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Stop Freelancing

robertnealan.com

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61–70 of 126 posts

Re: Stop Freelancing

#61

Post by dangero »

jonnathanson wrote: post #44

It really depends on what types of clients and gigs you want to take on, and what sort of ambitions you have for yourself as a one-man shop. Do you want to remain a one-man shop? If so, biting off more than you chew can be hazardous to your health (literally). You don't want to land the Pepsi account if you're not ready to handle Pepsi volume. By presenting yourself as an agency, you might signal a higher degree of p…

Good points. I would enjoy reading about companies that went from single contributor to agency smoothly.

Re: Stop Freelancing

#62

Post by PilateDeGuerre »

Hey Robert,

Thanks the article and the debate it inspired.

Tell me, was picking a company name that Google attempts to auto-correct a conscious choice? I couldn't get to your website just by searching for your company's name on my first try.

Follow up: About how long do you think it will take Google to recognize I am not making a spelling error and I am looking for your services?

Re: Stop Freelancing

#63

Post by josh_rosenblum »

One of the signaling effects this may have is that your corporate identity has built up re-usable processes, code libraries, infrastructure, and other IP. This itself can be useful both as a signal and practically. If you can talk about the corporate identity having processes in place -- even something as simple as a repeatable process for escrowing code -- this can be something that a potential client can lock onto versus a "freelancer" with no repeatable process. It may be an irrational bias, but I'd be willing to bet that most prospects would be more willing to ascribe repeatability and predictability (a key point in evaluating service providers, no matter the scale of the job) to a corporate identity than to a personal identity.

Re: Stop Freelancing

#64

Post by rbreve »

My experience us the other way around, I have been working for my web dev company for around 10 years, we had a lot of projects, but we also had a lot of expenses, at the end I was working 12+ hours per day and not making that much money. We had to close the company, now I am a freelancer, working less hours from home and making more per hour. It is less stressful and I get to pick the projects I like more. At the end it all depends, you can't generalize for everyone.

Re: Stop Freelancing

#65

Post by joshyeager »

lsc wrote: post #36

huh. Interesting. The thing is? I have no trouble at all getting freelancing or "contract" work where I'm paid by the hour, and where I'm expected to pretend like I want to be a full time employee. I mean, other than the pretending, I have no objections; usually the work is easy and the pay is good. The thing is, I like mercenary work, and I'm good at it (Most of the gigs I've gotten, well, they seem to be looking fo…

First, let me say that I don't mean this to be offensive, and I'm trying to be helpful to you.

As someone who occasionally hires consultants to solve urgent problems for me, I would be nervous about hiring a company whose point of contact had a communication style like yours.

When I need a problem solved, I want someone who understands exactly what I need and who makes me confident that they will follow through and make sure I'm successful. Those people start building that confidence from day one by communicating clearly and making sure that I can understand them easily.

In contrast, your comment is verbose and uses a lot of non-standard punctuation. That makes it hard to understand you. So my first thought is "wow, I'm going to have to do a lot of extra work to make sure lsc understands what I need."

I have no idea if that is accurate. But if one of your competitors was easier to understand, I would probably pick them because I don't have the extra time required to understand you and make sure you understand me over the course of our whole relationship.

Re: Stop Freelancing

#66

Post by jorisw »

I freelance by my name and only my name because I think pretending to me more than yourself is selling people BS.

The clients who hire me and have hired me are able to make the distinction between a 'cute' freelancer and a professional who will deliver.

Re: Stop Freelancing

#67

Post by mmagin »

jtbigwoo wrote: post #39
benburleson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there's a lot of information out there regarding this, but it's not too terribly expensive to file for an LLC. When the business is actually just you, it's basically invisible in regards to your tax situation. Just open a separate bank account under the LLC's EIN so you don't have to spend as much time tracking business income and expenses when you want the tax benefit of those business expenses.

>> When the business is actually just you, it's basically invisible in regards to your tax situation. Not true. In the U.S. if you create an LLC or S-corp you can pay yourself a salary and also pay yourself dividends (sometimes called distributions). Both salary and dividends are subject to regular income taxes, but only the salary is subject to payroll taxes. The justification goes like this: if you were paying an e…

(I am not a lawyer.)

As I understand it, the real benefit of an LLC for what would otherwise be a sole-proprietorship or partnership is if you do work where there's significant liabilities you need protection from. e.g. you make products which are sold to end consumers, end consumers are frequently dumbasses and hurt themselves, end consumer decides to try to sue you for ridiculous amounts of money.

But to make this actually work, it's a big deal to keep the LLC's finances as separate as possible from your own bank accounts, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil#Fa...

Re: Stop Freelancing

#68

Post by dreamdu5t »

I did the same thing. I freelanced under a company name, with most people not realizing it was just me.

There's no reason not you really, the benefits are so numerious in how people perceive you.

Honestly, I thought a lot of people did this. I'm shocked that this is a novel idea to many freelancers in the comments. Branding is everything as a freelancer.

Re: Stop Freelancing

#69

Post by thatthatis »

bdcravens wrote: post #55
Zoomla wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also protects your personal assets...

In most cases, a business license != corporation or other veiled corporate entity. It's merely the first step. It typically is just a piece of paper you get from the municipality.

Well if he isn't going further and advocating spending $300 a year to create a delaware LLC that elects to be taxed as a disregarded entity, he should be.

Re: Stop Freelancing

#70

Post by leknarf »

In general, presenting yourself as a professional is essential, but it’d be disadvantageous to act like a dev shop if you’re an individual.

In technology, there's a general distrust of "general contractor" style operations. No one wants to hire a developer for $200/hr, only to have him turn around and send the work to an off-shore developer for $20/hr. In fact, most freelance contracts have "no sub-contractor" clauses that explicitly disallow this.

Because of this mistrust, some clients don’t even consider working with out-sourcing firms and instead actively seek out individual contractors. They want professional contractors (you should have a LLC, a tax ID number, real legal contracts, etc.), but want that professionalism to come with a human face. Any individuals that are trying to compete with the dev shops are missing out a big market that’s a more natural fit.

We’re actually running a startup (http://getlambda.com/) that represents professional freelance developers and helps them find precisely these sorts of hiring companies. If anyone is looking for help starting or expanding a freelance business, we’d be happy to chat about what we’ve learned.

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