

Ask HN: $7000 per month freelancing - cosmorocket

Hey fellows. Being a freelance web developer and designer, a father of a wonderful 1 year old boy and a husband of an amazing woman I am in a temporary financial pit now, I am now working on creating a blog where I am going to describe my current financial situation, what I have in property, what I have to pay for, what I don't have to pay for. How much I spend for this and that, and how much I receive as payments for my freelance work.<p>I registered a domain name 93days.com for this and hope to make it live by the first day of summer. So, getting a picture of who I am and how I got into the downturn, the readers will be able to see all my daily work on the road to success. To make it more interesting, I set the timeframe to 93 days, let it be summer months plus 1 day as a bonus. This way I will be able to track my success, what I have done that is useful for my business and where I lost my time for nothing.<p>I will post all small and big thing I have done that day, will place some ratings and charts of my performance and other things like that. I will post where I sent my previous works, where I applied as a candidate for a job, what design and development works I have done, what projects I have been involved in.<p>I am going to let users easily direct me in my decisions and actions. They will be able to vote for doing this and not doing that. I am trying to build this site visually appealing and easy to use, add infographics. I had good and bad times being a freelancer but I like this business and I am not to give up. I want to set objectives and one of them is my monthly income.<p>So, one of my questions to you fellows who gets the bulk of income freelancing, do you receive at least $7000 or so per month doing your design/development work? It surely can be a difficult task but at least a good shift to that figure in three months will be great to achieve. Do you think it will be interesting for someone like me to track how I am getting out of the pit? Undoubtedly, I am open to any new suggestions regarding the site, please share your ideas about how to make it interesting, what info you would like to track in details and so on. Thanks!
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patio11
Your personal financial situation is unlikely to be interesting to people
other than you, and in particular it _actively hurts_ your ability to get the
best possible deals from clients.

I would strongly suggest you not let users direct your decisions. Most people
are not freelancers. Most career advice I receive from people outside IT is
shockingly bad. ("Glad to hear about the business being successful, Patrick.
You know, you could go back, get your MA, and then get a nice secure
government job! They'd love having someone with business experience! And you'd
get a pension!") The intersection of "people who are in financial difficulty"
(and would be interested in reading that blog) and "people who give good
career advice" is vanishingly small, partly because many people who are
experiencing financial difficulty got there as a predictable results of
choices which they feel committed to justify.

With regards to freelancing: first, get out of the mindset that you are
providing development/design. You are solving business problems for clients.
Dev/design are two things in the toolbox that help you do that. Can you earn
more than $7k or so solving problems that prevent businesses from making
money? Yes. Absolutely yes. The people who you need to convince to buy your
services to do this _are not poor_ and, by and large, _are not actively
interested in the problems of poor people_. "Hey hire me because I'm poor"
will _not_ be a successful tactic with them. "Hey hire me because I have a
track record of producing useful things which made rich people like yourself
even richer" is much closer to the mark.

~~~
lotharbot
Blogging about how you're overcoming a difficult financial situation _is_
likely to be interesting to a lot of people. The issue is that it's unlikely
to be interesting to _his particular clients_ , who may find it unprofessional
or off-putting.

With very good execution, it may be possible to overcome those issues or even
turn the whole thing into a positive with his clients. But it's a big risk.

~~~
systemtrigger
It's also time he could be devoting to productive activities. Blogging and
creating infographics for daily posts are time wasters. Given his desperate
financial situation he needs laser focus on making cash. Which for most people
means "get a job and give up your hobby until you get some savings in the
bank."

------
Travis
Why are you writing the blog, again? If it's for accountability, great -- do
it, but make it private. If it's public, you are going to spend too much time
and effort working on it, when you should be working on paying clients.

Additionally, it's going to take more than 93 days to build a following on
your blog. And I would doubt that you get very good advice from visitors,
especially at first.

If you're main focus is to make $X per month to support your family, _stop
doing anything that doesn't make you money_. Stop reading HN/reddit/cnn. Stop
writing your blog. Stop asking for advice. If you cannot draw a line from what
you are doing to profit, _stop doing it and switch to making money._

Blogs are hugely narcissistic, which is only going to take your time away from
making money. There are some great ones out there, but it sounds like you need
to make money, not navel gaze.

I highly doubt that you will make any significant money off of your blog in 93
days. Or ever. You know where you will make money? By solving an existing
problem for a business that increases their income. In exchange, they will
give you money (so much better than the attention that blog visitors give
you!)

~~~
cosmorocket
Great comment, thanks. Though it was not about narcissism. It was not my only
way to get paying clients, it was just one of the ways. I also didn't say I
had no paying clients. I have some and we work on a couple of projects and
they pay me. Though, I am aimed to increase the income and your tips convince
me once again that I should focus on something other, not this idea. Thanks.

~~~
Travis
It's a very easy trap to fall into. You've heard of certain bloggers and
respect other technologists because you've read their blogs. It only seems
natural that someone would read yours in order to find you.

However, in my personal experience (a long lesson to learn!), it's a bit like
Field of Dreams thinking: "if you built it, they will come." That does work,
but it's a long process, and I suspect it's generally a side effect of the
blog.

Think about it this way: is your ideal client really going to be spending a
lot of their time reading blogs like yours? I would guess not; the people who
would likely read it would be other technical people.

When I went from Field of Dreams thinking to direct line to profit thinking, I
was amazed at how much work I was doing that had no chance of yielding income.
I discovered I was only doing profit-generating things for about 2 hours per
day. I thought I was busy and going to be successful, but I was just wasting
my time.

HTH. Good luck to you. I think you definitely can make that much money per
month in income, but make sure you have a definite value prop.

FWIW, when I was doing blog/email marketing/web design work, I found the best
path was thus. Get them to sign up for a webinar on your blog, and give a live
webinar via GoToMeeting once a week. That was my best success -- I think the
key was that it qualified leads a ton, and gave me a chance to exhibit my
professionalism and skillset before I asked for money.

------
cstrouse
I only bring in about $2500/mo in freelance design/development work because
I've not yet had success in finding good clients. Mostly I've ended up with
idiots from Craigslist who insist on wasting all my time and then drag their
feet when it comes to payment. Then you add scope creep and people insisting
on meeting in person for a low budget project and I make almost nothing.

I really need to work on getting better clients!

~~~
rick888
I had the same problem 5 years ago. It's experiences like these that got me
out of freelancing completely. It's exhausting and isn't worth it in my
opinion.

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mattacurtis
I think you're going to find it fairly difficult to scale up to $7k per month
in 3 months with no existing readership or client base.

I do, however, like the idea of cash flow transparency, since people tend to
really consume that type of content.

/also, paragraphs.

~~~
tptacek
Cash flow transparency works for MicroISV-types, most of whose customers
uniformly don't read their blogs.

I'm gravely concerned that it will _not_ work for professional services.
Clients hold preconceived notions about the value of an hour of work. And it's
blissfully unencumbered from any of the risk factors that produce true (2-3x
FTE) consulting bill rates.

More importantly, very few --- maybe none! --- consultancies are surefooted
enough to have a consistent bill rate established across all their clients.
Contract rates happen on a case-by-case basis. As the dynamics of your
business change, so will your rates. Publishing your cash flows just invites
drama.

And who, exactly, is it helping? Other people with 92 days to dig themselves
out of a hole? Get yourself out of the hole first.

~~~
cosmorocket
I absolutely agree, thanks, Thomas. I should better take myself out of the pit
first. So, I will go on thinking about how to do that in another way. I think
I got a hint I searched for.

~~~
tnorthcutt
The way to do it is to work hard. No hints, secret strategies, or clever
tricks. Just work hard, deliver results, and get referrals from happy
customers.

------
gexla
The biggest problem isn't so much making 7k per month. That's really just an
arbitrary number. Some service providers might blow that number away, others
might not hit those numbers after several years. It all depends on your
business chops.

The problem here is that you have a family to feed and you are looking to get
out of a financial pit. I wouldn't suggest such a route (freelance web dev)
without a nest of savings to rely on.

I don't think you would benefit from posting your numbers. What freelance web
developers make is very personal. I have seen "internet marketers" post
monthly earnings on their sites but that seems less personal to me and these
people generally work for themselves (freelancers always have a boss... the
client.)

------
GoldenMonkey
Just Do It! Pound the pavement now for paying gigs! Freelancing is a
relationship business. Find your target market and start wining and dining
them. Attend their events, speak at their events, write articles with
solutions to their problems, meet them, befriend them. 2-3 months is about as
long as it takes for the first gig to happen. As you continue the above
process, you'll continue to have customers. Ppl do business with those they
know, like, and trust. Deliver on time and within agreed upon terms. Be
responsive to your customers, return calls and emails on the same day. Start
at a lower hourly rate at first, to get your first paying customer, raise
rates for new ones if you can afford to lose the work. Most importantly, do
not waste time creating an ideal portfolio. Number one, find these potential
clients. Get those clients signed up, get that money coming in.

------
bhousel
> _I will post all small and big thing I have done that day, will place some
> ratings and charts of my performance and other things like that. I will post
> where I sent my previous works, where I applied as a candidate for a job,
> what design and development works I have done, what projects I have been
> involved in._

This feels like a terrible idea to me. I've been consulting for a while and
the last person that clients want is to hire someone who 1. can't make
decisions without asking the Internet for help, and 2. puts all the tiny
details about their work out there for the public to see.

Do not do this.

I think you should go buy Gerald Weinberg's "Secrets of Consulting" now - it's
a quick read. Freelance/consulting work is about solving other people's
problems, not putting your own problems out there for other people to solve.

