Ask HN: Data visualization consultant

I started with fiver.com where I didn't really make any money but I learned many things and was able to do work for Dell and USC. It has more than paid for itself to have their logos on my website, so it might be worth a look. Some will discourage the low rate approach but it has worked for me to gain experience over dollars in the beginning and I can currently charge market average or better because of the experience.

Some other important lessons I have learned:

1. Turn down work if you are too busy. Its worse to hurt a client relationship than to pass up some work, to the point where you will lose much more in the long run.

2. Understand all the specific requirements before accepting a contract.

3. Be realistic with the timetable, don't underestimate any complexities of the data or requests.

4. Make sure the client understands the iterative process and is available for feedback along the way.

5. Reconcile the vizzed data back to the source. Tools and programming can do unexpected things to data if you don't fully understand all of the processes that produce the viz.

I freelance because I love data and helping others understand data through visualization. I also have found that data visualization is my passion when it comes to career interests. If you are discovering the same while developing with d3.js, I would recommend putting all your efforts into it. Good Luck!

You should check them out: https://www.graphiq.com

There are a number reasons. None of which individually, are huge or significant but as a combination are enough to make us consider something else.

1. Tableau has more polish as a product. The company has been around longer and has more time to refine its craft. Microsoft's product on the other hand while very impressive given how little time they've had in this area is a little clunky in comparison. Also the final visuals just seem to look better and the dashboard has better organisation which makes for a better end user experience.

2. Tableau Talent. There seem to be many more people that know about and have worked with Tableau in comparison to MS Power Bi. Much easier to outsource the work for Tableau than for the Microsoft product

3. Knowledge Base. It constantly seems to be much easier to find answers to common questions with Tableau than with Power BI. Microsoft have taken their typical Microsoft approach with things and it's quite fragmented, as are all their products.

4. Connectors. Not as a big a deal by any means but Tableau generally tends to have more connectors. Microsoft Power BI only just got an Amazon Redshift connector, whereas Tableau has had it for ages.

5. No Mac Client for Microsoft Power BI

Hope that helps.