of factors in it beyond the scope of this particular blog post – competition, your own minimum needs, etc.  However, I wanted to share part of my response as well, as it’s advice I find myself giving more often these days.

What I would suggest is coming up with 2-4 rates.

• 1 day rate
• 1 half day rate
• 1 hourly rate
• 1 weekly rate

You can just make the others a direct multiple of a base hourly rate, or offer discounts.  $50/hour would be $400/day and $2000/week, but a $350/day and $1500/week might be more palatable for people who want your undivided attention for those time periods (and make sure it’s pretty undivided – minimum 8 full hours per ‘full day’, for example).

This hackernews post makes it sound like independent consulting is almost all negative!  I certainly realize it’s a poll, and they’re wanting to talk about pain points, but I have to say that half of those options have little or nothing to do with being a freelancer.  ”Getting good requirements” and “scope creep” are almost two sides of the same coin, and affect everyone in any sort of web development arena – dare I say, many in other service professions as well.  These also go hand-in-hand somewhat – once a client understands a rate (hourly, weekly, daily, whatever), the inevitable ‘scope creep’ will have a way of modifying itself to a degree.  But, change is inevitable, and (within reason) as long as the client understands the changes will cost more, I’m generally fine with it.  I did say “within reason” because we’ve probably all had the project that dragged on with no end in site due to changing requirements, but hopefully we all have few of those

So, turning this around, what do you love about contracting?

Freedom/flexibility?  Financial rewards?  New/exciting challenges on a regular basis?  Something else?  All of the above?  :)

This is the perennial question, and I got to thinking about this a bit more recently after a few events over the past couple of weeks.

Firstly, there was a HackerNews article asking the same question.  This was someone from Europe asking about going freelance – as in ‘right now’, not some theoretically murky “in the future”.  His reasons were twofold:

A) I want to be able to call my own shots in how I spend my time. The commute is killing me, for one thing. B) I also want to bootstrap my own products.

Both admirable reasons, and yet there’s other aspects to consider.  Health insurance is always a big one, especially for US-based workers.  This poster was from a European country with a more generous health safety net than we have in the US, so that seemed a non-issue.  Secondly, the poster had about 6 months of savings set aside, which is admirable, although from my perspective possibly not enough.  Thirdly, the poster was assuming he’d be able to charge $100-$150/hr (USD) for his time.  While it may be *worth* that, without a strong personal referral network, it’s not simple to get those rates (otherwise everyone would be getting them!).

The consensus seemed to be – go for it, with caution, try to get some paying client work in the door before you quit, and get more savings lined up.  I’d encourage you to read through the comments there – there’s some good food for thought if you’re considering taking the leap, either full or part time.

Two other recent situations cropped up with friends of mine, which I’d like to share.

One friend had quit a full time (though rather low-paying) job to “go freelance”.  He’s a capable web developer, with solid skills in Java, C# and PHP, along with decent JS and CSS.  However, he was having a hard time finding work.  He got in to a financial situation where money was running out fast, and he started panicking, taking on demonstrably bad deals, then not getting paid, or getting raked over the coals on payments/rates/etc.  In short, he was spiralling downwards.  The good news is that he’s taken on a fulltime role – working remotely – and I think this will allow him to get settled financially again.  I know there were lessons to be learned in his recent experiences, and I hope he’s learned at least some of them.

Having been in situations like that before, I have to say that decisions I’ve made where money is a prime motivator (running low, in debt, need the money *now*) have been the worst professional decisions I’ve ever made.  The consequences of those decisions have almost universally been bad, and it’s made me far more cautious (possibly moreso than I *should* be) with money and clients.  It’ll take me a while before I’m ever close to as freewheeling as I used to be.

Another friend of mine recently parted ways with the company he was at fulltime, and is now ‘on the market’.  The upside is that the market’s pretty hot right now in our area, and he’s got solid Java and PHP skills to offer.  The downside is that he’s got a mortgage and family, and from what I gather, not a lot of reserve savings.  I’ve been in those situations before, and the jobs I’ve taken were primarily motivated by money.  The results?  See above.  I hope it works out differently for him.

How does his situation relate to freelancing/consulting?  Personally, I think he’d be a great fit for this working style.  He’s got senior-level experience to offer, a great perspective that combines traditional tech skills and a variety of non-tech skills, and so on.  The primary issue is stable income.  Without strong reserves, he’s not someone who can easily work with an infrequent income.   I’ve grown in to weeks without payments, then large numbers of checks all coming in at once.  It’s just the nature of the business.  However, for someone with small kids and a house to maintain, it’s a much harder world to break in to.

How did you manage the transition from fulltime W2 employment to fulltime freelance?  Did you have much in savings, or did you just take a leap of faith?

In my earlier post, I outlined a couple techniques which have worked for me in finding clients.  More precisely, these were mostly network building techniques that pay off over time – I’ve still not found a ‘quick fix’ that has ever led to quality clients.  No doubt those techniques may exist, or work for some people, but the successes I’ve had have come primarily from networking over the long haul  That said, a friend of mine tipped me off to a technique he’s been using over the last year or so, and I thought I’d share it here.

My friend was an independent web developer, basically taking any sort of web work that came his way.  He partnered with some friends and started focusing on social media a couple years back, but hit some issues and that partnership split up.  He was back to working on his own.  He did get a bit of work from a small design agency, and he started to spend some more time networking with other small design agencies.  The work started to flood in.  He was focused on providing web services to a particular sector of his geographic market, stuck to that, and it’s worked like a champ for him.  He now employs two developers, and may be expanding more soon to deal with the workload.

I’ve heard it said a number of times – focus.  It’s been great to hear/see him succeeding with that technique – finding a small subset of a market and focusing on that.  It’s not been something *I* personally have been able to bring myself to do yet.  To the extent that you focus, you have to say ‘no’ to some types of work, and while I do occasionally say ‘no’ to work, I’ve not made a strong commitment to one specific direction yet.  In taking stock of things over the last few months, I have noticed that a larger portion of my work is coming from the education sector, and if some more opportunities present themselves, this may be the industry to focus on.

For those of you who’ve found success by using laser-focus on a particular niche, congratulations.  For those of you who still struggle with defining your direction, you’re not alone 

How do you find client?

As I’ve mentioned before, a common question I get from people interested in making the jump to freelance/indie web development work is “how do I find clients?”.  I’ll describe a few approaches that have worked for me, but will start with the leading one.

Network
Like most things in life, there’s no shortcut to success, and networking is typically a ‘long view’ play – you won’t have your pipeline filled overnight via networking.  However, I can attest that it pays off.

I first moved to this area over 5 years ago, and began to involve myself in local user groups in early 2006, and made some connections.  In late 2007 I went ‘full time independent’, on the strength of one potentially long term engagement.  That didn’t work out entirely, and even when it did it was less than full time, so I found myself with some spare hours.  One of my 2006 contacts reached out and said he had some work.  He put me in touch with an org, and I did a small project for them.  That led to handing off that entire project to their client, and I’ve worked directly with that client for 3 years now.  In addition, I picked up some more projects over the years from that original contact’s organization.

Here’s where it gets interesting.  That particular organization is being folded in to its parent organization, and there’s been a number of layoffs and dispersals.  The old team I worked with has been disbanded.  But people from that team have contacted me at their new respective organizations, and I may end up having 2-3 “new” clients from the original one.  All of this sprang from an original meeting at a user group in 2006.  Over the last few years, that one connection has amounted to six figures of work.

Not *all* connections have been that successful, but that’s not quite the point.  Many have the potential, and if I was a bit more proactive about actually following up with people, it may be even moreso.  I just haven’t given it much effort so far.

Another chance encounter at a conference in January 2008 led to a phone call in August 2008, which has led to a steady stream of ongoing, low effort work which has resulted in a sizeable chunk of money over the past few years.  While certainly a chance enounter, this person already knew my voice from my podcast series (webdevradio.com).  Having a reputation, however small, helps enormously.  You’re a bit of a known quantity, and people feel like they know you already.  Whether through a podcast or regular blogging, people can get an idea of what you’re like even before meeting with you, and can convince themselves they want to use you over others.  There are a number of freelancers I know by blog only, but if the time came for someone with their skills, those are the people I’d want to reach out to first, and if they’re busy, I’d take their recommendations.

That may be another way to get work – find someone who’s got too much, and befriend them.  I’ve referred work to some of my podcast listeners in the past few years, simply because they reached out and initiated a relationship with me.  They’re not going to retire millionaires in the next few months but I’ve tried to make it work their while.

I’ve got a couple more points I’ll make in a future post.  In the meantime, what’s worked for you?