[speakeasy]

(11-27-2013 04:39 AM)Valhalla Wrote:  

(11-26-2013 11:03 AM)bojangles Wrote:  

Yes

Am I the only one here who's read this and still confused on how to start?

I have no experience with wordpress or making websites.

His message isn't about "making websites" or using wordpress. It's about finding companies that have needs and then finding people to design and code and managing them.

[bojangles]

(11-27-2013 04:58 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  

(11-27-2013 04:39 AM)Valhalla Wrote:  

(11-26-2013 11:03 AM)bojangles Wrote:  

Yes

Am I the only one here who's read this and still confused on how to start?

I have no experience with wordpress or making websites.

His message isn't about "making websites" or using wordpress. It's about finding companies that have needs and then finding people to design and code and managing them.

Word, I have no idea how to do either (code & design) but I know what needs to be done to bring it all together.

[2014]

Thread is golden, can't wait for session 5 to drop!

[Andy_B]

OP:

At what part in your business career did you first hire employees?

I've been self employed for 3 years now, yet in so many ways, hiring employees still seems as out of reach as it was on day 1.

[speakeasy]

Bump.

Eagerly awaiting the next chapter. If we gotta shoot you some PayPal donations to fund the remainder let us know!

[LouieG]

Thanks to everyone who asked questions & sent PMs while I was away. I’m gonna work my way through each of those.

As to why it’s taken me three weeks to post again…

10 percent of the delay was me fucking around; 90 percent was due to an unexpected short-term gig that’s winding down this week. It’s been a huge time sink, but also enlightening and directly relevant to this thread.

The backstory is that a few months ago, I met a guy who’s a principal at a prominent NYC digital agency that handles web design and coding. I told him about my little no-name shop, and it turned out I’d done a modest web design/development project with lots of similarities to a major engagement his agency was then beginning.

Fast forward to mid-November. We’d emailed a couple times since meeting. Nothing past that. Out of the blue he called and asked to get drinks ASAP.

We met that evening and he gets right down to brass tacks: the project he told me about is going splendidly, except that it’s massively off schedule. As in, his estimated launch date for the website was eight months later than what the contract stipulated. Mind, this project had only been under way three months!

I had to laugh. That is a royal fuckup that could only stem from a mixture overconfidence and total negligence.

We talked about how this happened, and sure enough, his agency and the client agreed to a project schedule that “felt” right without sitting down to assess the deliverables and the time needed to complete each.

That’s problematic on a $5k project. This is (guesstimating) a $500k project. Shit was going down. The client already hired people who won’t have anything to do when their contracts start, because the site won’t be ready. Board members were intervening, jobs were supposedly in jeopardy, and obviously all those involved were sweating bullets.

The night after we got drinks, I met with the client and some folks from the agency. They offered me a consulting contract to help get the project back on track.

Which was funny, because everybody else in that room had years of experience in this industry that I don’t have.

So along with tending to my own projects, I spent the last few weeks helping them. Broadly speaking, the process was something like this:

A) Discovery meetings –The agency conducted a brief discovery phase that left major questions unanswered. Critical, complicated functionalities were never discussed.



You don’t necessarily have to explain to the client how you’re going to code every functionality, but you always need to discuss the user experience for any non-trivial function. Those discussions should produce a flowchart showing all possible outcomes, or at least a step-by-step walkthrough of the main outcomes.

For instance, the site they’re building will have news and informational articles. Registered users can save favorite articles in their account dashboard. That could work a number of ways:

Option One: User clicks “save” icon on an article. Page title & link are added to their account dashboard under a list called “Saved Articles.” End of process.

Option Two: User clicks “save” icon on an article. A pop-up prompts the user to give the saved page a custom title. The custom title and link are added to their account dashboard under a list called “Saved Articles.” End of process.

Option Three: User clicks “save” icon on an article. They are redirected to their account dashboard, which includes a list called “Saved Articles.” Within “Saved Articles,” the user has created multiple subfolders. The user picks a subfolder for this latest article and confirms the save. End of process.

…and so on, through 500 possible permutations. A key goal of discovery is to decide which process is right for the site and commit it to paper. Then you design according to the written specifications.

Well, that didn’t happen in this case. Instead, they were figuring out these processes as they designed the site’s many, many templates. Each time the client or agency changed their mind about a process, it required the agency alter the designs of multiple page templates.

That’s a hugely time consuming process. It adds extra revisions to the design process and distracts the client from what they should be focused on—whether they’re happy with the look & feel of the designs.

Unsurprisingly, their design phase was proceeding at a glacial pace.

To rectify this, we (me & the agency’s guys) held dozens of additional discovery meetings with individual stakeholders and created detailed spec documents describing every template, feature, and function.

Then we turned those documents into directions for the agency’s designers. That will streamline their design work and make it much easier for them to satisfy the client’s expectations in only a few rounds of revisions.

This could easily have been done in the beginning of the project. That it wasn’t had already wasted a month, easy.


B) Responsive tech review – The site will be responsive with three breakpoints. That is, it will have versions tailored to desktop, tablet, and phone. Try resizing the your browser window on this page to see what this means.

The hardest possible way to create a responsive site is to make separate wireframes and designs for each breakpoint.

The easier way is to use a responsive theme or framework. In simple terms, this method uses ready-made code to automatically rearrange & resize your desktop design so it looks good on tablets and phones, too.

Astoundingly, the agency had planned to do it the hard way. That was unnecessary for at least 75% of the site’s templates. My lead developer helped them create a responsive plan that drastically reduced the design & dev work for mobile platforms.


C) Rewriting the project schedule – With mobile design & dev simplified and many of site’s details clarified, we wrote a new project schedule.

Because the design phase will no longer be so “exploratory,” we were able to cut 1-2 rounds of revisions from nearly all templates. Using a responsive framework will save weeks if not months on coding.


The original target launch date was hopelessly optimistic, so the site will still go live months later than hoped. But not eight months—more like four or five.


Moral of the story...

My point here is twofold:

1) Project management doesn’t require expertise in any particular discipline. What it requires is that you be meticulous and think critically about the work your team does.

I’m no expert on responsive development or user-experience design. Far from it.

But I hire people who are, and I know how to ask them questions to make sure they leave no stone unturned in their thinking. Between my attention to detail and their expertise, we create good project plans, good concepts, and ultimately good websites.

Valhalla Wrote:

Am I the only one here who's read this and still confused on how to start?

I have no experience with wordpress or making websites.

2) If you don’t know shit about making websites, don’t worry. You won’t be alone in that regard.

The most interesting part of these past few weeks was talking with highly-regarded web dev professionals about all the ways they fucked up on this project. And I can’t help but think I would’ve done better, even though some of their past work makes my best work to-date look like fucking Geocities sites.

The agency’s lead guy on this job is a veteran creative director with major programming bona fides. On paper, you couldn’t be more qualified to run a project like this one. In fact, he still was in completely over his head.

But, props to him—whatever his faults, they didn’t prevent him from landing this half-million dollar deal. He took the job and when he found a snag he couldn’t handle, he hired someone () to handle it for him. And although he paid me well, my cut was a pittance compared to what he and his agency will walk away with.

That’s what I’m advocating here. It’s not programming or design or any specialized skill set—it’s plain old arbitrage. Sell a client on a website, build as much as you can, hire people to do the rest, pocket the balance, and repeat.

After the last couple weeks, I’m more convinced than ever that if you understand that process, you already know more than enough to begin.

——

That said, I’m working on a post outlining a simple project lifecycle, and then one explaining how you find and hire programmers (or other experts). Those and PM responses are coming this weekend, honest injun.

——

P.S. I appreciate all the encouragement w/r/t to selling this info somehow. To tip my hand, I do plan on monetizing it eventually, tho I’m undecided on whether a paid info product or content marketing material for my business is the route I wanna try first.

In either case, this forum gives me a perfect venue to put down my thoughts in rough draft form and get feedback on what’s most useful and what’s missing.

P.P.S. If the spirit is moving you to give anyway, I suggest kicking me a few mBTC: 1149SF33LE4pGfE2FdPoWGZr842EL2h25H. Might make me a rich man someday.

[one-two]

After all these years of formal education and thousands of dollars in school debt, half the board is learning more about the business from an anonymous dude. There should be a hustling major in all universities.

[Andy_B]

(12-04-2013 09:18 AM)LouieG Wrote:  

Thanks to everyone who asked questions & sent PMs while I was away. I’m gonna work my way through each of those.

As to why it’s taken me three weeks to post again…

10 percent of the delay was me fucking around; 90 percent was due to an unexpected short-term gig that’s winding down this week. It’s been a huge time sink, but also enlightening and directly relevant to this thread.

The backstory is that a few months ago, I met a guy who’s a principal at a prominent NYC digital agency that handles web design and coding. I told him about my little no-name shop, and it turned out I’d done a modest web design/development project with lots of similarities to a major engagement his agency was then beginning.

Fast forward to mid-November. We’d emailed a couple times since meeting. Nothing past that. Out of the blue he called and asked to get drinks ASAP.

We met that evening and he gets right down to brass tacks: the project he told me about is going splendidly, except that it’s massively off schedule. As in, his estimated launch date for the website was eight months later than what the contract stipulated. Mind, this project had only been under way three months!

I had to laugh. That is a royal fuckup that could only stem from a mixture overconfidence and total negligence.

We talked about how this happened, and sure enough, his agency and the client agreed to a project schedule that “felt” right without sitting down to assess the deliverables and the time needed to complete each.

That’s problematic on a $5k project. This is (guesstimating) a $500k project. Shit was going down. The client already hired people who won’t have anything to do when their contracts start, because the site won’t be ready. Board members were intervening, jobs were supposedly in jeopardy, and obviously all those involved were sweating bullets.

The night after we got drinks, I met with the client and some folks from the agency. They offered me a consulting contract to help get the project back on track.

Which was funny, because everybody else in that room had years of experience in this industry that I don’t have.

So along with tending to my own projects, I spent the last few weeks helping them. Broadly speaking, the process was something like this:

A) Discovery meetings –The agency conducted a brief discovery phase that left major questions unanswered. Critical, complicated functionalities were never discussed.



You don’t necessarily have to explain to the client how you’re going to code every functionality, but you always need to discuss the user experience for any non-trivial function. Those discussions should produce a flowchart showing all possible outcomes, or at least a step-by-step walkthrough of the main outcomes.

For instance, the site they’re building will have news and informational articles. Registered users can save favorite articles in their account dashboard. That could work a number of ways:

Option One: User clicks “save” icon on an article. Page title & link are added to their account dashboard under a list called “Saved Articles.” End of process.

Option Two: User clicks “save” icon on an article. A pop-up prompts the user to give the saved page a custom title. The custom title and link are added to their account dashboard under a list called “Saved Articles.” End of process.

Option Three: User clicks “save” icon on an article. They are redirected to their account dashboard, which includes a list called “Saved Articles.” Within “Saved Articles,” the user has created multiple subfolders. The user picks a subfolder for this latest article and confirms the save. End of process.

…and so on, through 500 possible permutations. A key goal of discovery is to decide which process is right for the site and commit it to paper. Then you design according to the written specifications.

Well, that didn’t happen in this case. Instead, they were figuring out these processes as they designed the site’s many, many templates. Each time the client or agency changed their mind about a process, it required the agency alter the designs of multiple page templates.

That’s a hugely time consuming process. It adds extra revisions to the design process and distracts the client from what they should be focused on—whether they’re happy with the look & feel of the designs.

Unsurprisingly, their design phase was proceeding at a glacial pace.

To rectify this, we (me & the agency’s guys) held dozens of additional discovery meetings with individual stakeholders and created detailed spec documents describing every template, feature, and function.

Then we turned those documents into directions for the agency’s designers. That will streamline their design work and make it much easier for them to satisfy the client’s expectations in only a few rounds of revisions.

This could easily have been done in the beginning of the project. That it wasn’t had already wasted a month, easy.


B) Responsive tech review – The site will be responsive with three breakpoints. That is, it will have versions tailored to desktop, tablet, and phone. Try resizing the your browser window on this page to see what this means.

The hardest possible way to create a responsive site is to make separate wireframes and designs for each breakpoint.

The easier way is to use a responsive theme or framework. In simple terms, this method uses ready-made code to automatically rearrange & resize your desktop design so it looks good on tablets and phones, too.

Astoundingly, the agency had planned to do it the hard way. That was unnecessary for at least 75% of the site’s templates. My lead developer helped them create a responsive plan that drastically reduced the design & dev work for mobile platforms.


C) Rewriting the project schedule – With mobile design & dev simplified and many of site’s details clarified, we wrote a new project schedule.

Because the design phase will no longer be so “exploratory,” we were able to cut 1-2 rounds of revisions from nearly all templates. Using a responsive framework will save weeks if not months on coding.


The original target launch date was hopelessly optimistic, so the site will still go live months later than hoped. But not eight months—more like four or five.


Moral of the story...

My point here is twofold:

1) Project management doesn’t require expertise in any particular discipline. What it requires is that you be meticulous and think critically about the work your team does.

I’m no expert on responsive development or user-experience design. Far from it.

But I hire people who are, and I know how to ask them questions to make sure they leave no stone unturned in their thinking. Between my attention to detail and their expertise, we create good project plans, good concepts, and ultimately good websites.

Valhalla Wrote:

Am I the only one here who's read this and still confused on how to start?

I have no experience with wordpress or making websites.

2) If you don’t know shit about making websites, don’t worry. You won’t be alone in that regard.

The most interesting part of these past few weeks was talking with highly-regarded web dev professionals about all the ways they fucked up on this project. And I can’t help but think I would’ve done better, even though some of their past work makes my best work to-date look like fucking Geocities sites.

The agency’s lead guy on this job is a veteran creative director with major programming bona fides. On paper, you couldn’t be more qualified to run a project like this one. In fact, he still was in completely over his head.

But, props to him—whatever his faults, they didn’t prevent him from landing this half-million dollar deal. He took the job and when he found a snag he couldn’t handle, he hired someone () to handle it for him. And although he paid me well, my cut was a pittance compared to what he and his agency will walk away with.

That’s what I’m advocating here. It’s not programming or design or any specialized skill set—it’s plain old arbitrage. Sell a client on a website, build as much as you can, hire people to do the rest, pocket the balance, and repeat.

After the last couple weeks, I’m more convinced than ever that if you understand that process, you already know more than enough to begin.

——

That said, I’m working on a post outlining a simple project lifecycle, and then one explaining how you find and hire programmers (or other experts). Those and PM responses are coming this weekend, honest injun.

——

P.S. I appreciate all the encouragement w/r/t to selling this info somehow. To tip my hand, I do plan on monetizing it eventually, tho I’m undecided on whether a paid info product or content marketing material for my business is the route I wanna try first.

In either case, this forum gives me a perfect venue to put down my thoughts in rough draft form and get feedback on what’s most useful and what’s missing.

P.P.S. If the spirit is moving you to give anyway, I suggest kicking me a few mBTC: 1149SF33LE4pGfE2FdPoWGZr842EL2h25H. Might make me a rich man someday.

Posts like this are what I love about this forum.

[Lights]

Soooo

[AVTizzle]

A+ Louie. This is a comprehensive blueprint that a resourceful hustler could follow to a 6-figure income within 2 years. Literally just painting-by-numbers type outline. Incredibly valuable - I've personally picked a few choice nugs from what you've shared for my web development side project, so thank you.

This could absolutely be a paid info product with content to support it. Are you familiar with Amy Hoy's 30x500 playbook? It champions a combination of info products + software products for bootstrappers. She, Nathan Barry, Brennan Dunn, and Patrick McKenzie are part of a little crew who have all written quite prolifically about the info product (catering to web devs, no less) business.

Amazing value here. You're the fucking man.

[AVTizzle]

(11-13-2013 01:39 AM)LouieG Wrote:  

Personally, my ambition—and I’ll say more about this later—is reaching a point where my expertise and reputation are such that an hour of my shop’s time is extremely valuable and salable at a massive markup.

That’s why I’m always shooting for more complex jobs, with cooler designs and novel UX/UI features or strategy innovations. I want to eventually be regarded as a guy who can design and build a site that few other shops could pull off.

Respect for this.

Something that became clearer and clearer as your posts went on is that this isn't a no-work, get-rich-quick hustle. The first post *almost* started off with what sounded like a promise of riches for "no real work"... but there's a lot of hustle, creativity, savvy, and grind laid out here.

[Frost]

Once again a big thanks to Louie for this thread.

A few questions:

- How do you set up hosting and registration with small and unsophisticated clients who don't have the in-house expertise to want or need control over their websites? - Do you host all of your projects on your own server, or create new hosting accounts for each individual client?
- How do you handle security of passwords and login information?

FYI, thanks to this thread I am currently in the process of building a team of developers and designers so I can start cross-selling websites and digital marketing to my SME clients in my semi-related business. You are dropping a ton of value here.

[Blaster]

(11-27-2013 01:13 AM)T and A Man Wrote:  

(11-26-2013 10:34 PM)Travesty444 Wrote:  

I find it funny the thread starts with how software developers have money stealing monkeys all over their backs in every company and small venture which is true except for certain start ups.

I still believe this work is still "hustling".

The real money (i.e. you put in 2-3 years are are out of the game completely from a buyout) is in being a developer and finding 2 or 3 other like minded developers that are industrious and want to make a new product from scratch rather than spitting out small sites on contracts.

This is really just slave driving coders that are too dumb to know what they could be capable of if they fully utilized their expertise. Not hating on the OP.

Just hating on my fellow software developers that let this happen due to laziness, cowardice, and lack of creativity.

At a higher level what we can do takes much more creativity and intelligence than any law or finance guy. It is our entire profession's fault for being fucking pussies.

So you're saying the biz is inventing the next wordpress?

You might be able to make a killing inventing the next wordpress, but that's a long-shot goal that will require a lot of technical skill and up-front risk. And it will be competitive. You're going to be competing with guys from Stanford and MIT whose idea of chasing their dream involves moving to Silicon Valley, knowing full well it's one of the worst places in the world to get laid.

For example of competitors: there's Weebly for drag-and-drop website design and WuFoo for building basic database front-ends. Both Y Combinator backed, silicon valley web startups. They are both fantastic services, but still not even close to wordpress and drupal. There's also a faction of web design reverting to simpler technologies like Twitter Bootstrap (tutorial).

Incidentally, if there's anyone on this thread who is trying to pick up some basic website-building skills and are at the HTML/CSS stage, I strongly recommend taking a look at Bootstrap. Wordpress is great for blogs, news sites, and sites that tend to be updated regularly with new content. But many sites don't need regular updates or a database backend, they need to be fast, reliable, secure, engaging and nice-looking with maybe a few interactive features.

[Saladin]

(12-20-2013 09:06 PM)Blaster Wrote:  

(11-27-2013 01:13 AM)T and A Man Wrote:  

(11-26-2013 10:34 PM)Travesty444 Wrote:  

I find it funny the thread starts with how software developers have money stealing monkeys all over their backs in every company and small venture which is true except for certain start ups.

I still believe this work is still "hustling".

The real money (i.e. you put in 2-3 years are are out of the game completely from a buyout) is in being a developer and finding 2 or 3 other like minded developers that are industrious and want to make a new product from scratch rather than spitting out small sites on contracts.

This is really just slave driving coders that are too dumb to know what they could be capable of if they fully utilized their expertise. Not hating on the OP.

Just hating on my fellow software developers that let this happen due to laziness, cowardice, and lack of creativity.

At a higher level what we can do takes much more creativity and intelligence than any law or finance guy. It is our entire profession's fault for being fucking pussies.

So you're saying the biz is inventing the next wordpress?

You might be able to make a killing inventing the next wordpress, but that's a long-shot goal that will require a lot of technical skill and up-front risk. And it will be competitive. You're going to be competing with guys from Stanford and MIT whose idea of chasing their dream involves moving to Silicon Valley, knowing full well it's one of the worst places in the world to get laid.

For example of competitors: there's Weebly for drag-and-drop website design and WuFoo for building basic database front-ends. Both Y Combinator backed, silicon valley web startups. They are both fantastic services, but still not even close to wordpress and drupal. There's also a faction of web design reverting to simpler technologies like Twitter Bootstrap (tutorial).

Incidentally, if there's anyone on this thread who is trying to pick up some basic website-building skills and are at the HTML/CSS stage, I strongly recommend taking a look at Bootstrap. Wordpress is great for blogs, news sites, and sites that tend to be updated regularly with new content. But many sites don't need regular updates or a database backend, they need to be fast, reliable, secure, engaging and nice-looking with maybe a few interactive features.

I don't think he's saying you need to develop the next Wordpress.

I think there's big money in creating the right software for the right niche.

There have been SEO products made that have made their owners millions. There's a million niches out there where people will pay good money for you to make their life easier.

[RockHard]

(12-20-2013 09:51 PM)torontokid Wrote:  

I think there's big money in creating the right software for the right niche.

There have been SEO products made that have made their owners millions. There's a million niches out there where people will pay good money for you to make their life easier.

That's very true. The company I work for was started by a guy who had a process he wanted to automate; it turned out that a lot of other people had the same need, enough to pay a lot of nice salaries for all our employees and put the founder into a 20 bedroom mansion. I have a friend who does software for hospitals, something to do with billing. Keeps his bills paid along with 3 other guys. Another guy I did consulting for a number of years ago did communications software for airlines. Before the Internet became completely pervasive, airlines had proprietary comm protocols, and he wrote software to handle that interface. Had a half dozen airlines as customers. Always drove a < 2 year old Mercedes convertible, nice house in Silicon Valley, had a great, very relaxed lifestyle. Two areas I never would have even though of, but those are niches that paid really well for very specific things. Whatever industry you're currently in, look around. There are probably several things your customers would be willing to pay for. Don't give those ideas to your boss, develop them yourself. Get to know your customers, network with them however you can. Find out what problems they need to have solved and then solve them - that's what programming does as a skill. It allows you to save people work, and that's a valuable thing.

[speakeasy]

I'm assuming the OP ended up getting crazy busy with work and was never able to complete this guide. But I ran across something about this business that really got me thinking and figured it was most relevant to place in this thread. Here is an interesting post about why the owner of a successful web development company got out of that business and decided to shift toward developing products rather than providing a service.


http://blog.silktide.com/2011/07/why-we-...ful-years/

Quote:

It’s a ludicrously easy industry to enter too – all you need is a computer, Internet access and time. There’s plenty of demand for cheap work to get you started, and fair rates for good work if you can do it.

I started Silktide fresh out of University with no computer and £14,000 of debt. And though it was hard from the start, we were able to double in size every year, and all our work led to better work. Our efforts were continually rewarded as we grew.

Unfortunately, not forever.
Your fate is sealed

When you take on creative work for a client, they own a share of your time.

I used to think I was an entrepreneur running a web design company, but the reality was far from entrepreneurial.Clients were my bosses, and we were at the mercy of their whim.

We worked with some amazing and wonderful clients, but we had our share of the misguided, tyrannical and flat-out bonkers too. It’s not like you can always see them coming.

Most web designers work constantly just to keep their clients happy, because unhappy clients don’t pay their bills. Regardless of how good their legal contracts are, a web design company that pisses off their clients won’t stay in business for long, and to keep clients happy sometimes means compromising your work to do what you’re told.

I fired a number of clients in our time, but you can’t fire everyone you disagree with. At times, to pay the bills, you’ll probably take on work you suspect you shouldn’t, and deal with people you wish you wouldn’t. Bit by bit, you sacrifice your ideals for expediency, because the alternative is worse.

But eventually, your conscience grows thin.
Not a great business

It’s not easy to make a lot of money in web design. It’s decent sustenance, but a poor investment.

You can’t really differentiate yourself for starters – I mean, you’ll think you can – but in reality you’ll always be one of a gazillion companies in a global marketplace. It’s not like software, where one company can literally own a market; no one web design company owns 0.01% of their market.

Like everyone else, we charged clients fixed rates. If our projects were a storming success, our reward remained the same. At best, you’ll earn yourself more work. Well done! You just won yourself more work.

Understand how this is different from many other businesses. If you make a best-selling solar powered torch your reward is your own, and so is your destiny. You can choose to change your product, your brand, your strategy as you see fit. If you’re the best, the rewards are immense. But with web design, you essentially earned yourself more, slightly better work.

I've always felt an inkling of what he says above here in that last paragraphy but was never able to put it in words that directly. As a freelance web developer or a web development company, you are merely providing a service for hire. You can increase your revenue and find more prestigeous clients, but you still have bosses to please. It's a world different than say developing a product that you own that people purchaes from you. With the latter there is limitless potential for profit. With the prior, you are still at the end of the day working for someone. Sure you may have some benefits such as decent pay if you have good clients and location independence(maybe), but long run, is it a good thing to be in? The author argues that it isn't and lays out a good case why. The low barrier to entry also means a lot of competition, a lot of $10/hr coders in India and these click and build sites like Weebly and Squarespace are getting ever more sophisticated, making the market increasingly difficult. The blog comments are quite interesting too.

Would be curious to hear some thoughts from you guys.

[conservative]

Here is my take here. Certainly this is my opinion.

1. Be honest. The OP suggests that you try to make up a "fake" portfolio. This might work and kick start your business in a click; but this might work the other way around. If a tech savvy member of the board notice your BS, you'll get kicked out. And I don't really want to guess the consequences on your Brand.

Remember, you are building a Brand. That's what it is worth. Do it slowly and surely.

2. There is no short path to $$. An agency manager (CEO) should have lots of knowledge on running a business, marketing, managing a team, some cash (most companies pay net 30-90)... but also be able to take risks. I don't think any one can have these skills out of thin air. It took me time to understand accounting for my company. And if you don't understand basic accounting (cashflow, balance sheet, income statements...) you have a good chance of bankrupting your company. I heard lots of stories how CEOs spent money and left the company with no cashflow.

3. Connections. Connections are king. The guy with huge connections (because xxx and yyy) will probably kickstart his business in few seconds whereas you have to sweat for your name. If you have No connections, I'd suggest that you try something else (like programming, writing, design...) It's going to be hard and long for you.

[RockHard]

(02-05-2014 02:01 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  

http://blog.silktide.com/2011/07/why-we-...ful-years/

Quote:

Understand how this is different from many other businesses. If you make a best-selling solar powered torch your reward is your own, and so is your destiny. You can choose to change your product, your brand, your strategy as you see fit. If you’re the best, the rewards are immense. But with web design, you essentially earned yourself more, slightly better work.[/b]

I've always felt an inkling of what he says above here in that last paragraphy but was never able to put it in words that directly. As a freelance web developer or a web development company, you are merely providing a service for hire.

This is true even when you're an employee of a company. I spent my 20's working my ass off. I made pretty good money, but I drove a lame car, never took vacations, and while I was pretty good at saving money, I still had months where I was putting up credit card debt and having to catch up for a few months. Meanwhile, the CEOs and executives of those companies were living the high life, and not only that, but many guys who were somewhat wiser than me figured out how to hustle a bit of extra money - whether because they were more mercenary and switched jobs more frequently (this was the 90's), or learned some shitty but incredibly lucrative skill like SAP, or they took a chance and got a business off the ground. That's what he calls "opportunity cost" in his article - I was killing myself for someone else. You are always a free agent in the US. Your employer can cut you at any time, reduction in force, transfer to a shitty position, outright fire you, go bankrupt... you have no control.

The world needs employees and definitely when you're starting out, you need to gain experience and working for someone is a great way to do it. But keep your eye on the ball. Like I wrote above, always be looking for inefficiencies you can fix for people, and charge for it. You'll be amazed at the ideas that can pay off. I ran into an article by a guy who did event planning software - basically seating charts for venues. Who knew? It seems to pay him well enough.

You don't have to make the next Twitter or Facebook. If you can get an idea that you can manage by yourself and pull in $100-150K, you're doing pretty well. Even if you buy your own health insurance, that's still a good salary. I guarantee that the $150K ideas are out there, there's probably a thousand things that some business is willing to pay serious money for.

[TravellerJay]

This post is pure gold, wish he returns as this is truly exciting. I am a PM in-house and although work is ok, sometimes was more exciting, I do want to be my own employer and make a nice revenue, like RockHard said it a 100K idea is really worth the shot.

[Frost]

Interesting article speakeasy, but consider this guy's motivation. He is promoting software products to web developers, so he wrote an article that would get clicked on by web developers. Doesn't make him wrong, but worth noting.

As for his arguments, sure, web developers trade their time for money. Web development is a trade, not a true fire-and-forget passive income stream. But as trades go, it's a damn good one for smart men.

The author of that article complained that web developers are always busy, and doing a good job "just leads to more work." He claimed that web development was sucking up all his time and keeping his company from focusing on software products.

Those aren't real problems. You've got too much work? Double your rates. Even if you lose half your clients, you're making the same revenues for half the time. Troublesome clients? Fire them. Choose to work with people who are on the level.

I'm glad you posted this article. It's a different perspective and makes a few good points. But for any young guys thinking of jumping into this field, note that the author's goal in writing this article is to get web developers to buy his products.

On the subject of barriers to entry, WordPress has made it absurdly easy for amateurs to build perfectly fine basic websites with a bit of training and practice. I expect that this trend is only going to continue. CMSs will get easier to work with, Squarespace et al will continue to improve, and the technical barriers to entry for non-complex websites will approach zero.

This trend is frustrating to experienced coders, but it's a good thing for guys who are good at the business side of things. We're not selling "websites." We're selling marketing solutions, using whichever tools are most appropriate.

There will always be a niche for guys who can help SMEs navigate the world of digital marketing, no matter how non-technical it gets.

Edit: Just realized this article is three years old! Three years in which web dev shops have been booming.

(02-05-2014 02:01 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  

I'm assuming the OP ended up getting crazy busy with work and was never able to complete this guide. But I ran across something about this business that really got me thinking and figured it was most relevant to place in this thread. Here is an interesting post about why the owner of a successful web development company got out of that business and decided to shift toward developing products rather than providing a service.


http://blog.silktide.com/2011/07/why-we-...ful-years/

Quote:

It’s a ludicrously easy industry to enter too – all you need is a computer, Internet access and time. There’s plenty of demand for cheap work to get you started, and fair rates for good work if you can do it.

I started Silktide fresh out of University with no computer and £14,000 of debt. And though it was hard from the start, we were able to double in size every year, and all our work led to better work. Our efforts were continually rewarded as we grew.

Unfortunately, not forever.
Your fate is sealed

When you take on creative work for a client, they own a share of your time.

I used to think I was an entrepreneur running a web design company, but the reality was far from entrepreneurial.Clients were my bosses, and we were at the mercy of their whim.

We worked with some amazing and wonderful clients, but we had our share of the misguided, tyrannical and flat-out bonkers too. It’s not like you can always see them coming.

Most web designers work constantly just to keep their clients happy, because unhappy clients don’t pay their bills. Regardless of how good their legal contracts are, a web design company that pisses off their clients won’t stay in business for long, and to keep clients happy sometimes means compromising your work to do what you’re told.

I fired a number of clients in our time, but you can’t fire everyone you disagree with. At times, to pay the bills, you’ll probably take on work you suspect you shouldn’t, and deal with people you wish you wouldn’t. Bit by bit, you sacrifice your ideals for expediency, because the alternative is worse.

But eventually, your conscience grows thin.
Not a great business

It’s not easy to make a lot of money in web design. It’s decent sustenance, but a poor investment.

You can’t really differentiate yourself for starters – I mean, you’ll think you can – but in reality you’ll always be one of a gazillion companies in a global marketplace. It’s not like software, where one company can literally own a market; no one web design company owns 0.01% of their market.

Like everyone else, we charged clients fixed rates. If our projects were a storming success, our reward remained the same. At best, you’ll earn yourself more work. Well done! You just won yourself more work.

Understand how this is different from many other businesses. If you make a best-selling solar powered torch your reward is your own, and so is your destiny. You can choose to change your product, your brand, your strategy as you see fit. If you’re the best, the rewards are immense. But with web design, you essentially earned yourself more, slightly better work.

I've always felt an inkling of what he says above here in that last paragraphy but was never able to put it in words that directly. As a freelance web developer or a web development company, you are merely providing a service for hire. You can increase your revenue and find more prestigeous clients, but you still have bosses to please. It's a world different than say developing a product that you own that people purchaes from you. With the latter there is limitless potential for profit. With the prior, you are still at the end of the day working for someone. Sure you may have some benefits such as decent pay if you have good clients and location independence(maybe), but long run, is it a good thing to be in? The author argues that it isn't and lays out a good case why. The low barrier to entry also means a lot of competition, a lot of $10/hr coders in India and these click and build sites like Weebly and Squarespace are getting ever more sophisticated, making the market increasingly difficult. The blog comments are quite interesting too.

Would be curious to hear some thoughts from you guys.

[Saladin]

Any web developers on here looking for work?

I have a decent amount of work, and my current devs are pretty busy with another project so I need someone who's solid at web development(the actual coding, I already have an excellent guy specializing in design).

[frenchcorporation]

(04-01-2014 01:54 PM)Saladin Wrote:  

Any web developers on here looking for work?

I have a decent amount of work, and my current devs are pretty busy with another project so I need someone who's solid at web development(the actual coding, I already have an excellent guy specializing in design).

whats the tech stack?

[Ice]

LouieG, EXTREMELY good thread - thanks a lot for the information. This is really very valuable.

[Hafu Gaijin]

This is a great thread. Lotsa good info on deailing with projects and people.

Unfortunately, its thin on how to network and get the project.

I'm interested in networking on LinkedIn and online. I've read YGM's posts on how to leverage linkedin but its more on how to get a job in a company, not so much how to make a company your client if you're a web design/development shop (or one man shop).

I ask because I think Linkedin is good but its highly competitive. A lot of the sales people from other agencies and design shops are already in there with their premium memberships, messaging company CEOs and other decision makers.

I'm thinking a better use of my time would be to go to business networking events in my city and network in person - the old skool way.

Anyone successful in networking on LinkedIn?

[Saladin]

(04-09-2014 01:00 PM)Hafu Gaijin Wrote:  

This is a great thread. Lotsa good info on deailing with projects and people.

Unfortunately, its thin on how to network and get the project.

I'm interested in networking on LinkedIn and online. I've read YGM's posts on how to leverage linkedin but its more on how to get a job in a company, not so much how to make a company your client if you're a web design/development shop (or one man shop).

I ask because I think Linkedin is good but its highly competitive. A lot of the sales people from other agencies and design shops are already in there with their premium memberships, messaging company CEOs and other decision makers.

I'm thinking a better use of my time would be to go to business networking events in my city and network in person - the old skool way.

Anyone successful in networking on LinkedIn?

Step 1: Create an impressive agency website.
Step 2: Build a portfolio by doing very cheap work for family, friends and acquaintances. At this point you're running at a loss but consider it an investment in your business. Invest in building strong relationships with developers and designers, and use good ones.
Step 3: Once your portfolio is impressive, figure out a strategy to get leads. Work on it to the point where you're getting a steady inflow of leads. Figure out a sales strategy that consistently works for you.

Possible strategies include-

PPC advertising.
SEO.
Networking.
Cold Calling.

Etc. Figure out what works for you and get good at that advertising method. Also the more clients you get the more repeat work and referalls you'll get.