
Ask HN: I'm a first time freelancer with some questions? - chrisshroba
I am a web developer freelancer and just got my first client, and I feel very in the dark about a lot of things.  Does anyone have advice or links to resources that would help me?  Some of my main questions are:
 - How does a copyright work?  I have heard that I should copyright my work and only transfer the copyright upon completion of payment, but I don&#x27;t know anything about how to do register the copyright myself OR transfer one.
 - How should I value my time?  This is my first time so I&#x27;m inclined to start lower than others, but I don&#x27;t really have any idea how to do that.  Is my time worth $20 an hour? $40? Less? More?
 - I know I should write a contract between my client and me, and I&#x27;ve found several examples online, but how can I make it officially binding?  Anyone can forge a signature so how can I make it so the contract would hold up in a court, if, for example, they refused me payment?
 - Is there anything else I should know?<p>I&#x27;m sure many of you have been in my same situation, so any advice would be wonderful!! Thank you!
======
snouter
There is a good chance you will (initially) undervalue your time.

You are paid to know things and to find out how to learn things you do not
know. You have to stay in constant training and re-learning. You are an expert
in your field. Something you learned two or three years ago? You have to
forget that and learn some other thing.

You have to own hardware and software. You have to buy health insurance. You
have to save for a rainy day. You have to save for retirement. You want to go
out to eat like normal people. You want to buy a house. You have to do
billing. Not every client will pay. You have to hire an accountant. You have
to pay taxes. You need to file papers with the county and form an LLC.

Are you going to work 8 hours a day 5 days a week? No, you will probably
"work" 12 hours a day 7 days a week. Someone calls with work? Are you
available? You have to get paid for being available.

Still think $40 an hour?

A few things I have learned (solo since about 1996 but spent the recession
years 2007-2011 in a corporate job):

You are not a freelancer. Banish the word from your vocabulary. You are X. X
being whatever it is you do/are. You are a company. You are a professional.
That's just the work part. You are also a salesperson, a bookkeeper, a
marketer, etc.

You will need some steady clients. Clients that call enough during the year(s)
to provide some stability. You can't hustle for every single job.
Relationships matter. How much stability you need, I can't say, but, ideally,
you already have a jump-off client or two already.

You will have to do the numbers on your rate, but, I promise you, it is more
than you think and more than you may be comfortable asking for, initially.
Remember, your rate covers your availability, your expertise, your equipment,
insurance, retirement, etc. If your salary is $75,000 that is not close to how
much it really cost to put you in an office, with a computer, health
insurance, matching 401k, etc. A company that hires the solo you is also
paying for the flexibility to release you back to the wild at the end of a
project without having had to hire you or fire you.

Value your time, your skills and yourself. You are a professional.

------
jacquesm
I wrote a post that answers some of your questions right this morning:

[http://jacquesmattheij.com/the-army-of-the-new-
independents](http://jacquesmattheij.com/the-army-of-the-new-independents)

Best of luck!

~~~
31reasons
I charge $100/hour and I had extremely hard time finding work for last two
years. Primarily because most client's think I charge way too much. I live in
Los Angeles! Last year I worked at a mid-size multinational tech company as
iOS developer at a $700/Day rate. The manager probably told me 100 times that
I am very expensive and they have to let me go after project is over. I am not
sure if companies are spoiled by offshore low rates or something else is going
on. If Plumbers are making $100/hour, why do they think Software Developers
should be cheaper than that!

As a freelancer , after making 1/4 of what I can make as Full-time developer I
am going back to the full-time Job.

~~~
howlett
I've always wondered why freelance developers compare to
plumbers/electricians. You will hire the plumber for 3-4 hours of work and
that's it - he'll be on his way. But we will be there for days/weeks/months.

I agree in charging as much as you want if you can solve a problem noone else
can. In ~2002 a company had serious database issues with reporting queries
running for over 24 hours. So they hired 2 people who charged 600 pounds each
an hour. They both worked on the problem for 2 days and brought down the
execution time to 3 minutes. In that case yeah, I think they can charge as
much as they want.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a developer as well and I know the difference between
a 40/h and a 80/h developer. But I believe an hourly rate must depend on how
long you'll be working on that project, what you'll be doing as well and how
critical it is.

~~~
31reasons
Did you read the blog the original commenter wrote ? I was responding to that
blog.

------
lchengify
> How should I value my time?

Under-pricing my work cost me a lot during my freelancing days, so I'll
comment on that directly here.

The best advice I got was from my uncle who worked in the tech industry in the
80's, which is to take your normal hourly rate and multiply it by 3. Or, take
what you would be making full time, pro-rate it, and do the same.

This might sound high, but the easiest way to think about it is as follows:

\- The first 1x is for your normal salary, as if you had a full time job. You
are producing a product, or your time costs money, and this is the price.

\- The second 2x is for "backoffice" or "cost of doing business" expenses.
This is everything from accountants to lawyers, gasoline for trips, software
licenses, hardware costs, office rent, etc. This stuff adds up and you should
remember to account for it.

\- The third 3x is for profit. You're running a business, you're shouldering
risk, and should profit from that risk. Also more practically, there will be
boom times and bust times, and you need to weather the bust times with float.

All of the above is to say: If you are negotiating a price, especially if you
are not used to negotiating prices, think of the highest price you can say
with a straight face. It's often more right than you think.

As a final note, having been in a position of hiring freelancers in the past,
don't forget that the value you put on money it often completely different
than the client who hires you. For you, that money is your dinner. For a
company, your cost is nothing if it gets them another advantage, such as a key
BD contract or a stronger foothold in a 20m market. I believe the negotiating
term is "trading things of unequal value".

~~~
PeterisP
Add in a fourth X for taxes/social security/retirement/whatever - depends on
your country, but as a freelancer or consultant, you'll carry 100% of this
burden/investment, while in 'normal employment' that'd come out of money
that's not included in your listed salary.

------
leepowers
_How does a copyright work?_

In practice it's simple - if you're paid to build a thing for someone, that
someone owns the thing. It's known as a "work for hire". That's what your
customer will expect, anyway. I mean, would you pay someone to build a thing
for you and think didn't own the copyright on the thing?

 _how can I make it so the contract would hold up in a court, if, for example,
they refused me payment?_

You know what's better than a contract? Getting paid in advance. Whether it's
10%, 30%, 50% or 100%. You should work your ass off for your customers. But if
they haven't paid you, they aren't really a customer, are they?

If you didn't get any upfront payment, ask for something once you have any
deliverable to show. Show proof of work and a reasonable client should be
willing to send money your way. Worried about getting paid? Establish that
they will pay as soon as possible.

Also, a contract that holds up in court and results in a judgement in your
favor is no guarantee of payment. A judgement means you can send a debt to
collections. But the collections agency will extract a hefty fee and it may
take months or years to collect.

It seems like you're focusing on what can go wrong. Ignore that stuff. Focus
on building trust and rapport with your clients.

 _How should I value my time?_

 _Is my time worth $20 an hour? $40? Less? More?_

Abandon the concept of time. Think instead of services. What services are you
providing? What are these services worth to your customer? Approach this from
their point of view, find out what they're willing to pay, not the minimum
you're willing to charge.

Start out high. Charge a rate that seems too high. If the customer says "no"
find out why. It may not be the price, but some other concern. If the price is
too high tell them you're open to negotiate, ask for them for a counter-offer.

~~~
scarecrowbob
"In practice it's simple - if you're paid to build a thing for someone, that
someone owns the thing. It's known as a "work for hire". That's what your
customer will expect, anyway. I mean, would you pay someone to build a thing
for you and think didn't own the copyright on the thing?"

I don't think that this is true, at least in the US; the default is not work-
for-hire, the default is that creators own works. While it is possible that
I'm mistaken, I'd imagine that it is jus the case that you're generally
working in situations where it isn't an issue (for instance, you don't want to
reuse the code, the folks you're working with don't specifically care, or
something).

Otherwise, I agree with you.

------
jedberg
The best tip I ever learned is don't price by the hour, price by the job. You
can use an estimate for the number of hours you think it will take as the
basis, but don't tell the client your estimate, just say, "This job will cost
$X, and here is what I will deliver."

The reason this works well is because it benefits everyone. It benefits you
because you know what you are going to make, you don't have to worry about the
client saying "oh can we make this one change it will just be an extra hour
right?".

They benefit because they know the cost upfront and don't have to worry about
overruns, and they know exactly what they are getting from the detailed spec
that is required to make this work.

~~~
jacquesm
If you want to start doing fixed price jobs I would suggest that you do the
following first to avoid learning some very expensive lessons about your
ability to estimate jobs:

(1) read the spec for a job that you're going to do on an hourly rate basis

(2) make a very detailed layout of how long you think you will spend
implementing each part of the spec

(3) total it all up, write down the number and multiply by two, then multiply
by your hourly rate

(4) write down the resulting number as what you could have quoted your
customer with a huge safety margin of 50%.

(5) next, proceed to do the job as you planned, hourly rate

(6) keep track of your time (you need to do that anyway, but do it in a bit
more detail, what part of the spec took how long)

(7) add that all up, multiply by your hourly rate, compare with the number you
got in step (4).

If you end up 20% below or further than the number you got in step (4) you are
more or less ready to try (small!) fixed price jobs.

Keep in mind that it only takes _one_ big fixed price job to sink your
reputation or to totally eat up the profits of many otherwise successful jobs.
It took me a really long time to get good at this.

~~~
japhyr
_Keep in mind that it only takes one big fixed price job to sink your
reputation or to totally eat up the profits of many otherwise successful jobs.
It took me a really long time to get good at this._

Do you mean sink your reputation because you underbid and then can't afford to
finish the project, or something to that effect?

~~~
jacquesm
Depending on how bad you get it wrong it might actually get to that. If you're
lucky you will lower your margins, if your less lucky than that you'll eat
into your savings, if you're very unlucky then you might have to tell your
customer there is no way to deliver at the agreed upon price.

And that can get very ugly, especially if you cause bad things to happen to
your customer.

------
johnthedebs
Hey. I've been freelancing for about 5 years more or less. (Disclaimer: I did
recently accept a job as an employee, but not for any reason that should
discourage you. I think freelancing is awesome and expect to do it again at
some point in my life.)

Copyright - Maybe a lawyer can speak to this issue, but my understanding is
that you own the copyright to any work you produce until you indicate
otherwise. In the context of freelancing, that means that you should have a
clause in your contracts that gives your client the copyright to the work once
you're paid in full. No explicit transfer needs to be made and nothing needs
to be filed (unlike trademarks and patents).

Value of time - You should value your time according to the value you can
produce and what you will be happy with. This is tricky, and others have
written a lot about this (and have said it better than I could) so search
Google for "hn increase freelance rates" and you'll get enough material to
keep you busy for a while. Just one warning to add: Don't undervalue yourself!
It'll kill your motivation and put you in a vicious cycle of unproductivity.
Chances are the lessons you learn here will be learned the hard way (speaking
from experience).

Contract - Rather than thinking of this as a legally binding document, you
should think of it as an outline of the process you're about to enter into
with your client. Use it beforehand to make sure you're on the same page about
your relationship, rather than afterwards to try to protect your ass. How/how
much/when will you be paid? What are you expect to deliver, and when? How are
you going to handle disagreements or unforeseen problems with your client? How
much availability should the client expect of you, and vice versa (just as
important!). The answer to all of these questions should minimize the risks to
both parties and set you up for success.
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8976924](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8976924)
is on the front page as I write this and should get you started).

I could write about this for days, but I'll stop there for now :). If you have
any other questions though I'd be glad to answer as well as I can.

------
icpmacdo
What level of development skill should I have before I start freelancing? What
kinda of project should I be able to code to show clients I am experienced
enough with PHP/JS/CSS to be worth there time?

~~~
aethr
At a minimum, you should be able to put a complete site together using a
popular CMS/framework like Wordpress, Drupal, or Laravel. This should include
basic (but common) features, like: editable pages with images, blog, contact
form, search, homepage with editable content and at least one or two custom
features which will be specific to each business. The site should be
responsive, with every feature styled and functional in at least mobile and
desktop sizes.

There are also non-development skills that you will need. You will need to
gather requirements, possibly even produce wireframes. You'll need to be
organised around tasks and deadlines. I suggest using a task-tracking tool
that both you and the client have access to. Your clients may need design. If
you're not capable of doing this yourself, you'll need to find them someone
who is, or at a minimum give them a set of options of pre-built themes from a
paid theme site, which you're skilled enough to adapt to their requirements.

Also don't forget that you'll be deploying their site to the hosting, which
you may need to purchase and/or set up. I would also recommend a staging
environment (even if it's on the same server as live) for testing and
previewing changes and new features to the client before they are pushed to
live.

Development sometimes ends up being less than half of the time you spend on
the project. When you're a freelancer, there is no one else to do those tasks
but you! It's all valuable experience though, even if you take a corporate dev
job later in life, it will give you insight into the business decisions that
get made around your "strictly development" tasks.

------
scarecrowbob
I've been freelancing for the last five years. I do web dev, so it might be
different if you're a write or graphics designer or game programmer or
whatever.

Really, however you and the folks you work with want to structure your work is
how it is. There are things that are worse for you and things that are better
for you, but it's a question of what you and your clients what more than
anything.

As to the stability of contracts, they are only as good as the person signing
them; generally if someone has given you money as a deposit, then there isn't
a question about if the signature is binding, but rather what different parts
of the contract might mean... the meaning of "functions in most browsers" or
"has an easy to use method for adding XYZ" is really where you should be
sweating.

That's typically the issue: usually the people I work with want things to be
working well and done correctly, on a predictable schedule. Delaying delivery
until payment is made is one strategy. A better strategy is to work with
people and businesses you can trust... if you have a contract and there is no
question about the quality of the work, generally enforcing a contract isn't
something that requires lawyers.

The facts about negotiation apply to your rate: if your client will pay you
$500/hr, then that is what your time is worth. Instead of worrying about what
it is worth, worry about what you have to make in order to do the things you
need to do (or, if you prefer, what your rate needs to be so you don't have to
go get a job).

Generally, clients (end users, not, for instance, agencies) don't like hourly
pricing for the same reason that I like it: it transfers the liability for
additional changes or unforeseen troubles with the agreement.

So you might find that you're better off with fixed pricing, which involves
knowing what your hourly rate needs to be and how many hours you expect will
take to do the work, plus the cost of acquiring the client, plus a hedge for
unforeseen work that will need to be done without issuing a change order.
Multiply that time three, and then you'll probably not get too screwed by a
contract :D

------
ianlevesque
Pick a client that seems trustworthy or comes via a friend recommendation. Ask
for 1/4 or 1/2 the money up front. Don't worry about copyright, and often
clients themselves will have standard contracts they use.

If you are concerned with the complexity, start out using a platform like
oDesk which will take care of much of the payment and legal risk. Be sure to
bill hourly not fixed amount.

I've written and signed many contracts, but ultimately for casual contracting
it's most important to just find people you trust to work for/with.

~~~
wirddin
Yes!

Adding to this, try not to reinvent the wheel. If you're trying to code
something which is already there and open-sourced, go for it; include it in
the project and work on it.

Ask for 1/2 of the fixed amount / working hours upfront. This will ensure that
your client is actually interested and won't easily dump the project.

------
fideloper
Find medium to large sized businesses if you can - you want a client who has
expectations inline with your professional services and may support a higher
billable rate.

Smaller companies may have less savvy owners/managers who don't have an
understanding of what you're doing, leading to scope creep (why can you "just"
change this?) and miscommunication in time, quality (etc) expectations.

Set expectations clearly, especially ones that seem painful to bring up
(especially time, budget constraints).

------
welder
You will probably want to track your time, so I suggest an automatic time
tracker like [https://wakatime.com](https://wakatime.com)

------
Plough_Jogger
It's always easier to complete work on a per-job basis rather than hourly, and
in my experience clients like this structure as well. A lot of good
suggestions in this thread. One addition I would make is to check out
MotivApp.com, really useful freemium tools freelancing.

------
markcrazyhorse
I was considering going freelance myself and these are questions I also
considered. I hope someone with experience replies and we can turn this into a
very useful post.

------
maerF0x0
baseline for freelance work is take your current (previous) salary and div by
1000 . 50K a year before? $50 an hour freelance.In reality you need more, but
its a good "minimum" .

It actually may be more accurate to look at total comp: $50k a year + $12k in
health benefits + $3k in equip + $4k in vacation + $1k in retirement benefits
~= $70/hr.

~~~
sarciszewski
Please don't base your freelance rate off your salary. You'll grossly undercut
yourself.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7850335](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7850335)

A per-day rate equivalent to $100..200 per hour is the cheap side of things.
Don't cut yourself too short. Businesses have deeper pockets than most
individuals.

------
kephra
Copyright: You own the copyright by default, and only license further use of
your work. This license can be very permissive, e.g. MIT, BSD, viral like GPL,
proprietary, or even insane. Its your choice, and one of the questions you
should decide before talking to a customer. E.g. I prefer double license
GPL+proprietary for my work. But miles may vary.

Contract: The most important points in the contract are naming stepstones,
milestones, budget, payment at each milestone, payment terms. An agreement is
only good, as long as you agree. It often becomes toilet paper if disputed,
especially as lawsuits might be more expensive then the value of the contract,
and as contracts are difficult to enforce over international borders for a
freelancer. So there is no need to pay a lawyer to create a legal bullet proof
contract, as you can not enforce it anyway. Better write one that a human
understand. Thats not more complicated then selling your car. One of my
"tricks" is to offer 2% discount, if payment is within 7 days after invoice.
Any customer who can count money, and has no big cashflow problem will pay
instant. Drop those who are late payers. They are often problem customers in
other terms also.

Time vs money, 1st: The curse of any coder are infinite ideas vs. limited
lifetime to execute them. Applying the law of diminishing returns on this, and
new ideas receive a negative value. The same sooner or later shadows over the
value of money, as people start to throw more money at you to solve their
problems, then you ever need.

Time vs money, 2nd: I advise against selling time for money at all. Time for
money does not scale, as you have only a limited lifetime, but there is
unlimited money around. Selling time for money is typical for employed
workers, but a professional should sell solutions for money.

Picking customers: Often customers pick you. You are lucky, you got your first
client. Do a good job, and he will tell others. At first you will likely take
any job that comes. But take care, that there are problem customers, who will
leach your time, never pay the full amount, and claim they want more work for
the money you agreed. Drop them, to concentrate on good customers.

Pick the good customers and convince them to sign a maintenance contract. I'm
old and saturated now, have a semi passive income from maintenance contracts,
and I'm dropping more then 80% of potential customers, often just because of a
gut feeling during the first talks, before signing any paper. Signing a NDA is
often the end of the talk, as ideas have a negative value for me.

Build a portfolio of skills where you are better then the average, as you
already know the tools or the topic. You can offer fixed prices once you have
this tools, skills, and knowledge. Fixed prices to solve problem will make
much more money then selling time for money, as the value of the problem is
much higher then the value of a contractor. There are basically two types of
problems: Problems where you reduce the running cost of something, and
problems where you increase sales. Estimate how much a solution is worth
within a year, and ask for a good fraction of this for the prototype, and a
smaller fraction for the maintenance contract.

~~~
apayan
Can you go a little more in depth about the maintenance contracts you have
with customers? Does that mean they get a fixed number of hours of your time
every month? What if they go over that time? Does it mean being on call?
Thanks.

~~~
kephra
I avoid selling hours. Instead a maintenance contract should sell a solution,
e.g. \- they have an actual contact address \- you send them new versions of
your software (nothing in GPL forces you to publish new versions), \- you send
them database updates necessary to reflect legal changes of the software \-
you help with database migrations, when new software version require them \-
you might also sell hosting, including the above service, backups, security
updates, ...

Create a nice pile of things that have a good value for the customer, and
either are easy to automate (like hosting), or likely don't eat to many hours.
You'll lose the ability to invoice your customer for the 10 minutes mail or
phone help, but you would need more then 10 minutes for book keeping and
invoicing of those small things. So better sum them up, if you want to keep
contact to a good customer. As funny as it sounds. The annual maintenance
invoice was often the starting point for a custom asking me to solve a total
different problem.

~~~
apayan
Thanks for your reply kephra! That's good info to know.

