

Ask HN: Freelancers/self-employeds, what are your pain points? - codegeek

I am self employed even though not a freelancer in the true sense. I work at one client at a time for a  long term contract. I still have my own company, run my own payroll, bill the vendor etc. Some of my pain points:<p>- Not receiving payment on time (common and classic problem). Usually, I am ok with 7-10 days delay max. I end up &quot;reminding&quot; the vendor to pay just 1 day before the payment date. usually an email does the trick. Actual email I sent today to the vendor and his response &quot;The check has been cut. Due to the amount, I need to get two signatures and that is what I am in the process of doing&quot;. WTF. You have paid me the same amount before (in fact higher). You are late by 5 days already. Why are the signatures my problem ?<p>- Gettin paid through paper checks. I really hate this. I can of course deposit the check through my ipad banking app but why to receive it in the first place. Why not direct bank transfer ? I am in the US btw. I understand that this might be easier in europe etc ?<p>- Getting quality and not too expensive accounting&#x2F;tax help as needed. I have a CPA who bills me over $160 an hour. I am not big enough to hire monthly services either. what do you do ?<p>- Networking with potential clients&#x2F;vendors for future work. Even if you have a contract at hand, you want to be in touch with potential clients. How ?<p>what else ?
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ndcrandall
So some have commented that finding work is painful, but my current issue is
getting rid of clients. here's the link
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6270791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6270791)

Problem: I would like to pass off my contract to the right person (talent
wise) and no one in my network fits their needs. I also want to be paid for
the lead / introduction.

~~~
codegeek
I know exactly what you mean. I run into the same problems. I have been lucky
enough to not been let go from any contract yet and I am the one who had to
leave for greener pastures usually at the end of contract even though the
client wants to renew. I always wished I could get the current client someone
to replace me but it is just so hard to do that.

------
cbhl
\- I had a friend who did freelancing for a bit, and got caught completely
unaware of the tax implications of doing so. When tax time rolled around, he
had a huge bill... and then was goaded by his friends into trying to DIY his
tax return using TurboTax (while the alternative he wanted was to go to a
random accountant who had set up shop in a local mall).

\- Something I've never understood why it's so painful and expensive it is to
pay someone electronically. A paper check/cheque costs something like 10 cents
(when you amortize it over the cost of the entire checkbook) and if you use
the duplicate kind you get a paper record that you paid someone else. When I
use Simple Finance to pay someone, they contract out some other company to
snail-mail a paper check to them! If you want to use a wire transfer, the fees
range in the tens of dollars. Plus, when dealing with account numbers, it's
all too easy for you or your client to transpose two digits when writing it on
a form.

~~~
NoodleIncident
My uncle just paid me for some web-dev help with dwolla. Have you tried that?

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pjungwir
I freelance, and most of these are not really pain points. About half my
clients pay on Net 30 terms, so 7-10 days after the invoice is fine with me.
Getting a check doesn't bother me either. It's an excuse to get out of the
house and walk to the bank, so I actually I sort of prefer it over ACH. Re
taxes: it's not that hard to be informed and do it yourself, but in the last
year I've switched to an accountant and that's pretty nice too. I think he's
saving me more than I'm paying him, even before considering the hours and
hours (and mental energy) freed up from doing taxes myself. Re your last
point: sure, who wouldn't want the sales process to be easier? But I'm pretty
swamped with work as-is.

Here are the pain points I think about:

\- How do I take a vacation? At any time I've got one (or two!) 20-hour/week
projects, plus 2-3 extended relationships that require 5-20 hours/month. It's
hard to spin them all down at once for 1-2 weeks. Seems like a partner would
help, or even a relationship with another freelancer I could trust to be on
call for emergencies while I'm away.

\- Where do I go from here? I'm not sure how much further I can raise my rate
for general-purpose web development. I could start doing patio11-style
business value contracts instead, but I'm not sure I'm ready for that yet. I'd
rather either (1) specialize in Postgres, Chef, Machine Learning, or whatever
and double my rate that way, or (2) transition to an "agency" by seeking
larger projects and partnering or subcontracting to get them done, or (3) get
better at recurring revenue like support contracts.

I think ndcrandall has a nice idea. I could imagine a marketplace around
helping freelancers trade clients, or even just help each other with overflow
work.

~~~
ndcrandall
I like the idea of a freelance focused market place. I have wanted to build a
system for it, but before I jump into it, there are several issues that need
to be validated.

How prevalent is this need? Would it need to limit locally craigslist style or
is remote possible? How would you facilitate / enforce payment for leads (if
not a one time payment)? How should leads be priced?

etc.

------
stocktradr
Payments: Run a small web firm (among other activities that I do) and I can
sympathize with some of your pain points. Recently had client have a month
late bill. Nearly put our company under because of the size of the contract
and it took the threat of taking the website down to get the payment
"expedited". Working with a large $400mil company, they do have excessive
hoops to jump through.

Vacation: I can never take a vacation (or that's what it feels like). I think
this is fairly typical of most startup/contractors since you don't get paid if
you don't work, but I wish it were different. This is probably due to lack of
experience which will change over time.

Networking: I have some legacy clients that get my team through the months but
100% of our business is repeat or legacy. This is extremely problematic and
even though I do a lot of networking, it seems to all for a loss. Finding new
clients is definitely the hardest part for me.

Hiring/Contracting: Finding good talent in local towns is tough. Always have
to do coding review on developers to ensure correct methodology, look at past
project experience, etc. The hardest thing to determine (in my opinion) is how
hard someone works.

As others have stated... finding work = hardest problem. It is a bitch to say
the least.

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agibsonccc
Compared to the current marketplaces, I would say one that's more general
purpose (odesk, elance,...) that DOESN'T encourage a raise to the bottom.

Granted, this could be a more meta problem that might not be able to be solved
technologically, but it'd be great if something that allowed both sides to pay
for and receive quality work would be great. Perhaps some sort of incentives?
I'll admit I haven't thought too much about it. Mainly voicing my experiences
with some of the different tools available.

I mainly find clients my own way because of things like this.

That being through the usual suspects, word of mouth, various forums, etc.

Other marketplaces tend to be too niche specific to be useful.

Maybe something that vets clients a bit more? Many of the other problems
(payments, project management,...) have, in my opinion, been fairly solved. Or
at least there's enough competing solutions in those spaces that you have
options.

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sharemywin
I've owned other types of businesses and getting bookkeeping done on a regular
basis seems very expensive for what needs done. I always thought it would be
nice to be able to fax/email my bank statements/recipets to service which
tracked my financials. but, everywhere I look they want around $200/mo. for
maybe 150 transaction a month. but if I wait until the end of the year and
have it all done at once its like $3-400.

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bartonfink
I hate finding work. Let me rephrase. I HATE finding work. That is, by far, my
least favorite part of freelancing.

~~~
jkaykin
Try [http://Matchist.com](http://Matchist.com). Also, is there no service that
allows you to hire a project recruiter type person?

~~~
bartonfink
I've been with Matchist for about a year, but have been pretty disappointed
with the projects thus far: I've been contacted for about 10 ill-specified
integrations with their Zapier partner, and a couple of Salesforce projects. I
haven't gotten a single lead that has anything to do with my advertised skills
(web development in a variety of platforms). One way to look at the projects
I'm getting matched to is as a sign of the market as a whole and that I should
give up my experience with Rails, Node and other modern technologies in favor
of Zapier. That seems like a questionable conclusion to draw from limited
evidence.

I think Matchist and other sites like it fill a real need - matching
developers with contracts and doing some preliminary vetting on both sides of
the table. I wish them well. I've said many times on here I would gladly pay a
sizeable cut for an agent to keep my pipeline full of suitable work (web
development I can do on nights and weekends), but I have yet to find anything
that really works.

~~~
jkaykin
Interesting, thanks for the insight. Zapier is still limited and therefore
shouldn't be seen as a replacement for Rails and the like.

I imagine it would be hard to have an agent that can keep a steady flow of
work coming in since 1) the agent would most likely want to have multiple
developers (that just turns into a Matchist type service) and 2) constant
communication would be needed. I have a thought of running a service that
finds projects and deals with the actual clients but never really got much
interest from others.

~~~
bartonfink
Zapier is absolutely not a replacement for Rails. It is, however, all Matchist
seems to pitch. I'm sure that they get a lot of clients asking for that sort
of work, and that their projects are representative of that particular market.
My point is, that's a market I have little interest in entering right now.
Think of the difference between e.g. Pivotal Labs and the local "computer
store" that advertises web development below networking and VOIP. I want
someone to help push me towards the Pivotal Labs end of the spectrum. I don't
need the opportunity to compete with other developers for low-value, low-skill
work. I would like to pay for the opportunity to work on challenging, career-
furthering projects that aren't the coding equivalent of "wham, bam, thank you
RAM." That opportunity could take the shape of an agent.

I have two counterpoints in favor of the agent idea. Let's say I sign up with
Al the Agent. Al's responsibilities can be roughly described as business
development for an individual - i.e. me. I'd like it if Al could talk to me
periodically, find out what I do and what I'd like to do, and keep putting
opportunities for appropriate contract work in front of me. That's MVP.
There's lots of room for improvement and other services, but MVP is literally
someone else pounding the pavement. Now, to my counterpoints.

First, I don't care if Al has multiple developers. I only care that he can
keep my pipeline full when I need it. Sports, film, television, music - all
these other fields use agents, and those agents represent multiple clients in
controlled ways. I don't care if Al represents 10 other developers, and in a
way, I hope he does - it raises his profile (and, implicitly, mine). As long
as he's still able to adequately meet my needs, I'm happy. If he starts
pitching low-value WordPress theming (something I have no interest in), I'll
sever the agreement. Even if this agency did turn into a Matchist-type service
(which it needn't), that would not be a bad thing. As long as it doesn't turn
into another boss, I'm happy.

Second, constant communication isn't really necessary. I can just talk to Al
on a weekly basis, tell him what's going on, what I'd like to do, when I'll
need more work, when I'm going to be on vacation, etc. That's not a taxing
amount of communication, especially since I'm willing to make the economics
work with a large percentage cut. I have a very limited amount of time I can
put towards moonlighting (roughly 20 hours a week). If someone can help me do
more profitable things (e.g. coding for money) with those hours, I'm happy to
share the spoils. The common wisdom on HN is that a good developer can command
somewhere around $100/hr for freelance work, which doesn't seem exaggerated
since SV salaries can easily push $70/hr before benefits. If Al can get me 20
hours of work a week at $100/hr, I'm happy to cut him a big slice of that pie
if he's willing to do that sort of communication.

~~~
timjahn
Justin,

To reiterate, I encourage you to shoot me an email (tim at matchist) to
address you getting irrelevant or uninteresting work from us.

We have the type of work you're looking for (the Pivotal Labs work in your
analogy) and we have the integration type work that you seem to not want a
part of (which is fine). If you don't want a ton of Zapier work and you're
getting a ton of Zapier work, that's not how our service is designed to work.

This sounds like a case of your preferences not being represented properly in
our system.

\- Tim

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johnmurch
1) Finding Work and vetting them (making sure they are serious/pay/etc.) 2)
Getting Paid 3) Repeat

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jamesjguthrie
Definitely finding new clients is my main pain point.

