Why Freelancing is like Polyamorous Dating (How to Freelance: Part 2)

Yesterday, we covered steps 1-4 of how to freelance. Today, we’re getting to a post dedicated to Step 5: Clients. Seriously, go read part 1 first if you haven’t yet. I’ll probably combine these into a single blog post at some point, but yeah, go read that first.

CLIENTS: Like Dating, But Easier (since there’s contracts) Client management is like a polyamorous dating relationship: sure, you can have several partners, but you still gotta pick them well.

Would you enter into a 6 month relationship with any person off the street who offered? I sincerely hope not. You’d want to know the person was sane. Pleasant to be around. Able to support themselves. Emotionally stable. Communicative. All good things to have.

Clients are real, live people. They are not robots that write you checks. (If they were robots, they would probably pay you a lot faster.) They come with their own quirks, expectations, and personalities. Some are incredible people that you want to be best friends with. Some have unrealistic expectations and turn to verbal abuse when they’re not happy. So, pick well.

But what should you look for? The baseline:

The Perfect Client…

1. Knows what they want.
2. Has money to pay you.
3. Isn’t a dick.

In order to have a happy working relationship, you need at least 2 of the 3.

I can deal with someone who doesn’t know what they want, as long as they can pay me and are a nice person. I can do work for a bit less, as long the project is straightforward and the client is nice. And I can work with a more difficult personality, as long as they know what they want and can pay.

So before we even get into how to find a client, remember that this is a service business. You are dealing with people, not products. Yes, you have to be competent, but making a client happy, fairly or unfairly, is the real gauge of success here.

1) Knows what they want.

Do they say things like, “We fired the last designer because they just couldn’t get it exactly how we wanted it”? Do they make you write 20 million proposals and string you along? Do they constantly ask for more free work and ideas before getting started? Do they actually know what “minimum viable product” means?

2) Has money to pay you.

Do they preface everything with, “I have a budget of $200”? When you tell them your hourly, do they try to buy a half hour? Do they promise to pay you later? Is the check always “in the mail”? Do they hassle you endlessly on tiny details, trying to get you to go down in price? Do they try to pitch unpaid work as being “good for the exposure and your portfolio”? (Sorry, that only works in media.) Are they about to go out of business? Did their last developer/designer quit for unknown reasons (probably because they never paid them)?

3) Not a dick.

Well, I hope you can figure this one out for yourself. But a few specific things: do they respect your professional opinion? Are they condescending? For designers: are they constantly complaining that it needs something “extra” without being able to voice what that is? (They’re allowed to do this once or twice, but if it’s constant, good luck.)

So, here’s my advice: have a phone call or Skype chat. See if what they say raises the red flags above. If they do, proceed with caution or don’t proceed at all.

If you’re thinking of embarking on a large, long-term project with a client, test the waters first. Make sure they pay a deposit. Try working on a smaller piece of the project together (that they agree to pay for), to get a sense of their working style.

It’s a relationship. You want to build a good one.

WHERE TO FIND CLIENTS

Clients can literally be anyone. I’m currently making a website for an author that I met 2 years ago at a random party. Another is a referral from a college friend. Another is a referral from an old client. I work 2 days a week at an agency, which an existing client put me in touch with.

I started off in college. I started telling friends I was a web designer, and would attend startup events and introduce myself as a freelance designer. That’s how I got my first few projects, which then spawned referrals, etc. It wasn’t extraordinarily systematic, but it worked. It helps state what you confidently, as a statement: “I am a freelance designer.” Do not say, “I wish I were a freelance designer.” Or, “I’m trying to be a freelance designer.” You are. Be.

You can find clients online as well, but the lowest hanging fruit will be personal connections. Avoid sites like Elance or 99designs. You’re competing against people willing to work for peanuts. In the case of 99designs, you’re doing work on spec (not guaranteed payment). That violates Rule #1 of the 3 Rules for money. Skip the headache, unless you just want to practice. For developer jobs, I asked my freelance developer/startup founder friend Ian for advice:

i got initial gigs because i’d been building my own product so i had something cool out in the world to point to. i think this is the single best way to get clients. have something that you – not you and a giant team of people, you – conceived of and built. when people see it (provided it looks good and works) they’ll want to hire you.

…

at the beginning of every month someone will make a  SEEKING FREELANCER / SEEKING WORK post on hacker news. look for these and add a brief comment with your background and skill set. if you write clearly and concisely and hit the buzz words people will seek you out. I get anywhere from 3 to 10 leads from each of these. most are gigs i don’t end up taking, but the ones i have taken have been great clients. i would avoid any general freelancing sites (like elance) because the clients there will be pretty low quality. you work at a pretty high visibility startup so you shouldn’t have a problem. other than using hacker news, let some people in your tech network know that you’re available. people are constantly being asked “know any good developers?” – so, you can become an answer to that question.

So let’s recap:

1. Let your friends, family, coworkers, and random people you run into know what you do for a living.
2. State what you do confidently. It’s extremely helpful to have something online you can point to. (You don’t even need a portfolio at this point, honestly. I didn’t have one for 3 months when I started, during which I signed up 5 clients.)
3. Do some self-promotion in online communities, only when relevant. Make sure your work is visible online, and don’t be shy about putting it out in front of others. Link to your portfolio or projects on social networks, including Facebook and Twitter.

It doesn’t sound so hard. And really, it isn’t – things like client management and pricing were bigger sources of angst than finding clients. Finally, here’s my final insight:

A boring project with a good client beats an interesting project with a bad client. A bad client – one who refuses to pay you, insults you, haggles you on price endlessly, and doesn’t respect your professional opinion – makes your job not worth doing. A bad client fails to meet at least 2 of the “perfect client” attributes. Don’t take these jobs, no matter how cool they sound. You will be miserable, and worse, you might not even get paid.

Next up: Step 6, Don’t Get Screwed.

How to Freelance and Travel the World: Part 1

Several friends have asked me for advice on freelancing. Since I’ve been at this for two years (!), I thought it’d be fun and helpful to write up a blog post.

Remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs from psychology class? I thought it was strangely appropriate to use it as inspiration for this post – except inverted. Because you gotta self-actualize first. Let’s start there.

I even made some graphics to go along with this post!

Actualization #1:

Whether you’re looking to do this full-time, or just make some money on the side, the most important step is defining what you want out of freelancing.

When I graduated from college, I wanted to travel, so I had two requirements: no full-time gigs, and I had to be able to work remotely. I said no to everything that didn’t fit that requirement (including job offers). One of my friends freelances to bootstrap his startup, so he limits his freelance work to 15 hours a week, working remotely.

Work backwards. Start at the end, then figure out how you’re going to get there. Start off with what you happy and successful means to you, no matter how mundane and obvious it sounds. Once you have that in hand, use that to filter for clients and make your constraints clear to them (“I can spend up to 15 hours a week on this project”).

Great. You’re already 20 steps ahead!

Actualization #2:

Clients don’t pay you for a website. They’re paying you to build something that will generate leads, market their product, or sell a service. It’s easy to get caught up in the nitty gritty of what you offer, but clients rarely care about technical intricacies – they care more that you deliver a product that achieves their goals.

In fact, if you’re worried about not being a “rockstar” developer/designer, here’s a dirty little secret: it doesn’t matter. Clients care equally, if not more, that you’re pleasant to work with, trustworthy, and deliver things when you say you will. Competence will get you very far.

When I talk to people about freelancing, their first concern is finding business. If you’re a designer and/or developer, particularly one living in a startup hub, the world is your oyster. Freelancing isn’t scary because you have to find clients, but because you have to chart your own path.

There aren’t performance reviews, bonuses, or promotions. There are no ladders to climb, and no benchmarks except your own. If your goal is to make $3k/month working 5 days a month, and you hit it – congratulations, you’ve been successful. Figuring out what’s next is up to you.

You need to be self-motivated and self-directed. That includes your social life. There isn’t the easy camaraderie and built-in social life of an office environment, and you’ll be working alone a lot. Plus, People Just Won’t Understand What the Hell You’re Doing. They’ll ask you, what’s next? a lot. Acquaintances won’t give you the respectful nod at cocktail parties that comes with names like “McKinsey” or “Google”. (Personally, I never enjoyed being judged by the institutions I was affiliated with.) If you’re the kind of person who craves social affirmation, this isn’t the right gig for you. You’ll get respect, too — it’ll just be a different kind, and from different people. And you’ll hear a lot of, “I wish I could do that,” to which you’ll reply, “You probably can.”

And it’ll be awesome. But sometimes clients will try to stiff you, or things will go pear-shaped. But things would go wrong in a traditional job, too – and besides, gotta fail forward.

Remember that time you waited an hour in line for a free Benny and Jerry’s ice cream cone? Yeah. Time to reevaluate.

As a freelancer, time – not money – is your most valuable resource. Let me elaborate.

MONEY: A salaried employee gets the same paycheck, regardless of how much they’ve actually done. If they take afternoon naps, they’re still getting paid. On the flip side, if they have to stay late and finish up a report, they’re not getting paid more.

As a freelancer, you won’t get paid if you aren’t working. But if you line up work and get it done efficiently, you can make multiples of what you would make in a salaried position.

TIME: Employees can’t just decide they’re going to work really hard for 2 months, take a month off, then come back. If they need Friday off to go to a best friend’s wedding, they need to ask permission first.

As a freelancer, you don’t need to ask anyone for permission. In fact, if you set your business up to serve your needs, you will only take on clients that respect your constraints (whether that be working remotely, responsiveness, or length of contract). Moreover, you can work really hard for 2 months then take a month off – if that’s what you want to do.

All of this has completely changed my view of the relationship between time and money. Waiting an hour in line for a free ice cream cone… a really dumb idea.

There’s a popular venn diagram in the service business that looks like this:

Here’s the trick to freelancing: forget about cheap. Don’t promise cheap. Cheap is a trap. It gets you cost-sensitive clients who view your work as a commodity. Price acts as a signal and a filter: I am worth this rate, and I will only work with people who are serious and respect my time. As demands on your time grow, your rate should go up accordingly.

Here are the other rules to freelancing:

Don’t work for free.*

Get money upfront.

Don’t compete on price.

(If you work for free, do it without strings attached, because you want to. Don’t do “I’ll do this for free now because they said they’ll have money in the future”. I have not heard of this working.)

Developers charge around $50-200 (most that I know run $100-150) per hour. Several I’ve talked to have day rates of $800-1000. I know fewer designers, but somewhere in the $30-100 range seems about standard. Start off with what feels comfortable, and experiment with raising your rates as you gain experience and build your portfolio.

Read Part 2: Why Freelancing is like Polyamorous Dating here.