Questions on consulting 1043

Side job ??? It will quickly become all consuming OR it will go bust.

Start with a brutally honest buttesment of your own costs and income needs. The tendency is to lowball your fees in order to get a foot in the door. All that does is get your foot *caught* in the door. Maybe starving artists can paint, I don't know. I do know that I can't do programming without an ample supply of calories (pizza!).

Lowball fees will attract lots of work you don't want and can't afford AND keeps you too busy to service the good clients you will need to sustain a business. When you get pushback over a fee that's too high, just smile and give them the number of your favorite Indian IT outsourcing firm. Do *not* lower your fee. If you have to go hungry for a while, better to use the hungry times drumming up quality business than to waste your professional talents on cheapskates.

Wow! - Excellent! By all means. Make the Technical Specifications your contract. Make sure you mention how you plan to charge for additions made after the specs (contract) is agreed upon.

You must do that! You can use the customers spec as a starting point AND you can expect some substantial give and take while you develop it BUT you must be the author of this. There several reasons for this. The customer doesn't know what he wants except in the most vague and ambiguous terms. The customer doesn't know what is possible. The customer doesn't know what is reasonable. AND When you deliver it, the customer won't like what he asked for in the first place.

The only thing the customer does know is that he wants to use computer automation in some way, shape, or form to enhance the bottom line. You are going to give a clear account of how you plan to do this. When you show them something *you wrote* and they agree, then you have your contract.

writing it? Most certainly! I charge a flat rate of $300 which is a small token of the effort I put into it. I then tell them that that fee is waived if they accept the project. The thing you need to know is that they will probably take your spec to shop around looking for someone e;se who will agree to perform the plan you wrote at a lower price. They may find someone else, they may not. Even if they do, the job is liable to come back to you at some future date. For this reason, you shouldn't take it personally - it's just business. Just make sure they are serious enough to pay you *something* up front. AND that you don't spend all your time working for free writing specifications for work someone else ultimately gets paid for.

price? I don't know! I only know that I hate the way customers ask for and expect you to work for an hourly wage. I personally stick with the fixed bid on a contract model. I turn down a lot of requests for work to be paid on an hourly basis. When I do take such work, I always regret it. On the other hand - I am convinced that their are a lot of businesses out their who would rather pay $10-hr to have the same thing done over (badly!) 1000 times without success than to pay someone $80-hr to do something right the first time. I think someone with a different personality than mine might be able to make good $ this way. But hourly is just not for me!

Are you talking about bugs?

The bugs are yours to eat. Bugs are things that you put into your design spec and don't work as advertised. It is your obligation to fix them. They are paying you for bug free stuff. If my new Maytag doesn't get my Clothes Line clean, then Maytag has to fix it for free.

Or are you talking about mission creep?

On the other hand, when you show them your working masterpiece that does exactly what you said it would in your design specs AND they now they think of 12 new features they want to have added - Those aren't bugs!

You can handle this the way you want but here is where I do put an hourly rate. My contracts are fixed bid + x$-hr for add ons and modifications. This rate should be generous to *you* and this is where I tend to make money. When you show them a good job that you fulfilled inside your contracted terms, they *always* want more. It often happens that I lose money on my original fixed bid. This happens most often due to my own mistakes and miscalculations. I eat these mistakes and leave the customer happy. AND at that point, they are always happy to pay good $ for me to service the work after the initial contract. It is the most lucrative part of my business. Remember Show them a *good* job and they will *always* want more.

Probably a good idea. I don't do this, however. My personal definition of happiness involves not needing lawyers :-)

I don't know any. Or, at least, I don't know any I would waste my time on. Learn cold calling. Like it or not, it's a business essential.

And - don't be too surprised when you see your own design specs posted as a freelance job! You did charge $ for those specs, didn't you? Thomas Bartkus