

How to weed out tire kickers from your freelance business - nathanpowell
http://nathanpowell.me/blog/how-to-weed-out-tire-kickers/

======
dsr_
There are three broad classes of clients:

\- The Newbie has never hired anyone to do this sort of job before. They don't
know what to expect, and they don't know what it will cost. They may not even
have an idea of how much the work is worth to them. They do know that there
will be a bill, but they haven't matured into either of the other two types
yet.

\- The Black Hat is a malicious client. They will try everything they can to
exploit you for their own benefit, while giving up as little as possible in
return. These are the people who ask for work for free, ask for fixed cost
projects with unlimited scope, and dodge your invoices.

\- The White Hat is the client you actually want. They have hired people like
you before; they know what it costs, and they know how much value they to
receive up front. They have reasonable specs, or a loose spec that they work
with you to define tightly before they ask for a commitment. They have a
preferred deadline and a drop-dead date, and they tell you about both of them.

Your goal is to identify White Hat prospects and avoid the other two.
Sometimes a Newbie will develop into a White Hat, but they will always take
more hand-holding and reverse-management than a mature White Hat. As a single-
person operation, you don't have the resources to take care of them
efficiently.

------
elmuchoprez
These days I bill like a lawyer: Up to two hours free of charge as a
consultation and then the clock starts at my full rate. If you're not OK with
that, you don't value my time enough for this relationship to work out.

And that's a much more generous strategy than say a plumber where you have to
pay just to get him to listen to what the problem is.

But it's all supply and demand. Lawyers and plumbers who bill like that
typically have more work than they can handle. I didn't when I started out as
a developer, so I worked long hours for little pay for bad clients. Those were
rough times, but looking back, those experiences are really what led me to
being successful later on.

------
timmillwood
Great advice!

