

Freelance web developers: how do you handle the build up of maintenance work? - SkyMarshal

One problem freelance web developers face is that alot of times the client will want a maintenance contract.  If you build enough websites and agree to maintain some or all of them, eventually you could hit a point where you can't take on any new work because you're doing maintenance all the time.  How do you guys solve this problem?  Outsource the maintenance somewhere?  Stop taking on new work?  Something else?  Thanks!
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jon_dahl
Maintenance contracts can be really hard to manage if you're solo, because
they can make it hard for you to throw yourself 100% into a project.

Since maintenance contracts are a mixed bag at best, write them in your favor
- full price, fixed number of hours, use it or lose it. Then hire or
subcontract the work out for some passive income.

5 years ago, my consulting partner and I ran into this situation. We managed
it by hiring our first employee. We nailed down $5,000/month of guaranteed
maintenance from three customers, and hired a designer/HTML guy. (Much of the
maintenance work was simple HTML.) This worked out well for us - two years
later, we had five employees and large projects, plus a small steady
maintenance stream that was mostly handled by one person.

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single_serving
The contract needs to stipulate a amount of hours (like 6 month timeframe or
36 hours or labour) and how anything above that is a new project or for to
them to work on themselves, sub-contract etc.

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keefe
First off, write high quality code. High quality code requires less
maintenance. Keep everything separated out properly so that clients can do
some updates themselves (e.g. update the text here or change that color to
this color) and make sure to stipulate in the contract that you are not
responsible for such changes. Write comprehensive test cases. Possibly, limit
the contract based on these tests.

