Business Leads
It's funny where you find your business leads coming from. Just this week I had two unexpected enquiries. First came from an estate agent who came to value our house. On entering my room/office she asked "You work from home? What do you do?". I told her I was a Web Developer and things went from there. Turns out she was expanding in to the Spanish market and needed to get on the web. Her next question was whether or not I was expensive. So, I told her it would probably by thousands of pounds, rather than hundreds. Surprisingly she was open to this and gave me a card so I could get in touch with her.
Also this week I had a mail from a guy who had downloaded this application from the Sandbox. Expecting it to work on the web they opened it in a browser. What they saw was a really old version of this site's homepage, copied on to a form, complete with a link to this site. They followed the link, liked what they saw and contacted me for a quote to web-enable the database.
The thing I am finding out about the world of business is that you can't get too excited when the leads start flowing in. Wait until they turn in to real business for the celebrations. I'd reckon that only about 1 in 10 leads come to anything! Maybe I'm doing something wrong, I don't know. Maybe I need to be more agressive ;o)
Which brings me to the bit I don't like to do - ask for business. Anybody got any work they can send my way? For the first time since I started I find myself with nothing to do. In a way this is handy though, as it gives me the chance to finish off a company website. With this done I will be in a better position to promote myself. Hopefully, this will leave people with a better impression of exactly what kind of service it is that I offer and whether I am worth using or not.
Skip to the 
You can subscribe to an individual
I think one in ten is actually quite good in my experience!
I think direct marketing mailers only score a 2% response rate. 10% is very good for having done only community service type self promotion to date.
I'd keep the 2% metric in mind when you send out solicitations, whether by email or by buying some adsense ads. That should help you guage the cost/benefit ratio in advance to some extent. That is based, however, on essentially snail-mail spam, with something like adsense and the afore mentioned community service promotion, you're more likely to hit interested parties more directly, so maybe 10% isn't unrealistic. :-) Best of luck, either way!
Somebody I met at LotuSphere earlier this year talked about "Passive Marketing". Apparently it's the new kind of marketing and the most effective by far. Guess what a blog is. Yep, passive marketing.
Having been passively marketing myself without even realising it for about three years I am in a great position. So far I've got away with not having to look for work. To a certain extent it comes to me. Without codestore behind me I wouldb't even venture in to this crazy world!
i think a great paradigm of passive marketing is the PPK's personnal/professional web site : {Link}
Jake,
What I'm about to say in this long-winded comment applies to relatively small or medium sized projects only!
If someone has made contact with you, and seen the quality of your work and then asks 'how much do you charge?' then it's all up to you at this point.
If you tell them it's going to cost thousands instead of hundreds then all they're going to do is shop you.
I know - we're developers, not salespeople but as independent contractors we have to learn to be both. The customer will shop you to death until s/he will find the best price.
If you're unemployed then I believe you should approach it differently. Here's what I do in this situation, and I know some of you will disagree with this, but here goes anyway.
Offer to do it at a VERY cheap price. Tell them it will be hundreds, not thousands. And offer to build them a prototype (or the whole damn site) BEFORE you accept payment. Give them NO reason to shop you - eliminate ALL risk for them and you'll get a bite.
The goal here folks is to develop an impressive portfolio. Few will likely pay on the promise of something unseen. Would you?
Unless you sign something upfront you can design their fantastic web site/solution/whatever and it remains legally yours. Once the customer has paid for it and you deliver the code, etc then it's theirs, but you can probably retain the right to add them to your portfolio.
Don't lose site of the goal. If I am a customer and I see my ideal solution sitting on your web server I am going to deal. Why would I shop around if I know it's ready to go right NOW.
The disadvantage of this is obvious. You may spend time designing something you won't get paid for. But hey, it's only your TIME you're wasting, and you're not really wasting it IMO.
The advantages are numerous. You may get less money for the application but we all know that applications evolve over time, and guess who they'll be coming back to when they want something done. That's when you charge on an hourly rate. Over the course of that application I bet you'll earn at least twice what you thought you would at the start. Slow and steady will win this race.
All the while you're keeping up with your skills, and building a portfolio you can show to other customers.
Sorry for babbling on! Good luck matey!
>i think a great paradigm of passive marketing is the PPK's personnal/professional web site
Well, thank you for giving the effect a name. I quite like "passive marketing", and it works, because three small clients and one large one were sufficiently impressed by my site to hire me.
As to Darryl's comment about (basically) creating sites for free: I couldn't disagree more.
Although maybe (maybe!) this is a valid strategy for newbies on the market who lack any sort of experience, a (semi-)professional should not do this.
The problem is: if you offer something for very little money, the client expects you to offer everything for very little money forever after.
If the client returns, he will expect you to work for the same minimal rates, and if you refuse he'll look for someone else.
It's a psychological thing: after such a project they will rank you with the Cheap Guys and will never accept you as an Expensive Expert.
Besides, clients who accept such deals only care about the price. Serious clients with serious budgets will distrust you as soon as you offer to do something for very little money, because they'll assume you're inexperienced or that there is some sort of tricky catch.
I strongly urge everyone to decide on your hourly rate, and stick to it, in general. You can offer a 10% discount if it might help you win a project, but not a 75% discount, and you certainly shouldn't start out by offering it.
Yeah, I think you missed the point ppk.
I'm not a newbie, been a Domino developer for 7 years and PHP/MySQL for 2, and I've build up a good list of 4-5 trusting clients that pay regularly, based on this model. And I know a JAVA developer who sticks by his hourly rate - guess what, he's now stacking shelves at the local supermarket.
If you're unemployed you can set an hourly rate all you like - you'll get shopped and now you haven't differentiated yourself from 100 other guys out there offering to do the job cheaper.
Take a look at those sites out there like itmoonlighter.com, php-freelancers.com and see what competition you're up against! It's tough. The Indians, Ukranians, Russians, Turks, etc are offering to do the job for $5-$8 an hour - and you think Jake should stick to his hourly rate?
BTW I sold the initial solution to my clients VERY cheap but now they're hooked in. You said they would expect everything for cheap - that's my point I made earlier about being a good salesperson - once you've got them hooked you have to negotiate a good rate for all involved.
I think we all have to face it - we are simply not worth what we were 4 years ago. Some of us still think we're worth the $100/hr we used to get. Forget it, those times are gone for now - time to start thinking a little differently.
Daryl,
Ouch. The truth does hurt.
I appreciate your insight, but help us understand your method a bit more. What rates did you start with and what have your worked up to? How many hours do you normally work in a typical week? Finally, and probably the most important, how do you find your clients?
Darryl,
When you ar discussing small to medium size projects the client is typically not looking to find someone overseas on moonlighter.com to do it. They need some handholding or the project requires interation and communication that just wont work well w/ that scenario. I do understand what you are saying when you propose creating a prototype or whole thing for free with the idea that then they will go with you because its there, they have seen the great work you do, etc. I used to do this and it did not work well for me at all. Typically with web apps and sites you need "stuff" from the client, whether that stuff be content, info to create detailed specs, etc. Clients are also usually more busy with the business they have at hand then giving you this info, it certainly falls even lower on the priority scale when they haven't paid anything. When they have they take it more seriously. I no longer ever use this approach and never will again (although I would possibly recommend it for the newbie looking to build business/portfolio). If you want to do business here is what it will cost and here is what is needed to get moving. I have built over 20 regular clients using this approach. Yes, we are not what we were worth 4 years ago, but someone who has solid technical skills, gets things done when they say they will, can manage a project and has personality/works well with clients should be confident in being able to say "you get what you pay for".
It's so different depending on what skills you have, where abouts in the world you are, and who you know.
I look frequently on different freelance sites and often I see the winners of the projects go to programmers in India, Ukraine, etc. In fact, I often lose bids to these guys so I don't subscribe to NTD's generalist statement that small/medium sized projects will not go overseas. In my experience, it's the big projects that stay local (because the risk is higher), everything else is up for grabs!
Where abouts are you? I live in California where we are under a constant threat of jobs moving overseas. It's getting so bad that it's a primary focus of Presidential candidates in this year's elections.
It's interesting the perspective we all have. Someone earlier said clients will focis primarily on price, someone else says the client will need hand-holding. Each project can be so different, and each developer's situation too.
I want to remind you that I am addressing Jake's unemployment issue. What Jake would like is to probably get another lucrative full-time contract that pays 40 hours a week. Don't we all! But that's not the case right now. I've been there myself and if all you have is time on your hands you have to put it to good use.
If you have a set of clients already, or some other form of income then OF COURSE I recommend your approach NTD. But it looks like Jake, and probably many others, does not have that yet.
Jospeh - to answer your question depends on what rate, as a developer, you are willing to accept. Jake may have been on 100 GBP/hr for all I know but if you're unemployed, believe me, you can't turn much away. So Jake may be more than willing to accept 15 GBP an hour doing something he loves, and building a client or two, increasing the chance of referrals, and keeping his hand in, and building his portfolio, etc.
When things get better he can afford to take on new clients at a better rate and start telling his older clients that he can't continue maintenance at that cheap rate.
The trouble when you're unemployed is that there is NO minimum rate! All the time you don't spend coding is time you're out of the game - and we all know that you don't have to be out of it very long to start losing your edge.
Jospeh - I work about 40 hours a week, sometimes more. Some clients I charge more than others (which is why I don't advertise a standard rate) - it's all down to negotiation and people skills. Sometimes I tell my clients to package requirements together and then I tell them that I'll do it for e.g. $2000, and not by the hour. I know, I know - some of you are going tell me that I shouldn't do it but hey, I'm getting what I need right now.
As far as getting business - network, network, network. Tell them everything they want to hear - reduce the risk for them and you're likely to get more interest. Don't underestimate the power of lost-leaders and referrals. As I said earlier, slow and steady wins this race. It takes a lot of time and patience to build up a good client list. Over time they will send you referrals if you do good work, are reasonable, professional and timely.
I think it would be very interesting to hear from other unemployed developers out there, what they've tried and what results they've found. I expect there is no one correct answer but many!
Hi Jake,
getting business leads if really a difficult game. When I moved from Germany to SE-Asia I had to realize, that I moved from a Quality driven to a Price driven business environment. The question here is: "How much does it cost now, can I have a discount?" Better quality (and thus less maintenance cost) comes second. It was a tough learning curve.
There are two lessions I learned: first get your branding right, so you attract customers who are compatible. Second: increase your visibility.
For the first exercise, after a lot of home-baked attempts, I hired a professional, to suggest a make-over. I expect results in about a month time.
For the second (this is where I'm open to new ideas): I conduct public speaks about easy to digest topics in my field and get member of the various business networks, not only the fancy Internet based ones (like Ryze, OpenBC, LinkedIn ....) but also the more traditional ones like Industry associations and the Rotary Club. Most associations are constantly looking for presenters for their events, so that can boost your visibility quite a bit.
;-) stw
:) no doubt you worth it :) May Success be with you :)
Passive marketing is king. The business partner I'm working for is getting practically all its new customers by word of mouth or from Google searches that lead to follow-up calls from the web users.
We have been practising Passive marketing for years by having a web site that has quality content, not just sales stuff. It's highly recommended. But it gives you no quick sales.
What I have yet to see anyone mention is the first obvious answer for me - pay a professional! Speak with three or four headhunting and lead generation companies and listen to their pitches - Most of them have been in the buisness since before the internet so they know what their talking about. Don't waste your time learning how to look for buisness leads, let someone who already knows do it for you.