Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

training.kalzumeus.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 270 posts

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#251

Post by ahoyhere »

mikehealy wrote: post #250
ahoyhere wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we're disagreeing here about pricing at all! Lots of very good freelancers are undercharging and everybody should price on value delivered. (Especially those freelancers who disappear and only get work done when yelled at. If only!) That's why a lot of the educational content I've used to promote Freckle is about delivering, understanding & capturing value… for freelancers. (Which includes understanding…

I'm interested in the fact that your clients never sought someone cheaper to execute the plans in your report. If one of the (or THE) difference between consultants like yourselves and freelancers is the research and strategy work, then wouldn't it matter less who executes that plan? In other words, once you've come up with the strategy is there still extra value in it being executed at your rates, compared to a free…

You're assuming that the most important thing to clients is cost. For a decent client, it never is.

It's a huge amount of work and risk to hire somebody else after a service provider has already shown themselves to be self-managing, self-directed, professional, timely, responsible, and knowledgeable/skilled.

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#252

Post by luke_s »

koevet wrote: post #201
luke_s wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Another problem is that the clients are really interested in our specific experience: that means they want to work with me or my partner, not with the company. This bit is hard to crack." You certainly have a lot more business experience than I do - however I've been working recently on preparing a lots of tender responses. I work at a software consulting firm, with about 10 devs and 20 GIS analysts. In our tender r…

We are to small to even think of compete in one of the bids for a large company or the government. The majority of our engagements result from some kind of personal contact my partner or myself have in in our previous life as freelance consultants. Nevertheless, I see your point. It's just difficult to apply just yet. We also considered removing the "team" page from our site altogether and just discuss generically ab…

Hmmmm ... I've actually been going around meeting a lot of digital marketing agencies (I've been doing a bit of Android freelancing in my spare time). They all seem really interested in the bids I have been putting together at my day job, but don't feel they are in a position to be able to tender on projects like that.

I wonder what knowledge/skils/experience they need to be able to bid at that level? It seems like something really valuable to be able to train a company in...

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#253

Post by eupharis »

jacques_chester wrote: post #206
eupharis wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. But doesn't it make you throw up a little inside? Don't get me wrong. I want to make a ridiculous amount of money. But I want to make it by creating a ridiculous amount of value. Not because I figure out how to game lame, inefficient, entrenched business model number 13 in ways X, Y, and Z.

Sure, it bugs me sometimes. But I am actually creating value for my clients beyond helping them game a broken budgeting process. I will be saving them potentially thousands of hours of tedious labour and freeing up qualified specialists for much more productive tasks. The good comes with the bad, sometimes.

Ah, ok. Obviously you know the details of the situation far better than I. Just something I spend a lot of time thinking about.

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#254

Post by timv »

koevet wrote: post #201
luke_s wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Another problem is that the clients are really interested in our specific experience: that means they want to work with me or my partner, not with the company. This bit is hard to crack." You certainly have a lot more business experience than I do - however I've been working recently on preparing a lots of tender responses. I work at a software consulting firm, with about 10 devs and 20 GIS analysts. In our tender r…

We are to small to even think of compete in one of the bids for a large company or the government. The majority of our engagements result from some kind of personal contact my partner or myself have in in our previous life as freelance consultants. Nevertheless, I see your point. It's just difficult to apply just yet. We also considered removing the "team" page from our site altogether and just discuss generically ab…

I'm not sure whether it's helpful for your situation but the way I've seen this succeed in the past is to bring more people in while you're already there.

Big consulting firms do it, and do it badly, and get a bad reputation for it (but then keep getting hired back anyway), but if you do it well, it can work out fine.

My suggestions:

1) When you're on site somewhere keep an eye open for areas where one of your hired-guns could help solve a problem the client has.

2) Don't bring someone on just because it helps your company, only do it if you really believe it is in the client's interests.

3) Only bring in people you really trust, getting this wrong is deadly.

4) Be willing to make little or no money on it at first - this is primarily about marketing, not immediate income. But make it clear to the client that it's a special price and it may go up next time. Generally I find that the best angle is either to say "I think they can really provide value here, give them a trial and I can bring them in at 25% off their normal charge rate" or "Because you've been a great client, I can do a special deal this time, so you can see what else we have to offer".

5) Make sure you represent them as one of your people, not a freelancer. If they're good you want the client to come back to you and ask for them again, and not to think they can go direct.

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#255

Post by SwellJoe »

drue wrote: post #231
SwellJoe wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's cheesy, but "build your brand" is relevant to your situation. When a customer comes to you, rather than you going to them, and they've come to you because of something specific and awesome you've done or written, you can set your price and the customer will not balk. Many years ago, I did consulting at $125/hour, but if I was going on-site (particular in another city), I'd bill by the day, at $1000/day (often pu…

It sounds pretty good - but I wonder what you're doing now, given the post is written in the past tense?

I'm one of the founders of Virtualmin, Inc. We were a Y Combinator company in 2007. We are still in business and profitable, and growing (though slower than I'd like, of late, but I have pretty good theories on why we have slow growth and we've begun correcting the trajectory). I make less money than I did doing contract work, but I'm much happier and don't often have work-related stress anymore (being an IT contractor is being the guy who has to fix things Right Now!, because for many businesses, by the time it's bad enough to call the guy who charges $1000/day, it's pretty darned bad).

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#256

Post by lywald »

nhangen wrote: post #118
pc86 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was this a particularly "niche-y" software that you had (perhaps unknowingly?) positioned yourselves as the leaders? Presumably it wasn't The Next Big To-Do App but something that gave quite a bit of value.

It was our crowdfunding plugin for WordPress - http://ignitiondeck.com

I like the design but that automatic slideshow changing every 2 seconds is annoying... That close to the text it disrupts reading, and I don't even have enough time to watch the image (I can pause with mouse but by the time I learn that I'm already annoyed).

Reminds me of this thread "Don’t Use Automatic Image Sliders or Carousels": http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4595026

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#257

Post by new299 »

flyinglizard wrote: post #152
alinajaf wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi flyinglizard, I'd love to pick your brain about consulting on ARM/embedded stuff as it's a field I'm interested in. Do you have an email address that I can send a few specific questions to (that I promise won't take more than a few minutes to answer)? Thanks in advance.

YHM

If either of you guys are interested in chatting about ARM stuff, give me a shout (new@sgenomics.co.uk). I've been playing with ARMs since the ARM2, and have just finished the initial version of the Safecast Geiger counter kickstarter [1] and am also looking to pickup more ARM work in the future.

[1] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/seanbonner/safecast-x-ki...

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#258

Post by nhangen »

lywald wrote: post #256
nhangen wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was our crowdfunding plugin for WordPress - http://ignitiondeck.com

I like the design but that automatic slideshow changing every 2 seconds is annoying... That close to the text it disrupts reading, and I don't even have enough time to watch the image (I can pause with mouse but by the time I learn that I'm already annoyed). Reminds me of this thread "Don’t Use Automatic Image Sliders or Carousels": http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4595026

Thanks for the honest feedback. We've been wanting to update the page for some time, but just haven't found the time yet. Will keep that in mind for the next revision.

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#259

Post by pebb »

loboman wrote: post #32
loceng wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I work for myself, am building my own company(ies). I knew I would never get paid the value I can bring to the table, and I would never be motivated to do my best in that scenario.

If you do it right, you are never getting paid the value you provide. The model is always: generate value, get a slice of that, repeat. Think of a very rich person; if this person is so rich, it is because s/he provided much more value to others than the value it captured for him or herself. (Except for conmen)

Or banks

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#260

Post by nandemo »

new299 wrote: post #216
nandemo wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There seem to be a lot of comments centered on “wow, this sounds great – I wish I could charge more” or “how do I find these high paying contracts”? Actually, I'm wondering how can I get gigs that pay $100/hour in Japan.

As someone who is currently living in Japan, but only working remotely for companies in the US/UK I'm kind of interested to know how you find work here? Is it hard to get contract work? Where do you look? What is the pay like?

Personal contacts, recruiting agencies, job boards (but not craigslist). You're probably better off working for companies in the US/UK. Freelancing is not as common as it is in the US, large and mid-sized companies much prefer to deal with other companies rather than individual freelancers.

But you seem to specialize in relatively rare skills, so you might have better luck freelancing than the average web developer. Feel free to shoot me an email (I'm out of work at the moment so probably not the best person to give this sort of advice, but on the other hand I've been in this country for a long time).

Post reply on HN