* 100% money-back guarantee (no one has asked for it)
* Having an accountant
What did not work:
* Thorough proposal / contract documentation. I figured having detailed, in-depth scope of work showing I had knowledge of their industry, problems, etc, would help close deals. The teams that closed the fastest already knew they wanted to work with me, but the ones that weren't sold couldn't even be sold with excellent SOWs and proposal documentation.
* Having a lawyer. For a one-man consulting shop, you really don't need one. Most standard SOW/Contract/IP documents are easy enough to generate/find yourself.
* Toptal / Upwork / any of those race-to-the-bottom sites. There's great arbitrage if you're international like OP. But I'm in the US, and it's not worth the effort for US rates.
* Meetups. I just didn't invest time in them (yet). I think the next leap in rates will come from becoming more "well known" through blogging and speaking engagements, which this is a key area to invest in.
* All this "double your rate" business. Sure, I imagine this works if you're used to pulling in $50/hr, and I imagine Brennan Dunn and the sort are marketing themselves at more commoditized development. But trust me, people ran away when I doubled my rates. I had to find a sweet spot and build up my rates slowly per client rather than just assume I was wildly undervalued.
You also built one of my favorite unique sites (share latex).
I’m curious and have a few questions:
- how did you manage 5 prospects per day? That seems like an incredible amount of work that would break up my flow. Is this more like one day a week of hitting up 30 leads? Where did you find all of these prospects?
- why did you choose a 3 pronged approach of blog post, personal site AND consulting site? What’s the incremental value of the other two given one?
- can you describe, or give any links about value based fixed cost pricing?
I cannot speak about Toptal, but Upwork works pretty good. You just have to avoid silly jobs,be focused and perservere.
Disclaimer: I'm italian, working remote, strong focus on nodeJS and fintech, estimated revenue for 2018 (first year of freelancing full-time, not fully from Upwork): 360K$, working 220 days per year
What I teach is largely about repositioning yourself and focusing on the value you create vs just the tech. Not surprisingly, few freelancers focus on business outcomes. Higher budgets and pay are a natural side effect of doing that.
I'm assuming you transitioned into consulting from a corporate role. Were there any steps you took in preparation for that transition as well as any "exit criteria" before making the transition?
Impressive! Where do you look for new clients/projects? Do you contact possible clients and offer them your services or do the contact you based on your blog/consulting page?
That's a pretty great first year as a freelancer, maybe even an amazing first year. I'm in my 17th year and am tempted to think that if I started out like that, I'd be retired by now ;-)
My first year was like: "Client bought me a computer! That was amazing. Man these eMachines boxes are a steal. Got some software from school, too, and a former employer gave me Photoshop 4.5 on a CD. [Update a month later] Oh, I get it. People give you free stuff hoping not to have to pay you later."
The only client I landed, following the guidelines stated on the link (cover letter, etc), was for a very niche job (IoT/FPGA related). I undersold myself as it was my very first gig on Website.
The client ended up hiring me and another guy from Country. They explained what they had, what they wanted, and I explained the problems with their architecture and possible solutions. The other guy was like, yes, all can be done, yes, great idea, sure, it's easy, yes, of course, nothing is wrong, it's so smart.
I was constantly dropping quotations from RFCs, IEEE, FCC and recommending hardware choices for backing it up with documentation, but they consistently followed the other guy's advice, to the point of deploying extravagant and unnecessary hardware: think of a workstation plugged to a Zynq, plugged to 3 Arduinos, and a Stratix 10 in the middle with a plethora of custom circuits and transceivers attached kind of mess, just because the guy only could find libs and IPs that ran precisely on those devices to do the puzzle that he himself sold to the client. I suspect this was not out of pure incompetence, but an evolutionary way to make one seem expert and make the project take longer to cash in more money.
And all of this was ON REMOTE. We literally had to ask the remote office to verify connections, and status LEDs on the devices, and obviously debugging out of business hours was an absolute PITA.
The other guy was insanely productive, in a meaningless kind of way. Everything was documented but badly, some stuff had CAD, some hand drawn; the designs had some corner cases well thought and commented, while basic things completely overlooked. Half of the code was copied from OpenCores, Arduino examples, etc, and the other half didn't make any sense. The only way I could describe him is as a bored engineer on the 5th day of a meth binge.
One day I just snapped during an argument, calling their project "Internet of Spaghetti", and called it quits. Then the client contested all the hours I filed, and Website took their side, I assume because they had high rating and I had just started.
Then I went back to corporate, it's boring but I don't have to deal with such bullshit.
You are thinking like an engineer not like a businessman. I'm speaking from experience here as I have been (recently) guilty of the same thing and I assure you my case was much, much worse.
Engineers love to solve problems. They love it SO MUCH that they very often do it for free (see: opensource). You yourself said you 'underbid' the project. You were trying to solve a problem with logic, reason and an attempt to deliver a clean, well functioning, properly designed product.
Business do not care about those things. They care about 2 things:
1. Money
2. They want it to work
Your best defense against stupidity that has money is to collect money as often as possible. Get a deposit, stop working if they are late on payment, changes cost more, phone calls where I'm consulting to you costs money.
It's hard to hear, but the other guy kind of did it right. Save yourself a lifetime of lessons that I have learned (or stay in corporate) by simply treating every single client like you are running a business.
Be transparent about your unwavering focus on payment. You can do that and still be friendly by the way.
You (and I) think "I'll do an amazing job, this product will be clean, fast and standards compliant AND cheaper!"
And when you are done all they will say "does it work?"
The unclean truth is, customers don't care about well functioning, well designed code until NOT having it costs them money. See #1 above.
Of course you have the choice to not continue working with these types of clients, but, the truth is there's going to be some insanity in any business. Lessons are hard to learn and the best you can do is protect yourself and be honest, meaning, "This isn't the right way but it'll work and save you a few bucks, is that OK?"
Yeah a corporate job may be 'soul draining' but at least they are legally req. to pay you. This sudden interest and push to freelancing and gigs seems like a way to inure people to the loss of this ironclad right to get paid.
Seems like a problem with trying to remote for hardware in the first place? But this is a great example of how (remote) freelancing/consulting doesn't work for everything.
It's strange that this person didn't also describe the lessons they'd learned about Content Marketing, but I guess it doesn't work if you point that out.
> Silvestar is a fearless web developer and consultant, JAMstack enthusiast and Wordpress coder currently available for hire.
This person may have accidentally reinvented content marketing but they aren’t implementing a known good strategy. They are a web developer, a coder, available for hire. They say they’re a consultant, which is nice but they don’t understand the difference between a consultant and a contractor. A consultant is way more expensive. If this person has a marketing position or a niche I don’t know what it is. I’m completely convinced they’re a good web developer but they don’t have a market position more differentiated than “I build websites”.
From looking at their submission history, it seems this is the first "hit" they had, so content marketing probably hasn't helped much... until now.
FWIW my own pipeline of consulting clients relies solely on introductions and blogging ("content marketing" but much less formal). I continue to encourage new freelancers/consultants to write and share their knowledge more often.
I'm in my first month freelancing. The last time I wasn't in a full-time job was when I was running a small web design company in the 90s (it still exists and is run by @prawn).
Finding work was not difficult – I was lucky enough to book all of my capacity from day one. The biggest challenge I've had so far is managing my time across clients, and adjusting to not having a team.
A developer for Toptal tops out at $3,200 a week? $80 an hour is peanuts in software engineering and they certainly aren't attracting the entire "top 3%" of "experts in the field" with such a low, max rate.
https://www.toptal.com/faq#how-much-does-toptal-cost
Keep in mind that Toptal keeps a significant chunk of that so a developer is left with much less. I am on Toptal platform myself and think that it's most suited for those like me that are from countries with a relatively cheap cost of living.
In maybe 3 or 4 cities worldwide, sure, you might be right. That leaves plenty locations where $80 per hour is insanely well paid. And most folks live in those other locations - including some top-3% experts!
I'm not in Toptal, but a friend is and he asks for around $5k a month. Here in Brazil it's insanely good. I don't personally know anyone else who receives more than him here, actually. In software dev or anything else. I don't go around asking how much people make, though.
For citizens of developed countries, freelancing seems like too much work for little pay. for coding and web work you're computing with foreigners who can do the job at a much lower price. Bidding process creates a race to the bottom
If you're in a situation where you're competing with low cost foreigners on price, then you're doing it wrong. There is a huge market for freelance software engineers who are based in the U.S. and speak English (or who are based in Germany and speak German, or whatever). If you have a client who will benefit 5x+ from the money they pay you, they don't really care that there is somebody in Eastern Europe or India who will do the work for 1/3rd the cost; the overriding importance is on getting the work done well and quickly. Fluent communication is critical to this.
You just have to find the clients (the hard part). What has worked for me is making myself visible inside of my particular niche, then forming relationships with established freelancers so they send their overflow my way. Still in my first year, but this strategy seems to be working.
As someone who does freelance in a developed country, competition from foreigners isn't too big of a deal.
The main problem is, with the way businesses are ran in the US, it's REALLY expensive being self employed. You pay a massive amount in taxes and you don't get any social security matching from an employer or health, dental, etc. benefits.
Basically, you need to make a LOT more pre-tax to come out to the point where you're living the same type of lifestyle as someone who has a full time position.
This is an interesting discussion... but it really has nothing to do with the article. Which, really doesn't say much of anything unlike the note from acconrad, which gives real details.
[+] [-] acconrad|7 years ago|reply
* Closing in on $250k revenue
* 2 major clients, 4 smaller, short-term engagements
* 100% utilization rate (no downtime between clients)
* Successfully raised rates with all client projects (avg: 19% / engagement)
* Closed via a sales funnel of: 5 new prospect outreach / day, 2 proposal follow-ups / day, 1 existing (or prior) client referral / month
What worked:
* Networking aggressively (see sales funnel)
* Setting up a 3-prong presence of blog + personal site + consulting site
* Pruning and refining available code/assets for portfolio
* Pricing / week & value-based, fixed-cost pricing
* 100% money-back guarantee (no one has asked for it)
* Having an accountant
What did not work:
* Thorough proposal / contract documentation. I figured having detailed, in-depth scope of work showing I had knowledge of their industry, problems, etc, would help close deals. The teams that closed the fastest already knew they wanted to work with me, but the ones that weren't sold couldn't even be sold with excellent SOWs and proposal documentation.
* Having a lawyer. For a one-man consulting shop, you really don't need one. Most standard SOW/Contract/IP documents are easy enough to generate/find yourself.
* Toptal / Upwork / any of those race-to-the-bottom sites. There's great arbitrage if you're international like OP. But I'm in the US, and it's not worth the effort for US rates.
* Meetups. I just didn't invest time in them (yet). I think the next leap in rates will come from becoming more "well known" through blogging and speaking engagements, which this is a key area to invest in.
* All this "double your rate" business. Sure, I imagine this works if you're used to pulling in $50/hr, and I imagine Brennan Dunn and the sort are marketing themselves at more commoditized development. But trust me, people ran away when I doubled my rates. I had to find a sweet spot and build up my rates slowly per client rather than just assume I was wildly undervalued.
[+] [-] jmheinkle|7 years ago|reply
You also built one of my favorite unique sites (share latex).
I’m curious and have a few questions:
- how did you manage 5 prospects per day? That seems like an incredible amount of work that would break up my flow. Is this more like one day a week of hitting up 30 leads? Where did you find all of these prospects?
- why did you choose a 3 pronged approach of blog post, personal site AND consulting site? What’s the incremental value of the other two given one?
- can you describe, or give any links about value based fixed cost pricing?
[+] [-] pibi|7 years ago|reply
Disclaimer: I'm italian, working remote, strong focus on nodeJS and fintech, estimated revenue for 2018 (first year of freelancing full-time, not fully from Upwork): 360K$, working 220 days per year
[+] [-] bdunn|7 years ago|reply
Great job, seems you're doing really well!
[+] [-] mdn0420|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ioddly|7 years ago|reply
Interesting, does that mean you raised rates during the project or as you switched to a new one?
Well done, that's a very impressive first year.
[+] [-] posix_compliant|7 years ago|reply
How did you find new prospects outside of upwork?
[+] [-] johnkkc|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hugocbp|7 years ago|reply
Do you have any resources like blog posts sharing more details on some of those strategies? I would be interested in reading about your experience.
[+] [-] kilroy123|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] themodelplumber|7 years ago|reply
My first year was like: "Client bought me a computer! That was amazing. Man these eMachines boxes are a steal. Got some software from school, too, and a former employer gave me Photoshop 4.5 on a CD. [Update a month later] Oh, I get it. People give you free stuff hoping not to have to pay you later."
[+] [-] zedder|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Uberphallus|7 years ago|reply
My first year freelancing was my last (for now).
The only client I landed, following the guidelines stated on the link (cover letter, etc), was for a very niche job (IoT/FPGA related). I undersold myself as it was my very first gig on Website.
The client ended up hiring me and another guy from Country. They explained what they had, what they wanted, and I explained the problems with their architecture and possible solutions. The other guy was like, yes, all can be done, yes, great idea, sure, it's easy, yes, of course, nothing is wrong, it's so smart.
I was constantly dropping quotations from RFCs, IEEE, FCC and recommending hardware choices for backing it up with documentation, but they consistently followed the other guy's advice, to the point of deploying extravagant and unnecessary hardware: think of a workstation plugged to a Zynq, plugged to 3 Arduinos, and a Stratix 10 in the middle with a plethora of custom circuits and transceivers attached kind of mess, just because the guy only could find libs and IPs that ran precisely on those devices to do the puzzle that he himself sold to the client. I suspect this was not out of pure incompetence, but an evolutionary way to make one seem expert and make the project take longer to cash in more money.
And all of this was ON REMOTE. We literally had to ask the remote office to verify connections, and status LEDs on the devices, and obviously debugging out of business hours was an absolute PITA.
The other guy was insanely productive, in a meaningless kind of way. Everything was documented but badly, some stuff had CAD, some hand drawn; the designs had some corner cases well thought and commented, while basic things completely overlooked. Half of the code was copied from OpenCores, Arduino examples, etc, and the other half didn't make any sense. The only way I could describe him is as a bored engineer on the 5th day of a meth binge.
One day I just snapped during an argument, calling their project "Internet of Spaghetti", and called it quits. Then the client contested all the hours I filed, and Website took their side, I assume because they had high rating and I had just started.
Then I went back to corporate, it's boring but I don't have to deal with such bullshit.
[+] [-] thomk|7 years ago|reply
Engineers love to solve problems. They love it SO MUCH that they very often do it for free (see: opensource). You yourself said you 'underbid' the project. You were trying to solve a problem with logic, reason and an attempt to deliver a clean, well functioning, properly designed product.
Business do not care about those things. They care about 2 things:
1. Money 2. They want it to work
Your best defense against stupidity that has money is to collect money as often as possible. Get a deposit, stop working if they are late on payment, changes cost more, phone calls where I'm consulting to you costs money.
It's hard to hear, but the other guy kind of did it right. Save yourself a lifetime of lessons that I have learned (or stay in corporate) by simply treating every single client like you are running a business.
Be transparent about your unwavering focus on payment. You can do that and still be friendly by the way.
You (and I) think "I'll do an amazing job, this product will be clean, fast and standards compliant AND cheaper!"
And when you are done all they will say "does it work?"
The unclean truth is, customers don't care about well functioning, well designed code until NOT having it costs them money. See #1 above.
Of course you have the choice to not continue working with these types of clients, but, the truth is there's going to be some insanity in any business. Lessons are hard to learn and the best you can do is protect yourself and be honest, meaning, "This isn't the right way but it'll work and save you a few bucks, is that OK?"
[+] [-] paulpauper|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maximp|7 years ago|reply
what an image
[+] [-] testb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] starbist|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtolan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barry-cotter|7 years ago|reply
> Silvestar is a fearless web developer and consultant, JAMstack enthusiast and Wordpress coder currently available for hire.
This person may have accidentally reinvented content marketing but they aren’t implementing a known good strategy. They are a web developer, a coder, available for hire. They say they’re a consultant, which is nice but they don’t understand the difference between a consultant and a contractor. A consultant is way more expensive. If this person has a marketing position or a niche I don’t know what it is. I’m completely convinced they’re a good web developer but they don’t have a market position more differentiated than “I build websites”.
[+] [-] gk1|7 years ago|reply
FWIW my own pipeline of consulting clients relies solely on introductions and blogging ("content marketing" but much less formal). I continue to encourage new freelancers/consultants to write and share their knowledge more often.
[+] [-] anarchitect|7 years ago|reply
Finding work was not difficult – I was lucky enough to book all of my capacity from day one. The biggest challenge I've had so far is managing my time across clients, and adjusting to not having a team.
[+] [-] gk1|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aantix|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] superkarolis|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brianmcc|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sohakes|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mantas|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] derangedHorse|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TomMarius|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulpauper|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toasterlovin|7 years ago|reply
You just have to find the clients (the hard part). What has worked for me is making myself visible inside of my particular niche, then forming relationships with established freelancers so they send their overflow my way. Still in my first year, but this strategy seems to be working.
[+] [-] nickjj|7 years ago|reply
The main problem is, with the way businesses are ran in the US, it's REALLY expensive being self employed. You pay a massive amount in taxes and you don't get any social security matching from an employer or health, dental, etc. benefits.
Basically, you need to make a LOT more pre-tax to come out to the point where you're living the same type of lifestyle as someone who has a full time position.
[+] [-] CrankyBear|7 years ago|reply