The best freelance web dev advice I found so far! 0% code talkie, 100% business talkie! I want to learn more from you! How/where can I do this? How can we connect Luke Ciciliano?
Great video! Couple of things to note on BNI though. Firstly DO NOT rely on it for 100% of your business, I've seen people make that mistake and eventually they stop being able to give back to their Chapter. Secondly if the Chapter is not run well the pond eventually dries up because no new people (leads) come in. Just my 2 cents. Cheers
Great video Luke! Thanks so much for the info. I hope you put up more videos along this topic. This helped me a lot. Also, I really liked that you put all the info on the video notes. When you're trying to learn something, having the notes right there is better than having to rewind the video to find the info. Keep up the good work. Thanks!
Dear Luke: I think that the "intangibles" that one encounters in the course of starting a business would be interesting. The stuff that you really can't find in books or videos. 1) If a client asks me to build a site that I think is atrocious (blinking robots on a black background 'cause he thinks it's cool). It's his web site after all and I need the money. Should I build it for him? 2) Who should own the source code for the web site I built for a client? Can the customer give the web site I built for him to his brother who has a similar business? Or resell the site to other businesses in the same sector? 3) Cold calling (on the phone) to drum up business is something I hate and I don't think is very efficient anyway. Are e-mail campaigns just as bad? 4) Who should write the "copy" of the web site? Some businesses don't know what a tag line is or even have a logo. They don't have any idea what the web site should say. All they want is to increase their sales. What is the best way of creating the text for a web site? Who should provide the images for the site? 5) Should maintenance time be included in the contract or should it be a separate contract for that? 6) Should developers get a "white label" hosting site so we can sell hosting space and domain registration to our clients? Is this upsell income worth it? 7) What systems do you use, as a successful developer, to keep track of clients, billing, invoice generation, online payment sites (Paypal)? Is WHMcs worth the subscription? 8) If the sites we build for our clients are supposed to increase their business, are we more of a marketing firm? Do we need to conduct marketing test on their logo (if we are asked to create one) or their tag line? Do we need to understand their target audience and create the copy accordingly? Or are we just creating an electronic "brochure"? At times I feel we need to have both marketing and web design skills to solve the clients problem and at times I just want to create the site and not worry about the other. Do you do everything in your business for your clients: marketing analysis, UX and UI design, requirements analysis, accounting, Wordpress development, etc.? Some of these topics may not require a whole video tutorial but are just some of the topics that come to mind. Looking forward to more of your videos. Thanks! Greg F. (ps: wow, sorry I went a bit long! :-)
@@gregfierro2365 bump. This needs to hit the top of the comments. So many good questions I'd like to know the answer to as well. @Luke Ciciliano could it be possible to maybe do another video on Greg's questions?
Everyone says people are cheap and don't want to shell out the cash, but you can see the ones where businesses have scrimped on web pages from a mile away.
I would not say "do not go to dev networking events", you will probably found people with business you can do but they cannot. I do give business contacts to other dev (for free) and they do the same for me. I am not a good business talker so I don't know what to do to in Business events. Usually I feel alone. But in dev tech events, I meet and talk to dev who might have business for me. I had 1/3 of my business from other dev !
If you only knew sales, you wouldn't even need to learn to code. You just sell your customer on your service and then sell a coder on making it for you.
If you're good at selling your freelance skills you should became a full time salesperson and earn more. If you're not good at marketing your freelance skills, you can't work alone.
I want to be freelance developer . I am a cs student . I really can't decide which area I should lean in to. Which skills I should lean to prepare myself. I know c++,java,c# . Anyone reading this comment your opinion is valuable. Please give suggestion . I want to do this for experience and want to lean real world development.
"Roughly 30% of those small businesses..." Do you have a source to this percentage?? I have a proposal/project I am working on and these stats would help out greatly.
Alex I work for an agency and our starting price for a custom wordpress site is more than double that. Sure, web dev can be easy, fast and cheap if your client likes a particular theme and does not need any custom functionality. But if they want a fully custom design with custom (imagine e-commerce!) functionality then it's a different matter altogether, and damn time-consuming, which justifies quotes of $5000 or even way more!
hey id appreciate it if somebody could answer my doubt i understand getting the clients building the website part but i dont understand what to do after that like should i sned the the files or should i host it on my own etc
What I do is I send it to them in a encrypted zip and then once the pay comes give them the password. Also most of the times, they have a seperate hosting provider or if they don't, mostly I ask them to find one. If they insist and it's a static site I host it on netlify with thier custom domain
How much do you think getting someone to devote, to grow your business online (because it's all about that, not wrighting ligns of html code) will cost you? 3k is not expensive at all if you consider the work and most of all the expected value obtained... For a big project, it can cost about 35 to 50k to get a freelance providing you with a great website. If you go into this business to be poor, don't go into freelance. If you bring 100 000 dollars of revenues a year to a business, don't you expect a return...?
The best freelance web dev advice I found so far!
0% code talkie, 100% business talkie!
I want to learn more from you! How/where can I do this? How can we connect Luke Ciciliano?
This presentation is SO undervalued. Please do this again for freelancers! ❤️❤️❤️
Great video! Couple of things to note on BNI though. Firstly DO NOT rely on it for 100% of your business, I've seen people make that mistake and eventually they stop being able to give back to their Chapter. Secondly if the Chapter is not run well the pond eventually dries up because no new people (leads) come in. Just my 2 cents. Cheers
This guy Luke Ciciliano is really knowledgeable. This is my second video I'm watching from him, and everything he says is fire. Truth bombs.
The most helpful video about freelance development I saw. Thank you Luke!
Great video Luke! Thanks so much for the info. I hope you put up more videos along this topic. This helped me a lot. Also, I really liked that you put all the info on the video notes. When you're trying to learn something, having the notes right there is better than having to rewind the video to find the info. Keep up the good work. Thanks!
Dear Luke:
I think that the "intangibles" that one encounters in the course of starting a business would be interesting. The stuff that you really can't find in books or videos.
1) If a client asks me to build a site that I think is atrocious (blinking robots on a black background 'cause he thinks it's cool). It's his web site after all and I need the money. Should I build it for him?
2) Who should own the source code for the web site I built for a client? Can the customer give the web site I built for him to his brother who has a similar business? Or resell the site to other businesses in the same sector?
3) Cold calling (on the phone) to drum up business is something I hate and I don't think is very efficient anyway. Are e-mail campaigns just as bad?
4) Who should write the "copy" of the web site? Some businesses don't know what a tag line is or even have a logo. They don't have any idea what the web site should say. All they want is to increase their sales. What is the best way of creating the text for a web site? Who should provide the images for the site?
5) Should maintenance time be included in the contract or should it be a separate contract for that?
6) Should developers get a "white label" hosting site so we can sell hosting space and domain registration to our clients? Is this upsell income worth it?
7) What systems do you use, as a successful developer, to keep track of clients, billing, invoice generation, online payment sites (Paypal)? Is WHMcs worth the subscription?
8) If the sites we build for our clients are supposed to increase their business, are we more of a marketing firm? Do we need to conduct marketing test on their logo (if we are asked to create one) or their tag line? Do we need to understand their target audience and create the copy accordingly? Or are we just creating an electronic "brochure"? At times I feel we need to have both marketing and web design skills to solve the clients problem and at times I just want to create the site and not worry about the other. Do you do everything in your business for your clients: marketing analysis, UX and UI design, requirements analysis, accounting, Wordpress development, etc.?
Some of these topics may not require a whole video tutorial but are just some of the topics that come to mind.
Looking forward to more of your videos.
Thanks! Greg F. (ps: wow, sorry I went a bit long! :-)
@Luke Ciciliano sir , omg , great work. Never felt boring. Thanks a lot for this.
@@gregfierro2365 bump. This needs to hit the top of the comments. So many good questions I'd like to know the answer to as well. @Luke Ciciliano could it be possible to maybe do another video on Greg's questions?
Everyone says people are cheap and don't want to shell out the cash, but you can see the ones where businesses have scrimped on web pages from a mile away.
This is such amazing stuff, exactly what I needed! Much Love FCC
I wish I'd found this video sooner. Great stuff, thank you very much.
an awesome presentation, it summs everything very good up.
I would not say "do not go to dev networking events", you will probably found people with business you can do but they cannot. I do give business contacts to other dev (for free) and they do the same for me. I am not a good business talker so I don't know what to do to in Business events. Usually I feel alone. But in dev tech events, I meet and talk to dev who might have business for me. I had 1/3 of my business from other dev !
Thank you Luke. This presentation is very clarifying. 👏
If you only knew sales, you wouldn't even need to learn to code. You just sell your customer on your service and then sell a coder on making it for you.
This description section with important points is good...
This could change how I talk to my clients so far.
Amazing!!! Thank you very much Luke!!! So much valuable information 👍👍👍. Enjoyed learning from pro
Great video, Luke! I learned a lot!
I like this guy, there's no bullshit
If you're good at selling your freelance skills you should became a full time salesperson and earn more. If you're not good at marketing your freelance skills, you can't work alone.
I love the emphasis " you can sale".
Great video!
Thanks for sharing it with us. :)
This is some great advice!
Thank you.
Awesome info! Thanks alot. Any resources for a Proposal template for developers?
Thank you for this video Sir.
Thanks for the video. Only question I have is when do you talk to them about the proposal?
Thanks!, I'll try this idea.
this is fantastic
Thank you very much!
Great content
Good discussion, Thanks
glad I found this video
I want to be freelance developer . I am a cs student . I really can't decide which area I should lean in to. Which skills I should lean to prepare myself. I know c++,java,c# . Anyone reading this comment your opinion is valuable. Please give suggestion . I want to do this for experience and want to lean real world development.
Great!
Thanks
"Roughly 30% of those small businesses..." Do you have a source to this percentage?? I have a proposal/project I am working on and these stats would help out greatly.
Thanks so much for this resource. This definitely helps.
www.bni.com/
BNI link for your convenience.
Thanks. I was searching for it in description.
How is this free?
im already a freelancer but i just dicovered its not right for me by watching this video
i learn from free code camp
No small business is gonna drop $3000 for a website with all the do it yourself cms softwares out there.
That's what I was thinking.
You'd be amazed with what people spend money on
apparently, this guy has not heard anything about wix godaddy or ...? lol
Alex I work for an agency and our starting price for a custom wordpress site is more than double that. Sure, web dev can be easy, fast and cheap if your client likes a particular theme and does not need any custom functionality. But if they want a fully custom design with custom (imagine e-commerce!) functionality then it's a different matter altogether, and damn time-consuming, which justifies quotes of $5000 or even way more!
Most small business owners i know barely know how to use facebook or excel. Wordpress for them is like physics and coding more like quantum physics
Is it 21.6 Millions or Billions?
Pretty sure it's billions
Jordan Peterson is that you? lol.
can i hit like 200x?
Guy looks like jon stewart
exactly!!
People are cheap and don't want to spend the money
People need to see the value in what they are buying, that's where selling it comes in
show them how what you create can make them money in the long run
hey id appreciate it if somebody could answer my doubt
i understand getting the clients building the website part but i dont understand what to do after that like should i sned the the files or should i host it on my own etc
What I do is I send it to them in a encrypted zip and then once the pay comes give them the password. Also most of the times, they have a seperate hosting provider or if they don't, mostly I ask them to find one. If they insist and it's a static site I host it on netlify with thier custom domain
3k for a website?!? 😂
I've seen higher quotes at my company..
How much do you think getting someone to devote, to grow your business online (because it's all about that, not wrighting ligns of html code) will cost you?
3k is not expensive at all if you consider the work and most of all the expected value obtained...
For a big project, it can cost about 35 to 50k to get a freelance providing you with a great website.
If you go into this business to be poor, don't go into freelance.
If you bring 100 000 dollars of revenues a year to a business, don't you expect a return...?