Freelancing Tips, Tricks, and Resources /w Tim Noetzel

streaming all right how does that look awesome is it looking good on your end yep all right well let's just jump right into it then hello everybody wordpress nerds and all um today we have a special guest tim netzel and he is going to be chatting with us about freelancing he's got a lot to say and i'm really excited to talk to him about it um i'm gonna let him kind of introduce himself from here on out but uh i'm really excited to chat awesome well thanks so much for having me alex um again my name is tim nettle i've been a web developer and ux designer for about 15 years professionally although honestly it feels like my whole life um and for the past five years i've been freelancing on and off full-time for the past two or so um and so yeah excited to kind of chat about uh wordpress um general web development ux and of course freelancing awesome yeah that's a kind of like a thing that i've i've noticed a lot about uh the people that like to watch my videos is this general overarching kind of um interest in freelancing whether they're thinking about getting into it or if they're currently freelancing or something like that or maybe doing it more like on the side so i feel like this is hopefully going to add a bit of value to the channel like get something to uh out there to people who are maybe thinking about doing freelancing currently in freelancing that want to kind of up their game a little bit or kind of anything in between you know um i think that somebody well somewhere we'll glean some good information out of this um i've been freelancing kind of off and on my entire career with uh um uh with freelancing some so i've you know i've run into some good situations i've run into some bad situations so maybe we can talk about a little bit of each maybe some positive things we've done some maybe some things we've had some lessons on and uh hopefully some people will be able to uh you know avoid some of the same stuff that uh maybe we've run into um so i guess like let's just kind of start out with uh like is even freelancing worth doing nowadays i mean there's lots of likes lots of jobs out there health care decent consistent paychecks all that kind of stuff what would you say like to somebody if they're if they're considering freelancing at all yeah i mean i i'd say a couple of things first of all definitely consider it um i think freelancing is awesome um but it's gotta be the right fit for you right so um i always think about three things when people ask me this question um the verse is kind of do you know enough to function on your own and and sort of learn as you go right um so if you are you know brand new to web development um i mean like really brand new like you you can't build a basic website um and you need lots and lots of help um and you're not comfortable kind of figuring it out as you go freelancing's probably not a great option um but on the other hand you don't need to be an expert at everything either right um i think especially as as web developers a lot of us suffer from um sort of imposter syndrome it's like oh i haven't been doing this for 20 or 30 years so you know who am i to start my own business doing this and that's honestly that's not really shouldn't be a big concern as long as you can do something technically that other people can't do um that's of value and somebody will probably pay you for it um but you know think about where you are on that spectrum and if the reality is that you're you know kind of comfortable figuring things out as you go and you're technical enough um then yeah you probably passed that hurdle um i think that the the other two big ones are like are you serious about building a business and whether that's you know a side hustle or a full-time thing um you know either is totally fine but if what you really want to do is just sort of focus solely on your craft like all you want to do is code or design or whatever it is you do um freelancing may not be a good fit but if on the other hand like you're you're willing to kind of you know meet people and talk to people um and you know learn a little bit about business um then freelancing can be a great fit um and then i think the last one is just like are you willing to experiment and try new things um and you know definitely some folks are are of the mind that they really just want to play it safe and they only want to do things that they've um you know been taught to do them directly and that kind of thing if that's where your head's at probably freelancing is not a good fit for you um but you know if you're willing to experiment and take some some honestly quite candidly small risks um i think freelancing is great um you know i freelancers you have um tons of flexibility especially if you're doing it full-time right you pick who you work with when you work where you work um you know my wife and i in a couple of months are about to embark on like we're um about to go live kind of a nomad lifestyle for about six months and we'll be kind of traveling the country and um honestly there's no way i could have done that if i wasn't freelancing um i'm making significantly more than i've ever made before which is great and so there is definitely um that revenue upside um but there's you know there's challenges too right just like anything um so i definitely think you should you should consider it if you're thinking about freelancing but also go and go into it with your eyes wide open like it's not a get rich quick scheme by any stretch of the imagination you will have to put in the work um and you have to be serious about it yeah i think that's there's a couple interesting things you said there um the first one is kind of are you able to like build a site top to bottom like that's something that and if you can do that in a way that's comfortable you know because like you can struggle through just about anything i mean with all the resources that we have i mean there's gonna be some stuff you can't find online but like overall the a freelancer is gonna have to wear a lot of hats uh you're gonna have to do a lot of client interaction obviously you're gonna have to code the thing yourself you're gonna have to figure out like the scoping needs of a project you're gonna have to do a lot of things that if you've come from like an enterprise background or an agency background things have just kind of been taken care of for you and if you're coming out of school and you're just thinking like oh i'm gonna try some freelancing you're gonna kind of get hit in the head with you know um it's it's gonna be a pretty big wake-up call real quick but i don't know like some people really thrive under that type of environment um i for one am not necessarily like i might my freelance background has always been um like outside of like my nine to five you know like i i've always kind of had that like i i got married pretty young like so i've always had like a family and like that kind of stability of of like a nine-to-five job has always been appealing to me and but it never actually like fulfilled everything that i wanted to do like a nine to five is very much a structured like you do this while you're here this is your very strict like job description these are the things that you're gonna be tackling because the types of tasks you're gonna be handling and everything's kind of limited to what we do as a company whereas like once you like start freelancing all of a sudden you get to pick your clients especially if you have a nine-to-five because this is all extra for you and so you can just start doing stuff that you didn't in your nine to five you can kind of broaden your horizons a little bit but yeah then on top of that you're starting to like having to do all this stuff after hours which can be pretty uh stressful and then on top of that you've you're having to interact with clients that maybe you've never had too many experiences or have much experience doing before in the past so i think like if you're ever like wanting to dip your toes into it maybe like dip your toes into it rather than like i'm quitting my job i'm freelancing now um see if this is even something that you may want to do because that's one thing that i i would suggest because then you can easily back out if you're like oh no i don't like any of this uh but like you're saying is like you can there's a lot of reward to have in a setting like that like you can it you can do really well for yourself if you get like a good like portfolio of clients and you do have your your compensation nailed down you do have good um parameters around you like your time and stuff like that because you know like i said with life with client work is you could have some clients that you know if you give an inch they'll take a mile as far as your time goes so you could be getting phone calls at you know 10 p.m or you know 11 p.m at night trying to maybe hit a deadline or fix something because they have a meeting the next morning and they're just like throwing on this last minute so these are like all kind of things that that you know could play into like a decision like that but overall like you're saying i think that there's nothing wrong with kind of uh doing what works for you like if it works for you to do this kind of stuff if you like that kind of nomad lifestyle if you're if you're capable for doing that that's that's way more of an option doing freelance now than it is kind of in a nine to five nowadays well more or less after kind of 2020 happened but you know what i mean it's a it's um it's definitely has a large number of pros that i think a lot of people aren't aware of yeah i think that's that's definitely the case and and i'd also i'd also say like i think you're you're right about a lot of the potential downsides um but i'd add that many of them can be um if not all of them can be mitigated if not entirely eliminated um as long as you kind of you know set healthy boundaries set expectations ahead of time with your clients and you know cover your bases in terms of of things like contracts and and scoping and just some of the basics and you know i'm sure we'll get into all those in a few minutes but um you know i think you hit the nail on the head when you said there's there's tons of upsides right whether it's um you know the the flexibility that comes with you know getting the scent set your own eye hours or the creative freedom of of picking which projects you do and don't want to work on um you know i think there's something sort of freeing and almost joyful about um about freelancing because it is on you right and um if you are successful that's because of what you put in and if you're um you know annoyed at your clients and you don't like them that's also on you right you can fire um which is which is great right and i think that's that adds to many people a lot of freedom um that they don't feel in a regular nine to five right where they're like well this is kind of all or nothing um if i'm if i'm unhappy either i have to quit um or i have to like you know just sort of slog through it right i think with when you've got four or five clients um you've got options you've got flexibility and it's really nice so we have a question in the channel that i'd like to get your eyes on at least um so carlos is talking about um he's got a job and he's looking to he makes a little extra money on the side kind of essentially being like a professional wordpress helper it's more or less a little bit of html a little bit of css but uh not much more in-depth stuff like that so it's a little bit more like high level just kind of going in and editing stuff for people like that how well do you think you can do um kind of build a career off of that or do you think if you're gonna go down that route that's you kind of have to do a little bit more coding what's your what's your idea yeah so i i think you can absolutely build a career based on that um for sure and i think that the the question honestly is less how technical you are or what specific services you provide and much more how you position yourself right um because i think you know as as developers or you know people who are working with wordpress there's like a lot of emphasis on like okay do you know php right like what languages do you know what frameworks do you know what technology do you know but the reality is that like the vast majority of businesses the vast majority of clients don't really care about that they care about whether you're delivering a solution to their business problem right um are you helping them increase increase their sales or decrease their costs or you know eliminate some huge operational headache that's you know got all of their staff grumbling right um and you know the the people who know how to um size that up um and we can talk about how to do that um but how to size that up on a first call or two with client and understanding okay here's really what they're trying to solve it's not this project that they're asking me to do it's this business need right um and then you know demonstrate to the client that they know that that's what they actually want um can sell you know the same service right whether it's um copywriting or minor tweaks to a website or you know really deep in the code they can sell the same service for substantially more um and so you know i'd say like yeah do you want to get more technical if yeah if you're interested definitely get more technical it certainly doesn't hurt um to have more tools in your toolbox and have more flexibility um and how you solve different problems but i think the bigger thing that that i advise you to do is is to really like try to hone in on what people are actually asking for um and also you know to the extent that you can move from selling your time um which obviously doesn't scale right like after you're working 40 or 50 or 60 hours a week um you start to get burnt out and you can't do much more um to selling your expertise right and that could be technical expertise but it could also be expertise in terms of like conversion optimization or marketing or copywriting or like um you know whatever else and put kind of your you know unique spin on it um to sort of help your clients hit their goals i like what you said about how you're supposed to be selling like solutions to problems and not necessarily like an end product if that makes sense so like for example if somebody needs like hey we need this our site to um i don't know do this thing with our clients like instead of just like having them come to you with like a prescriptive like here's what we want you to do we just need somebody to just get this thing done it's like okay we need to take a step back maybe we can solve this problem a little bit differently from i don't know like a higher level like need to starting to ask those questions from a higher level about let me sell a solution rather than just like my time to fix a thing if is that kind of what you're trying to say more or less yeah yeah like if a if a client comes to you for example and says like okay we need a new website right um your first response shouldn't be like great i do that or i mean maybe it should like you should say awesome i do that but um you know ask why right and and ask you know i'm sure a lot of the folks watching will have heard of the like five wise game right um but like what's the underlying need right um you know okay well we're you know we think that's gonna increase sales okay great well what are your sales like now right um how many customers are coming to the site what percentage are checking out what's the average order value um you know and and keep kind of digging deeper and deeper like what do they hope it's gonna be um and because that's gonna arm you to not just say like yes i can do this but also give you a lot of insight into other things that you could do that will potentially help them right um and so it's easy to it's easy to find a first project or first client it's a lot harder to upsell them um and retain them and have them keep coming back um but honestly the difference between the freelancers who do and the ones who don't is just asking questions and being curious more than anything else and if you're curious with your clients and you and you really are kind of trying to understand what their underlying motivations are it's going to arm you to sell a lot more business and it's also much better outcome for the clients because you you know you've got solutions that they probably haven't thought of um that's that's almost always the case especially when you're you know more technical or more experienced but even if you're not right like you're you're sort of creative spin on things um and bringing different ideas to the table is a huge value add but you can only do that if you understand what they're really trying to do yeah i think that that's kind of the other hat that you kind of have to wear because you know most people when they think of freelancing is like i want to write themes or plugins or i want to you know create little apps or something like that but there's so much more that goes into it because essentially when you come in as a freelancer there's all this potential to become more of like a partner to the company rather than just somebody who's there to kind of like a construction worker right like instead of coming in just to kind of pour the cement and lay the foundation of you know that's all they need you for all right goodbye you know you can come in and say like all right well what are we building here and like maybe we can you know figure out a way that i can be a little bit more useful and i think if you can get in a position where you're adding more value than just the code that you write or the plugin that you install or the images that you upload like that's all of a sudden where you can start to see a little bit more long-term success with um like a freelancing career because like you said like your time isn't necessarily scalable like there's 24 hours in a day and there's only so many hours a human can work before all of a sudden you're burnt out and then you lose on all this potential because now you're burnt out and now you can't even work your 40 hours a week so like being able to get into a position where you are i don't know just adding like more value than just the code that you write and the time that you're putting in because that's where i would say you start to feel like see real success and that's that's a harder skill to hone i think that like you said is like knowing the right questions to ask up front is really important to getting to setting up the expectation of who you are when that relationship is is being formed because if you say that you're like yeah i can build your website what do you want then all of a sudden you're just kind of like another kind of faceless developer that's just kind of we're going to hire you then when our contract's done we're done and then that's it thank you we'll call you the next time we need something maybe you know or unless we find somebody cheaper like that's kind of like as far as it's going to go but if you can be invested in the business if you can ask all these kind of questions and all of a sudden they're like oh like this person actually wants to to help us and to actually do you know more than just you know write the code they want to know all these different aspects about our business what our sales are how maybe how we can kind of integrate that into what we're asking him to do all this kind of stuff then all of a sudden you have a way better first impression i think that when the next time a project comes up or if they were thinking about doing more now all of a sudden you're like in a way better position than you were if you were just like yeah what do you want you know what i mean totally yeah you know i'll tie that into a question i just saw somebody else ask um which was you know about sites like upwork and fiverr and whether they should you know first of all use them but also like compete on on on price using those websites um and i think that's that's very tied in to how your clients and potential clients perceive you right um if you're if the perception is that you're just a developer right um you're just kind of a code monkey and like they give you a task you do the task without really putting any critical thinking in in terms of like is this the right thing to do um and will it actually help them fit their goals um then you're gonna end up competing on price regardless of what platform you're on um now you know i do think certain platforms um fiverr and upwork among them um really encourage people to compete on price and so i think if you're trying to build um you know a sort of high ticket business um which if you're serious about this and serious about this being a career i'd recommend you do um then those probably aren't the best platforms and there's don't get me wrong there's certainly exceptions right like i've heard of 100 000 upward projects um but they're really rare and they're hyper competitive um and so there's a bunch of better places to look um whether it's online places um you know there's some great sort of high value job boards that tend to have freelance work on them like um angel list which caters to like tech startups and we work remotely which obviously as the name implies is all remote jobs which are you know i'd say probably 40 to 50 percent of the gigs on there or are freelance or contract work um but you know i think that that that bigger thing is ask yourself how you're positioning yourself and who you want to be right like if you really just wanna do code and like you want really clear instructions without like you know any any opportunity for interpretation um you know by all means do it maybe upwork and five are good good options for that um but you know there's ways to to to make more money and i think quite frankly have a lot more fun um you know if you if you look at other channels and um you know i think there's a lot of stuff you can do locally too like um slack groups and meetups are great opportunities to to meet clients and um you know i know a lot of people hate networking i certainly do i'm an introvert but it doesn't have to feel like that where you're you know like schmoozing and working the room um honestly if you're just like curious and talking to people um and i think like local slap groups are a great opportunity for that because people just you know hang out to the entire slack group hey do you know someone who does wordpress and you can just raise your hand and say i do let's talk um you know so so yeah certainly you could use those but i think it's probably worth considering um a bunch of other options first um and you know either way consider how you're positioning yourself yeah i i really like i mean like granted i've never really dug into things like upwork or anything like that i've used them but i've never really advertised myself on any of those places because the kind of work that i would get out of there is not really the kind of work that i'm looking for if that makes sense right typically the way that i have found clients is through word of mouth like i mean i i come from a background where i've have you know worked at agencies multiple agencies three of them and in that time you end up working with designers or marketing folks or seo folks and typically everybody's doing a little something off to the side and they have their own connections they have their own friends they have their own previous connections that are starting to do something or have done something or work at a different company and then all of a sudden they're like talking to this other person like hey like i have this project that i'm working on do you know anybody that does x y or z and they're like actually i do there's this other dude that i worked with at this agency and i know that he knows how to do it and so at that point if you can make at least like good connections in your nine-to-five job like with other marketing people and other sizes even other developers for that matter i've i've tossed up a ton of clients to other developers that i've known because i know that they're good good people and they work hard and they're trustworthy with that kind of stuff so you can kind of like get yourself even just like you just do a good job at your job some stuff might just come to you but usually like what i'm trying to say is that like it comes from networking stuff or word of mouth that i've seen just like kind of naturally um just uh by working hard and all that but another one that has um kind of also found i found was um charity which was i thought was really interesting i didn't quite expect to to see this like some people are like all right like i'm i'm starting out brand new i'm coming from like zero clients like i need to like i don't have a job like or i do and nobody's like really doing freelancing right now so i'm not getting anything so like where do i even go well if you need to like build a portfolio or start building like connections with anybody i would start reaching out to like charitable groups like nonprofit organizations and things like that because almost almost every uh nonprofit that i've ever like visited their website um they're they're usually pretty terrible because it's really hard to find so if you're looking to like you know tax deductions here if you're in the united states or something like that um you can usually still kind of get compensated somehow for your work sometimes they have like a budget that they can work with but you can also like uh get um just like portfolio pieces going that way too like and just being able to get um uh just yourself out there more or less is start making connections with these business people start getting something together you can start throwing like if you're when you're pitching other people that you do encounter you can say like oh i did this you know piece for so and so and you know went really well and here's the site go take a look at it so there's like you know um just trying to build on top of that yeah like slack groups discord channels um which i've done a couple videos on for those kind of resources yeah like meetups like there's a wordpress meetup here in salt lake city and then like half the people there or either work at like bluehost or like a couple of other little uh places here and then the rest were like local business people looking to get their questions answered so there's always like we'd always do like a presentation somebody's always asking like a question about like hey so i have like this e-commerce thing like should i use big commerce or should i use shopify or should i use woocommerce and everyone's throwing out all their you know um opinions but you know afterwards you can go up to him and like hey like i you kind of sounded like you're looking i can maybe help out with that like you know i do that and so there's all these different places that you can do it um but yeah i would say that like most of mine have been all like word for word of mouth just people that i know that knew somebody that knew somebody that needs help with something so you can you can put yourself out there and also work will just come to you if you end up doing a good job at least in my opinion yeah i definitely think that that all that's right um and it's been my experience as well like i've got tons of clients through um referrals but one thing i know because i also i coach you know developers who are looking to go freelance and designers who are looking to go freelance um is that you can also sort of engineer that success too you don't have to just wait around for it to sort of happen to you um and and there's a couple of ways to do that right like you can go out proactively and start to to find clients on like those high-value job boards i mentioned you can go to meetups like you mentioned um i think you you also hit the nail on the head when you said um you know meeting other developers meeting um also people in related industries right designers and marketers are fantastic and i've got tons of referrals from um designers and marketers because they do things that are complementary to what i do right so they are already working with clients but they don't do what i do um and so you know as soon as their client says oh like we've got this need right they get out their mental rolodex right and say like okay who's you know who do i know who does this right um and you want to be on that list and that's really just about like making some connections um and you may already have some from you know jobs you've already worked but like um if you're a developer honestly i think the easiest thing you could do um to go and start kind of kick starting this is go to a design meetup or just join a design slack channel go to a marketing meetup or join a a marketing slack channel um those are really great ways and start meeting people right because those people are gonna have um you know needs for what you do and because they don't do it themselves chances are they don't know that many people who do it either right um and and so that means um you know when they've got that need the number of people they're gonna call might just be you um or it might be three to five people which is way better than you know like what you'd see on an upwork or one of those other sites where you've got 50 people competing on price for the same thing that's actually a really good point and like i've never thought about going to a meetup that doesn't necessarily directly line up with what i do because i've always gone to like meetups where it's you know like js meetups or wordpress meetups or all this kind of stuff because it's like i'm there because i'm here for the topics but like i've never kind of thought about going to one to be there in kind of like a support capacity but i could really see that like if you go to like an seo meetup or like a marketing meetup or like a designer meetup or join discords or slacks that are like related to that i can't imagine how valuable that would actually be for members of those types of groups to have somebody who's a developer because in an agency like when the when the designer is talking to the um the client they're kind of coming up with all this stuff that you know that they want to do on the site and it usually doesn't translate very well to code right so you kind of have to talk them down or you kind of have to propose other solutions so having those conversations ahead of time would be really valuable for designers in particular if they're like hey like so i'm designing this thing for this client and oh look there's a developer here like what do you think of this i'd be like don't do any of that that's that's crazy like it's not gonna like it's gonna slow down the site like crazy don't do this don't do that but do this instead and maybe you can do that and they're like oh like this dude actually knows what he's talking about so hey maybe like next time i have you know a client or a freelance client or something like that i know who i can talk about because you know they're really smart at what they do and they could they could definitely add some value to this project so i actually never thought of that that's actually a really good point um so i guess like once we've once we've got the client right like what would be some of the things that you would do to i guess first of all like well i guess let's say that we got into the room with the client right like they're like all right hey alex or tim like we've got this thing going on what would be some of the things that you would uh recommend doing in general at that moment in time yeah so i mean i think that the you know the first thing you want to do is ask a bunch of questions um right and so it's it's like i said like you're working to uncover and quantify that business need right so like okay you know they came to you with that um that project idea of like we want a new website like okay great um why is that like is it to increase sales is it because the website they have currently is creating like all sorts of issues for their back end order fulfillment staff and and that kind of thing um and once you've established that then the question is like how much right um how much is it costing them in lost revenue or lost time um and lost costs um and that the reason you want to do that is is twofold right first of all it's going to establish you as someone who cares about their business um and as an expert um and allow you to design a solution alongside them that doesn't just like kind of scratch the itch behind their problem right but like knocks it out of the park um and number two doing that is gonna allow you to charge a whole hell of a lot more right um and so i saw you know it's funny because i saw another question from carlos um about like how do you um you know compete with people who are charging thirty dollars for a website right um and honestly the answer is you don't right if somebody wants to pay thirty dollars for a website yeah um it's because they're not they're not serious about their business right um you want people who want to pay three thousand or thirty thousand dollars for a website right um and the way you find those people we kind of just talked about um but part of what you're doing when you first talk to people is evaluating is this that kind of client right are they serious about growing their business are they serious about investing in it right but then you don't just build them any old website right you understand what their goal is you design and build something that's going to meet their goals and so that you know that first conversation i think is all about doing that um it's also about establishing credibility um and everything i just said i've found is like kind of the easiest way to establish credibility because if you're asking smart questions people are gonna assume that you know what you're doing um even if you've never done it before um you know they'll ask you some questions and that kind of thing um and you know you're also kind of starting to scope things out a little bit um and so there should be like a lot of questions about about you know how how much of the things do they want right um it's a great opportunity to start to start to like define the price range of the project um and you know oftentimes on that first call you'll get questions about price my advice is to respond with a range um you know and so oftentimes people say like well you know how much how much does this cost um you know how much would you charge to design a new wordpress and build a new wordpress site um and my response is always something along the lines of like you know i've done projects like this for as cheaply as 3k and as much as 30k um and it really depends on on what you want right um and so let's talk about you know what the business value is to you um and you know talk about your budget and then i can design a solution to fit that um and that's really nice for a couple of reasons because typically you end up somewhere in the middle um and so it gives you an opportunity to like decide with two ends that are gonna establish that middle are um you know but it also gives you flexibility so you're not like backed into this corner where you have to name one number without you know knowing anything about who they are and what their budget is um so those are you know a couple of the things that usually happen on the first call or two um you know i'm curious what what have you found on on you know your first call with a client i think yeah the price thing always comes up it's it's really tough because you never really want to do like you want to set yourself up as an expert right like we're talking about competing with upwork right and fiverr and all that kind of stuff there's 30 client there's 30 clients and you just don't want to be any part of that like there is a space for that if that's if you knew that's what you wanted to do that's what you would be doing and it seems like anybody who's like watching this video right now knows that that's probably not the best route because if you're competing against 30 websites that means you have to go 29 and like that's not really a viable solution for most everybody so you need to be getting like the bigger fish you want the clients that are more serious you want all this kind of stuff and so usually they want to find out number one if you are an expert in whatever they need like you need to be asking those kind of questions that we talked about earlier not just like they're like all right well what's your price and like all right well what's your budget and it's just like oh okay like we're gonna be going down this rabbit hole and we're just gonna be doing back and forth and then we still don't even know really what the scope of the project is but if you're asking questions about like well what are your business needs why are we doing this like i want to know about i need to know the entire lay of the land before i start building a castle on it because it could just you know sink into the bog we want to make sure that we have a good idea and if you are asking those kind of questions all of a sudden you're putting yourself in a position to where you're going to be getting the higher dollar amount even if there is a magical budget that they have in the back of their brain all of a sudden they're going to be putting you on the higher end of that spectrum because they know about everything that you're bringing to the table isn't just you know it's not just as as simple as you know throwing together a couple lines of code that you're aware of everything else um so like i like to ask all about that kind of stuff and just like get like a good scope of work um as well like that is something that i feel like is is completely missed a lot of the time is we get really excited that we got this new client so like all right let's just let's go like what do i got to do give me the logins give me do this do that um but i think taking your taking it slow i think is is a really you know um positive thing because all of a sudden you're if you can break things out into chunks into a really good scope of work you're going back and forth with a client on what needs to be done and your suggestions for how things can be handled and things like that and having and nailing down a really good scope of work document i think is is really positive so there's no confusion about what's actually going to get done by the end of the project i can't tell you how many times that it's like well like oh so we've we had this form here we kind of assumed that it was going to have this this and this attached to it too and it's just like wait a second we didn't talk about any of that um so like making sure that you're asking questions about each of the features that do end up in the scope of work document like those scope of work documents should be pretty big if you ask me um it's usually not as simple as just like make an about page make a contact page make a checkout page or whatever there's a lot more that kind of goes into it and i'm probably derailing myself by going down this route but it's come to mind a couple times but like getting that kind of stuff nailed down and setting those expectations about what you are gonna do and and what you're not going to do because there could be this whole conversation about seo work they think that they're going to be on the front page of google or something like that because you've touched the site magically and now they're all there like we paid you for this new site and here we are like all right we got to have these conversations about like seo and how things are going to shake out that way and whether or not your work is going to influence all that kind of stuff so i think that having those type of conversations also puts you in a good position that you know like what the consequences of your work is going to be as well on top of that so that's more or less but i know i kind of went down a very different path of that but that's just kind of where it took me yeah no it's i mean alex i think it's it's it's funny that you're you're sort of mentioning scoping um you know my approach to that is probably a little bit different um and you know i think hopefully this it's at least a little bit on on shelby's um question too about how to handle folks who ask for pricing before they want to discuss anything um and you know first of all it's like well the price depends on the details and so if you're not willing to give me any of the details then i can't give you a price right um you know it's like buying a house without being able to go inside right um if if they're serious they'll give you the details um and if they're being really cagey they're not serious and honestly just like run the other way um you know you i think that's like you shouldn't be desperate exactly like like this yeah somebody said like you know like pay peanuts get monkeys like i i understand that sentiment is like they you need to know like this is an interview that goes both ways just like when you're getting a regular job like you're interviewing them as much as they're interviewing you for the job like you don't want to be going after clients that are not worth it to you like and that's kind of there's like those different tiers of of clients and there's different tiers of freelancers because if you're doing stuff for five bucks on fiverr then that kind of puts you into a specific category you're gonna start to get clients that are like that but if you really want to make freelancing your career you have to set yourself up into the kind of those like upper echelons of freelancers like you are going to be the kind of freelancer that takes on these 3 5 10 20 000 clients you can't be like all right well you kind of have to know these little like details like you're saying like if they're not they're being super weird about pricing or they're like non-committal about like sharing information about what the project actually is before like asking about um like what you're gonna charge and stuff like that like all that is kind of like it it puts you back into that lower echelon of of of uh freelancer if you're kind of doing that and kind of entertaining that so definitely setting like a standard for yourself i think is really important when it comes to this kind of stuff like if you want to be getting good clients good consistent clients you want your you want you know high quality low quantity kind of stuff that kind of feels like a really good place to be in good relationships with with clients and stuff like that you're really not going to get that off of you know like the lower dollar amounts or kind of like the shady clients and stuff like not saying that they're bad people of course not but like the but the idea that if you're kind of in there and they're being really weird about pricing and whatnot you probably won't that's like your good sign to walk yeah i mean and you know what alex i'll say it some of them are probably bad people not all of them by any stretch of the imagination right some of them just aren't professionals um or they you know they don't know what they don't know um and you know you want to avoid those types of of clients right because they're just a time and a money suck um the that i've generally found that the best clients i have are also the ones who pay me the most um and it's it's not because i like them for for paying me the most it's because those people are serious right there's a mutual trust there yeah they take themselves seriously they take the project seriously and they take you seriously as a result right um and because they don't want someone who's not serious working on their project um it also means um and you know to go back to the scoping conversation um it also means that you have to worry a little bit less about scope ironically um and scope creep becomes less of a thing because they're focused on their business goals not like an arbitrary set of um features right like they're not adding bells and whistles just for the sake of adding bells and whistles right um and so like if they're really trying to you know cut down on the back end cost um you know because their inventory system sucks they're gonna be pushing you to add some random like you know flashy thing to their website if they're really focused on growing sales same thing right like the quickest cheapest fastest thing that does that job is what they want um you know within within reason obviously there's you know there's always some small exceptions like it's gotta be consistent with the brand and you know stuff like that but um for the most part you know my experience is the people who take it really seriously also have budgets um are comfortable paying high prices um and so like if you're feeling um you know really uncomfortable with with charging the types of you know prices were we're talking about you know obviously adjust a little bit for for your locale and some of that kind of stuff um then you know i'd challenge you a little bit to think about why um and honestly i think it is in large part because i you know i felt the first the same way when i was first starting out um it's in large part because you're talking to the wrong people um you know you're talking to folks who don't have those budgets and like you're not going to trick somebody who doesn't have that kind of money into sending it right um at least not honestly um and you know being being dishonest as a freelancer in addition to being unethical is a great way to you know tank your career so don't do it um but travels fast yeah um but you're you know you're you're talking to people who aren't serious about this and don't have and don't have those types of needs and and honestly i just don't think that those are great clients like let the guys on on and gals on fiverr um and upwork deal with that um you know go go look for the people who are a little bit bigger and a little bit more serious yeah i think that kind of success kind of snowballs a little bit i think you can make that snowball as big as little as you want like once you've kind of started it um but yeah like if you do if you can get that first client and you can kind of use that as a springboard to get other clients like they'll talk to you know businesses talk to each other and people who work within those businesses also have many connections that talk to each other and they'll know about this guy or girl that knows how to you know take care of them and so if you can get that do a good job you're ethical and everything from top to bottom that is huge and um yeah i think that you're that you're right just kind of leave the other stuff you know kind of down there and and like upwork and fiber to those who are who want to do that type of work and there's nothing wrong with that but yeah that's fine but yeah if you're going after the bigger fish then you kind of need to set yourself up in a way to do that and i think that what you said about just kind of being like overall like ethical with your dealings on all that kind of stuff is a kind of a no-brainer but i feel like it should be emphasized just in case there's any sort of question about it at all for everybody is like make sure if you're gonna promise something actually deliver it make sure that you're if you are charging by the by the hour make sure that all your time stuff is correct all that kind of good stuff making sure that all that is on the up and up that's just not a position you ever want to get yourself in if you're planning on on doing this um at all really like there's no real real way around it um some uh uh shubham asks 10 to 20 000 clients are difficult to find in poor countries what should one do if he lives in one of those countries um i'll do like a quick response to this and shoot this back over to tim but like that one's that one's a little bit harder i mean you kind of have to set your expectations to kind of like where you're at a little bit but with like the more and more like we kind of have opened up like people are really looking for people who can help them with solutions to their problems it really doesn't matter if you're you know in the united states canada if you're in europe or asia or anything like that if you can help them deliver um a product that they have had envisioned or if they have a problem and you are the solution to that problem it doesn't matter as much and so like if you can um honestly just be like an effective communicator if you can respond to emails and messages in a timely and efficient manner and get those questions and just being open to like i guess communicating in the time zone of the client's country that would be really helpful all this kind of stuff adds to them because it's going to be way more valuable to them that they can ask you a question during their business hours and get a response during their business hours than it is to send it at like you know 10 a.m their time and get an answer at 2 a.m you know that next day those are the kind of little small details that will actually um matter a lot in my opinion but what what are your kind of thoughts on that yeah i think i think everything you you said is true um but i also think that there's i mean there's there's two ways to think about this right like one of them is um okay like you definitely have the the internet's a wonderful place um it connects to people from from across the world and so you do have the opportunity to work with people on other sides of globe um you know like you were like you were getting at um but you know even if you you know you don't have the time or inclination or ability to do that um you know maybe you've got um kids or or you know other commitments that you can't really like time zone shift um you still should be going after the bigger fish in your locale right um and so maybe you're not going from you know the 50 upward project to a five thousand dollar project um from a client from somewhere else maybe you're going to a 500 project but the principle is still the same right look for the people who are who are really serious um you know that said um there are all kinds of of big and successful companies um in those countries um so i also do think that there are those types of opportunities in fact i i know there are just a little harder we've found them yeah you just you just have to dig a little bit harder um but the point is you're not you know you're not looking for the the the client who's like the the grandparent who wants a website to put up like their you know grandchildren's photos right um you know you're or or the like mom-and-pop fly-by-night business um you know i work with a lot of small businesses and i love working with them but the ones who are serious who have some financial backing um you know those are the ones you want to go after um and you know there are like i've had you know people pay me four or five figures um and they're single person businesses um and it's you know it's just because they're serious so you don't have to do um you know a 50 project just because you live somewhere that's you know not the us or the uk or australia yeah that's true like i think that yeah it i guess like yeah digging a little harder and just also having like a lot of patience because not all of those fish are gonna be out there all at the same time and it's just a matter of you just being ready like sometimes it takes a little bit of time um and just being open to those opportunities when they come i think is really good too like um but yeah i think yeah i mean that's kind of one of the nice things about working in a system in in the modern age where we have the internet is that you aren't just locked to your locale like that that is something that you can expand upon over time if that makes sense and i think that if you are providing those solutions if you are doing a good job like that that will snowball and i i truly believe that um alvaro s why is it so hard to find wordpress and php developers with modern modern js react and skills i believe wp is a great tool that is adjusting to modern technologies and even big corporations can use it as a headless cms yeah that that's pretty interesting like so one of the reasons i think why my channel got is is as big as it is um is because at the very beginning of the channel probably oh maybe a year in maybe a little little less i did a video about headless wordpress and i think that was like first of all it's really kind of like a new concept not necessarily like headless in general it's not necessarily a new concept but kind of using wordpress as like a headless cms is semi-new um in my opinion so like the venn diagram of like like people who know wordpress and people who know like modern js frameworks the overlap between those two is fairly thin in my opinion so i think that's going to grow over time especially as like more and more people do that um because i think it is a really strong um combo like everybody knows at least a little bit about wordpress or has interact with it at on some level and that can be a really great you know content management system even if you're not really using the front end of it and i think the power of the front-end js frameworks like gatsby or next or something like that really makes kind of like it takes all the good things out of wordpress and combines them with all the good things of a front of a front-end framework and so like with those two powers combined all of a sudden you have something that not a lot of other systems have and if you are freelancing and you can set up the expectations of what that system looks like i think that could be a really powerful combination a really good selling point for yourself because it's like we can do like just the vanilla wordpress route but you're not always just working with like a like and we i feel like we can talk about this a little bit is that like you're not always dealing with just a company that has no idea about technology like they're they're a lot of the times you're dealing with with other engineers that like have um that that kind of sit over this department or sit over this project they need just somebody to do it or somebody to kind of like be an addition to the team somehow and so you kind of have to be able to like maybe provide something that um could appeal to some of those decision makers as well you need to need to know like hey like speed is a real issue or this is a real concern that we have with wordpress and this is the one that's currently sitting on what can we do here and so you can go through all the optimizations you can make to wordpress but you can also be able to pro like um present a secondary solution which is using wordpress plus a front-end framework like those things so like being technically savvy can also give you like a one-up in that we've talked a little bit about just kind of just general business kind of tips and tricks about like actually being able to you know get those clients and being able to ask those questions but at the end of the day you're you're still providing your a lot of the time you're providing you know hard-coded solutions and being able to expand your tool set into something more like a headless headless uh setup i think is is really invaluable so what do you what do you think tim about kind of like i guess like being able to provide like a like a bunch of different technology solutions to to them like have you had to deal with a lot of technology groups during your time freelancing and what was that like yeah so so definitely um you know i'll i'll answer the question directly first i think it's it's hard to find people who do a bunch of different things because it's hard to learn a bunch of different things um but i also do think it makes you you know much more flexible and gives you like um you know a lot more options um so i do um react development um i do you know wordpress work and you know playing php work um you know i do shopify development i do know js so like i work with a lot of technologies um and um you know i would encourage people who are just starting out learning development um or we've only been doing it for a couple of years to um learn another language or and or another framework um because it's really gonna help you just understand the fundamentals programming a lot better um which even if you don't end up um you know using that new technology professionally it's gonna make your life a lot easier um it'll help you you know look at problems differently it'll help you code faster um you know that said i think we're we're starting to see a lot more of that in the world wordpress world um and you were talking about um about headless um not a lot of people know this but like the gutenberg um like if you create a custom gutenberg block um that actually uses react um and and so like you know wordpress is definitely heading that direction how far they go um you know talk to the creators not me but um you know i think i think you're gonna see a lot of that happening um and you know i don't know a single um you know wordpress theme or wordpress implementation that doesn't use at least some javascript um and you know like the the old school solution um was always to use jquery um but like you can definitely write um you know even if you're not gonna go fully in the headless direction right like you can you can write wordpress themes using this uh using these modern technologies and um honestly i think i think that's a good opportunity for a lot of folks um it can also be a lot of fun yeah and i think that there's like okay so i've got like i i've only been taking like one client client at a time i've got two small kids and i got a a demanding nine-to-five job and so like i've been doing like one client at a time and this latest client essentially just says like we need a thing you can do it however you want and that's essentially where i like you know a couple years back when i made the headless wordpress video i was like well here i go then i'm gonna do one in headless wordpress and i'm gonna do gatsby and wordpress together and then i'll kind of go through it come back make a video and then that's kind of like what it ended up with um but anyway like i think that sometimes you just straight up have that freedom to do use modern technologies any way that you want to in freelance projects and that is a huge like benefit in my opinion especially if you know like the site is not like you you know like you're not to get stuck and and like code yourself into a corner like don't use something that's brand brand new to you on a client's project where it's going to all have all these complicated features that's just that's just a recipe for disaster but if you like you know you'd understand the scope of the project you can also use some um you know modern technologies for um the stack it's huge i learned so much from just being able to do that another huge benefit of um working freelance is like i don't know i wasn't able to do that in my nine to five at all like i mean maybe someday but not now but so i was able to learn quite a bit about this and then it became like a huge proponent for headless setup so we're actually going to start doing it at this company that i work at now here in the next little bit so it's huge but yeah like i think that if you can become if you like i mean the more things that you know pretty well the better i think like because there's lots of times where you know you there's like a weird balance that you have to make and i'm just kind of this is just stream of consciousness at this point like i'm not really having too much of a point here but what i'm trying to say is like there's this kind of weird mix that you have to um create where you have to be an expert in kind of like the things that you're doing so you can you can sell yourself as that expert you're not just kind of a commodity like there's not like 50 000 developers that are just like you like you you're you know this these systems really well so you can do pretty much anything in them that the project requires so there's never going to be a real point where you have to like throw your hands up and like sorry i just don't know how but also like there's all these other requirements that a project could have that you might need to adhere to like in the case of the site that i'm working on currently it needed to be able to serve images really quickly and obviously gatsby was like the best tool for the job it's got gatsby image in there everything's statically generated so you get these really cool images but they're loaded really efficiently so like knowing gatsby kind of like i had ahead of time and knowing that the scope of the project was all going to be image related like that together was able to help me build put like the the best project that i could out the best of the best product is what i meant so being able to kind of at least like have a good understanding of other things um kind of sets you apart in my opinion so like what do you what do you kind of think tim like so like there's there's like this thing where it's like how do you just like not become i guess another face in the crowd when it comes to that kind of stuff yeah yeah i mean i think i think you've you've hit the nail on the head right like that's that's the goal and i think you know the the the phrase that comes to mind to me um is you know to keep in mind that like technologists hire technologists and business people hire business people right and so when you're selling right like keep in mind who you're talking to right and and sometimes it'll be more than one person and if that's the case you've got to address you know multiple frames of view right but if you're talking to um a business person they probably don't care that much about the technology right they want the thing to be stable um easy to use and cheap to maintain right um but beyond that they really don't care about the technology they care about you know the business solution does it does it sell better than the thing we have today does it you know make it easier easier for us to ship out widgets um and quicker for us to ship out widgets than the thing we have today right um if you're on the other hand you're talking to um you know like a director of engineering or a senior engineer at a company who just needs another engineer um because you know they've got a bunch of other projects they're working on they'll care a lot more about the technology and they'll probably be a little bit more prescriptive about which technologies you use because they've already got like a staff that they like and you know they're opinionated about those things um and so like my advice for you would be um number one to like practice figuring out which of those two personas you're talking to um and have a you know sort of a pitch ready right like a a unique differentiator for each of those right so um and and usually like it's helpful to have a couple of of them on the business side right like one of the things i pitch really frequently um and sort of like pitch myself on is like i do conversion optimization right um and so like i work in all these different technologies right like node.js react um you know wordpress and php shopify um you know and and a few others but um like when i'm talking to business people like i'm barely talking about that at all some in some conversations it doesn't even come up um you know i'm much more focused on like all right like your business goal is to grow sales great like here's a bunch of ways i've done that in the past here's you know looking at your website now some things we could try um you know that kind of thing but when i'm talking to a technologist it's like okay great like i just built this you know similar project in react um for a client last week um you know we just launched it like you can go check it out and like um you know hear some of the technical details on like how we structured things right um you know it's a different conversation um and so you know just bearing in mind who you're talking to but then also having a unique differentiator um for that person right or that persona right like technologists want to feel confident that you know what you're doing technologically business people want to feel confident that you are going to be able to deliver a solution that meets their business needs yeah i think that's a really really important piece of advice is know your audience you can't be throwing out a bunch of techno jargon to the business people and you can't be just talking all this business stuff with the tech people they're you need to know they're they're both looking at you for different reasons and you need to be able to speak to each one of them individually and kind of speak their language more or less so i think that's really important so know who you're talking to and then talk to them in the way that they need to hear and then i think that'll that'll uh set you up pretty well um let's let's kind of get more down to like brass tacks about like uh pricing and things like that there's usually a lot of questions around how to structure pricing how much should i charge all this kind of stuff so i'd really like to kind of hear from from you like what is the typical advice that you would give to somebody who's like i i don't know like how much do i charge for any of this how do i even go about like even coming up with a number yeah so i mean my first um response when i get that question and i get it you know pretty much constantly um is to ask a question back which is how much do you wanna make um and like obviously everyone's gonna say well like as much as i can um but um there are trade-offs right and and so i think it's important to think about these things in terms of like a range um so in in the us the average freelance dev makes somewhere between like 120k um but like the people in the 95th percentile are making you know 300 to 400k um and so you know the way that happens is very different right like what the people who are in the 95th percentile are doing is very different than the average person and you know what the average person is doing is very different than you know those people who are in the bottom fifth percentile who are you know just going out on um you know fiverr or upwork um and you know we talked we talked about that a little bit right so right away just by doing some of the things that we've done or that we've talked about you know over the past hour or so you're going to get yourself a lot at least closer to that average number um but you know the thing to understand about pricing is that it's based on a couple of different factors right and so like the traditional way that freelancers price themselves um you know is either like cost plus right which means like i calculate how much this is going to cost me um to do right so like i take a project and like i multiply it by the number of hours and i try to come up with some you know cost for my time and then add you know 20 or 30 or 40 to that right um that's like cost plus right um there is also sort of market-based pricing and honestly like cost plus kind of often is masquerading um but it's it's really market-based pricing which is like you go and you look at a bunch of um you know try to get comp numbers right like what are other people charging for the same thing um and charge based on that um those are both really useful inputs um but ultimately your pricing should be based on value um and so you know this is one of the reasons we talked about this um at the beginning of the call that it's so important in those first you know one to two conversations to quantify the value um of what you're doing right um like how much revenue is it gonna drive if you're successful how much money is it gonna save whatever it is um and then what you're gonna try to do is kind of like triangulate between those three things right um between like cost plus um market-based pricing and value-based pricing um and so you know like you want to know what the range is right um and and so like i'd say for people doing the types of work we're talking about like building wordpress themes that are you know or that kind of thing we're sort of in like the um you know react websites whatever it is who are sort of in the like average range right that like hourly would be somewhere between like 75 and 150 right um and and in the us right in like major metros um and you can kind of like you can get that information by looking at you know just googling around for it like pay scale and some of the other folks have like um you know those ranges but your point is you want to be in the you know the top end of that range right um and maybe even above it um and then the way you do that is by quantifying that value um and making the the client that you're selling to feel confident that you're gonna deliver on it um and when you do that it becomes easier and easier to charge more premium prices um it's also a better outcome for for the client um and so they're happy to pay more um and you know honestly one of the best pieces of sales advice that i've ever gotten um was to to charge more um because honestly it makes the right type of customer more comfortable because they feel like they're hiring an expert right and they feel like they're hiring someone who's going to take their business needs seriously not just build something that may or may not work right um and i don't mean i don't mean technologically right like that's the the easier of the two um you know barriers to to um like overcome right like does it work technologically the real question is does it work you know for their business and solve that you know that problem that they really have um so that's you know generally speaking how i i think about things um and so like the other part of this is like how you sort of size clients up in those first couple of conversations um you know in terms of what their budget is um and so what i try to do is like i've got um you know an hourly and i don't charge hourly um we can talk about like pricing structure in a minute but like i've got an hourly rate roughly speaking in mind um that like i never want to go below that because um you know that impacts my profitability and i don't frankly have to go below them um and so you know typically what you want to do is sort of like right size your project right so like get a sense of what their you know budget range is um and you can kind of give them a range like like i gave you that example earlier if they ask for your pricing like say like okay like you know i've built sites like this for 3 000 and sites like this for 30 000 like it's gonna depend on the details and and then shut up right and listen to them um respond right and a lot of them will say like you know well i think like our budget's like much closer to this right um some of them won't give you that information you gotta kind of like ask a couple of questions but like the key line here is like if i understand your budget like i can design a project that'll meet your needs in that budget right um and so like we may not get all the bells and whistles but like you don't want bells and whistles right like you're not paying for bells and whistles you're paying for a business result um and so you know we'll work together and we'll figure it out um so hopefully that like gives you at least a little bit of insight um into that i know that's that's like a lot to unpack so you know alex you tell me if any of that made any kind of sense oh yeah for sure um i think what you're talking about about like adding business value is is huge and being able to like identify like how much of an impact you can make to like their bottom line goes back to talking about like asking a lot of questions up front about like all right so if they're like hey like right off the bat like what are you gonna charge us for for us a website and it's like okay well it could be between 3000 to 30 000 depending on what you need you know and that kind of stuff that's when you can start to they're going to be like all right well what's going to make it 30 000 and what's going to make it 3 000 and that's when you can start to like kind of dig in that's like essentially in my opinion like your door in to like start asking like all right well what what are you kind of looking for here like what it was like your what is your end business result like are you trying to increase conversions or you just need to like increase like i don't know just like the speed of your site are you needing to like just increase like um oh i don't know like your seo footprint or something like that there's all these other things that you can like start to use to kind of come down to like a like a number and if you're like oh this what i can do for them will end up making them like six million dollars or something like that okay well now all of a sudden you're not going to be charging you know like three thousand dollars anymore because now all of a sudden you know like the impact to their bottom line is gonna be much more than three three thousand dollars and it's gonna be much more worth it to them if you can give them that max potential of what you can give them so that kind of like helps you kind of draw all of that um a little bit more and so like i think that and another thing that i wanted that that you said that kind of uh piqued my interest was talking about like having like an hourly rate in mind which i think is really interesting like i think that could be like the number that is just like your what what what's a good way to put that that is like your your like um your make even point is like if i if i can if i just charge my hourly rate i've essentially just broke even and so like adding that cost or that like kind of like padding on top of it actually makes it kind of better for everybody in a weird way like it makes it better for you obviously because you're getting more money but like uh the other end of things like if i know that i'm getting paid for what i'm doing and i'm being fairly compensated for it i'm just inherently going to do a better job in my opinion like there's there's they're getting something more out of it because i'm going to be working the best that i can because i know that i'm getting compensated fairly if i was getting paid minimum wage i probably would give minimum wage work if i'm getting paid fairly i'm going to get give out fair work and even better you know so i think like making sure that you know what your base is so you don't like are spending dozens of hours over on a project which is essentially cutting back on how much you're making per hour versus like all right i know that i've made my break even and i'm actually making this this kind of stuff on top of it so like i can kind of gauge what my true compensation is for all of this and yeah i think it just works out better for everybody when when you're actually getting paid fairly so like i would say like fight for yourself because ultimately it's gonna it's gonna benefit them and you and there's nothing more that like it it always pains me to open up a project that i know i've already hit my break even point on and like i'm having to dump more hours into it so giving yourself that room because scopes like inevitably creep there's always something that like we miss so making sure that you're you're paid for all that kind of stuff too all the incidentals that are coming through but yeah like making sure that i think that if anybody's like so i watch like this is weird example but i watch a lot of like barbecuing youtube channels because i like to barbecue a lot like i've got a part like a smoker in my backyard and they're they're always talking about when you're seasoning your meat that you're always underestimating how much you're seasoning a meat like if you've got a big old brisket or something like that people are like oh my gosh this is like a lot of seasoning we're putting on this big chunk of meat and he's like i can guarantee you whatever you're doing on there it's not enough and so it's like you kind of always have to kind of bully yourself into charging more like the the idea is like we typically if like in like vulnerable positions like this we tend to like undersell ourselves and so we always kind of like kind of shy away i don't know this is at least my experience i always kind of like go more towards the lower end of things because i was like oh like i don't know like if i'm really worth that much they're just gonna like gasp and stop responding my to my emails when i throw out a bigger number but i found that actually in the most recent projects that i've done when i've gone big and i've said like it's kind of this or i'm i'm done they usually are like oh yeah no that's fine like i think they can really pick up on your confidence that you are an expert that you're gonna be worth your time and they're worth your time all of a sudden now it's like a like a relationship like we're kind of in this together and so i think that is another piece of advice is always charge more than what you think you're worth because at a certain point like i think we tend to kind of cut ourselves short a little bit yeah i think that's i think that's exactly right um and you know i think that the other thing i i would you know say is put yourself in a client's shoes right like would you rather spend a thousand dollars for a website that's gonna make you two thousand dollars or thirty thousand dollars for a website that's going to make you three million right um and and think about that out there right like people don't want to spend a dollar to get two dollars back right they want to spend the dollar to get ten dollars back and so like if it costs significantly more to do that as long as they can reasonably afford it they'd still rather do that um because you know they want the best possible outcome and so you know the things that i found to be really effective in this or like number one like okay you know that you know that value you're gonna provide right like if if this website that you're building or this you know tool you're building whatever it is delivers on that value you know like what the range is um you know put that front and center in your proposal right your proposal is not about the technology it's not about the scope um all those things are in there um but it's about like okay you have this business challenge here's what we're building and like here's what it's going to do for your business right um and then the other thing is like give them options right um and so like you know i always present my proposals over uh a call um usually a video call um sometimes a phone call but like that way like i have the opportunity to hear how they respond like what's their gut reaction to the price um and if for some reason i've you know um miscalculated and like i've read them wrong read their budget wrong and you know honestly it doesn't happen that often anymore because if you're asking the right questions um you'll kind of know um but like if for some reason that happens i can right on the spot adjust things right and and then the key there is like you're not just like turning your pricing down right like it's not like you're hoping to get 200 an hour and you're just going to go to 150 an hour right um what you're doing is saying like all right like we can throw some stuff over you know um you know off the boat right and and make some changes to still get you what you want but within your budget um and clients really appreciate that um and they'll respect you more for doing it um and they feel like they're dealing with an expert um when you do that so like that works really well um and you know i think the other thing is just you know i don't know alex if you want to get in a little bit to like um to like pricing like contact or contract structure and billing terms and that kind of stuff but um there's a lot you can do there too um you know that that can help you a little bit like help you make more money um and and also set you up for for success in terms of maintaining an ongoing relationship and and set the client up for success yeah that that it's kind of interesting we there's all these different like structures a project can take on um at least to my experience where if you're working for a large enough company it's not just a single person there's typically things that they have to go with like there's bounds that they have to stay within that are not strictly the dollar amount um and what i mean by that is say like there's like a budget for 50 000 or something like that but i mean quarterly budgets kind of take account into that kind of stuff it's like okay well we only have fifty thousand dollars for this quarter and if your chart if you're saying that this project is going to take 75 thousand dollars well we can't we can like strip out some of these features for now but we can do the rest next quarter so like all of a sudden that opens up the conversation to well first of all the longer term relationship but also second of all is like you're not necessarily like taking price off of what it is because all of a sudden the cat's out of the bag at that point it's like all right like all right this guy just charged us more because he could it's like no everything's kind of tied to something and why this is why this why the work that i would put on this is more valuable so like you can say like okay well all right well if we need to kind of do this into multiple phases well here's the things that i think that we can kind of move over to the second quarter where you have more of the rest of your budget or whatever and now all of a sudden you can kind of work with them on back and forth your price didn't actually change but the scope of work did and the timeline did so there's all these little weird things you kind of also have to like be understanding of from like the business perspective of things it's not really that they don't want to work with you or want to give you this much money is that there are like strict things that are just straight up out of their control so being able to kind of work with that expect for that kind of have backup proposals like you were talking about is like having multiple options for for like kind of timelines and budgets and budgetary needs it's like okay there could just be like we just don't have that much money what can we do and you could also have you know options for that as well it's like okay well here's all the things that if we want this end result like we need to increase conversions well here's kind of some of the kind of like edge case things that i was that we could have done that we could probably strip off that would bring us down to something closer to your budget being ready with those kind of things in like a phone call setting or like a video chat setting would be really helpful especially if you have them all like laid out in a really nice presentation that would be huge um and yeah like i think kind of talking about timelines a little bit and kind of payment structures we can get a little bit into that um it's been a minute since i've had to do this because like i've now i'm kind of like on retainer with my current client so it's not really as much of a thing but i do remember very um for a long time i was doing when i was doing lots more clients a lot more frequently i was always doing milestones because at the beginning i was just like i'll do the website for a thousand dollars thank you very much and then they're like all right here's a check and then i would essentially be doing the website for the next six months while i just kept adding stuff and i already had the money in my pocket it was just like okay well that didn't really help out anybody um so and then it was kind of like oh well maybe i'll do half up front and then half at the end and then i was like okay well i would get my half up front and then that half at the end was kind of like you know dangled over over like my over me is like that carrot on the stick was always chasing out so then i started doing like you know scopes of work and contracts and things like that and that kind of locked me in a little bit more but ultimately what i found out was like once you kind of ask the right questions and you understand the project a lot better then all of a sudden it makes a lot more sense to do something like milestones and milestones has been kind of was saving grace for me because it kind of kept me accountable and it kept the client accountable for everything now it got to a point where it's like there wasn't really a need there was this just like inherent trust that we had like all right hey like i did the thing they just send me my money and then we would move on to the next thing but like no like at the beginning it was very helpful to kind of point to like hey i did x y and z here's a link to the site or the staging site or something like that here's you can see x y and z so let's get the milestone taken care of and now you kind of are in a power position where you can say like all right well we're not starting on the third milestone until we've taken care of the second milestones payment and now we're kind of we're mutually accountable and then they're not going to pay you the third milestone until the third milestones items are complete and so it keeps everybody kind of like on a level playing field and there's not as much of like this kind of i don't know somebody's in a really vulnerable position and somebody's really in a power position it kind of keeps everybody working together and things like that and that's something that i found is really helpful is essentially giving getting the budget breaking it up into as many milestones as makes sense for the timeline and the project scope and then just dividing that number up into that many equal parts and you're good to go so that's what's worked for me but i'm not really sure like if if you found like a way that's more helpful or what are your kind of thoughts on the milestone approach anyway yeah so i definitely use it um for and i'd say you know i've got a bunch of retainer clients as well and for them i don't use it for for obvious reasons right like they're they're paying me um on an ongoing basis and i'm doing work and you know we've we've been working together for a long time and everybody's happy but um one of i i you almost never sell a retainer right off the bat right so like your your first project um is either going to be hourly or project based and um you you can charge a lot more if you do project base um and you're and you're good at it so like do that and you know i i i use milestones i'll split things up depending on on the length right like if something is shorter than two weeks um i just charge 100 up front um and that's kind of like you know i've got a good reputation people can talk to other clients um like i get i get my work done um and you know if you're if you're not willing because something that's less than two weeks isn't that expensive like if you're not willing to do that you're probably not that serious um but for stuff over that right like something around a month like i'll do half up front half at the end um and anything longer than that that's when i started doing milestones um and you know it can also be helpful um in situations where like um where the scope isn't fully known like say if if you're the one doing the design and the development i'm sure we've got a couple of folks um you know tuning in who are um you know sort of that jack of all trades and do both you know the design and the implementation um then you know it's worthwhile to split the project between those two phases um and say like all right like i'll do i'll do the design view that's gonna be just a totally discreet phase and during that when we're gonna like um work together on sort of right sizing the design so that like the development also fits within your budget um you know and so there's there's there's other situations where it's useful to do milestone-based based stuff even if the project isn't necessarily all that long um but definitely definitely do it um it makes your clients more comfortable um you know and and both of you are kind of on equal footing where like no one's you know worried the other person's gonna screw them or that kind of thing so yeah i think that it kind of depends on the situation like i mean i wouldn't recommend a milestone for a project that's gonna take you three hours like i think that there's definitely a time where you can build well first of all if you have like a good relationship with the with the with the client you can get loose with that i think it becomes it becomes a benefit to everybody they don't have to worry about like checking off all these boxes or anything like that they know you're going to do what you said you were going to do you know that they're going to pay you when it's done i think once you've established a good relationship with that client for sure but if this is like a brand new client and it's like this is gonna be a one to two month project absolutely i would that would be the thing that i would recommend is like it keeps you accountable it keeps them accountable everyone's on the same playing field here and it just makes a lot of sense in my opinion to do it that way yeah yeah i mean the thing the thing that i'll add too is like um i usually like the vast majority of times i'm i'm um pitching a new client it's it's split into roughly speaking three meetings um like before before the close and it's you know sometimes you might take more than one meeting for each of these three steps but like the first one is like understanding their needs right this this second one you know and so we're asking all the i'm asking all the questions we've already talked about the second one is like i come back to them with a proposal and that's got like you know a rough idea of what like the project um is and like roughly what the pricing is um but i don't mention payment terms other than to say like next step is like i'll you know once we agree on this i'll put together a statement of work um and and then that third step is like i send them the statement of work and like the thing to keep in mind is what happens um in between steps two and three right which is where you like you have a conversation about the proposal and like in that conversation you'll get a like it'll be very obvious if they're the type of client who's going to constantly be doing scope creep because rather than saying like what about x and y um and having it be like a couple of things that like you know maybe needed to get to get added they'll have like 10 right um and you know when that happens you definitely want to either use milestones or like you can like cap the project and say like up to x number of hours and anything over that like is extra like there's different ways to handle it but like pay attention to how they respond because if they're already like right from the get-go or asking for more and more and more they're definitely going to do that later in the project yeah yeah that's true um let's uh work we're at about an hour and a half let's go a few more minutes um we have a couple more things that i'd like to cover so we'll just kind of go through those the last couple things and then we'll call it unless somebody else has a question in the chat and remember if you all have a question just make sure to type it in we'll definitely get to it um so the other question we have is like how to avoid the feast or famine problem and keep things steady that seems to be kind of the the issue is being able to you know how am i going to pay my bills one month and then have enough to go on a cruise the next like how does how do people manage those kind of uh those kind of months and scenarios years even yeah so you know i've got um a couple of approaches to this and i think that the nice thing i'll say is that like um i don't know a single freelancer who's been doing this for more than like a year and a half or two years full time who has that problem anymore um so like um it's it's a problem for sure when you're starting out but um like it's almost never a problem after that if you do if you do good work um and there are a couple of ways to handle that first you know year to two years um you know one of them is to partner with existing agencies so like a lot of times um like the larger agencies have sort of overflow and that kind of thing so it's a great way um to get like um a couple of more stable clients um you know who will say like all right like i want to buy effectively buy like 25 or 50 percent of your capacity for the year um or whatever and like you know they won't pay for the entire year up front but like they'll say like you know i need we need somebody for you know 10 or 20 hours a week whatever it is um so that can be uh like a really good way to deal with that um another thing that you'll want to focus on is just like closing um retainer clients um and it's you know honestly like it it sounds daunting but it actually isn't right like um one of the key questions you ask is like when you're talking to your clients it's like is this a discreet project like um you know one-time need that you guys are gonna have or is this something that's ongoing um they'll almost always say it's a little bit of both um you know and they'll say like we want to start with this but here are some other things um and it's also an opportunity like if you you know talk through the project to point out things that um they might need that you can do on an ongoing basis um and so like um particularly early those retainer clients are are really important um you know later um like as you start to establish yourself um it might be more beneficial to actually have less retainers um at least if you're sort of like selling your time um because obviously that doesn't doesn't scale as well because you can charge more on you know on a project basis than you can for a retainer um but you know so like those are a couple of the things that like i usually recommend to folks um and usually you can find if you find you know two or three agencies you're sort of partnered with um that could eat your entire capacity up um and they won't pay you quite as much as other folks but it's like nice to have them you know to have a couple of them um you know sort of in the wings so like when something happens um you know if like you can't find a client for a month or two um you've got some you know you've got some work um you've got income coming in yeah i think that's a really good point i've actually done that in the past where i've contracted with a agency for a while and that actually works out pretty well usually you're kind of getting the work that nobody really else wants to do so you kind of have to be prepared for some of that but every now and again like once you kind of like establish i think this was a an agency that i had previously worked for and then like said hey like you have an extra work i'm here you'll actually give you like full-on like good projects because they know that you work well and they can kind of get that off of their plates and trust you with it so it could actually turn into something that's pretty lucrative and actually be like a really good relationship but i think at the same time yeah you kind of have to pick and choose and who you're actually working with and the kind of projects that you're willing to take on there but uh yeah it's it's a great way to kind of fill out your time and um is a great way to even build like relationships even with the clients themselves um it's it's it's uh possible to kind of make connections out that way too um and then so i'll go ahead one other thing i'll add to that is just um like always be thinking about um like upsells and crosstals and things like that right so like if you're i think first of all like if you're um in the wordpress space for example which i'm assuming a lot of the folks watching right now are right um you should have affiliate relationships with every one of the major wordpress hosts um and like any of the like major plugins that you find yourself using regularly that like have premium versions like have affiliate relationships for those because like those are great ways to bring in revenue sometimes it's monthly revenue like you get you know you get an affiliate cut for the lifetime of the subscription um and so like those are are are really helpful things to do but also be thinking about um you know even small retainers that you can sell um you know to to your customers right so like i've got a handful of folks who are paying um you know for like um me to go in and like update plugins update the wordpress core um and like run a couple of monthly reports for them right um and it's like it's all stuff that they could do or they can honestly like they could turn on like you know auto updates and like automatically do backups but like they just feel better having somebody do it who knows what they're doing in case something goes wrong um you know and you package like a traffic report with it and a couple of other things where like you give them some insights um you know people people will pay for that and it's not necessarily going to be huge right like maybe they're paying you like 500 bucks a month for like something like that and it comes with like you know a few hours of like if the if an emergency happens you'll like do some stuff um but people will pay for that it's like a nice way to round out your income yeah i agree like i mean there's plenty of things that i pay other people do just for peace of mind i could definitely cut my own hair or like fix for certain things of my car but i'd much rather leave those kind of things to an expert you know like there's there's peace of mind there and like i mean particularly with updating plug-ins and wordpress and all that kind of stuff you update a plug-in to and all of a sudden your site tanks that's something that it's really hard to do if you don't know what you're doing but if you're a developer now all of a sudden you're like you know how to roll it back you know how to go fix some stuff get it back to where it was and then kind of flag it and figure out what's going on there so yeah there's definitely a space for that and people will absolutely pay for that so that's a really good a really good point let's just jump down to our last question which is how do you structure things to make managing multiple clients easier i'm going to toss that one over to you because i only take one client at a time right now yeah so um i do a combination of things um so number one like in invest in automation right so like and when i say that like i'm not talking about like ai or crazy things right like just um i pay for calendly um as an example right and it's so people you know my clients know if they need to meet with me um they can just click on my you know go to my calendly url and find a time on my calendar right so like i don't spend time you know going back and forth with them about about availability um but i also block off large chunks of my time to do heads down work right and so like i've got you know time every day to do like actual coding because like anybody who who codes knows like if you're getting interrupted every five minutes you're not gonna get anything done so um those two things i think are really helpful um and there's you know there's other pieces of it you can automate like invoicing and things like that um you know i use um harvest and stripe um for you know time tracking and invoicing those are really helpful um but i think the other big thing is just setting boundaries and having good habits um and so um you know i was i a couple of months ago i was pitching um a client who's now like my largest client um and um you know the i pitched them on you know on some ongoing work um i didn't work with them in the past you know that was project-based um and they're you know they're not paying me a retainer and one of the things that was like a little bit unclear to me was like all right look how much time am i gonna have to be on the phone with them um and you know i was just really candid with them i was like you know i i'm i've got a lot of clients um you know i want to make sure that like if i take on this project and do the best possible job for you and i also continue to support my other clients so like if you're looking for someone to act as an embedded member of your team um it's probably not a good fit and i can help you find another freelancer who would be a better fit right but if on the other hand like you're comfortable with me kind of just running things like we'll you know check in on slack and maybe have like one meeting a week um you know one to two meetings a week like um you know if you're comfortable with that and it's really just more about like having someone who's an expert in these things um then i'm a great fit right and you can have those conversations with people um and just be candid like this is what i can do and what i'm willing to do what i'm excited about doing and this is you know what i can't right and what i'm not excited about doing and like um people really respect that um and you can oftentimes find that um like people actually appreciate it so like and and you know you can also but it doesn't have to be always those big conversations either right like i use um loom which is a you know screen recording app um because obviously i'm working on like lots of of websites and a lot of times it's like okay like i have a question for you or like it was time for you to review some of my work and i'll just walk people through it um so rather than like scheduling a meeting and like then there's you know 10 minutes of um pleasantries at the beginning and five at the end right like i record a three minute video and email it off to them um they appreciate that too right because then they don't have to have another meeting on their calendar so there's a lot of that kind of stuff that you can you can do but it's i think just a combination of like number one automation number two setting boundaries and number three like just being being in a habit of tracking your time and making sure that you're not spending too much of your time on like project management types of things um unless unless that's a type of freelancing that you do um you know there are definitely project management freelancers but like um you know track your time and the things that are big time sucks will start to jump out at you and then you'll figure out a way to like automate or streamline them yeah i think that's a those are some you have some really good points there i think the one thing that stuck out to me was uh not overextending yourself and setting the expectations of what your currently your current availability is like being a like a an embedded member of the team as you kind of put it so well is is something that sometimes clients just straight up expect that they're just paying somebody and not giving them any sort of like benefits or health insurance like we want you 40 hours a week and all this kind of stuff for the entirety of the project and when you're grabbing a freelancer you can't expect that and so jump coming in and saying like all right as a freelancer this is kind of what my time is i have these extra clients like you're not the only one like i mean there's some freelancers like myself only take one but that's not you and that's probably not most and so there's there needs to be that that boundary set that expectation set because you're going to be juggling a lot of different clients i think automation like you said is also a really big uh thing even from like the code standpoint you know if you're consistently running like reports if you're consistently um doing those like kind of like repetitive tests on a monthly basis you can do a lot with you know cron jobs or just like even just like setting up like simple scripts to like run through this kind of stuff easier and easier so like you're not having to like spin up the project do the same thing over and over again rerun these things run these things like all all of a sudden you can just like make a little little guy that that does all that for you and and there's there's little time savers here and there that you can do and just like same with like even within the project itself i've talked a little bit about this on some of my videos but like being able to deploy like a wordpress site can be like weird at times especially if you're like trying to show off work like being able to spin up like a new like instance of a wordpress site there's certain like hosting companies and stuff like that where if you push to a certain branch it'll like spin up a testing branch like you have my work my nine to five we use pantheon because you can spin up a new like branch off of the get push it up to the remote branch and it will like copy the database it'll copy the files it'll copy the code from your current branch and it'll spin up a brand new instance of that site that's private so then you can just copy that link toss it in an email so like here's all the stuff that i did boom and you toss it up there and then all of a sudden they have something to look at now that's completely automated right and like doing that in like any other way is a little bit like it's very time consuming so like being able to set up little little things like that could actually save you a lot of hours in the long run but you're charging the same price so now all of a sudden you have that time back and this they get the same end product so if you can find little things like that that would that's going to build up over time so i really like appreciate the automation part because that touches in multiple different ways on the business end as well as the code end as well um all right i think we're probably going to end it right there i really appreciate the con uh the conversation tim i really enjoyed it i think we touched on a lot of different things um i want uh do you have anything that you want to um let everybody know about before we uh sign off yeah so you know you you threw a link in the channel and and mentioned this but i i do offer a um free course on how to become a freelance developer so definitely check that out um i also you know i make a blanket offer to like any of the folks who take the course and i'll make it to everyone who's watching as well um if you are you know trying to decide if you want to become a freelancer or you're already a freelancer and you're struggling with you know um some piece of it whether it's finding clients or something else um you can book some time with me totally free like we'll we'll talk for 45 minutes or an hour and um you know i'll help you kind of brainstorm and and come up with a strategy for for you and um you know i also i also coach folks one-on-one um so if you you know if you do want some more one-on-one advice on an ongoing basis we can talk about that too but um in general just you know really enjoy the conversation alex thank you so much for having me and um you know to anyone who's watching excited to to watch you guys on your journey and please let me know if there's any way i can help that's great thank you so much i appreciate your time also guys remember that uh we've got the the wp cast youtube channel make sure to subscribe all that good stuff um i've got videos every single week at least i try to and i try and throw in some of these kind of more podcast styles every now and again so if you'd like to you know have me chat with tim again go over some stuff that maybe that we didn't get to or you have some questions that you didn't think of until later be happy to talk to tim again really enjoyed our conversation so anyway thank you guys for watching and we will see you in the next one thanks guys

Channel: WPCasts

Views: 1,549

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Id: gfUnElfEjTw

Length: 109min 25sec (6565 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 30 2021