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Freelance Web Developer Best Practices?
SirLurksAlot writes "My last employer had to make a series of budget cuts, and I was laid off. I have been on the job hunt since then; however in the meantime I have begun freelancing as a Web developer. This is my first time in this role and so I would like the ask the Slashdot community: are there any best practices for freelance developers? What kind of process should I use when dealing with clients? Should I bill by the hour or provide a fixed quote on a per-project basis? What kind of assurances should I get from the client before I begin work? What is the best way to create accurate time estimates? I'm also wondering if there are any good open source tools for freelancers, such as for time-tracking and invoice creation (aside from simply using a spreadsheet). Any suggestions or insights would be welcome."
First of all be sure you get signed contracts, or you will be stiffed more then you get paid.
Plenty of OSS timekeeping apps out there. Check out SQL-Ledger for a complete solution with accounting.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
For the love of god, do NOT make your websites using any of these:
- tables (for layout, I mean)
- Flash
- Java
Also, learn to code for Opera/Safari/Firefox first, then add conditional CSS for IE6 and IE7.
Take time to learn the real-life differences between JPEG and PNG. You shouldn't have a photo in PNG anymore than a logo should be in JPEG.
And last, know the limits of bandwidth and clients. Not everyone uses a high-speed cable connection on a Quad-core computer.
posted anon because of the freakin' Adobe Flash fanboys.
1. Maximize what you get from the client. Do hourly or fixed-quote, whichever is most appropriate. If you have the luxury of choosing only high-paying clients, well, nice to meetcha, Santa. How's the skiing in Hell?
2. Half up front. No exceptions.
3. Years of experience.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Even in the current economy, you're an asset. Don't under value your services; the worst mistake you can make is letting your clients get used to being billed for less than you're worth.
Aside from that, bill a percentage up front when you've all agreed on the specifications. Also, set milestones and bill another percentage when you meet them. This keeps you in the black and sets up expectations which help your client perceive you as a professional (now, be sure to _meet_ those milestones!).
As for time tracking... I'm sure there are good free solutions, but I haven't used any yet. I did use Quickbooks Online and it works, especially if you'll be working with others. Hopefully you'll be back at work somewhere soon! Working for yourself can be stressful.
Good luck!
The answer to that is another question - how badly do you need the check? If next month's rent depends on it, hold your nose and take the check. Principles don't pay the bills.
I carefull define what constitutes a "minor" update--basically, anything that doesn't involve a complete site redesign or a lot of graphics work is covered.
Here's the beauty of it: about half my customers go for maintenance and in the 4 years I've been doing websites on the side, I've gotten 12 customers that have maintenance contracts. I haven't done one update under maintenance. I just sit there, quietly collecting $25/month for doing absolutely nothing. And, even if I do have to do something, so long as it's not alot of graphics work, it only takes me a half hour or so anyway.
Also, as others have said, get a deposit before you start work on a site. I do sites on a flat-rate basis, and require 50% up front. Otherwise, you can spend a lot of time working on a site for someone and never get paid.
Also, remember that you will make as much money on hosting in general as you will on design--get a reseller account with a good hosting provider (I use hostgator, but if I had to do it again I'd probably get a dedicated server because hostgator's rails support sucks.) I suggest using paypal subscriptions to make sure you automatically get paid for hosting. They're cheap and easy to setup, and it all happens automatically.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Several years ago I did exactly what you are doing. I worked for several companies as a freelance web designer/developer. Here is what I learned: 1. Overestimate time demands. Use the 2x, 3x principle. For new projects figure out what you will need in terms of material resources. Break down projects into subparts and estimate the time it will take. For technology and projects you are familiar with double your time estimate. For new technology you are less familiar with triple the time estimate. If the learning curve is very steep use 4x estimate (avoid this). 2. Use a contract with your client based on 1 third up front, 2 thirds midway, and final payment on shipment of product. Specify this in writing and get it signed by their billing department. If they won't agree then consider another project to work on. 3. Consider your billing and internal planning such as flow charts for projects just as important as doing the actual work. A lot of new freelancers fail to do this and get burned. 4. If you use artists work or do your own graphics use sign off contracts to get your client's approval that the final design is acceptable. Most clients will at this point say, "It needs to be approved by marketing...," or something similar to this. This step can save you from redoing this endlessly for free. 5. Be assertive about following the above suggestions. Part of running your own business is sticking up for your rights. If you don't others will take advantage of you.
If he was talking about pure run rate to code then yes. I always used run rate to code times 10 to estimate. Surprisingly, it works fairly well as you need to do a bunch of stuff besides coding like collect requirements, documentation, etc.
The questions you're asking are very broad and very basic. You're going to fall flat on your face and work long and hard for a net loss if you're not very very careful.
On the one hand you're asking for a good way of doing estimates, but on the other you're asking if you should provide fixed quotes. It should be clear that if you don't have much experience estimating, you shouldn't be shooting for fixed work. You need to get these skills up BEFORE taking on this kind of work (and certainly before you take it on a fixed price basis).
Your best bet at this stage is to apply for some short term contracts, paid by the hour while you develop your estimation skills. Go through an agency to begin with if you can. Do this and provide YOURSELF with a fixed estimate at the start of the job. Write down your assumptions (which should always be part of any fixed quote - unless you want to work for free when the scope creeps). Only when you're able to create accurate estimates should you take on fixed work (making sure anything you sign limits the scope of the estimate). Make sure you're permitted to see the details of all contracts regarding your employment, and keep a copy to refer to if you do decide to take anything on without an agency. (Fixed contracts will be different again to hourly, but you need to start getting an idea of what the language is like in your employment contract if you're going to handle all this yourself).
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
1) build a nice portfolio and get references
2) NEVER work without advance payments
3) never call a potential client more than 3 times before getting a deal signed
4) never ever fail in doing what you're hired for
5) paypal will do for invoicing and billing. get a premier/business account and you'll be fine
6) get a set of must-have documents: an agreement, NDA, proposal wireframe, a set of relevant links for each project category
7) avoid custom coding. there are a lot of open-source apps today you can use code from
8) donate to them!
9) use modeling and frameworks. avoid coding pure language, you will waste precious time
10) don't get jobs just because you need the money!! very important.
11) decide on some hourly rates for various category of tasks and only give discounts for large projects. calculate fixed fee projects' values based on these rates.
12) always add 10-20% on the top of any quote you generate. clients will always surprise you with stuff like "i thought that was assumed"
13) establish a sales strategy and stick to it: "i'll do it for X-10% instead of X if you decide today" or "I can do both your projects for 75% their total value"
took me 9 years to learn this on my own. the very hard way.
www.buzzica.com is the result of all this work.
Hit me up if you need help!
1. Make sure your client understands that changing a website core mid development will make it push past scheduled completion time AND drive the costs up. Sign contract (talk to a lawyer to get correct wording etc).
2. Make sure they understand that changing website mid dev... yeah.
3. Written communication each and every time or you will be SOL when the client decides to change the website mid development... you never win an argument with a client unless it is all documented.
4. Quote them a whole project if you feel they are willing to cough up the cash for it. Take deposit totalling no less than your expenses (eg. travel, lunches, new software, etc)
4.1. If they state during initial talks "Pricey/too much/whatever GAH" quote a base site, (text, images, pretty banner maybe even a basic flash animation or 2), then each addon priced separately.
5. Make sure they understand that a lot of the work is behind the scenes, but show them the pretty to satisfy their visual urges.
6. Be prepared to age quick.
7. Know people are relatively clueless and needs basic stuff explained again and again. Write it down in an easy to understand format and email to them. Keep it short, most clients develop a severe form of ADHD when they need to make an effort to understand you.
There's a better one... measure the work and keep track of your historical records. These multiplication techniques really only mean that you have no idea what you are doing.
I've been freelancing on and off over the last 9 years or so, and I just came out of three years with a successful company where I learned a lot about how to be a consultant, how to create happy clients with clear expectations on both sides and how to not get soaked. Here are some things I've picked up, YMMV.
For time tracking and invoicing, I'm enamored with Freshbooks.com (referral link, non-referral link.). It's cheap, you can accept online payments, freshbooks can snail-mail invoices for you (!), the billing options are pretty flexible and the timesheet app is pretty slick with desktop widgets aplenty. I haven't found an open source project as polished and featureful as freshbooks - please let me know if something like it exists. SQL-Ledger is not a competitor to freshbooks - not by a long shot.
Hope this helps. Good luck!
The trick is to get them to believe your idea is their idea. Some reading on confidence cons will probably help.
Sometimes you can just get by with, I like the base concept, but what do you think about these improvements.
Most times I've dealt with in house projects its always been as you described. In the end, it's not my dime, but I try to mitigate the damage as much as possible.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
What a load of rubbish - have you ever seen just how slow Ruby sites run with any sort of significant load? Python too. PHP isn't the silver bullet or anything, but saying Ruby/python is "better" is just playing to the fanboy crowd.
Yes, I have used all 3 in commercial projects - have you?
And as for the idiots saying "don't use a table, you can make divs behave exactly like table cells, except not in IE6" - where to start... If you're having to code up 20k of CSS and AT LEAST the same amount of markup (probably a lot more) to emulate something that already works, and works realiably, then you're an idiot. The visitors don't care, your client won't care, Google doesn't care (really! go check it out) and you won't earn any more out of it. Saying "ah, but I can tweak it easier" is more junk - how many sites do you actually "tweak" after it matches the visuals? Virtually none. A redesign usually requires different content and completely different layout.
Don't even get me started on making the site work across mobile and email shots (yeah, you're going to be using tables, or lots of images and nothing else)
Tables have their place in the real world. Stop being elitist about it.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Do you think his clients will pay him any less if he uses tables instead of CCS? I doubt it.
Don't forget who your clients are: not software purists, not your comp-sci teacher, but the people paying you money. Some "clean" approaches will earn them money, some won't. I'm not suggesting that you ignore best practices, but you have to justify it in terms of direct value and savings to the client. A directive of "learn CSS" is totally off topic for your question.
It may be perfectly acceptable to many people that you can reach 95% of their target audience for $200, and they'll decline the standards-compliant package at $1000.
Oh my god, this is the worst advice I've ever read.
It's extremely hard to estimate the level of effor it takes to build software. Thus you are virtually guaranteed that if you bid fixed rate you will get burnt. And, even if you're good at estimating, maintaining change orders for each little request is killer. And what happens when you estimate something (like say printing in Flex/Flash/Air to be a 40 hour project and it turns in to something like 120? - not that that's happened to anyone, or anything.) My point is, neither you nor your client know how much effort it will take to build software. Read my comment above to see how I recommend estimating, billing, and collecting.
Besides, I'd rather get paid for every hour I work. That's both honest, as I'm not getting paid for work I didn't do, and fair, as in I'm only billing for work I did.
I know a LOT of people who have been burnt bad by agreeing to fixed fee work. Software ALWAYS has bugs and your clients can easily say that something that doesn't work they way they feel it should is a bug and threaten legal action if you don't fix it for free. If you bill hourly for every hour of work you're covered.
Contracts? From reading the article, contracts are really premature. The person asking the question is too vague about too many things. They should have at least gone into some detail about their skills, experience, and target market. "I want to freelance as a web developer" sounds more like an act of desperation than a person with a plan.
Just some of the basics that are missing:
If, after looking at this list, you see you don't have the resources to pull it off, maybe it's because succeeding in business is more than just "doing a job." Perhaps it's because now is just not the right time for you. Perha
The correct answer is you do whatever is within the budget of your client. You and I both know it takes longer to do a proper CSS based two column layout. If your client cannot afford that, do the tables and tell the damn W3C to suck it. Purity trolls have no business in contract work. This is business and you work for your client, not the W3C. You do what is in the best intest of your client.
And yes, CSS is easier to maintain in the long run, so it might be worth your while to convince your client that it is worth *their* while to pay you to do it right so they can save later. It is an up-front investment that will pay off downline. But if you know they are never gonna expand and you are doing a quick one-shot design an they are a budget... tables all the way!
In other words, it depends. Just remember, this is business, not advocacy. If you are in it for the advocacy and not for money, you'll never survive. Sorry.
Read the book "Software Estimation" by McConnell - extremely relevant knowledge after I misquoted a couple of projects.
I have to disagree with much of your post, as you're conflating a number of (yes, related) issues - such as how to live frugally versus how to be a freelance web developer.
More importantly, right off the bat on your first remark, you've told the person that, in all likelihood, they've earned an 'F' because they don't know their market, and that is that. I mean, that line (and most in this post) read as though they were taken straight out of a 'how to' book on business - and not the freelance Web work they're looking at. If the poster wanted that, there are plenty of places to go.
To my mind, the most important adage is "Don't train, do." You can spend a lot of time on the various points suggested - market research, for instance, or cold calling businesses, or making business cards. But there is a core to the business - doing web development. Figure out what the bare minimum is for that, and get going. Every moment wasted on anything else is moments you're not getting paid. Why sit around trying to think of ten good reasons someone shouldn't hire you? And what to say? The best reasons someone won't hire you will come up when they don't, and the best rejoinders will come with practice.
The point is that no one, out of the gate, has really any of this. You can go from zero to a successful business, but you're asking them to plan on plenty - when in all likelihood they should plan on nothing, keep an eye out for why they fail the first ten times, and learn to adapt. That is the learning curve that is needed - not how many business cards they need, or how to see fifty clients a week (which, by the way, good luck - that's ten clients a day, which is highly unlikely even if you can find them). If the person in question wants to be a salesman, then by all means, go that route. If they're going to be a developer, then they need to develop.
To my mind, there are three important pieces that all else are subordinate to:
1) Be capable. Know what you're trying to sell. You may fail to sell it, but that will get you farther than if you sell something you fail to be able to deliver.
2) Have something to show. Suits and business cards are all well and good, but if you cannot demonstrate the product they want, they'll see right through you.
3) Document everything, and review it. People get shafted by not having documentation that proves they did the work. They also lose track of where a project started to fail and why. By documenting (and showing the clients) everything, you not only keep them honest, protect yourself for the future, but you also are able to trace where it is you went wrong, and adapt.
But all of that aside, if you want to do it, you're ready. Ignore anyone who says otherwise. You may fail - but you'll get over that. Not starting is a far worse fate.
[Ego]out