Brennan Dunn

Brennon Dunn has a lot of great free blog content and an excellent podcast about all things freelancing / software consulting. Would highly recommend as his content has helped me a lot over the past year, mainly regarding the marketing/selling, billing and dealing with clients sides of things: https://doubleyourfreelancing.com

You're right that value based pricing [ie what it's worth to the customer] is a better approach. Both the Freshbooks book Breaking The Time Barrier [1] and Brennan Dunn's website [2] are good resources on those. But they might be too advanced for someone just starting out. You do need to determine what your own base costs are though, at least to ensure you're not going backwards. The calculators I linked to above at least help with starting to think about those costs. [1] https://www.freshbooks.com/blog/breakingthetimebarrier/ [2] https://doubleyourfreelancing.com

$100/h is my highest rate, but frankly plan to increase it to at least $150, which I still don't have an idea of how to do :) jus wondering: anyone followed http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/ rules and succeeded?

I've been consulting since 1995, and have been co-hosting the Freelancers Show podcast (https://devchat.tv/freelancers/) for about 5 years now. If I could distill all of the advice I've given (and received) over those years, it would come down to a few things: (1) Consulting means running a business. This requires a different set of skills, and often different thinking, than you have as a developer. You'll have to learn budgeting and marketing, among other things. Learn these skills, and realize that for as long as you consult, you'll need to improve at them. (2) There are many different types of consulting. I personally do Python training, and love it. But many consultants do what's sometimes called "staff augmentation," working as a contractor on gigs that can last one day to one year. Staff augmentation is the way that most people start off, and it's not inherently bad -- but you can make far more money, and have more influence and satisfaction, by providing insights and value from your experience and knowledge. And yes, this often means that you can make more money diagnosing problems and architecting solutions than actually developing the software that solves the problem. Also, the higher the level at which you're working at a company, the more you can make; helping a team leader is better than helping a programmer, but helping a VP is better than a team leader, and helping the CEO is better yet, still. (3) Don't forget to budget, and to put money away for a rainy…

If you've been successfully freelancing for 7 years, then it's likely that you already know much of what I'm about to write. I'd say scrap partnerships and salespeople, and focus on what sales channels are best for you, online or local, whatever works. The two most important lessons I've learned in consulting so far are: (1) It's really all about trust. The client wants someone who can reliably solve their problem, and tooting your own horn has a very limited effectiveness in building that credibility. Trust heavily impacts what projects people will give you, and how much you can charge. It's common that a company will somehow find 2-3x budget to hire a partner who they know will get the job done. (2) Referrals and good deeds are the fastest way to build trust. When you come well-recommended by a prospect's trusted friend or partner, then a good amount of that trust gets instantly transferred to you. This transitivity of trust is key to building a good referral network that will consistently send work your way. If you don't have this, then you have somewhat of a cold start problem. In this case, providing value to people on a regular basis could really help with establishing your credibility. I don't mean doing projects for free, but more like offering people free 30-minute consultations about how to build their things, or sending them resources (articles or books) on a consistent basis that would really benefit them. This demonstrates that you can already deliver value,…

The size and quality of your network is generally the main source of work for freelancers. Expanding your network is a great way to increase your 'luck surface'. Most of my big clients came to me with referrals from my existing (happy!) customers. You can check out Double Your Freelancing[0]. I'm not fancy of his academy stuff, but the book covers most of the things that will help you become succesful in your freelancing career. When I read it, I already knew most of the things taught in the book, as I had already been freelancing for 2-3 years, but it was still helpful with widening my perspective. Regarding meeting with developers, you should also expand your network in areas that will include your potential clients. If you are not only targeting startups, getting your name out in business owner circles is a good idea. I'm living in Turkey, and attending the local chamber of commerce activities and meetups allowed me to meet with business owners that are all potential clients. [0]: https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/

Part of the “make the change easy” was making sure that I had work lined up before leaving my job. So by the time I was ready to quit, I was already jumping into projects (these projects were with people that I had worked with in my last job and started their own companies or knew very well in the local startup scene). It is difficult to get work without a showcase of some kind, especially a designer. That’s why I relied on contacts I would consider good friends as my first clients. As mentioned earlier, they either worked with me in some way or I’ve talked to them before about the cool stuff I was working on, but was ready to start something of my own. They didn’t need to see my work, because they either seen me work or have heard me talk about this stuff at local meetups (helps that the community is small here). Though I consider myself extremely lucky to not have had done any outbound sales for my first gigs, so YMMV. As for reading material, these are the books I went through last month specifically for consulting/freelancing + the one I’m currently reading. If you’re not a designer I’d just recommend reading the last three. - The Designer’s Guide to Freelancing (http://nathanpowell.me/guide-to-freelancing/) - Design Is a Job (http://www.abookapart.com/products/design-is-a-job) - Double Your Freelancing Rate (http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/) - Million Dollar Consulting (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002MPQ230/)

There is also value-based billing. A lot of people talk about it, but never seen in the wild. EG A business has a manual process that costs them £2m/year to run. Instead of calculating how long it would take you fix, you price based on what it is worth to the business to fix the issue (obviously this needs to be larger than what you would charge on a time and materials basis). Brennan Dunn was a big advocate of this, but mainly on a small consultancy scale (https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/rate/).

you might check this out: https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/ not along the exact path but, has some good tips. especially around road maps.

My favorite blogs generally post super actionable marketing tactics that you can begin implementing as you read. Also enjoy reading industry insights, observations and trends from folks with high levels of experience. https://a16z.com/ (specifically Ben Horowitz's posts - he starts off each with a rap lyric) https://sparktoro.com/blog https://andrewchen.co/ https://doubleyourfreelancing.com https://rankz.io/blog https://contentdistribution.com/guides (mine)

From a developer point of view one frequent advise is to never give a number first. https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ has a chapter on that. > Are there companies who provide this? Yes, well, consultants and ebook writers. Most seem to target freelancers who want to raise their prices though, not job starters. For example https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/

A good resume won't get you consulting clients. You need marketing - see e.g. https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/ which has lots of free content. You are also not likely to get a remote job without some relevant work experience that demonstrates you can work independently. So your resume should heavily focus on that - show you can learn on your own, manage yourself, etc.. Lacking any programing job experience, though, it's going to be somewhat difficult. If you don't have relevant job experience, can you get a non-remote job to begin with?

Look here: http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/ There is lots of similar advice there. Finding the clients for iOS development will be hard. It would be easier to just apply for remote or full-time contract positions (try careers.StackOverflow.com)

Read this book: http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/rate/ Brennan's book is mind-expanding, especially for someone who doesn't have any clients at all. For the record, I just finished my first 12 months of independent work and it's been amazing. It's definitely possible.

That's great! We're actually running weekly profiles on people who have used my advice to help grow their business, and I'd love to feature you. Here's the link: http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/student-success-spotlight-application…

You should go read "Double your freelancing" by Brennan Dunn http://doubleyourfreelancing.com Also check out his blogs, his book goes exactly through how to figure out all your questions, like how much shouldnyou charge, how to find clients, etc While you probably won't be charging 100+$/hour at thr beggining you can work your way up to that eventually.

I bet there's lots of companies that would hire you, based on this particular HN thread alone. Here's what could be worth doing, and wouldn't take much time at all: 1. put together a one-page website, on a domain like firstnamelastname.com 2. Add a link to this page 3. Put a link to your website in your email signature Done! Now everyone you ever email, if they want to know more about you, will know that you're _deeply_ proficient in certain domains, and it'll be up to them to decide that you might be a good fit. Since you've got this particular charge against you, and the US makes it nearly impossible for people who have run afoul of the state to legally be paid, but you _might_ be able to open up a Stripe account, and create a "payment link" (https://stripe.com/payments/payment-links) for a one-off "roadmapping sessions" (https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/roadmapping/) where a company/team pays you $10,000 and you'll visit them (virtually or in person) for a day or two to talk about their thorniest security problem. "The system" wants you to apply to (and be hired into) an entry-level position, but that would be a giant waste of your time and everyone else's. I wrote this article for eager bootcamp grads, looking for their first job. You're not a bootcamp grad, but it _might_ be helpful to you: https://josh.works/remote-job-resources

Productized consulting is where you take what your consulting does and turn it into a repeatable product. Some links: https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/3-great-examples-of-productized-cons… https://www.karllhughes.com/posts/scaling-services (writing) The goal would be to find something that you offer that you can make repeatable. You didn't talk much about the services you offer (other than the fact they are 'dev services'), but some examples for a dev shop might be: * architecture review * seo analysis (if you do webdev) * accessibility survey (if you have the skills/desire) * disaster recovery audit All of these are tasks you can put a single price on, that you can turn into a process, and that have value to the customer disassociated from the hours used to deliver it. That means the first one might take longer, but you can start to optimize the process and therefore make more profit. As far as hosting, if you build applications, you can offer hosting of those applications. Even if you are building on a cloud or PaaS (like firebase or heroku) you can still offer to manage applications over time. This would include doing things like setting up alerting, handling dependency upgrades, and managing the cloud or PaaS provider. The value to clients when you do this is that they don't have to set up and manage their own hosting. Since you built the application, you probably know how to run it pretty well too. This can be recurring revenue that…

I did this around October of last year out of necessity and started doing it because I wanted to in January. So far it's going quite well. Here's roughly what I did: First, read everything patio11 and Brennan Dunn have written on the subject. Start here: http://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/ and here: http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/ Get yourself a website. Don't spend a lot of time building this, just on the content. It's stupid easy for developers to get sidetracked working on their own site and rebuilding it in Hot New Technology X every two weeks; don't bother. I recommend Squarespace as it makes it easy to setup & change content as well as track some basic metrics. Make sure it's very clear what you do. Separate it out into Articles for SEO, a Portfolio, and a page about working with you. Write articles about things you're very, very good at and at the end plug yourself. For examples, I have: http://<domain>/articles/ http://<domain>/portfolio/ http://<domain>/app-development/ Regarding a portfolio, there is no reason you cannot include the programming you did as part of a larger project. Just make sure that you accompany each entry in the portfolio with what your responsibilities were and how you contributed and why it was a success. Link back to other key members of the project, too; they'll appreciate it. Next, I set up something to drive traffic to my website. Think of something interesting that would make a potential client say, "Oh, that's pretty…

> Professional freelancers, that refuse to work for $5, seem to be losing the battle against an army of low-rate workers on sites like Elance, Odesk etc. I disagree, but you made the statement. Can you back this up? I don't think there is a problem with these "freelance markets." As with any market, it's a crazy, chaotic, noisy place with prices all over the board. The so called $5 workers occupy a niche just as their higher paid counterparts do. Perhaps the missing ingredient is education for the customer. Again, each of these types of workers are potentially helpful for different cases. The difficulty for the customer is to figure out the landscape. I have heard many stories of people having a hard time doing this in the beginning but after blowing through X funds and trying out X developers they eventually figure it out. If money isn't an issue in this case, then the time may be an issue. For the developer, the fix is to break out of these markets and attract potential clients with your own brand as opposed to piggy-backing off someone else's platform. There are resources all over for finding out this info. Patio11 is quite active on HN and posts a lot of great info. Here is an example article from Brennan Dunn http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/high-value-clients/ And a quote from that article. > This is going to have you seek out clients who have problems to solve, rather than clients with projects to do. As a consultant, you're end game is to become a partner to…

Start here: https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/category/start-freelancing/

https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/category/start-freelancing/ is a good place to start. No affiliation, though have purchased some of his products in the past and they were superb. Specifically to your question regarding first client -> https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/3-easy-steps-to-finding-your-first-c…

Brennan Dunn has money off his "Sell Yourself Online: The Blueprint" ebook & bundles: http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/leads/?promo=2015 Any good?

There's 3 bundle options. The minimum package including the book is $69. http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/rate/

I've been around for a couple of RFPs(1), and the company I work for had one for a CMS recently. The way it works is: 1) Business has a crappy, very manual website/intranet/whatever. 2) Someone with the actual capability to do something (CIO, manager, whatever) decides this has to change. 3) Input is asked from people from the business and people that are nominally technical. Usually the people that actually know the requirements or are going to maintain the new system are not included. 4) Other people from security, audits, etc. chime in 5) Someone (business analyst or project manager) transforms the laundry list of requirements into an RFP. 6) Business approves the RFP. It is sent out. There are companies out there that live on RFPs. If you're lucky, they'll use open source software, but they might re-package that into their own CMS. Companies that have the CMS that ticks the most boxes in the laundry list have a leg up. It doesn't matter if it's shitty and buggy, it's VERY hard to write "non-buggy" in an RFP (if the company is wise, they'll have a trial period with competing products, but that costs $$$). So, the company ends up with proposals in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for what could have been an in-house project (be warned, a mismanaged one can run in the hundreds of thousands too, even with open source CMSs). A period of time later, company will select the CMS and will drop that info on the team that will actually implement and maintain the…

I've been meaning to test to see if I'm subject to nostalgia bias on this. Any suggestions for how to do so? FWIW, I have a VERY strong feeling that the content on HN has shifted since about five years ago, to the point that I've been trying to find a site that has more of the entrepreneurship / practical advice that I used to see on HN a lot. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10190783 ) However, I don't have data to back it up (yet). I can't swear that these things don't appear on HN any more, but in terms of what I'm looking for, and used to find on HN, I'd say stuff like Brennan Dunn or Jason Cohen's writing on practical entrepreneurship: http://blog.asmartbear.com/unprofitable-saas-business-model.html http://blog.asmartbear.com/consulting-company-accounting.html http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/the-freelancers-guide-to-recurring-re… I very, very rarely see posts like that upvoted on HN any more. And if it does briefly appear, it tends to get significantly downvoted and criticised - I recall an Empire Flippers article recently that took a lot of flak in the comments section (despite defence from Patio11 amongst others) and disappeared. More tech / programming-focused stuff bubbles up with some regularity, but the micro-ISV / lifestyle business and even startup advice hardly ever appears from what I see. Hope that feedback is useful!

Figure out who your audience is. The easiest is to pick someone like you or who wants to be like you. Are you a rubydev? You can probably solve problems for aspiring ruby devs, etc. Consultants can solve common consulting problems, (brennan dunn did (http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/rate/). Find out where your audience hangs out online (forums, reddit, hackernews, blogs, etc). Start systematically going through the comments looking for pain points. Write those down. Then eventually you should find a pattern. Once you have an idea of a major pain you can probably come up with way to solve it. That's basically what this guy just did to launch rubysteps: http://patmaddox.com/rubysteps/ . He realized there are a lot of aspiring devs that took the first step but couldn't figure out what they should do next. There is an interview here where pat talks about his process: http://unicornfree.com/2014/from-zero-to-3k-mrr-in-10-days-the-story-o…