My first month freelancing

http://alanhollis.com/first-month-freelancing/

by Alan01252 • 14 years ago

191 119 14 years ago

Sounds good are you enjoying it so far, compared to full time work? I am just starting up this month freelancing/contracting for iOS apps so hopefully I can find some work.

Alan0125213• 14 years ago

It's going well so far, I've had some really down days, just sending out emails and getting no responses. Or getting close to a project starting and it not happening. Fortunately it's all worked itself out in the end. I've been lucky!

superprime• 14 years ago

it sounds like you've also been persistent.

Killswitch• 14 years ago

Nice post... I used to do freelance a few years ago, now I am building my own stuff. Thought about doing freelance again so I can leave my day job, but I'm iffy on it as it's not stable reliable income.

smoyer• 14 years ago

I think there's really only one thing to say when you've got such a short time under your belt:

Don't give up and your persistence will pay off. Good luck!

tptacek12• 14 years ago

People want to pay you hourly/per project, convince them it’s better for both you and them to pay you daily. I’ll explain why in a future post.

I've burned many thousands of words here arguing the same point and will hopefully be able to spare you all a retread, so let me just say that I think a lot of good habits and useful dynamics emerge organically from this one decision.

If you make no other careful strategic decisions about your consulting business, make this one: bill daily.

arellanv• 14 years ago

"I’ll explain why in a future post."

The suspense is killing me. Now I want to know sooner than later haha.

sequoia3• 14 years ago

link or something? I'm also curious.

thechangelog• 14 years ago

Here's one of the times: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3420303

sant0sk12• 14 years ago

I've brought up daily billing to a few potential clients and am always met with resistance to the idea.

I've instead tried structuring my fees to promote long-term engagements.

So I have an hourly rate (highest), day rate (little lower), week rate (little lower), and month rate (lowest). This is working out okay so far, but it sure requires a lot of explaining up front and I'm probably losing out on potential income for longer engagements.

The key is to have your lowest rate still be something that you're willing to work at, or the whole system falls apart.

Has anybody else tried a similar rate strategy? How'd it go for you?

tptacek12• 14 years ago

There are two common consulting arrangements in which a customer gets a discount for a commitment.

The first is a retainer. Retainer hours come at a significant discount because they might not get used, but are billed regardless.

The second is long-term forward-looking commitment. A monthly rate is at the short side of long-term commitment; a multi-month project feels like a more typical discounted commitment.

You should not discount for daily or weekly commitments. Daily and weekly rates are industry standard. When you offer a discount on a daily rate, you are effectively communicating a willingness to negotiate your underlying rate.

If there's a second strategic decision I want to urge everyone to make, it is "NEVER NEGOTIATE YOUR RATE". With a savvy customer, you will never get any concession on your rate back; once you establish a new floor, that floor is likely to remain there forever. This is the case at big companies and small ones, but be aware that this is such a common dynamic that Fortune 500 companies have people whose performance is evaluated by how effectively they hold the line on bill rates.

If you have to negotiate, negotiate over the total price of the engagement. I know your nerd brain can't separate the total for a project from what the hourly for that project works out to, but they are very much not the same thing.

I am generally of the mind that your rate structure is your rate structure. Clients want to push back on all sorts of stuff. They also want you to sign their master agreements unmolested. Learn to say "no" professionally: to quickly find ways to accomodate your customer's underlying concerns without budging on your price structure.

marcamillion14• 14 years ago

Do you mean 'quoting' daily, or 'billing' daily?

There is a major difference. The main one being that if 'bill daily' you are putting a burden on your client to have to think about paying you every single day. At some point, it becomes annoying.

Thoughts?

tptacek12• 14 years ago

I just mean don't have an hourly rate.

patio114• 14 years ago

Quoted daily ("Work is on a time and materials basis. Rate: $2,000 per day."). Invoices will typically cover a few weeks of work, depending on the tempo of your engagements, your relationship with a customer, etc.

lotharbot2• 14 years ago

I would phrase this as "bill based on your natural work increment".

If you're working at the thrift store putting price tags on shirts, your timeclock is probably in 5 minute increments. If you're a defense contractor bidding on a major combat platform, your minimum increment is probably ten engineers worth of salary. Anything smaller than "the increment" is probably a rounding error, which is a headache for both parties to track.

For independent software engineers and consultants, I can see reason to bill hourly, half-days, days, or weeks -- based on what's "standard" in terms of project size and work flow for you.

tptacek12• 14 years ago

Your natural work increment and your fee structure are not the same thing. When you freelance, you aren't being compensated solely for your effort; you are providing much more value than that. Factors that go into freelancers getting paid more include:

* Access to talent on predefined schedule

* Minimal commitment to that talent, instead of a year of salary

* Allocation of that talent to your projects as opposed to some other company's projects

* Ramp-up

* Ramp-down

* Travel and/or logistics & communications overhead

* Invoicing and receivables overhead

It is a really pernicious meme that developers should consider billing hourly because they work hourly. When you switch from salaried work to freelancing, you need to start thinking of your work product as a product, not simply the output of your brain connected to a keyboard for fixed periods of time. You don't price a product based on its raw cost structure; you price it according to the value it provides to customers.

noahc• 14 years ago

How much of your advice do you think is applicable to freelancers who moonlight on occasion. Do you think anyone would go for a 'nights and weekends' ( 25 hours ) weekly rate?

dools• 14 years ago

I bill hourly for some clients, daily for others and fixed project basis for others. My hourly clients are some of my best.

If you don't have systems setup for tracking time without overhead and producing invoices on that basis it can be difficult but we do so it works really well.

I think your repeated flogging of this particular dead horse is mis-guided and mis-leading.

cygwin98• 14 years ago

Late to this discussion.

Here is my take.

From the consultant's perspective. Bill hourly means more time spent on bookkeeping and less time spent on actual development. Say, you spent 8 hours in a day, you need to put 5 minutes per hour for bookkeeping. In total, that's 40minutes of unproductive time. If you bill daily, you can spend maybe 20 minutes doing so. That's 20minutes more saved for coding. If bill hourly implies more multitasking switching among multiple projects, the context-switching time can easily to add 10minutes per hour wasted. That's why it's more cost-effective for the customer if they agree on bill daily.

However, the customer may have different opinion. If a project needs 12hours to implement, bill daily means they have to overpay extra 4hours (2days = 16hours, assume 8hours per day), which they don't like.

A geeky analogy. When you initialize a hard drive partition with file system, you need to slice it into a large number of blocks. Smaller block size such as 4KB is more space-efficient than bigger ones such as 64KB. However, it's less efficient in terms of throughput. Of course, it depends on the pattern of your file usage. If most of the files are small files, small block works perfect without performance penalty. If most are big multimedia files, then big block size is preferred. You can easily map this to the case of consulting gigs.

So, it's more like a psychological thing. Bill daily encourages bigger projects, better project planning, less turn-over, and may lead to better results, which consequently cultivates long-term relationship.

HyprMusic• 14 years ago

As someone who used to rely solely on freelance income, but having wound up freelancing full time at a consultancy company, it's refreshing to hear your experiences. I often dream of going back to freelancing and working on my own side-projects, but I fear that I won't have as much luck as I did before in getting new work.

throwaway1979• 14 years ago

I'm impressed with your persistance! For the activities you list in "How I found work" ... did you start these before the first month? I'm curious how long it takes to get work flowing through the pipeline.

The blog seems interesting and I wish you the best of luck. I think I hit a bug though ... When I make the font larger/smaller, the different elements of the screen move around and reposition themselves for a few seconds after. Also, the code samples disappear in an hap hazard manner. Am using Chrome on a MacBook Pro.

Alan0125213• 14 years ago

Absolutely everything was started from April 21'st. Which is the date I returned from 8 months travelling. It took me a few weeks to get into a routine again and see friends, family etc. The first blog post was published on 2012/05/03 which is when I started really hunting for work, so it has been just over a month in total.

Thanks for the bug reports. I'll investigate as soon as the site calms down a bit. :)

benholmen• 14 years ago

I tried to subscribe to your site in Google Reader but it could not detect your feed. Since you're running Wordpress I was able to locate http://alanhollis.com/feed/ but you should probably add some link tags in your header that indicate the location of your RSS feed.

I'm eager to hear more about your progress. Good luck!

alinajaf4• 14 years ago

Great post. I'm in London and started freelancing a few months ago and I'd agree with everything you've said. Only things I would suggest:

* Contracts. Watch this talk by Obie Fernandez[1] and take a look at his Master Services Agreement + Statement of Work bundle (paid for, but totally worth it). Not only does it protect you to some extent legally but you come across as a lot more professional to clients.

* Charge more. I have a comparable amount of experience and I'm charging around double what you've listed on your price card. Many good things fall out of charging more. Even if you don't intend to charge a higher rate, I would at least quote higher on your price card page for more negotiation room.

Good hunting!

[1] http://www.infoq.com/presentations/fernandez-sales-do-the-hu...

Alan0125213• 14 years ago

Thanks for this alinajaf.

Pricing is tricky. I've already been turned down by a few companies at my current rate because I was too expensive. This put me off raising it higher. I'm still unsure as to whether having pricing on the website is a good thing or not, it's always tricky to know what to sell yourself for.

alinajaf4• 14 years ago

> I've already been turned down by a few companies at my current rate because I was too expensive.

In this market, you really, really really are not too expensive.

Some concrete sources for PHP work:

* http://hackerjobs.co.uk/ - Quality of clients that advertise there is generally high.

* If you don't mind dealing with recruiters, cwjobs.co.uk will happily email you a steady stream of PHP contracts at the £350+/day range.

* The big publishing companies seemed to be hiring both fulltime and contract staff in perpetuity. I'd follow up at PHP London, as they seem to hang around there.

You should be going to PHP London anyway, with business cards (side rant: not a single freelance developer I've met at a meetup has had a business card on hand. The same developers complain about how hard it is to find work. Don't be one of these developers).

> This put me off raising it higher

I know the feeling. There are clients in the world that can afford higher rates, but it's hard to remember this if you get turned down a few times in a row.

If you're nervous about raising your rates, I would suggest that you try raising the quote by £50 at every interview you go to. If it's too expensive for the client and you really need the work, you can always invite negotiation.

Other than that just stick to your guns, and remember that there are economic situations that clients can be in such they can afford to pay quadruple your daily rate without raising an eyebrow.

If you'd like to grab a beverage sometime and talk shop, details are on my profile :)

moystard• 14 years ago

I keep the thought in my head of freelancing in the future, and whether I will do it or not, it is always nice to read about the starting of the business.

I will follow your blog to see if you give more details about how you found your initial contracts, why should you ask to be paid daily, and how your enterprise will evolve on the mid-term.

Thank you anyway for sharing these details.

nollidge• 14 years ago

Looked at another article on your blog [0] and the Crayon plugin acts really strangely in Chrome/Win7. As I mouse over a code block it keeps disappearing and reappearing.

EDIT: Also...where's the RSS link? If I just follow on Twitter, I'll probably miss any updates.

[0] http://alanhollis.com/silicon-milkroundabout-coding-competit...

ilija139• 14 years ago

So you actually only worked for 7 days? (£1,785.25 / 250 ~ 7)

Also you say you entered a programming competition, can you share which and why you chose that one?

Alan0125213• 14 years ago

A bit more than than that, unfortunately I haven't got exactly £250 from every client so far. And finding work, is work ;). I have had to negotiate as it's early days, and work for a reduced rate is better than no work. I haven't yet taken the first offer any company has offered me though, hence my advice in the post to negotiate.

I entered a competition ran by a company supporting http://siliconmilkroundabout.com/, purely because the competition appealed to me, I had some free time, and I thought it would be a good way of promoting myself before the event. Unfortunately the competition wasn't as successful as I hoped it would be (very few entries). I came second overall, it's another example of work on my github profile, and I got to play with Python for the fist time, so it was a positive experience.

nohup• 14 years ago

Great to hear about your progress.

I have been freelancing for the past 4 years and have done so for 6 years in my programming life of 11 years. All said and done, I find doing a honest job in estimation, no over billing and writing code to the best of your ability is the key to success.

Documenting your own knowledge helps a lot. Knowing what is the latest and greatest, even if you have never tried it helps in keeping your client informed about their choices.

Not living in your comfort zone is the best thing you can do to yourself. What I mean is, don't give your clients what you know, give them what is good for them even if that means you have to learn a new tool/trick/language.

Maintain a healthy pipeline, it helps in keeping the stress down.

On a day to day basis freelancing is more stressful then a regular job, but on an average over a month or quarter you will find it to be more relaxing and it lets have more time for yourself.

Best of luck.

garagemc2• 14 years ago

Speaking as person that hires freelance developers it would probably be helpful if, on your blog, you mentioned what languages and frameworks you can develop in.

Alan0125213• 14 years ago

Hi garagemc2. Where specifically were you looking so I can improve?

http://alanhollis.com/ has an overview of my skills. http://alanhollis.com/cv/ has more details of my experience.

marcamillion14• 14 years ago

I will ask a question here that I wrote on the original link, because I think it may be useful for others here.

I recently started freelancing (the last 12 - 18months) also, and one thing I did - to generate new business - was wrote a script that sends me a bunch of leads. Right now, it's primarily from Craigslist, but I will add other sources.

I showed it to a friend and fellow web dev and he loved it. So that made me start wondering if others would find a service like that useful.

Would you pay, say $9/mo, to get a handful of curated Craigslist leads (5 - 10) sent to your inbox every weekday?

Thanks.

P.S. The reason I would sell access to these leads is because I can't manage everything. There are some leads that want someone local, there are some that want say an iPhone or FB App developer - none of which I do.

alinajaf4• 14 years ago

It would depend entirely on the quality of the leads, though I'd definitely sign up for a one month free trial to test it out.

Many a thing like this exist, both paid and free. Jobpile has netted me some work in the past.

Jobpile: http://www.artypapers.com/jobpile/

marcamillion14• 14 years ago

Agreed. Admittedly - I am working on increasing the signal to noise ratio - but I never realized how valuable it was to have a constant stream of leads coming to me daily was, until I stopped doing it.

I am also thinking of finding a way to make the entire process more efficient - but all it takes is a handful of leads a year and it has more than paid for itself.

Does jobpile email you links - or is it just a search engine that you go to?

freshfey• 14 years ago

Count me in, I'd love to see what you came up with.

marcamillion14• 14 years ago

I wish I had a URL that you go to immediately and put in your email address.

Ok, will try and get that up asap =)

marcamillion14• 14 years ago

Here you go sir: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4144245

vitomd3• 14 years ago

This is similar http://freelancefunnel.com/

marcamillion14• 14 years ago

Thanks for this!

I guess this is just validation that the idea makes sense.

bravura• 14 years ago

If you have a bunch of leads sitting in your inbox, can you discuss how you rapidly qualify all your leads?

Surely there must be value around the process behind that.

[Aside: I'm on the fence about you selling this software. Once everyone has it, the value of it decreases, because everyone is competing for the same leads.]

marcamillion14• 14 years ago

The truth is, right now I just email the ones I am interested in. Some work out, some don't.

I definitely agree that there is value behind that process - and I have some ideas about how to solve that issue. But I first want to verify that there is a market-based need for the core product. Once people find it useful enough to pay for, then I will continue tweaking it and adding stuff on, etc.

I am not selling the software, I am just selling access to the leads. So you sign up, and my software sends you an email with 5 - 10 leads every single day.

I doubt that everybody will act on every single lead, every single day. Plus, I do agree that if we are to look at extreme cases - where I have as many freelancers as I can get, and everybody is replying to every lead - then the value of each lead decreases (or increases, depending on your perspective), but I will be tweaking it and adding sources and listening to feedback.

If the problem I am having is that too many people competing for the same leads, I think that would be a good problem to have :)

vitomd3• 14 years ago

I am a freelancer too, and this podcast it's really good. http://rubyfreelancers.com . For getting more clients ask your current client for referrals, if you made a good work they will be happy to help you. And use social media to maintan contact and reach other clients and freelancers (They too can send you some work )

stevejalim4• 14 years ago

Shameless, shameless plug alert: if you found Alan's post interesting, you may also like the book I've almost finished writing. Check out http://freelancedeveloperbook.com

The plan is to ship it before the end of June - am publishing via leanpub.com (great experience so far) and it'll be a paid-for book to cover the (many, many, _many_) hours I've put into it.

When it's ready, I'll make a sample available so you can try before you buy, and will be pulling out a dozen names from the early-sign-up hat for a free copy.

So, if you're interested, please do sign up.

Alan0125213• 14 years ago

I have signed up ;)

stevejalim4• 14 years ago

Ha, thanks Alan. Email me directly on devbook[at]somefantastic[dot]co[dot]uk so I can spot you in the sign-up list and I'll make sure you get a coupon for a free copy! :o)

kranner• 14 years ago

Looks interesting! Signed up and emailed you.

RBerenguel2• 14 years ago

Signed up (even if the iPad layout is quite horrible :/) As a jack of all trades freelancer (data analysis, web development, advertising, SEO, reporting...) I'm very interested :)

stevejalim4• 14 years ago

That's interesting - I just used launchrock's templates. Could you ping me a screengrab so I can see how it looks?

AjJi• 14 years ago

signed up too, looking forward to reading the book :)

philjones88• 14 years ago

Signed up too. I kind of started freelance work but like Alan's post, the c# freelance world was either "contract" or "permi".

Found some good guys to do work with now on a kind of "per project" approach which is good.

Interested to read the book as I found my weaknesses to be:

1. Charging for my work. I still find I undercharge as I enjoy the work and feel awkward asking for large amounts per billable hour. I'm now kind of trapped on low billable hours with my initial clients...

2. Finances. I've learnt enough and in the UK you can survive for the first 6 months without an accountant. I'm probably going to get one soon to handle the more complex tax/pay stuff.

3. Work out a proper hourly rate. Don't use the same broken formula I did thinking I can work 7 billable hours per day. I end up with about 4.5. I didn't account for the gaps between work. I now understand why freelancers have high rates.

stevejalim4• 14 years ago

Thanks Phil. That's exactly the kind of stuff I'm including in the book, although - as this thread proves - there is no cut-and-dried answer to rates/billing, so my approach is to set out a sensible baseline for stuff, to help people get up and running. As time goes on and feedback comes in, version 1.x of the book will probably take that further and provide more detail where people are asking for it. Because I'm publishing via leanpub.com, updates will be pushed to owners of 1.0 for free.

jere• 14 years ago

>There are a lot of failed companies with legacy code which now needs to be maintained.

If they were failed companies, they wouldn't need you to manage legacy code.

greyboy• 14 years ago

What he's saying is that there are plenty of companies who have purchased software from companies that have since folded. Obviously, any support from that defunct company would then also be gone.

startupstella• 14 years ago

I'm actually working on a project that would help freelancers get qualified leads by doing all the scopework/qualifying for them.

I've chatted with a few of you HNers about what you'd like to see, but I'd appreciate any more opinions for matchist.com in this quick survey: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFI4cjQ...

c250d07• 14 years ago

I know a few others doing freelance design work, and they're also pretty good. They are doing very well, but I think the market for freelance programmers is a different story right now.

wilhelm2• 14 years ago

> Get the specification of work nailed down as thoroughly as you can, it’s mutually beneficial to you and your customers.

I hate specs.

You won't know how to solve a problem before you've already solved it, so your spec will be wrong.

My customers pay for my time. Together, through an iterative process involving myself, the designers and the customer, we find good technical solutions to the problems they need solved.

I can tell them “this solution is difficult” or “this solution is trivial”, and they can judge the cost-benefit ratios along the way.

You've paid for 300 hours of my time. Let's make the most of that.

xiaoma2• 14 years ago

I've been job searching since moving to SF last month. As a junior-mid level guy with a pretty generalist background (non-web ruby, iOS, JS, even some flash games), I've gotten a ton of feelers from recruiters and companies alike, but most are looking for and even desperate for more senior people.

With a sense of impending doom, I got onto oDesk to do some consulting myself. What a humbling experience that has been! I must have gotten outbid on the first 10 jobs I went for, and finally had to take one at ~ $10/hour. With that experience it became easier to get a 2nd. I find myself a lot more impressed with the OP's first month than I would have before my own experience looking for freelance work.

Alan0125213• 14 years ago

Thanks Xioma,

It's interesting really as to when you start classifying yourself as senior? I didn't really think too much about it when I started applying for roles as I had gained that confidence in my own ability.

That being said, I was almost put off working for one company because I thought at the time I might not be experienced enough. This turned out not to be the case at all and I'm so thankful I rode it out rather than letting my own self doubt influence my decision.

There are going to be companies out there with people in "senior" positions with less experience/skills and talent than you. In some cases considerably less. Don't sell yourself short because of a label you've given yourself.

xiaoma2• 14 years ago

Thanks for the encouragement! In some cases there are pretty hard HR filters that look at my LinkedIn and see I only have 1 years as dev and was a pure business guy before that. In others, I truly don't have experience with all the stuff in their stack.

Where possible, I'll avoid the term junior for here on out.

My first month freelancing

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