[consulting] Drupal web design as hobby - shall I start consulting?

[Larry Garfield]

On Saturday, August 14, 2010 05:19:30 pm Alexei Malinovski wrote:

> > There are also consulting shops that will subcontract you work and some
> > may rip you off, so be aware of those too; usually they are looking to
> > make a buck off a developer and will give you the hardest parts, and try
> > to keep as much money as they can for themselves. In general, put
> > everything in writing as to what is to be done and get them to agree
> > through e-mail on the document. When the spec is finished ask them to
> > pay before you continue. If they fail to pay, don't give them anything
> > until they either pay or just walk away; put this in your contract as
> > well.
> 
> Thank you for warning about that. Actually, I do not plan to work as
> subcontractor. Since my sister has a lot of friends in showbiz who
> desperately need site but do not have I might be able to have plenty
> requests to create music sites directly from musicians.

Not all subcontracting gigs are bad. :-)  With a good company they can be a 
perfectly good way to focus on what you do best and let someone else handle 
the parts you don't want to deal with.

> > > Q2: Site creation:
> > > 
> > > Since I'm a newbie, I have only 1 site in portfolio I need to extend
> > > portfolio and be very nice with first Customers.
> > 
> > Do some work for a charity. I find it difficult to motivate myself to
> > work
> 
> for charity. Everything I do should either belong to me or my family or
> bring me money. Of course in long run big portfolio is good. I guess I will
> look around my family. I know that my girlfriend mother needs a website
> dedicated to selling cats. I guess I'll do this one.

There's nothing wrong with doing work for a charity or NFP.  Your church or 
school are also good pro bono candidates, and can be good "portfolio 
builders".  They may not directly bring you money but if they get you your 
next paying gig, then they've benefited you anyway.

As for "belonging", that's all down to the contract.  The default in the US is 
work-for-hire, meaning the person/company that pays for it owns the copyright.  
However, you can certainly say otherwise in a contract, and given that in 
Drupal you're working with all GPL code it's usually in both your and the 
client's best interest if any custom work that can be generalized is released 
to the public on Drupal.org.  You can also retain copyright yourself if the 
contract says so.  In our case, our standard contract gives us ownership of 
all code we produce which we license to the client under the GPL but the 
client gets the copyright on the design and look-and-feel of the site, which 
is usually custom-designed for them anyway.

If you're doing mostly click-together sites, that's less of an issue.

> > You can ask for 50% up front, if you are worried... Don't give them the
> > code and host it on your site until they at least pay 1/2. If the refuse,
> > show them the contract and tell them that they are failing their side of
> > the contract.
> 
> The ugly truth is that many people in showbiz are absolutely non technical.
> They are clewer, creative, nice, talkative but not technical. So, if I do
> the web site I make sure that it runs somwhere. The funny thing is that
> they even allow me to own they domain names. In other words they do not
> realise that they can and *SHOULD* own the domain name!!!

As a consultant, part of your job is to educate the client to the extent they 
need to be educated.  They don't need to be super technical, but explaining 
what they get, and what the trade-offs are, is part of your job.

If you have a support contract with them, it is actually often easier for you 
to own the domain name and hosting account so that you can deal with the web 
host directly without going through them.

> > Most of this work is not very profitable, avoid if possible... If you
> > have to do it, make sure it's in the contract.
> 
> Most probably I have to do hosting and site maintenance to be a one stop
> shop for showbiz people. I do realize it is not profitable and, actually,
> might be time consuming to maintain the sites. Another solution could be if
> I find someone who is ready to take over the maintenance. I will look for
> such companies/individuals in Russia.

"Host and support a site built by someone else" is one of Acquia's main 
business channels.  They may be out of the price range for your clients, but 
it's worth considering.  Acquia's Gardens project is also targeted at rapid 
creation of reasonably conventional sites (I won't say cookie cutter, but 
less-than-fully-customized) that are hosted on their heavily-tuned 
infrastructure.  Both are definitely worth looking into.

> > > Q3: Site maintenance
> > > 
> > > What problems do you see if I host several sites/Customers on the same
> > > account on Bluehost using Multisite feature. At least I see problem of
> > > upgrade. Whenever you need to upgrade drupal or modules other sites
> > > must
> > be
> > > upgraded as well. I guess this is a bad idea to host different
> > > Customers
> > on
> > > the same account?

If you're building a separate site for each client, put them on separate 
hosting accounts.  Many web hosts offer "Reseller" accounts aimed at exactly 
that; you get one account with them but have separate sub-accounts for each 
client that are hosted separately.

You don't want to do multi-site unless you're 1) Focusing on mass-hosting 
(that was the business model for Bryght back when they were still around) or 
2) Offering rapid-spin-up cookie cutter sites.  There is a market for that, 
especially for artist websites where, realistically, they all want more or 
less the same thing just skinned uniquely and with different content.  Whether 
or not that's a market you want to pursue is your call.

--Larry Garfield