rmcastil

I get what you're saying. HN is known as a place to generate traffic for your product. After all, that's why I posted it here.

Completely agree with the premise of this article. I'd even put communication slightly ahead of technical aptitude in the skills required to freelance.

I've just seen so many freelancers fall on their face because they built out what they envisioned as "done" rather than what the client actually wanted.

It's actually how I lost my first client. It was a two week Rails/Angular contract and I was focused on things such as clean code, contributing to OSS, and putting in tests. At the end of the contract the CEO said it wasn't going to work out.

I asked for a quick call before we parted and he revealed to me that he went with a consultant because he wanted to someone to know exactly what he wanted done and for them to just finish it independently.

It sucked failing like that for my first client after full time work but I'd rank it as my number one lesson in independent work.

Lean how to sell. When I was in college I got frustrated at not having software dev opportunities and only opportunities working at the mall (I went to college right after the dot com bubble). This curse ended up becoming a blessing because I learned how to empathize with what people wanted and what they were trying to accomplish.

A lot of freelancing is just being able to sell yourself. When you find a lead you have to convince them (aka sell to them) that you won't run away with their money and are trustworthy enough to finish what they asked. Each week/day/month you have to do a smaller version of this sale to convince them to continue to stick with you and pay you. Even at the end of the project you have to convince them (aka sell to them) that they should provide positive reviews for you.

Aside from selling you've got to be sure you deliver on time and perform the work asked. You'd be surprised how much of freelancing is more about soft skills (listening, empathy, communicating, saying no, etc) than technical skills.

If have any more questions don't hesitate to reach out to me at ryan at challengeacceptedhq.com

I write a newsletter on freelancing but have taken a couple months break to wrap up my book: The 7 Recurring Revenue Recipes for Freelancers.

A lot of salary negotiation and asking comes down to preparation.

It's terrifying to ask for one the first time but it's a natural part of employment. The basic principal behind hiring an employee is that they will become a financial net positive for the business eventually.

As an employee you can figure out how you affect the bottom line. It may take some imagination but you can come up with a ball park figure. In a larger corporation this may be a little tougher but with some digging you can come up with an idea whether you've become a net positive.

At the point you've become a net positive everything you make the company beyond your salary goes to profit or your bonus. If you're really good at your job then a lot of it is going to be going to profit. This is the point where you should ask for a raise.

Again it will be nerve racking but if you go in knowing how you affect the business's bottom line your raise will be justified.

I'd also suggest walking in with knowledge regarding how much people with similar job responsibilities make. This can be found on salary look up sites. A quick google search pointed me out to payscale.com and indeed.com

Great copy! My only issue is with the "How I Can Fix Your SQL Server Woes". Everything prior is the right level on the ladder of abstraction. This section needs to be more specific though since it is the last area besides the testimonials to handle potential client objections.

It needs to have actual use cases where your Dad's expertise helped these businesses. You can think of it as the bullet points in a resume. It may also help to include some kind of case study that formalizes your Dad's offering.

Actually this isn't my article. It's just something I encountered while doing research for my guide.

First I just have to say this was titled "How I launched a productized consulting service in 2 days that brought $15,450 worth of work in the first month" but that was a little long for HN :)

There are just a ton of things to learn from this article. I'm not sure if I can cover them all but I'll try

> freelancing service with a fixed length, scope, and price

This negates a ton of the pains of freelancing. You wouldn't have to go through a ton of contract negotiating on price and work delivered because everything is fixed a clearly define. You shouldn't have to worry about going past the end date of the engagement since you're offering a productized consulting engagement which you're an expert at.

What if anything falls out beyond what's defined in the scope and end date? Just define a traditional MSA and SOW. The process should be a lot easier since you've already established trust with the client which is usually what 99% of contract agreements are all about (not a real statistic).

> Announce LPIAD like a product

This is what I found particularly fascinating. This service can be launched. And by launching you outreach to thousands of potential customers you couldn't reach before. That's the ultimate cold call!

> I assume that these things should be obvious.

I'm glad that you've gotten so many takeaways but be very mindful of this. As you've said you didn't see a lot of these things when you just started out. It's through experience that things became obvious.

It'll take time but if you focus on teaching and improving your team you will get there.