Yellow Pages ad circa 2006

When I first decided “hey! why don’t I service clients directly?” about 8 years ago I really didn’t plan things out much. I knew I was no longer enjoying contracting (working onsite at agencies) and the thought of going permanent didn’t exactly fill me with joy.

So, there was a morning, and I can remember it now, when I was sat at my new IKEA desk in our old house in Newport. My laptop was switched on. I’d bought a mouse mat (which was aligned squarely on the desk). Pencils? Check. Paper? Check. Cuppa of coffee? Check.

Ok, I’ve got all that.

…but what do I do next?

Ground Zero

I’d not really planned ahead for that day. In fairness, I knew pretty little about the giant, unknown, Here Be Monsters” area of working for yourself so perhaps that was to be expected.

What did I start doing on that morning?

1. Set up an ad in the Yellow Pages
2. Decided to go only to some local, chamber of commerce events (for another post!)

Another belter from 2006

The Yellow Pages Brick Road

The Yellow Pages (+ online) ad was obviously the lamest idea in the world but it seemed to me a ‘this is what businesses do” kinda thing. So I did it. Did it bring in any work? Of course not. Of the people responding, the scenario went something like this:

Them: I’d like a website

Me; Ok, can you tell me more?

Them: Nothing complex, just about 5 pages with a logo

Me: {panicking as I still had no idea what this meant} Errr…can we meet so I can find out more?

{fast forward to meeting when I get even more hopeless information because as I asked dull questions}

After the meeting (I wouldn’t talk money during it) I would put a proposal together. I would think something along these lines:

“Ok, I was billing £250 a day when I was contracting, this job looks around 3+ days (but what do they mean by a page?!) so perhaps I’ll say 5 days. Ok, let’s say £1,000 (+VAT) then. There. Easy”

…and I would eventually get a response back something along the lines that they were only looking to spend £100.

Now, we can laugh at clients like this all I want, but the joke is not on them. It’s on us.

What did I expect to happen with a Yellow Pages ad?

What sort of client did I think would shop there?

What sort of budget did I think that person would be likely to have?

In short, I had no marketing sophistication about my approach.

It took me a long time to get wise to that; it was up to me to set my stall out correctly. It wasn’t up to potential clients to try and decode my offering. And it was also up to me to filter potential clients, to not waste time with tyre kickers, to qualify leads so that, before you invest time in meetings etc, you know this project has the potential to go somewhere.

The End

This isn’t meant to be an attack on the Yellow Pages and I hope you don’t see it that way. If you make a living out of that approach then I’m guessing you have an offering which really suits that market. The point I am making here is that you have to think through who you are going to market to; simple answering ‘everyone!” is not good enough.

Plug time: I only wish that The Business of Web Design conference, happening in Cardiff this July, had been around back then. We’ve got a great line up and it’l be a cracking day for you to spending working ON your web business (instead of IN it).

How did you find start off your business? I bet you were more switched on than I was

Joel

p.s.

I’ve set up a Tumblr of Bad Website Design ads – feel free to submit yours ;)

This week I thought I’d give you an insight into the tools I use to run my business and to keep things on track. A brief re-cap about how I run my show, I’m more of a micro-agency or virtual agency in that I work with freelancers to deliver the sharp end of my projects. Plus points of this approach are that you are able to scale up (and down) resource to match current project work load (i.e. not so easy with full time staff). On the down side the freelancers tend to work remote; that’s not particularly a down side per se but it does add to the organisation and communication burden. I do long for the day when, in my relaunched mini-agency (Hinkford), I can wander across the office and share ideas with developers/designers – anyway, more of that to come.

For now let’s take a look at some of the tools I use today:

1. Red Booth

Red Booth handles multiple projects well and the task lists are a breeze. My remote freelancers are invited in to relevant projects, assigned tasks, chat goes back and forth on points etc. Red Booth is my central point for staying on top of projects from a day to day basis. It has time tracking, group chat etc – not that I’ve played with those yet much.

2. Harvest

I’m getting tougher on recording where time is getting spent and Harvest really helps with this. It helps with staying on top of projects and how much time freelancers have used. And it also helps with me staying on top of my time and keeping an eye on where it goes.

3. Quote Roller

I think this package has a few warts but it is useful. It helps manage the process of producing quotes. You edit your ‘estimate’ in multiple sections online, enter your products/prices (which can be stored in a library) and, at the end, it’ll produce a nicely formatted PDF. At some point I’ll probably just set up a nice InDesign template for myself but, until that day, this is useful.

4. FreeAgent

No surprises here. A rock solid, web based accounting app. Apart from the expected stuff of invoicing etc, I like that way it has the concept of ‘projects‘ which means I have at-a-glance view of what I’ve billed for a project, how much remains etc.

5. Google Docs

A pretty obvious one which I’m guessing a lot of us use. One thing I use a lot are the spreadsheets for my ‘lightweight sales tracking approach‘. Very useful, very shareable and getting more powerful & reliable all the time.

So, those are some of the tools which I find useful, how about you?

Joel

p.s. it goes without saying that ‘Dropbox‘ is being used :)

p.p.s I’m always on the look out for talented freelancers to collaborate with.

p.p.s thanks to Chris for doing some cosmetic work on this blog; bringing it a little more in line with the 2014 conference website.

This is a great question and one which I’ve seen crop up time and time again. Everyone has got their own particular angle so here’s my 2p.

Hosting

From day one I decided to host because I liked the idea of recurring revenue. It’s all well and good winning project work but one month you’re working 5 projects and the next you’re doing diddly squat; that’s a lot of peaks and troughs.

My reasoning with hosting client’s sites was that the recurring monthly revenue (I prefer monthly rather than annual) will, given time,  add up to something. And that something can help smooth out the troughs between the peaks.

Did it work out for me? Well yes…and no.

Considerations

If you’re mulling whether hosting is right for you then here’s a few things to chew over:

Have you got the skills?

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no server admin but I know my way around a linux box. Editing Apache config files, SSH, restarting, trouble shooting file permissions, getting SSL working, getting MySQL backed up, DNS etc, I can do. So I was happy I had the basics covered.

Many of my client’s sites are hosted at Memset; in particular I like their virtual servers; many folk’s sites are pretty low traffic which means you can fit a lot on one.

My company tends to work a lot on WordPress now and I’ve also been impressed by WP Engine, dedicated hosting just for WordPress with lots of bells and whistles thrown in. Managed WordPress hosting suits me as you don’t have to worry about patching it all the time (admittedly that has got easier recently anyway).

Managed Options

Now if getting your hands dirty on the linux command line is not your thang then why not looking at something like Heart Internet. Heart’s reseller hosting is pretty cheap and offers lots of one click install stuff. Plus their support department seems pretty on the ball to me.

Note: just for the record, I’m not on commission with Heart, WPEngine or Memset. Those aren’t referral links!

(Oh, and take a look at what I’ve written in the p.s. section at the bottom as well…)

How Much Should I Charge?

Ah! The eternal question! You’re providing a service. You’ve found a best of breed hosting solution, you’ve configured it and installed the website…this needs to be factored into your pricing.

What else are you providing? Firewall? O/S updates? Database backup? Load balancer? Replicated server?

This all needs to be paid for.

Your starting point in price calculation is obviously what you’ve got to shell out to the hosting company , if you’re not making money on it then there is no point.

But what IS included in hosting?!

And this is where you have to be careful. There is no point whatsoever getting (say) £100 a month for hosting a client’s site if they take up so much time that it costs you £500. So the answer is to carefully ring fence what is hosting & what is support.

Everyone will have their own definition but I try to draw the line as follows:

Hosting is the physical server and basic tasks to keep the web server up and running. Hosting includes X amount of (say) office hour* support to help ensure the web server is running. Client’s typically never had to contact about this as, if there is a web server issue; I’ll know about it before them.

Hosting does not cover application support (which means ensuring the website is running) or help with a CMS.

Support can be more about being responsible for the actual website. Depending on what you’ve agreed you may be helping with the CMS, updating the website core files (e.g. if it’s WordPress) or performing X amount of changes at no extra charge.

As you can see from the above; you really really need to be clear with the client as to what is and what is not included in your hosting & support. In my experience, if you are NOT clear on this then you’ll end being out of pocket and the client will still be peeved as you are not jumping when they ring every 5 minutes.

Clarity

As usual, it’s up to us to ensure that the client is crystal clear about:

• What you consider hosting & support to be
• What you are prepared to support (and what you are not)
• What conditions might invalidate support (e.g. third party fiddling around!)
• How they should contact you with support issues
• When they can expect a response from you
• How much time they can expect you to spend on their issues
• What happens if that time is used up
• etc

Assumption is the mother of all disasters so being clear saves a load of grief.

From early doors I’ll present the client with hosting / support options. They don’t have to host with me but I make it clear that if I do not host then I typically cannot offer any support on the basis that we do not control the hosting environment and cannot guarantee what state it is in. This is to avoid some plank (on behest of the client) mucking up the server and expecting muggins here to clear up their mess free of charge. In the words of Alan Partridge: no way jose.

SLA

I’ve never signed a formal SLA (Service Level Agreement) re support but, like with most things, you’ve got to take these things seriously otherwise you’ll let clients down. One area I was nervous about was holidays. My company set up is that I’m the only employee but I’ve got a trusted network of freelancers who now do more of the clever stuff. I tend to field support emails so will get a member of my team on the case as and when.

Issues could arise if I were on holiday, in those circumstances, I need to make sure the support system is a bit more proactive. I’ve used ticketing systems such as Zendesk but I’ve not quite found the right fit yet. I’m after something which I can use intermittently and can easily change who is or isn’t agent; better still, being able to assign when an agent is on duty would be cool.  However, I manage my client’s expectations well and, truth be told, they simply do not pay the kind of money where I need someone manning the support helpdesk 24×7 (I do offer that high end service to clients, just to scare them with the price ;)

Closing Remarks

So, if you’re mulling hosting & support, I hope that’s given you some food for thought. If you have any questions, please shout out below.

If you are hosting/supporting and have got some ideas to add, please also speak up.

Peace.

Joel

p.s. I’ve always thought that another option (especially for folks in my situation) is to have a third party supporting agreed issues. Well, guess what, it looks like Adam Griffiths is doing such that at hostingandsupport.co – details on the website are thin on the ground so Adam emailed me with some more info:

Here’s why I wanted to start hostingandsupport.co: Basically, I knew a bunch of developers that wanted to provide hosting and/or support contracts to their clients but were either too busy to do it, or didn’t want to deal with keeping a server online or ‘silly questions’. The service I am providing basically lets people start a recurring revenue stream that needs almost 0 input from themselves. A win-win.

What I’ll do is: update the site software each month, whether the site is hosted with me or not, I’ll back the site up if hosting with me and I’ll monitor sites for downtime. If the site goes down at 3am, hosting with me or not, I will help to put it back online.

The whole point to this really is to take a task that some developers & designers don’t want or aren’t quite sure how to provide and let them provide a good service to their clients. This should also help them boost revenue and maybe one day buy a boat! :)

Ok that sounded quite martkety didn’t it? I essentially won’t be doing anything someone wouldn’t already be doing as part of a support contract. I’m trying to relieve some people from doing this so they can do what they love (and earn more money), and on the other side of the coin help people who don’t or can’t offer this service to offer it and to boost their overall revenue.

Sounds good eh?

p.p.s apologies for the long p.s. ;)

*Website and speakers for ‘The Business of Web Design’ conference in July will be announced by the end of month. 

Doing anything but paid work can be seen like an extravagant luxury; but it is not. Bear in mind that when you’ve got your head down, at the coal face of building or designing websites etc that your business is actually heading a direction. And unless you take time to step away from that coal face that you are not focussing on that direction. But a direction it is heading whether you like it or not.

Ways to step away:

1. Conferences

Why not spend a day away from the office learning about new techniques and meeting up with peers? I find that conferences are a great time for me put my mind in a different zone; to allow it to focus on a broader horizon than just getting the current projects out the door.

Conferences are also good for me as I work with lots of freelancers; the ability to meet and mingle with new folks who can help my clients is fantastic (and ultimately good for my business).

(Note: I do have a sore head from Handheld’s after show party last night mind).

2. A Business Day Out

This can be very useful. Take a day/morning off and (importantly) go somewhere where you do not normally work. Turn your email off. Stay off Twitter. And take time to really think about your business. Perhaps get your scrappy business plan out and see how that’s going. Perhaps read a business book or some business articles that you’ve been meaning to cast your eye over. Perhaps think about how you want your business to look in a year’s time; or 5 years time*.

(*Yes it can feel like a luxury to do this when you’re fire fighting projects but think about this: if you don’t know where you are heading; how are you going to get there?)

3. Re-charging the batteries

You can’t just work harder and harder; we are not machines. If you pull an all nighter to get a project done; exactly how productive are you the next day? Not very I bet.

Working too hard over a long period of time is not good for you. Its not good for your physical & mental health; not good for your relationships and it’s not good for your clients. It dampens your enthusiasm for the work you love; and that’s not good.

Perhaps once a month schedule in some personal time when you do something just for yourself; visit an art gallery; take your camera out (which has been sat on the shelf for too long); go for a stroll across a blustery beach. Let your mind free wheel. Whatever works for you.

Unless you spend time re-charging your batteries then your work and your clients will suffer.

4. Books & Online learning

5 Simple Steps offer a great selection of industry focussed books. You need to invest in the time to read and learn as this is actually the resource which you are offering clients; your knowledge (websites are just an output).

Treehouse offers online learning opportunities and many conferences have workshops (on a side note I’d like to see more practical workshops; I love hands on learning).

There’s an infinite buffet of topics to choose from; but don’t be swamped by that. We can’t know everything about every subject – embrace your constraints. Don’t push yourself to learn topics which just aren’t you but, at the same time, allow yourself the scope to learn about topics which are at edge of what you currently do. Ultimately, have fun with it. And treat your learning as a core part of your business (which it is).

5. Mentor

Seek advice from a business person you trust; they may or may not be in the same sector as you. It’s very useful to be able to talk openly & candidly to someone about your business; sometimes we are just too close to it to see the blindingly obvious solutions. Put the feelers out for someone you can talk to; don’t be afraid to ask.

Have a lovely weekend everyone and don’t work too hard.

Joel

1) Contracts

I have to say that I’m not a fan of those contracts written in impenetrable legalese – those just look plain scary and I’ve found them to spook reasonable clients. On the other hand, some contracts are nice plain English – I much prefer that approach. And why not have a clause in your contract which details your ‘payment schedule‘ for the project; this lays out, in no uncertain terms, when you expect to be paid, how much, what happens if you are not etc. Don’t leave these crucial details up to an unspoken gentlemen’s agreement because, if you do, at some point it will turn around and bite you on the arse. Hard.

2) Deposit

Before a project begins, it is important that the client has parted with some money. If it is a new client then this is really, really important – talking about websites is one thing; putting your hand in your pocket to kick off a paid project is another.

How much a deposit to ask for? Well, like everything in life, that depends. Some people say 50%. Personally I typically aim for around 25% as I like to smooth the money over the life of the project (my projects are around 6-20 weeks elapsed time). By all means request a larger deposit for a new client if you are worried about getting your fingers burnt.

If they don’t want to pay the deposit (and can come up with no reasonable reason why not) then you need to walk away. Shaggy dog stories of when money may turn up should really set your alarm bells ringing. The only occasion I’ve been flexible here is when I’m dealing with very large companies such as multi-nationals who may have procurements systems which are set in stone; in those instances you just need to use your best judgement.

3) Regularity of Payments

A project typically has a set of phases; discovery, planning, design, build, testing etc. I tend to make the end of each of these phases a billable checkpoint where the client agrees to sign off what has gone before; this then triggers an agreed part payment of the overall project cost.

Note:  I have to hold my hands up here; sometimes projects drag on longer than they should (not normally my fault I hasten to add!) – and on these occasions I’m reminded that I really should set firmer deadlines for when stuff should happen so that, even if something hasn’t been signed off, ‘x’ money could be released. My staff need to be paid each month; so I need to make sure that money comes in. I’d be interested in what time related clauses you ladies & gentlemen use.

4) Final Payment

I normally state that the final payment is required as and when the website is ready to go live; i.e. the project is fully paid up before we press the big, red button. This has another benefit in that the conversation is then about support post launch; instead of being caught up in an endless cycle of changes which has somehow been lumped in as part of the original project (we’ll be delving into this nest of vipers in a future article).

5) Late Payment Fees

Put these in your terms and conditions. The GOV.UK website has some excellent information on this. Basically you can charge a set fee for debt recovery and interest on the outstanding debt. The debt recovery fee is handy to compensate you for the mucking around you have to do chasing people (remember, that is time which could have been spent working on billable projects or playing with your kids).

Again, some larger orgs seems to have insanely long payment terms and they aint gonna change them for you. The important thing here is to find out what their payment terms are first, find out what is negotiable and then see if it’ll work for you (and, in these circumstances, what we cover in point 8 might be useful).

6) Cancelled Projects

If a client cancels a project part way through, you should make sure that your terms and conditions cover your ass. You might think “but it’s ok, they’ve paid for the work done to date” but you’re missing the point: you’ve budgeted your company resources (even if that’s just you) on delivering that project; perhaps you’ve even turned work away because your pipeline is now full. Why should you now be penalised because a client has created a large hole in your workflow?

Obviously it pays to always try to be reasonable and fair with clients but reasonableness & fairness only go so far. If your terms & conditions state that if a client cancels a project, the total cost of the project is due or the total cost of the current stage is due (irrespective of how much work has been done) then you have more options if things get hairy.

7) Refuses to Pay

Luckily I’ve never encountered this (although I’ve hit pretty much every other issue!) and the circumstances where I normally hear about this happening typically involve a lack of contract, terms & conditions, clear specification etc; you really want all your legal boxes ticked in case push ever comes to shove.

An easy option is to get a legal looking letter sent to offending client; that’s often a quick & cheerful way to shake things up a little. One such company who offers this service (and more) is Thomas Higgins.

Seeking firmer legal advice is your next recourse. You may end up going to the small claims court. Don’t expect this to be an easy process though and, if that debt isn’t huge, you may well be tempted to write it off as a bad experience and think hard about your process so that you don’t make the same mistakes again.

8) Factoring

Factoring is where you get paid (regularly) by a third party based on the invoices you raise; if the client doesn’t pay, then this isn’t your problem and it’s all handled by the factoring company. The factoring company take their cut; but that’s the price you pay for the added security.

I’ve not used factoring but, thinking about it, it could be an option for the larger clients who pay on on long terms (e.g. 90 days);

Here’s a link to a factoring company I’ve found online but I’ve not used them so please don’t take that as a recommendation.

Parting Shots

Please shout out if you have anything to add to the above or with any comments you’d like to make.

Joel

I first went freelancing/contracting in 1998, when I was working on OS/390 IBM Mainframe kit (old skool!), plugging holes in the Y2K bug. I loved contracting; the money was better for starters. But, more than that,  I’d always hated working for other people…and that seems to be a common thread.

Some people fell into freelancing though, redundancy or a simple lack of full time positions:

“Thrown into it when was I made redundant from my agency job in 2011.” – Cole Henley

“The company I was working for went pop” – Darren Beale

“the decision for me going freelance was not made by me but the company where I worked. – Dan Davies

“Freedom. Fed up working for others.” – David Goodwin

“It just sort of happened” – Dan Dineen

“I would say I fell into freelancing.” – Victoria Jones

“I was very unhappy where I was” – Matt Saunders

And I can certainly sympathise with the anonymous soul who simply said:

“Hated my job.”

In the early 2000’s I was contracting and working at places that I really, really disliked. The travel was a grind and the work was soulless; so I know how the above person was feeling. There is only so long you can put up with the pain of hating your job, at some point something has to give; you are in charge of your career – take the necessary steps to get to where you want to go.

“I imagined that with the ludicrously high rates I could earn freelancing that I only needed to work for a few months a year to match the salary I was on as a permie.” – Rick Hurst

Ah yes! The lure of money! What does Del Boy always say? “By this time next year Rodders my old son, we’ll be milllllionaires!“. I’m pretty sure that it was money which first lured me into contracting in the late 90’s; I’d hear the hourly rate some hired hand was on and think “but, I’m better than you and earning a lot less?!“. But it’s never that simple of course; a full time role has other perks (aside from your monthly wage). And being a freelance/contractor also means you have to make hay when the sunshines – you don’t know where your next project may be coming from.

“It turned out that I loved being my own boss and the new found sense of control and freedom that came with it. What had been a stop gap became a full-time freelancing career for the next 6 years.” – Matt Hill

The above echoes a common theme of stumbling in to freelancing; perhaps that’s the nature of the beast but part of me wishes/hopes that people can increasingly take a long hard look at what they want out of their careers and plan a path which suits them; and not simply get dragged along in wake of circumstance.

“Freedom to work on more interesting / different projects.” – Joshua Marshall

Freedom to work on more interesting projects is a cracking reason to freelance but, for the majority of people, you have to put in the hard yards before you get to the stage of being picky with your clients/projects. If you’re smart, you’ll have a few clients ready & warmed up when you do decide to go solo (as Benjy below did); I did not – I had to create a parachute after I’d jumped out of the plane – not always the best plan (but sometimes the only option).

“I worked for a small web design agency, but one of the directors was leaving, so I decided to make the leap into freelancing. I was able to take all of our design-work clients with me.” – Benjy Stanton

“I didn’t plan on doing full-time client work but also wanted time to do research and talk about performance at conferences, I also wanted to be able to take the school holidays off and spend time with the kids.” – Andy Davies

Ah! The dream of the freelance life! Sipping a cool margarita on an exotic beach, the kids playing in the surf, whilst running your business via a shiny new Macbook Air! For most people, the initial reality of freelancing is a blind panic to get in as much work in as possible; hanging over you, the shadow of next month’s mortgage and a fear of letting yourself and your family down (why don’t I get a proper job?!). Andy is spot on here with his aims for freelancing; be warned though – it can take a while before you get the work/life balance that freelancing and running your own show can offer.

Closing Remarks

A lot of folks seemed to stumble into freelancing, as I’ve mentioned above, that concerns me a little. Hell, if I could speak to my 25 year old self again I’d give him a stern talking to – try to plan it out a bit more. What’s that saying? The longest journey begins with a single step…

Many thanks to everyone who generously shared their experience in the creation of this article (and the series to come).

Next time we’ll explore the answers to the following question:

“What did you think freelancing would be like?”

Joel

p.s. don’t forget we’ve got a conference coming in Cardiff next year (18th of July) which is solely about the business of freelancing and running your micro-agency.