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Ask HN: What mistakes did you make when starting as a consultant/freelancer?

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Re: Ask HN: What mistakes did you make when starting as a consultant/freelancer?

#131

Post by jimnotgym »

wwweston wrote: post #8
mattferderer wrote: post #3

Hire a good tax person immediately. Maybe hire 2. A significant amount of your income earned is gained through having someone walk you through handling taxes & health insurance. I'm not suggesting cheating on taxes. There are common practices such as knowing how to best incorporate your business for your situation. How to best pay yourself (dividends vs income) & how to handle your personal & company expenses. This c…

What are some ways to (a) tell a good tax person from a bad one and (b) look for a tax person in such a way that increases your odds of finding a good one?

1) Do they sound interested in what your business actually does? 2) Do they work with other people in your industry, or comparable ones. 3) Did they get back to you in good time 4) Do they take documents electronically etc.

Most of all

Recommendation

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes did you make when starting as a consultant/freelancer?

#132

Post by tonyedgecombe »

super-serial wrote: post #20

I tried freelance and realized I hate it more than any other type of programming work. I can tolerate being an employee where I do what I'm told. After a month I get a feel for the environment so it becomes low stress and then I can keep my head down programming. Or I can tolerate selling software or having a SaaS. If I'm CEO I decide the direction of the product and then just have to handle customer support. But the…

For me the nice part of freelancing was the end date. I knew I would be gone in a month or two so could detach myself from the politics and bullshit and just observe. I used to try and think of it in terms of a trip to the zoo.

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes did you make when starting as a consultant/freelancer?

#133

Post by estsauver »

threwawasy1228 wrote: post #97
epc wrote: post #40

Didn't charge enough. Didn't market. Didn't network. Didn't constantly hustle for clients. Didn't outsource scut work. Didn't down tools when clients were slow to pay. Didn't develop/maintain a backlog of client work. Didn't reject fixed price contracts. Didn't renegotiate when projects changed beyond contracted scope. Didn't filter free consults against probability they'd turn into a contract. Didn't have my heart i…

What did your hustling for clients consist of? Like I get the pounding the network pavement, everyone recommends that, but beyond that I never really get what it is that people do. Like do you just cold call people or do you entirely go through your network? What specific situations do you place yourself in where you can hustle up work?

Maybe a couple examples would explain what I think people mean. You're getting dinner with a friend, and they mention their new friend just started a company and is looking for some people who do X. You don't really do X, you do Y, but a lot of people who do X also need Y.

On the 0 to 10 scale:

0: "I don't really do X, thanks for thinking of me."

3: "Hey, I don't really do X, but he may need Y. Let him/her know if they need Y they can call me."

5: "Oh, that's neat. Why don't you introduce us, I'd love to meet them. "

8: "Oh, cool, what's their name/email? Can I mention your name and reach out? "

10: "Cool, let's invite them to grab a drink with us after dinner. What neighborhood do they live in so we can go somewhere convenient?"

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes did you make when starting as a consultant/freelancer?

#134

Post by nickjj »

I've been freelancing for ~20 years.

One of the biggest mistakes was not charging enough early on, which lead to taking on work from questionable clients.

I think it was easy for me to fall into that trap because I started really young (pretty much right out of high school). I had no mentors or anyone to talk to, and this was in the late 90s so there weren't thousands of blog posts and Youtube videos on this topic.

Your rates make a big difference and it's not just related to your income, it's also heavily tied into the type of clients you'll be working with. On average after many hundreds of gigs at varying price rates I find the more you charge, the more easy going your clients are. They tend to trust you to do your job instead of trying to micro-manage everything with unrealistic expectations. Of course this comes with more responsibility, but that's a trade off I'll make every time.

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes did you make when starting as a consultant/freelancer?

#135

Post by jimnotgym »

m0zg wrote: post #122
thdrdt wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is very bad advice. I had great clients who overlooked a payment. Just let them know and everything was fine. It also depends on what country you live in. Where I live it is 60 days by rule unless it is in a contract signed by both parties.

My wife is an accountant, and here's a protip on how to make sure that a client never "overlooks" a payment: put a penalty clause in your contract that says the client is to pay 1.5% of the balance every month after the payment is due, and the client is responsible for any recovery fees. Your invoice will always be paid on time. If the client does not agree to this, walk away. It's a laughable amount of money, but th…

Penalty clauses are not always enforceable. Early payment discounts are...

I mentioned it in my post, but the number one reason a reasonably sized company doesn't pay is that your invoice is not on their ledger. Call their accounts payable dept up after a few days, check they have the invoice, ask them when it will be paid. Don't be shy, this is what they expect!

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes did you make when starting as a consultant/freelancer?

#137

Post by [deleted] »

aliswe wrote: post #114
fyfy18 wrote: post #83

Not when I started, but after I'd been contracting for five years I ended up in a contract where the client ran out of money so couldn't pay me. I figured that because I was hired through a recruitment agency I was safe, but apparently not. For those who aren't aware 'contracting' in Europe refers to what is effectively a short term employee who charges X/day. Clients usually pay net 30 - 60 and often you work throug…

> Clients usually pay net 30 - 60 What do you mean by this?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes did you make when starting as a consultant/freelancer?

#138

Post by ElFitz »

mkbkn wrote: post #28
chirau wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it better to charge per project or per hour?

Don't know the ideal scenario in the tech industry but in the advertising/marketing industry, it's useful to charge by a project. One may try to calculate (in their mind) how much time they will take to complete the project and then quote a fixed amount based on the no. of hours that came up.

One difference that comes to mind is that while in advertising / marketing you'd need to get what your clients offer, what they'd like to be offering, and how to work with them, in tech you'd also need to understand how it is currently done. The fact is, it's often a mess, with lost, fragmented and conflicting knowledge.

And while both need to deal with unclear goals, figuring out what it is the client and truly needs, in one case you're selling what they have, or what they are, in the other you have to make something they want and will be able to use, support and sell.

That's very often a tremendous amount of uncertainty to work through.

Edit: also what this comment says https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21729677

Edit 2: And this one, featured some time ago on HN https://erikbern.com/2019/04/15/why-software-projects-take-l...

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes did you make when starting as a consultant/freelancer?

#139

Post by tudorw »

mkbkn wrote: post #28
chirau wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it better to charge per project or per hour?

Don't know the ideal scenario in the tech industry but in the advertising/marketing industry, it's useful to charge by a project. One may try to calculate (in their mind) how much time they will take to complete the project and then quote a fixed amount based on the no. of hours that came up.

My work has mainly been with small businesses on limited budgets, so while an hourly rate might be agreed, I'll also agree to be realistic about limiting costs. Here communication and trust are key, we'll discuss core essentials, nice to have and blue sky dreams, we agree to a fixed limit on costs, I start the project, then, once I'm 20% or so into the budget I'll go back with a clearer picture of the project and the client can decide to spend more, or cut back on non-essentials, at this point the level of trust is high, they know I am keen to deliver good quality work while respecting that the cost needs to reflect the benefits and the mutual understanding of what we our aiming to achieve has been reinforced.

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes did you make when starting as a consultant/freelancer?

#140

Post by jklepatch »

daxfohl wrote: post #59

Staying too deep in tech. As a consultant your number one thing is making money. Find high paying clients, establish good relationships, do good work but don't get too far in the weeds of tech stuff. From everything I've read and experienced, deep technical work doesn't pay well or market well. Dumb stuff like setting up Magento is where the big money comes. People who are mainly technical seem to do better at compan…

I am sure Magento pays well but I don’t think it has to do with being more simple.

Ex: wordpress developer vs react / frontend dev, who makes more? React / frontend.

This being said, for really high paying consulting gigs, i think that its definetely not in tech but in sales / marketing/ strategy.

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