[consulting] Freelancing, Finances and Finding Work

[Roshan Shah]

To add further to my earlier post:

If you are looking at long term steady income and have very good Drupal
expertise, you should look at

a) Having a long term retainer relationship with clients. I.e They pay you
every month for a block of hours whether they use it or not. This would work
well with few clients as they don't have to hire full time employees but it
depends on how efficient and available you are to them.

b) Build something very scalable that has mass appeal - something like
http://www.galaminds.com

c) Build your own web properties or become an equity based technical partner
with a well established publishing industry business (newspaper or magazine)
which is trying to put up a social network or rebuild their site.

In my opinion individual consultant generally gets tired after 2 to 3 years
doing same thing over and over again for clients and at the same time having
to keep up with Drupal will make his/her normal working day 16 to 18 hours.
In the long run this will impact family and health.   In services business
you are also limited by your own capacity to work (unless you outsource your
work or work with a partner who can take extra work).

But if you are building membership or ecommerce based web properties in
specific niche or scalable solution in a particular vertical (SaaS), you
will see higher returns for your invested time in the long run.

I do know at least a few of the big Drupal development shops trying to take
this route and move up the value chain. This would also be an ideal
situation for any individual too to get into.

I have gone through this entire cycle myself and hence I am sharing my own
personal experience here. We started as Services business but today we have
structured our business into Services, Verticals, Products, Training and
Infrastructure Support Services. We have been recently nominated for "Best
Innovative Technology Company in state of Gujarat, India" for GESIA Awards
2009. Of course - our other technology area of expertise is also Ruby on
Rails where we have started doing a lot more work nowadays.

Roshan
-- 
--
Gloscon Solutions Inc - http://www.gloscon.com/portfolio
* Drupal and Ruby on Rails Powerhouse
Skype : bpocanada
T : 604.630.4292 (Canada)
**************************************************************
This email may contain confidential information, and is intended only for
the named recipient and may be privileged. Distribution or copying of this
email by anyone other than the named recipient is prohibited. If you are not
the named recipient, please notify us immediately and permanently destroy
this email and all copies of it.
***************************************************************

On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 12:21 AM, Sam Alexander <sam.polenta at gmail.com>wrote:

> To respond to the thread about quitting the day job to freelance, I could
> also add that I have been freelancing for 10 years and aside from the issues
> mentioned, there are two which, for me at least, are prime. One is getting
> work and the other is getting paid.
>
> Getting paid is usually not an issue, but I have had several clients over
> the years who failed to pay. Not only complete deadbeats who never paid
> anything but I twice had long-term gigs where I was basically telecommuting
> part time for someone (a small firm) and after a year, or 3 years in one
> case, of steady pay, the last month's paycheck never came. While this is not
> a major issue (in the long run), it *is* an issue.
>
> The other is finding work. I am a good programmer and I know Drupal well,
> but I am a lousy salesman. People who can read my resume and appreciate my
> talents are happy to pay me a very good hourly rate. But for others who
> don't have an understanding of programming, I think they wonder why on earth
> should they give me such a rate when some other bozo is only asking for $30
> an hour and he also claims to know how to program.
> On the same note, I wanted to ask people if anyone has any advice on how to
> get new work. This is for sure my weakest point. This year has actually
> been, thus far, very good for me--a few small gigs here and there and two
> fairly large gigs which pay on time and are interesting work for me--and all
> at a good rate. But those two gigs are slowing down and ending soon and I am
> looking for more work, but, as usual, not entirely sure how to find it.
>
> Thanks,
> Sammy
>
> _______________________________________________
> consulting mailing list
> consulting at drupal.org
> http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/consulting
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/consulting/attachments/20090316/6ec57f0d/attachment.htm>