Comment by michaelwda | Hacker News Reader

Comment by michaelwda | Hacker News Reader

I think web-design in the SMB market is completely commoditized between website builders and even CSS toolkits like Bootstrap lowering the barrier to entry. I barely know CSS and will just buy a $20 design from wrapbootstrap and the client doesn't care.

Anything related to web-design should be a side-effect of the true product you're selling, which in your case should be web-based software application development (IMO).

My opinion:

#1) Get really good at a web-framework. Doesn't matter which, but something like laravel would be a great choice. Learn MySql/MSSQL to go with it.

#2) Market yourself as a specialized consultant and bill $100 hr+. I don't know what market you're in, but if this is a big leap for you then work up to it. The kind of clients you want to work with will pay this without blinking. Sometimes they won't even know about the bill because it goes straight to AP. blah blah blah patio11.

#3) Never say you do web-design. Say, 'I convert your MS Access application that runs a critical component of your business (barely) into a multi-user/role, always-online, accessible-from-home web-application. Along the way we're also going to streamline this to make your company more money. It will pay for itself. That will be $30k.'

Came here to blah blah blah but you beat me to it, thanks!

The thing I’d add is to not sell undifferentiated web design but rather find the business problem that web design is one approach to solving (e.g. “Your insurance agency doesn’t get enough leads”) and then sell yourself as the expert on fixing that business problem.

> The kind of clients you want to work with will pay this without blinking. Sometimes they won't even know about the bill because it goes straight to AP.

I agree #3, but on #2 - I've never dealt with any business of individual who operated like a blank check ("just send the bill to AP"). They all have budgets - implicit or explicit - and all want a rough idea of range at the very least. Is this a $3k project or a $20k project? They all have a need to know up front. You can sometimes tell up front - you get better at it - when people are going to complain about it more.

Told someone on a project they were looking "in the $2k range, at $x/hr". Sent a bill for $2200, and they flipped out. "You said it was $2000!"). Well.. no, I emailed you that it would be roughly in the $2k range, and if it was going to go much outside that, I'd let you know beforehand. I got you your project done 3 days ahead of when you wanted as well... blah blah blah.

Written agreements up front with clear expectations, etc.

More to the point on money, working with people where the money is coming directly out of their pocket (vs an operating business where there's a budget, and the person you're dealing with is simply managing a budget) will take you much further. IME, most of the people you work with where the money is directly from their pocket will watch every nickel and take $9 of time to explain a $2 expense.

This isn't to say you should pad billing or rip people off by any means, but... taking hours to explain how web hosting works, and that no, we can't build a custom ERP system on your godaddy account that you prepaid for 4 years in advance last week when you bought your domain name, and that if this really is a "million dollar idea", you will need to spend more than $200 for an MVP. All of that is low-value stuff you want to figure out how to avoid.

> taking hours to explain how web hosting works, and that no, we can build a custom ERP system on your godaddy account that you prepaid for 4 years in advance last week when you bought your domain name, and that if this really is a "million dollar idea", you will need to spend more than $200 for an MVP.

You joke, but I was in this exact position on Wednesday. It's natural to think that web consulting is dying or that there's a race to the bottom on pricing, until you come face-to-face with the level of ignorance many business owners (even successful ones!) have about technology. The world of business software is mysterious to many people. And while it's easier than ever to build a solution that replaces clunky .xls files or (worse) paper -- that can still be a major hurdle for someone not familiar with it.

I think the solution to OP's question is to see yourself as not just a developer but also a tour guide. Educate your customers without judgement. Teach them why what you do matters (translation: market to them!) Lots of people won't see the value and will never pay $100+/hour. But some of their competition will. And that's how you build a consultancy of your own.

Well... I don't joke :) The $200/MVP is a slight exaggeration, but not much. I've been approached by people about MVP, but they only focus on the M, not the V or P.

You're right on #2.

To clarify, any clients I have that behave that way are firmly out of the SMB segment (or have grown to that point as we have worked together), seem to be in cash-flow heavy industries like manufacturing or construction, and we've been working together for several years.

I think you made the point I was going for - it may be more hassle than it's worth to do work for a client that makes a fuss over $2200 vs $2000.

What's your strategy to avoid future work from such clients? I've thought the contract should include creating documentation for maintenance (e.g. login details to various services to update payment information or software versions or whatever) that the business can keep secured and that while you can be reached to perform certain kinds of maintenance at some fee you aren't obligated to. I had a friend in freelancing who self-hosted everyone on his own servers and charged an ongoing fee, though if I were a client I'd be nervous if the freelancer decided to raise their fee for the understandable reason that maintenance costs can increase.

You would be surprised... also don't rule out middle market companies ($50MM - $500MM in sales) in low-tech industries. Suspect these could be highly profitable clients (yet potentially infuriating, details below).

Examples from my day job:

- Transaction pricing, trade system setup, and item costing is effectively controlled by Excel VBA (written by one guy who left, and maintained by a third-string developer who moonlights from his job at another company)

- Was told we couldn't do something on our site because it was "an old WordPress site" and had to be totally rebuilt for over $50,000.

- Apparently PhotoShop is too complex for mere mortals, thus everything must be outsourced and under no circumstances should we invest in our copy and do anything in house.

Oh - and I should mention that the process owners for these areas are usually technically clueless and utterly paranoid about anyone else touching their baby. The fastest way to get anything done is to pay up for OT and let the existing insane clown posse do the additional work at overtime rates. Rates are ridiculous - my spouse and I run a digital business on the side and our equivalent total project costs are 1/10th (if that!) what these guys seem to shell out (then again, we're both ex-IT / developers, so we know how to design and buy things correctly...)

I've flown past most of this crap since I've been retained to deal with a slightly more fundamental problem (aka: Dude, Where's My Sales?)... but there's probably a lot of money sitting in these kind of messes if you do some networking.

> but there's probably a lot of money sitting in these kind of messes if you do some networking

Possibly, but you may just be stuck doing donkey work (almost regardless of rate, that gets boring after some time). You can identify problems and offer to 'fix' them for businesses, but they need to be willing to actually change their processes. If there's political turf wars over "don't touch my pet project", no amount of money thrown at the problem will make it better. And yes, you possibly can siphon some off of those for a while, but I think for many people it's going to end poorly (political types will turn on you, etc).

You already mentioned some issues in that scenario above - never do anything inhouse with the talent you've got there - people need to set themselves up as middlemen. When the answer to the company's inefficiencies involves "remove the middlemen", it's a major battle.

> Was told we couldn't do something on our site because it was "an old WordPress site" and had to be totally rebuilt for over $50,000.

Interestingly tho, I can possibly see that. I might not tell someone $50k, but if I see some old WP site, and someone's asking for moderately complex functionality, I do not want to touch the existing site. It'll be a rebuild, or a separate service, and then integration work between the two. The $50k price may have just been a "we don't want to do this but this is our 'happy' price" sort of deal. If a new piece of functionality may cost, say, $10k of service work, I don't want to have to tie it to whatever legacy stuff came before, as I'm now responsible for supporting everything on it, because I was the last one to touch it ("it never used to do that before - you broke it!")

Some of my favourite projects have been very similar to the ones you described, basically technical webapps that help improve internal workflows. Been focusing on that and offering "quick" MVPs for the past few years.

However, finding such clients seems to be extremely difficult. Is there any advice you might have?

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