Podcast: | (Duration: 47:03 — 64.6MB)
Panel
- Charles Max Wood ( )
- Eric Davis ( )
- Evan Light ( )
- Jeff Schoolcraft ( )
Discussion
- Transition from other work to freelancing
- Finding clients
- Have money in the bank
- Have no money in the bank
- Selling yourself short
- Billable time, administrative work and time spent working
- Finding prospects
- Get involved with user groups, the community, for networking
- Host events, get behind podium, have credibility
- Confidence for getting clients and not selling one’s self short
- First and second degree contacts
- Find out where your customers are
Picks
- (Chuck)
- (Chuck)
- (Chuck)
- (Evan)
- (Evan)
- (Evan)
- (Jeff)
- (anti-pick) (Jeff and Evan)
- (Jeff)
- (Jeff)
- (Jeff)
- (Jeff)
- Reading for fun (Evan)
- (Eric)
- (Eric)
- (Evan)
- (Eric)
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Cool podcast. Keep it up.
Maybe checkout SoundCloud for a nicer player?
Loved the show. It was very rewarding to see there are a lot of freelancers with the exact same background history than me. Keep the show guys, awesome work.
pretty cool , i am ruby freelancer.
looking forward to more blogs…
Great first show!
I was just talking to @ngauthier about getting some folks together and sharing our freelancing knowledge. I think Rails is so perfect for freelancing and remote work, and I see a lot of different levels that developers can come in at. I’m looking forward to more podcasts and ways to discuss freelancing topics.
Great podcast! Please keep it up. Looking to get some freelance work in Ruby/Rails.
Thanks
So this was useful.
You mentioned that you’ll talk about finding clients. A lot of people wanting to be freelancers are doing so because the local industry sucks. In my city/country the market for software projects is small, with low budgets, late payments and is already saturated by all kinds of consulants.
So here’s one thing I’d like to hear about … how to get clients from a different country, even a different time-zone?
Also, even though I’m very knowledgable and have a good “pedigree”, people wanting to hire developers from my country expect cheap developers – the last offer I’ve received for remote full-time employment was for $2000 / month, which was insulting. I got them to tripple that amount, but to tell you the truth, I’d rather avoid such harsh negotiations. So how to overcome this expectation?
Also, besides an accountant, do freelancers also need a lawyer? At which point? And how do you select? (I assume selecting good professionals from any field is just as hard as selecting good software developers).
Thanks for sharing your knowledge,
I’ve done a lot of remote work for clients, I think only 1 or 2 have been local but I met them online. I’ll add your ideas to our topic suggestions page, I’m sure the other guys will want to talk about a few of them too.
Ive never had a client closer than ~200 miles away. Among many reasons, location is part of why I freelance.
Darn you! Another awesome podcast to listen to every week!
Great first show, nice pace – and quite spooky how much of it echoes my experience (ex-gov, disillusioned by the agile mafia, taking on PHP projects to feed the kids, etc.).
Looking forward to next weeks show.
I love the podcast and have a feeling it’s going to be very useful. If you’re taking requests for topics I’d love to hear you discuss how you get work as a programmer (but not a designer). I can modify and rebuild ThemeForest design, or build something with Twitter Bootstrap but I’m not a designer per se and I worry that this would be a problem if/when I look for freelance work. Do your clients normally hire designers seperately?
p.s. this comment box is a nightmare to use on iOS. It keeps missing key events. Is there some key handler running?
Nice show
can’t wait to listen to the 2nd edition.
Please talk about how you define your projects timing and pricing.
Great podcast. I’d be interested in hearing about how you get your first client(s). Did you have a site/portfolio to point potential clients to? Did you have existing apps/sites they could view?
I’ve built several rails apps but they aren’t open to the public so I can’t show them (or the code), therefore I don’t have much of a profile. I have a github account and I toy around but my professional work is dont ‘at work’ which isn’t visible to anyone.
Can’t wait for episode 2 and beyond.
I enjoyed the first episode, and look forward to more! I’ve been freelancing for 16 years now, the last 6 or so (mostly) in Ruby, and it’s always fun to hear from and speak with others in my position.
I wanted to respond to the Harvest vs. Freshbooks debate: I’ve been using Harvest for the last 18 months or so, and chose it after looking at a bunch of other services, including Freshbooks.
Because I live in Israel but work with clients in the US and Europe, I have to track time and income in three different currencies (shekels, dollars, and euros). Harvest isn’t perfect on that front, but at least when I checked into it, was far ahead of the pack when it comes to handling multiple currencies without trying (as some online services did) to convert everything into “your” currency. When I bill someone in dollars, I want it to stay in dollars, and only Harvest did that for me. Unfortunately, Israeli law prevents me from using Harvest’s invoicing services with my local clients, but I can use it with my US clients, and it’s very convenient to do so.
As for Skype, I have been using it very heavily for years, and have noticed serious degradation in the last year or two. But as you guys said, it’s still the best game in town — particularly in that I have a US phone number and unlimited calling to the US, which is very useful when working with clients there who don’t want to call abroad.
Anyway, best of luck with this new and interesting podcast!
Reuven
Good blogging!