Hacker News Reader

Comment by kevingadd | Hacker News Reader

This 100x.

I had four solid long-term contracts lined up as of a few months ago, scheduled so that I could make adequate progress on them without overloading myself, with the overlap set up so that I'd be protected if any one of them fell through.

So far, two of them have fallen through (in the non-paying fashion) and one of them is in the process of actively falling apart. I ended up sinking a ton of energy into trying to salvage each one and trying to protect clients from themselves, but ultimately it's not possible. So now I'm potentially left with one paying project... if that one falls through I'm screwed.

Maybe in some fields you can be looking for work and have some good contracts in your lap a week later? For me, jacquesm's '3 months or so' is on the money; some of my better-paying contracts take even longer than that to get to the point where I can actually start doing work and billing for it.

View on HN

have you ever considered the reason your deals/clients fall through because you're not dedicating enough time and energy to each one? i've had significant experience working with freelance developers and it's very obvious which ones are working with multiple clients and which one is working with only 1 or 2.

If a freelancer works just with 1 customer they should simply be hired.

A good strategy: 1 background job that is long running and has a reasonably low price tag because it can be pre-empted, one high priority, short bursts of work that are paid top rate and maintenance on a number of old clients that still bring in a part of the income.

That way everybody gets value for their money and the freelancer gets a good mixture of income. You're mistaken if you think that having a freelancer with only 1 or 2 customers is good for you, in the long term you'll need to rebuild your relationship with new people because your old ones will go out of business when you don't need them for a while.

Not to mention that if you have only one client, you may actually legally be the employee of your client, which is a big liability for your client!

I think there are even situations where having a contract explicitly stating you are not an employee may not be legally binding if you have only one client.

In none of these cases did the client ask for more time/energy and not get it; I gave more time and energy than would have been necessary with a properly run project. Just bad clients, bad contracts. They happen, and my point is that it would have been hopelessly irresponsible for me to invest all my hopes in just one or two.

To give you an idea of what I mean, the one that's in the process of falling apart took over six months of negotiation, periodic prodding, and concessions to get them to actually provide me fully signed documents so I could start work. The whole time they were telling me how excited they were about the project and how important it was to them. Clients like this all seem to exist somewhere on a spectrum, and you have to figure out whether they're just a 'less profitable' client because you'll have to put more work in (and set your hourly rate accordingly), or whether they're a fundamentally problematic client that will just never work out. This client turned out to be the latter, even if I am billing hours now.

I suspect once you've been freelancing long enough you can just say no to any client that seems like they could be a problem. For me, it's been a little over two years and the influx of work is not remotely enough to justify that (even if I get way more offers than I used to, and they're better offers)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com