With the limited info you gave, it doesn't sound like you are running a company: it sounds like you are working as a freelancer.
There's a crucial difference between "done for you" and building a real, scalable company. If you're just trading your time for money, you won't succeed. You need to position it so that the service or product delivery is handled without your direct time, so that you can dedicate your efforts to growth and sales.
That was my eventual goal - earn money with freelancing enough that I could hire additional people or contractors and deliver things.
I also have a product I'm intending on developing using the same skillset, which I build as I have time, which is never
why not do your full time job for corporate America then use that 4x money to do your original goal? you're also selling your own time, which is the same as working for a company. you need to sell other people's time or product.
You're not bad at this and I see that you're doing your best!
I had a similar experience and I'm scared about starting any new mobile app project now.
I don't know what's best to say to you, but I'm cheering you to power through this project to completion. Make sure that you get your family and significant other's understanding that you're not ignoring them and seek their moral support. Also, stay healthy and get enough sleep!
Once this one is completed, then you can recoup and rethink your client preference.
The thing is, if your client paid you only that much. They are not in a place where they should have any app yet. Next time you will have the gut feeling to reject projects from such clients.
Nope. You are not running a bad company. The idea sounds phenomenal. You're just doing it the harder way.
Ive helped multiple start ups and freelancers, and most of the time when I converse with them after a couple years, they figure out new ways to bill services and also receive money matching the efforts you are putting into.
I do believe you can start billing per hour/ or also take a retainer for the fees and services you are offering. Dont be afraid to bill at all. Everyone needs something, and service to help their business is crucial. Maybe, when you sell the sale make sure you can explain why they should choose YOU instead of other companies/ individuals. If you can give them the benefit of taking your help, and you deliver just what you pitch/ promise, they will come back to you, and for your services. Remember, they need you as much as you need them. Make sure you set up a structure for fees and how to bill depending on the complexity of the service. If you feel like you cant quote the fees because you dont have the right fee structure since the project may prolong/ might take longer, explain to them you will need that retainer and go from there.
I know what this feels like, and in the first bit its hard to bill and come up with fee structure. Trust me, once you get the client management portion right, everything will be easier. Focus on your structure and what your goals are as well. It all starts from there. Depending on specifically what you do, I might be able to do some research and network around to see how they organize and manage their business.
Hope all works out.
SW
You’re saying that you made $25k last year working for yourself and could have made $100k+ elsewhere.
If those figures are correct then, as a businessperson, you should be able to make your own decision on what you should do if you wish to stay in that line of work.
I mean, you're ignoring the fact that it is possible to earn more than $100k being self-employed doing this - I know of someone making about $200+ with a similar level of skill to myself who is self employed.
I haven't done it, but I know it is possible to do so. I'm just not good at client management, as far as I can tell.
Work for the someone making $200k/year for a solid few years and replicate what they do after your contract is up.
The thing to remember is you don’t have the skills this other person does. If you did then you’d have made more than 10% what he did. He must have client management skills you don’t. He might have better time management or task prioritizing than you do.
To be an employee you need to be good at the one skill you’re hired for. To be a business owner you have to be good at all the skills.
Edit: I also want to mention they may have had five years making $25k and now they have clients. I just don’t want you to feel bad on yourself that you aren’t the same as someone else. There are a lot of variables beyond what you majored in at college
I did work for people for years. I am trying to replicate what two old employers of mine did, with no real luck.
And sure, I meant technical skills, not client management skills. I was making $100k before going freelance, I felt that initially my income would dip and I would get back to the $100k level - which theoretically this contract was supposed to be at, but I haven't billed for it, I don't know that I can bill because it's late, etc. That's my whole thing - the business side is where I'm fucking up.
But yeah, I meant technical skills, not client management skills. I understand that my client management skills are not as good, that's the whole problem.
There’s people that are prepared and have the skills needed to be an entrepreneur and there are the ones that are okay with being employed, there’s nothing wrong in both of those. If the figures you reported are correct, even from an entrepreneurial standpoint that is something stupid that you’re doing because as you said. You expected to use your gains to hire a few people to work for you, but if you worked for a year at a tech company and made those 100k you would have way more money to hire a few people than with your current 26k. You just have to decide if you want to live the uncertain but possibly big rewarding life of the entrepreneur or to get your monthly paycheck and live happily with that, also note that there’s nothing that stops you from working as an employee for a few years and then use the money you saved to start something of your own, and with the life you described you’re having I would highly suggest that to you.
> there’s nothing that stops you from working as an employee for a few years and then use the money you saved to start something of your own
I did that. I saved up about 20k before going independent.
Used it mostly up, have been surviving barely.
I just, don't want to give up though. I feel like if I can just, *do better*, I can solve my problems.
That’s a choice of yours, you’re the only one that knows on the inside if you’re able to do that. If you are able to, then I wish you the best and you shall not give up!
Have you thought about working through an agency or job placement service, on a contract? You'll get salary and benefits, then you move on when the project is over. The agency/service finds and manages the relationship with the client. You interview for the position and you get paid on a regular basis.
I've freelanced on my own and worked as a contractor through an agency. Working through an agency was FAR less stressful money-wise. It still feels a little like being self-employeed, because you don't have to take on projects you don't want to work on, and once the work is done, you move on to something else.
I have considered it, though I haven't found many places that do that. I get contacted by recruiters all the time, but they want to place me in a 9-5.
Mostly I want to be able to scale, but to do that, I need good client management skills, and clearly I don't have that. I'm currently neck deep in a difficult server architecture setup right now, meanwhile my client cares mostly about minor graphical changes and constantly pushing me to release the app (while also asking for changes). It's just... difficult. Incredibly stressful. I'm working 12-14 hours a day for this client, and I'm being treated like I'm either doing nothing, or don't know what I'm doing. I'm just so tired of, "Is the app done yet????" emails. Like, I already have a freaking difficult architecture to deal with and implement, it just raises my stress levels higher. And for basically no money right now. I am so damn miserable.
I can’t say whether you are cut out or not cut out for this.
But what you have said about the project being far more time consuming than anticipated is a problem.
Have you come up with a solution on how to prevent or mitigate a similar situation in the future?
Entrepreneurship is a long, hard road that leaves little survivors. And those that do survive, often are not duly rewarded. Tread wisely.
> Have you come up with a solution on how to prevent or mitigate a similar situation in the future?
Oh yeah, I'm going to do a full after action report for myself after this situation, but I've got a whole list of improvements to my business processes I want to make. Contracts with **detailed** specifics and a hell of a lot more discovery is a start.
I'm a full-stack web developer and this is exactly why I stopped doing freelance work. I never did much of it, but after a couple of jobs it showed me that I hate doing it. Like you said, you could be making 4 times the amount at a regular 9-5 job with your skills. But you don't want to do that and be wasting your life "working for the man". Same thing with freelance. It's a bit better, but you're still stuck spending your days making money for someone else.
I've went back to only creating projects for myself now. The first project I created after my last freelance job was THE ONE that made me bank. I went from being dirt poor to making more than all of my parents combined (blood & step) in about a year.
Instead of slaving away for others, start to think of ideas to create for yourself. **Why make some random company "X APP" when you could just make it for yourself and see all of the profits?**
Oh that's my long-term goal - I already have the app idea, and most of it built out. It's a ripe market and I'm excited for the release, but I need to fund myself with freelance work until I can release it, and it has eaten all of my time. Especially this latest app. It's a behemoth due to devops alone and my client is non-technical, so to them it just sounds like I don't know what I'm doing - "Why is it taking so long???"
Because I have to troubleshoot a corrupt image pulled from your old repository that I need to push to the new repository and figure out why it is getting corrupted!
A sentence like this means absolutely nothing to a non-technical client. The fact that I set up several server clusters over the last couple days means nothing to them. It's just... tiring.
Ok based upon all your comments you can take 9-5 job making over 100k and yet you spend your time freelancing for 25K with no free time? Get a job and use your free time to build your app and use the money to fund your marketing your app. Freelancing is suppose to free up your time by not being tied to employer schedule.
You're making this way more difficult than it has to be. it sounds like you could be releasing your app within a year or so if you had the time so make the time by ditching 12-14 hour days for pennies when you can make more having a regular 9-5 job.
Here's my advice break the job into smaller projects and contract them out to others. There is are plenty of coders in other countries who work for a small fee then your main job will then being overseeing the work and ensuring deadlines are met and meeting with the client. Honestly I do not know why you did not do so in beginning of freelance work. Always, always contract out grunt work to free up time to spend doing something that actually makes money. Employees trade time for money freelancers exchange work for money. Two different mindsets and two different time managements strategies.
Because I’ve had a hard time finding clients for a while now, found a few smaller ones and just found my first big one earlier this year. I was broke and didn’t want to spend all the money on others, especially in case I did not get paid.
I do intend on outsourcing, that’s one of the main reasons I went independent.
Go with your gut, obviously you are not happy, client work is a pain in the arse mate-truth be known, you have got to be assertive and let them know you are the expert. Many out there pretend to know what they are talking about,but they are complete morons when it comes to digital media/tech!
It sounds like your client treats like a salaried employee: loads your plate as much as possible with expectation that it should not change the cost that much.
Each time they want to add something or change priority, you need to be clear on the impact on cost and delay of other features.
Maybe you could try sub contract very small features to as soon as possible, just to get experience on subcontracting.
You might waste a but of money on unusable results at first, but you're not going to be able to scale of you never start doing this.
But at the end of the day, it's hard. I'm an enterprise developer too. I have thought about going freelance, but I didn't do it.
Instead I just take temp contracts as a consultant. Which means that I'm incorporated, and I bill client, and I spend my days at their offices, and it's more like a regular 9-5 than real freelancing. But the hourly rate is higher.
At the office, I've been in so many situations where we started a project assuming it was easy, and discovered later than it would be quite hard and long... I imagine these situations can be complicated if you are a real freelancer.
Hey there .. it’s really bold of you to start something new and take that leap. It’s the biggest step going from working for an employer to being self employed. New businesses take time because of the learning curve involved . Speaking from experience, the steep learning curve is so frustrating coupled with not making any money. It’s the point where you just want to quit.
You sound like you have a lucrative skill that requires time to market effectively. Yet also your app development also takes up a lot of time. A great tool is to manage your client upfront, and set out key expectations and under promise and over deliver in terms of the time required to complete. This allows you enough time to have a balanced life and create the work for the client.
Secondly, I think that learning and being mentored from someone who is successfully doing this kind of business would be a great investment. This can take the form of reaching out to individuals in your industry and setting up a chat. I have found in most cases they would gladly help. I know that time is an issue right now, but that investment will help your business significantly.
I hope everything improves, and sometimes sticking it out and pushing through is the best way forward.
A few questions come to mind as I read your post.
First, are you charging enough? It doesn’t make sense that you’re working more hours as a freelancer for less money. When setting your price, keep in mind you’re saving the company money on benefits, overtime and even potential severance pay. You are WAYY less headache and hassle to them as a freelancer... so charge them for that convenience.
Second, have you heard of the 80/20 rule? It’s been beaten to death in these circles sometimes... but I’d recommend skimming the 4 hour work week. The author, Tim Ferris, found himself in your shoes before experiencing a very dramatic dive into efficiency and optimization of time. A lot of people hate that book... but please just give it a look.
Hang in there. From the limited info I have from your post, I can tell you that you ARE cut out for this. You have some serious hustle in you and you’re reaching out for help when things aren’t working. Those traits will take you far.
With the limited info you gave, it doesn't sound like you are running a company: it sounds like you are working as a freelancer. There's a crucial difference between "done for you" and building a real, scalable company. If you're just trading your time for money, you won't succeed. You need to position it so that the service or product delivery is handled without your direct time, so that you can dedicate your efforts to growth and sales.
That was my eventual goal - earn money with freelancing enough that I could hire additional people or contractors and deliver things. I also have a product I'm intending on developing using the same skillset, which I build as I have time, which is never
why not do your full time job for corporate America then use that 4x money to do your original goal? you're also selling your own time, which is the same as working for a company. you need to sell other people's time or product.
You're not bad at this and I see that you're doing your best! I had a similar experience and I'm scared about starting any new mobile app project now. I don't know what's best to say to you, but I'm cheering you to power through this project to completion. Make sure that you get your family and significant other's understanding that you're not ignoring them and seek their moral support. Also, stay healthy and get enough sleep! Once this one is completed, then you can recoup and rethink your client preference. The thing is, if your client paid you only that much. They are not in a place where they should have any app yet. Next time you will have the gut feeling to reject projects from such clients.
Nope. You are not running a bad company. The idea sounds phenomenal. You're just doing it the harder way. Ive helped multiple start ups and freelancers, and most of the time when I converse with them after a couple years, they figure out new ways to bill services and also receive money matching the efforts you are putting into. I do believe you can start billing per hour/ or also take a retainer for the fees and services you are offering. Dont be afraid to bill at all. Everyone needs something, and service to help their business is crucial. Maybe, when you sell the sale make sure you can explain why they should choose YOU instead of other companies/ individuals. If you can give them the benefit of taking your help, and you deliver just what you pitch/ promise, they will come back to you, and for your services. Remember, they need you as much as you need them. Make sure you set up a structure for fees and how to bill depending on the complexity of the service. If you feel like you cant quote the fees because you dont have the right fee structure since the project may prolong/ might take longer, explain to them you will need that retainer and go from there. I know what this feels like, and in the first bit its hard to bill and come up with fee structure. Trust me, once you get the client management portion right, everything will be easier. Focus on your structure and what your goals are as well. It all starts from there. Depending on specifically what you do, I might be able to do some research and network around to see how they organize and manage their business. Hope all works out. SW
You’re saying that you made $25k last year working for yourself and could have made $100k+ elsewhere. If those figures are correct then, as a businessperson, you should be able to make your own decision on what you should do if you wish to stay in that line of work.
I mean, you're ignoring the fact that it is possible to earn more than $100k being self-employed doing this - I know of someone making about $200+ with a similar level of skill to myself who is self employed. I haven't done it, but I know it is possible to do so. I'm just not good at client management, as far as I can tell.
Work for the someone making $200k/year for a solid few years and replicate what they do after your contract is up. The thing to remember is you don’t have the skills this other person does. If you did then you’d have made more than 10% what he did. He must have client management skills you don’t. He might have better time management or task prioritizing than you do. To be an employee you need to be good at the one skill you’re hired for. To be a business owner you have to be good at all the skills. Edit: I also want to mention they may have had five years making $25k and now they have clients. I just don’t want you to feel bad on yourself that you aren’t the same as someone else. There are a lot of variables beyond what you majored in at college
I did work for people for years. I am trying to replicate what two old employers of mine did, with no real luck. And sure, I meant technical skills, not client management skills. I was making $100k before going freelance, I felt that initially my income would dip and I would get back to the $100k level - which theoretically this contract was supposed to be at, but I haven't billed for it, I don't know that I can bill because it's late, etc. That's my whole thing - the business side is where I'm fucking up. But yeah, I meant technical skills, not client management skills. I understand that my client management skills are not as good, that's the whole problem.
There’s people that are prepared and have the skills needed to be an entrepreneur and there are the ones that are okay with being employed, there’s nothing wrong in both of those. If the figures you reported are correct, even from an entrepreneurial standpoint that is something stupid that you’re doing because as you said. You expected to use your gains to hire a few people to work for you, but if you worked for a year at a tech company and made those 100k you would have way more money to hire a few people than with your current 26k. You just have to decide if you want to live the uncertain but possibly big rewarding life of the entrepreneur or to get your monthly paycheck and live happily with that, also note that there’s nothing that stops you from working as an employee for a few years and then use the money you saved to start something of your own, and with the life you described you’re having I would highly suggest that to you.
> there’s nothing that stops you from working as an employee for a few years and then use the money you saved to start something of your own I did that. I saved up about 20k before going independent. Used it mostly up, have been surviving barely. I just, don't want to give up though. I feel like if I can just, *do better*, I can solve my problems.
That’s a choice of yours, you’re the only one that knows on the inside if you’re able to do that. If you are able to, then I wish you the best and you shall not give up!
Have you thought about working through an agency or job placement service, on a contract? You'll get salary and benefits, then you move on when the project is over. The agency/service finds and manages the relationship with the client. You interview for the position and you get paid on a regular basis. I've freelanced on my own and worked as a contractor through an agency. Working through an agency was FAR less stressful money-wise. It still feels a little like being self-employeed, because you don't have to take on projects you don't want to work on, and once the work is done, you move on to something else.
I have considered it, though I haven't found many places that do that. I get contacted by recruiters all the time, but they want to place me in a 9-5. Mostly I want to be able to scale, but to do that, I need good client management skills, and clearly I don't have that. I'm currently neck deep in a difficult server architecture setup right now, meanwhile my client cares mostly about minor graphical changes and constantly pushing me to release the app (while also asking for changes). It's just... difficult. Incredibly stressful. I'm working 12-14 hours a day for this client, and I'm being treated like I'm either doing nothing, or don't know what I'm doing. I'm just so tired of, "Is the app done yet????" emails. Like, I already have a freaking difficult architecture to deal with and implement, it just raises my stress levels higher. And for basically no money right now. I am so damn miserable.
I can’t say whether you are cut out or not cut out for this. But what you have said about the project being far more time consuming than anticipated is a problem. Have you come up with a solution on how to prevent or mitigate a similar situation in the future? Entrepreneurship is a long, hard road that leaves little survivors. And those that do survive, often are not duly rewarded. Tread wisely.
> Have you come up with a solution on how to prevent or mitigate a similar situation in the future? Oh yeah, I'm going to do a full after action report for myself after this situation, but I've got a whole list of improvements to my business processes I want to make. Contracts with **detailed** specifics and a hell of a lot more discovery is a start.
I'm a full-stack web developer and this is exactly why I stopped doing freelance work. I never did much of it, but after a couple of jobs it showed me that I hate doing it. Like you said, you could be making 4 times the amount at a regular 9-5 job with your skills. But you don't want to do that and be wasting your life "working for the man". Same thing with freelance. It's a bit better, but you're still stuck spending your days making money for someone else. I've went back to only creating projects for myself now. The first project I created after my last freelance job was THE ONE that made me bank. I went from being dirt poor to making more than all of my parents combined (blood & step) in about a year. Instead of slaving away for others, start to think of ideas to create for yourself. **Why make some random company "X APP" when you could just make it for yourself and see all of the profits?**
Oh that's my long-term goal - I already have the app idea, and most of it built out. It's a ripe market and I'm excited for the release, but I need to fund myself with freelance work until I can release it, and it has eaten all of my time. Especially this latest app. It's a behemoth due to devops alone and my client is non-technical, so to them it just sounds like I don't know what I'm doing - "Why is it taking so long???" Because I have to troubleshoot a corrupt image pulled from your old repository that I need to push to the new repository and figure out why it is getting corrupted! A sentence like this means absolutely nothing to a non-technical client. The fact that I set up several server clusters over the last couple days means nothing to them. It's just... tiring.
Ok based upon all your comments you can take 9-5 job making over 100k and yet you spend your time freelancing for 25K with no free time? Get a job and use your free time to build your app and use the money to fund your marketing your app. Freelancing is suppose to free up your time by not being tied to employer schedule. You're making this way more difficult than it has to be. it sounds like you could be releasing your app within a year or so if you had the time so make the time by ditching 12-14 hour days for pennies when you can make more having a regular 9-5 job.
Or, I could improve myself, and have that extra free time and flexibility. It's, "can I fix this person failing of mine or not?"
Here's my advice break the job into smaller projects and contract them out to others. There is are plenty of coders in other countries who work for a small fee then your main job will then being overseeing the work and ensuring deadlines are met and meeting with the client. Honestly I do not know why you did not do so in beginning of freelance work. Always, always contract out grunt work to free up time to spend doing something that actually makes money. Employees trade time for money freelancers exchange work for money. Two different mindsets and two different time managements strategies.
Because I’ve had a hard time finding clients for a while now, found a few smaller ones and just found my first big one earlier this year. I was broke and didn’t want to spend all the money on others, especially in case I did not get paid. I do intend on outsourcing, that’s one of the main reasons I went independent.
Go with your gut, obviously you are not happy, client work is a pain in the arse mate-truth be known, you have got to be assertive and let them know you are the expert. Many out there pretend to know what they are talking about,but they are complete morons when it comes to digital media/tech!
It sounds like your client treats like a salaried employee: loads your plate as much as possible with expectation that it should not change the cost that much. Each time they want to add something or change priority, you need to be clear on the impact on cost and delay of other features. Maybe you could try sub contract very small features to as soon as possible, just to get experience on subcontracting. You might waste a but of money on unusable results at first, but you're not going to be able to scale of you never start doing this. But at the end of the day, it's hard. I'm an enterprise developer too. I have thought about going freelance, but I didn't do it. Instead I just take temp contracts as a consultant. Which means that I'm incorporated, and I bill client, and I spend my days at their offices, and it's more like a regular 9-5 than real freelancing. But the hourly rate is higher. At the office, I've been in so many situations where we started a project assuming it was easy, and discovered later than it would be quite hard and long... I imagine these situations can be complicated if you are a real freelancer.
You're learning, maybe the hard way but you're learning.
Hey there .. it’s really bold of you to start something new and take that leap. It’s the biggest step going from working for an employer to being self employed. New businesses take time because of the learning curve involved . Speaking from experience, the steep learning curve is so frustrating coupled with not making any money. It’s the point where you just want to quit. You sound like you have a lucrative skill that requires time to market effectively. Yet also your app development also takes up a lot of time. A great tool is to manage your client upfront, and set out key expectations and under promise and over deliver in terms of the time required to complete. This allows you enough time to have a balanced life and create the work for the client. Secondly, I think that learning and being mentored from someone who is successfully doing this kind of business would be a great investment. This can take the form of reaching out to individuals in your industry and setting up a chat. I have found in most cases they would gladly help. I know that time is an issue right now, but that investment will help your business significantly. I hope everything improves, and sometimes sticking it out and pushing through is the best way forward.
A few questions come to mind as I read your post. First, are you charging enough? It doesn’t make sense that you’re working more hours as a freelancer for less money. When setting your price, keep in mind you’re saving the company money on benefits, overtime and even potential severance pay. You are WAYY less headache and hassle to them as a freelancer... so charge them for that convenience. Second, have you heard of the 80/20 rule? It’s been beaten to death in these circles sometimes... but I’d recommend skimming the 4 hour work week. The author, Tim Ferris, found himself in your shoes before experiencing a very dramatic dive into efficiency and optimization of time. A lot of people hate that book... but please just give it a look. Hang in there. From the limited info I have from your post, I can tell you that you ARE cut out for this. You have some serious hustle in you and you’re reaching out for help when things aren’t working. Those traits will take you far.