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On the flip side, I suppose that there are people that could use me but they don't know how to find consultants.
The only time this has happened was when a potential employer and I didn't quite work so they let me name a price for the time I worked and they paid (rare in consultancy, I bet).
Sigh... I'd settle for someone giving me $100 per hour.
100 an hour seems like a lot to most of the contractors I talk to, but it's actually probably less than the average for a contract programmer.
Pardon my ignorance. What does a consultant do?
In broad strokes, make businesses money. In a little more detail, I (personally) work mostly for B2B SaaS businesses and know a few things which tend to work for generating incremental growth in revenue. If you've followed my blog or HN posts they won't sound all that impressively new: write drip email campaigns, do A/B yet, redo pricing tiers, optimize conversion funnels, etc etc. There are many other consulting spe…
This is different than "freelancing" or "contract development". This is more traditional business consulting. You're going in and changing processes and structures more than anything else.
It might be around a specific goal like "make our signups more effective", but you're not just writing some code. You are going in an helping them to change their mindset by incorporating feedback (A/B testing) and new methodologies to run their business better. You get paid so much because the results don't just result in better signups, but in a transformed company at the end.
To do this type of consulting you need extreme credibility. Either a big business win, an ivy league education, or something equally as impressive.
ha, when i saw the headline and read the first paragraph i assumed this was a sales pitch for something.. but after scrolling down to the bottom and not finding anything i shortly realized this is the author of kalzumeus.com which is the source of some of the best advice I (as a programmer) have read on the internets. One gotcha here is that not every programmer can be as successful doing such business consulting. I…
So what do I do if I don't have a blog or any real friends to refer me? I don't know anyone at all here in SV and no one seems to want me anyways. On the flip side, I suppose that there are people that could use me but they don't know how to find consultants. The only time this has happened was when a potential employer and I didn't quite work so they let me name a price for the time I worked and they paid (rare in c…
- Start going to meetups and make friends (no meetups? Organize one!)
Sigh... I'd settle for someone giving me $100 per hour.
I consistently meet people who earn > 200 $ / hour, without much programming experience (but know an open source project of interest very well).
So what do I do if I don't have a blog or any real friends to refer me? I don't know anyone at all here in SV and no one seems to want me anyways. On the flip side, I suppose that there are people that could use me but they don't know how to find consultants. The only time this has happened was when a potential employer and I didn't quite work so they let me name a price for the time I worked and they paid (rare in c…
Change that. Go to conferences. Go to meetups. Leverage whatever professional network you currently have to expand it. Start a blog. Post to it. Establish yourself as an authority on something.
If you can't do the above yet (because you aren't an authority on something), become an authority. Contribute to a related open source project. Get involved in meetups that focus on the topic. Find conferences that relate to it and attend... later, speak at said conferences.
So what do I do if I don't have a blog or any real friends to refer me? I don't know anyone at all here in SV and no one seems to want me anyways. On the flip side, I suppose that there are people that could use me but they don't know how to find consultants. The only time this has happened was when a potential employer and I didn't quite work so they let me name a price for the time I worked and they paid (rare in c…
What if you're already a consultant, but are tired of Internet marketing (and its related accoutrements)? Is there a pivot for that?
Alternately, you could raise your rates a bunch, save the difference and try to retire early.
ha, when i saw the headline and read the first paragraph i assumed this was a sales pitch for something.. but after scrolling down to the bottom and not finding anything i shortly realized this is the author of kalzumeus.com which is the source of some of the best advice I (as a programmer) have read on the internets. One gotcha here is that not every programmer can be as successful doing such business consulting. I…