

Ask HN: Best Way To Present Your Freelance Business - benjaminwootton

As a freelancer, are you best to trade under the banner of a small branded company, or all under your own name?<p>My current preference is to brand under my own name as I fear I may fall in the cracks between people who are looking for a freelancer and people who are looking for a business if I try to appear too formal.<p>However, I'm interested in the pros and cons and what other freelancers have chosen.
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bdunn
A lot depends on the kind of clients you want. If you want to be subbed out
work or hired short term by an existing development team, marketing your
persona, maintaining a technical blog, and other things will definitely help.

But if you're like me, you want to work directly with founders and small
businesses. They tend to trust companies, they seem more... permanent (even
though it costs $100 and an hour of paperwork to put one together) And it's
also all about appearances. Say you attend a networking event. When you pass
out a business card with "ABC Consulting" and your name followed by
"President", I'm almost certain the results would be better than "Brennan
Dunn, Web Developer".

There are a few other benefits that come with being under a company.

I've realized the need for some pretty firm processes: payment schedules,
handling additional scope, etc. And I think it's easier to stick to processes
when they're a _company_ thing, even if it's just you.

Second, if you get more work than you can handle and need to subcontract
things out under you, you'll want to manage that as a company.

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pawelwentpawel
If you brand yourself as a small company then the clients might get the
feeling that you have an office. Hence, when you try to set up a meeting with
them, they might be surprised.

I was always telling the truth and saying that I will be the only person
working on the project. However, if you don't have an actual company it might
be a good idea to say that you work as a collective - a few
designers/developers working together and outsourcing the work between each
other.

