
Ask HN: Are big budget projects losing you money? - workshop_leads
“I won’t touch projects that have budgets smaller than $30,000. Anything lower is usually low-quality and unprofitable for me.”<p>That’s a statement I hear every week from freelancers who pay me for freelance leads. I’m not sure why $30,000 is the magical number but apparently it is.<p>Leads below this magical threshold get rejected by people who are self-labeled as “desperate for work” and sometimes even in a dry spell, but how can a $5,000-$10,000 project really be that unprofitable for one-person?<p>Why do most freelancers even prefer big budgets anyway? Big budgets mean big projects - which are hard to scope out and actually finish. When you finally deliver them, there’s always more revisions. They drag on. They kill profitability.<p>Of course, this can also happen with small projects at a smaller scale… which is my point.<p>If you’re not able to make a $5,000 project profitable, you’re less likely to make a larger, more complicated project profitable - right?<p>When I examine my past 5-figure freelance projects, I find most of the budget went to things like: meetings, proposals, presentations, revisions, emailing, and following up on things.<p>I can’t help but wonder what would happen if I cut these things out and replaced them with nothing. Would the client really be worse off?<p>I’d be able to focus on things that actually mattered instead of fluff and I’d charge them less.<p>So what do you think?<p>• Have you ever felt like big budget projects could be losing you money?<p>• What would you do if  you had to make a $3k project profitable instead? What would you cut out?<p>• Have you ever hired a freelancer like you for $30k+ project to help your own business? Why not? If it’s truly a great investment why aren’t you paying for it?<p>(Note: While I do agree that some highly-specialized consultants shouldn’t work for less than $X0,000 — I don’t think that’s the case for 90% of people.)
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PaulHoule
To do the small projects profitably you have to eliminate the
sales/requirements gathering/etc overhead.

For instance, if you charge $100 an hour for the time of the principal and it
takes 3 days of meetings to decide what to do you are down $2400 right off.
Never mind handoff, training, etc. Yet you have to get this stuff right.

You need to have a highly disciplined process in terms of project management,
programming and try to learn as little as possible extraneous information to
getting the job done. (Don't try a new language) However you can't waste time
on the process.

The real difficulty is that 1-in-5 of those $3000 projects will metastasize
into a $30,000 project that you have to eat the costs for. I worked for a guy
who was a brilliant salesperson and he could price 80% of the deals right, but
20% of the deals would go massively over... and that's why I don't work for
him anymore.

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kogir
There are too many bad clients that have $30k ideas and only $5k available.
They'll never be satisfied, are super cost conscious, will want a micro-
accounting of all time spent, and simply aren't worth it.

While there are a few good clients in that price range that actually know what
they're doing, they're far overwhelmed by people with unrealistic
expectations.

