

Ask HN: Independent Web Developer, Seeking to Establish Working Relationships - sev

To give you guys a little background about me:<p>I'm an independent web developer, and I have a few clients, 2 of which are big and take up most of my time.<p>My work load ranges from simple landing page design projects, with basic ASP.net or PHP, to modifying existing ecommerce platforms to add new functionality or features, to creating an entire database driven site from the ground up.<p>My goal is to be able to handle more clients, especially big ones, and also to speed up the turn-around time of projects to my current clients.<p>Here are my questions to the community, and feel free to give further insight into areas that you think I <i>should</i> be concerned about, that may not be apparent that I am, based on my questions below:<p>1.) What and where is the best way to establish such relationships?  I know about sites like getafreelancer, etc...but those seem to be one-time deals, with a bidding process, rather than a trusted, on-going working relationship with someone.<p>2.) Besides a portfolio of past work, what ways would you recommend to find out if a person interested in working with me really has what it takes to do the types of jobs, with the speed necessary?<p>3.) How do you deal with NDA issues, such as server passwords of my own clients, etc, that may be required to be passed on to do some of the work if there were to be some delegation?<p>4.) Would it be okay &#38; decent to post my email address so that HN hackers/readers who are in related fields and are interested in such relationships to reply to me?
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mixmax
Regarding no. 4 the accepted thing to do is to put your e-mail (and homepage,
blog, etc.) in your profile. That way people that want to contact you can do
so.

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zepolen
Regarding 2. Hang out on the web dev channels on IRC, after a while you can
tell who has the chops to handle the work you're looking for.

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mahmud
IRC usually proves technical competence. Business-sense is a whole different
skill set. FWIW, my problem with very competent programmers has been that they
told me what I should be doing, instead of what I want done: the former is a
technical decision that the two of us could have made in a mutual agreement
after a brief discussion, the second is something handed down to me by the
people signing my paycheck. Do what you're asked to do, not what you _aught_
to do.

