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Discussion on: Let's talk about clients

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Ryosuke

Find Clients

  • Friends, family - or community through meetups, LinkedIn, Slack, etc
  • Job boards
  • Blog posts, tweets, etc letting people know you have expertise in their needs
  • Contribute to open source projects for companies you're interested in -- sometimes they hire you, especially if it's a funded project (e.g. Github, Apollo, Prisma, etc)

It's all about putting yourself out there and connecting with people through whatever platform you can. Make videos, blogs, social media posts, anything you can to signal boost your existence and your expertise.

Todos

What to do

  • A good job you'd reflect on and be happy to have associated with your name and portfolio
  • Be professional and courteous
  • Remember you have a lot of overhead (your cost of living, expensive tech, constantly learning new tech, etc). Make a list of all your hard costs, and if your total monthly projects don't profit more than that -- reconsider your pricing model.

What not to do

  • Talk poorly about previous clients. Bringing any kind of negativity can create a sense of camaraderie, or can quickly backfire and reflect poorly on your character.
  • Give out work for free, unless you feel absolutely sure it'll have a return down the line
  • Let people walk all over you. Make sure to have a spine, and learn to say no. Just don't be aggressive or rude about it, speak from a platform of professional experience and the wisdom of previous outcomes.
  • Under price yourself. People have money. Don't let anyone fool you into thinking they don't have money for something, because if they want something -- they often know there's a price to pay (or if they don't know, now's the time for them to learn). Their goal is to get the best price, and your goal is to get the fairest price for yourself (sometimes it can be cheaper than competition if your profit margins allow).
  • Forget about your clients emails for a week and get back to them. Be timely in your responses.

Better to meet the client?

Depends. You can work completely remotely, through only email, it just depends on how responsive you and the client are. Many clients like having coffee with you, speaking over the phone, or some form of more intimate communication. There's often miscommunication through text, since things like tone aren't conveyed easily. If you weren't raised on the internet and forums, you might not be comfortable with text.

Pricing

Find your competitors who post prices publicly. It can be hard, since most people like to get contacted for prices, but you'll find a few people who prefer to just put pricing out there. See what they offer for the price point (full theme, development, installation, etc etc). Make an excel sheet with all their price points, and examples of their work. If you think your work is as good, or better than theirs, you should be charging at least that -- or more.

It helps to find salaries and hourly wages on job listing sites for the position you're looking for. It also helps make it seem more real, since these are real people willing to pay that price for that skill. If 30+ companies are hiring React devs and paying $50+/hr, you probably should make that much too.

Once you have your first project, you'll get a feel for how your pricing is. You'll definitely feel it if you undercharged and you feel like your work was under-appreciated, and/or you were overworked. You'll find you'll constantly tweak your prices and terms based on client experience.