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:

- Not receiving payment on time (common and classic problem). Usually, I am ok with 7-10 days delay max. I end up "reminding" 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 "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". 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 ?

- 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 ?

- Getting quality and not too expensive accounting/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 ?

- Networking with potential clients/vendors for future work. Even if you have a contract at hand, you want to be in touch with potential clients. How ?

what else ?

[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

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 → ndcrandall]

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.

[JayNeely → ndcrandall]

I'm also interested in this, both for transitioning clients and referring work I don't have time for.

I don't want to manage a sub-contractor, and it's awkward to "hire" someone to refer work to.

[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 → cbhl]

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

[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.

[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 → pjungwir]

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.

[codegeek → pjungwir]

I should have clarified the payment delay thing. I also bill Net 30. So 7-10 days after the 30 days period not the invoice.

[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.

[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.

[bartonfink]

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

[jkaykin → bartonfink]

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

[bartonfink → jkaykin]

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.

[timjahn → bartonfink]

Justin,

As co-founder of matchist, and more importantly, a past freelance web developer of many years, your comment makes me pretty sad. The fact that we're not helping you the way you need to be helped is a problem.

First, I encourage you to please email me (tim at matchist) and share any/all feedback you have regarding us sourcing you clients. Specifically, I'd love to learn more about how/why you feel the projects we're sending your way have nothing to do with your advertised skills.

Second, I know we're not perfect in the "finding the absolute perfect clients" department yet. Every day, we work on ways to get better in that area. Feedback from developers like yourself helps immensely.

- Tim (CTO/Co-Founder matchist)

[jkaykin → bartonfink]

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 → jkaykin]

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 → bartonfink]

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

[bryanh → bartonfink]

Hey Barton! Zapier co-founder here, is there anything we could do when we refer customers to Matchist that would help you spec out these integrations? We've found Matchist to be quite nice when customers know what they want, but I'm curious what its like on the other side.

[johnmurch]

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

[jamesjguthrie]

Definitely finding new clients is my main pain point.