Do You Need to Be a Really Good Programmer to Make a Living Freelancing?

christopherhawkins.com

11 points·JoshDoody··6 comments

In the SaaS world, there's the problem your app solves, how good your solution to the problem is, and marketing. The more real the problem, and the better your solution, the less you have to rely on marketing. I think the same applies in freelancing. The more desperate the client, and the deeper your domain knowledge, the less you might have to work to get clients.

"The more real the problem, and the better your solution, the less you have to rely on marketing. "

I don't know...isn't the world full of good work that doesn't sell because nobody ever finds out about it? It seems like a freelancer is screwed without marketing & selling skills, no matter how good their work is.

Ha, I didn't say "no marketing", just that you don't have to work as hard at it. Maybe "rely on" was a bad choice of wording.

I don't think it helps to think of marketing as something you rely upon. Marketing is a multiplier. Even if there's huge demand for your amazing solution to a painful problem, marketing can still get you more customers. It's just multiplying a bigger base number.

This simple concept of thinking of everything in business - product, design, demand, marketing, sales, customer support - as multipliers has been very useful to me.

"Marketing is a multiplier" is an interesting perspective.

The idea of "force multipliers" is one that occurs to me quite a bit - in fact, I even use that term in the linked article.

A problem for many freelancers, I think, is when the base number you are multiplying is "zero". This is, regrettably, something I have a great deal of experience with. :)

You're right. I should not have said, "rely on". I should've said "work hard at".

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