WebProWorld - View Single Post - Getting out of the rat race and running it alone...

carlos_p · #13 (**permalink**) 03-30-2007, 08:00 PM

This is a bit of advice for after you get all those new clients.

In the first place, you can actually get too much of a good thing... and it can turn into a bad thing. My experience tells me that in this line of work you can easily get a client-Boom and with it more work than you can handle. It'll be wise to devise right now a plan for when that happens.

Second, if you get a lot of new clients then you are bound to get some bad clients in the mix. Some of the above marketing methods are more prone than others to attract this kind of clients, so I suggest you try to rank all the above marketing methods in terms of risk of getting bad clients and then try to avoid the more risky ones. (of course you should also rank them by economic cost, time cost, feasibility, potential conversions, etc.)

There are all sorts of potential bad businesses out there, some you can spot right away, others you can't. There's no way to know what you're up against if you can't spot it right away, but there are also times when some "red flags" start to pop up. If you are too eager to do business you will probably disregard the flags and jump right in. Obviously, you'll regret it later.

As for working for free, as someone suggested, one word of advice: don't!
If you want to do pro-bono work, pick some worthy cause and treat it like a full-fledged client for the duration of that project. (of course, if it grants you good exposure the better)
If you want to barter that's a completely different thing, but you should never work for free nor sell yourself short. If you want to barter (or if someone proposes you such a deal) you must estimate your costs/benefits before closing the deal.

I have made a couple of quasi-barter deals as a web designer/developer. What I do in these cases is take a challenging project when I have the opportunity and I explain this to the client: this way the client gets a premium service for a minimal fee and I get the opportunity to research and develop some particular technical aspect. (It's a bit like a research grant...) But the subject of such experiments must always be something with a market potential you can later explore to your advantage.

I hope you find this useful.