jasonswett

I don't think I'm really qualified to give a recommendation on something like that. Even if I were, I think there are a lot of factors that would need to go into such a decision. What I might recommend is for you to look up what Rob Walling has to say on build versus buy.

My wife got a job at a hair salon and their software sucked. I didn't have any exposure prior to that.

Thanks. Yes, it's not enough for there to be a need. You also have to think about how you'll reach prospects. Stylists and salon owners aren't on the computer all day every day and they don't like to take phone calls from salespeople. They're very expensive and/or time-consuming to reach. A solo bootstrapper almost by definition has very little time or money, so salons are a very bad match for the capabilities of solo boostrappers.

I'll add something I wish I had realized several years ago: build a SaaS is not the only path to a product business, and for a solo founder, it's (in my opinion) probably not a very good path.

I spent 5 years trying to get a micro ISV off the ground which made scheduling software for hair salons. It was a terrible idea for a large number of reasons (described in detail here: https://www.jasonswett.net/im-shutting-down-snip-heres-why/) and I never made more than about $430/mo.

My opinion now is that info products are a better way for a solo founder to get started with a product business. The reason is that a SaaS product can take a huge amount of effort (perhaps pre-traction effort, which is risky) to get off the ground whereas an info product business can be started with a tiny "guide" and then expanded outwardly from there, keeping effort in proportion with traction the whole time.

My current business is AngularOnRails.com, an info product business. In its third month of making money, it made $1580, over 3 times what the SaaS made at its peak. Here's a detailed income report: https://www.jasonswett.net/november-2016-angular-on-rails-in...

SEEKING WORK - Sand Lake, Michigan, remote okay.

I specialize in Angular/Rails and I'm the author of AngularOnRails.com. Over 10 years of professional experience.

jason@benfranklinlabs.com

BTW, I can even introduce you to some if you'd like. Send me an email at jason@benfranklinlabs.com and I'd be happy to make an intro. (I'm a freelancer too.)

Good recruiters absolutely do exist. I've met them at local tech meetups.

SEEKING WORK

Location: Michigan Remote: Yes

Ruby on Rails developer, author of AngularOnRails.com. Been building web applications since 2000.

Email: jason@benfranklinlabs.com

Phone: (616) 856-8075

A book about how to get freelance programming clients: http://www.jasonswett.net/book

SEEKING WORK - Ruby on Rails and/or AngularJS

Remote: Yes

Location: Grand Rapids, MI

Email: jason@benfranklinlabs.com

I'm a senior-level web developer and author of AngularOnRails.com.

I definitely have some advice. My social skills still aren't very good but they used to be terrible. I was able to at least improve them.

* Read How to Win Friends and Influence People

* Read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

* Join Toastmasters (and, importantly, participate!)

* Make it a part of your life to continually study psychology and human nature

My life has also improved personally/professionally/socially since I got fired from my last job in 2013 and went freelance. Having to run my own business has forced me to develop social skills and freelancing has given me the opportunity to regularly change the group of people with whom I'm surrounded, which has allowed me to "collect" people I like along the way, which can happen at a regular job but much more slowly.

I think this advice might apply to your situation at least partially: http://www.jasonswett.net/how-to-get-a-job-using-a-technolog...

When I discovered that there was a third path between job and startup, a whole new world opened up for me. http://www.jasonswett.net/the-whos-who-of-the-micro-isv-worl...

I view it as the OP doing market research before he invests a lot of time into building something people may or may not want.

If all you have to contribute is discouragement, why bother saying anything.

Find a technology (or combination of technologies) that's widely used but not very well documented, and provide the missing documentation. That's exactly what I did with AngularOnRails.com and it's worked out great for me.

It sounds to me more like the OP doesn't want to be peppered with 30-second bits of communication all day while he's trying to work on something else. You can't keep billing Client A while you're responding to an email from Client B, but if it's a 5-minute thing, what are you going to do, clock out and clock back in again all day?

So the communication from one client could be disruptive to other work, i.e. it could make a person lose money. If making a certain agreement with a client would cause me to lose money, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that I would either charge for it or not agree to do it at all. In my experience, reasonable clients respect this.

FWIW I could see myself using this service. What would probably change it from a "maybe" to a "definitely" for me is if you offered not just fill-ups but oil changes, detailing, mechanic visits - i.e. all vehicle maintenance.

I've never really considered pumping gas to be downtime. It takes long enough to be annoying but not long enough to start thinking about anything meaningful.

The difference for me is that that getting gas is a REAL time-taker-upper for me, and that I really have outsourced this job in the past. I've never outsourced getting quarters for laundry, because if I'm going to do that, why wouldn't I just outsource laundry altogether?

If my time is worth, say, $500/hr, it's economically rational for me to outsource practically everything that doesn't require my unique skills. I've paid people to fill my gas tank before as well as oil changes, laundry, dishes, etc.

This service is probably meant for people with higher-value ways to spend their time than fill up their gas tank, i.e. business owners.

Is it targeted to devs looking for full-time work only or will it make sense for freelancers as well?

> Pay yourself a monthly amount and don't touch the rest.

This is exactly what I do. I used to not and it sucked. I would never ever go back.

I would also add the micro-tip that I set up not only separate accounts for business and personal, but separate accounts within person for "money I can blow" and "money to live on". My wife and I each have our own money-to-blow account which totally prevents arguments about wasteful purchases.

> I believe that services companies and recruiters make a living of hiding this information from the developer community, and often take a 20-25% cut just for sending an email with a CV, a second email to schedule an interview and sending a contract for signature over the post.

Don't mix up hard work and valuable work. If a recruiter approaches you with a client for you and all you have to do is accept the job, that saves you a lot of the hassle of going out and finding a new client. If I sell you a $100 bill for $50, why should you care how much effort it took for me to get that $100 bill?

Another thought: once you get above a certain rate it ceases to make sense to work with staffing agencies. Staffing agencies in my experience usually seem to be willing to pay $30-80/hr, and I'm guessing they probably bill out at about twice what they're paying you. So if they advertise $50/hr as the rate for a particular gig, they're probably billing the client $100/hr, and if your rate is $150, that's a total no-go from the start.

My advice would be to not worry about what anyone else charges. There will always be people who charge more than you and less than you, and it varies wildly. There will always be businesses that will be absolutely shocked by a rate another business would find totally reasonable.

The way I handle my hourly rate is to get a client at $X/hr, and once I've been working at $X/hr for a few months, set a goal to get a new client at $1.5X/hr or $2X/hr by a certain date. Then $2X becomes the new $X and I repeat the process. In this way I've tripled my rate from what it originally was.

I don't share my rate publicly because I don't want a client in 2015 to say, "Well, I saw that you were charging $0.5X in 2014, so why are you asking for $X now?"

If you're a solo founder I think the place where the money is is in "boring" B2B products. There's a whole community called the micro-ISV community you might not be aware of that is full of people doing what you seem to want to do.

I wrote about the micro-ISV community here: http://www.jasonswett.net/the-whos-who-of-the-micro-isv-worl...

No, not isomorphic.

That's an awesome idea. I'll definitely check your stuff out.

Nice. I think your Angular/Devise work will probably end up being helpful for me.

Hmm. Unless I'm crazy, RABL is a totally different thing for a different purpose. RABL is a tool (as is the analogous JBuilder, the default JSON-rendering-thingy for full-blown Rails) whereas Rails::API is a framework.

Thanks! I'll check it out.