[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2234155/

But, consulting pays about the same, and since the contracts are usually for months if not a full year the situation is a lot more predictable.

Those skills are hard won. Sounds like you could create a great course and monetize it.

(Not talking about udemy etc, talking about a high end course with sensible price points in the hundreds or more)

On a qwerty keyboard o is next to i, r is next to t.

THIS! My goal is to move away from my full-time day job and concentrate fully on my current side hustle...and arriving at or close to where you are now - both income and low expenses/cost-of-living, etc. Even if i'm a little under the 200k, that's squarely within my goal. I applaud you on having reached this, and wish you continued success!!!!

I'm more laravel/mobile/node/vue/react, and I find I under-charge, but I think if I were doing WP I'd need to charge even less... Currently my best-long-term client pays $40...but I feel I want/deserve 60-70 and trying to land that for my next couple clients... do people pay you more than $40/hr for wordpress or do you just charge per project?

Laravel or other custom work starts at $125 for clients I'm expecting volume from or $150 for one off projects, again given in estimates as a flat fee for the project. If I expect something will take 8 hours to build, then I'm giving them a quote of $1200.

You can scaffold up a lot of CRUD stuff in Laravel in 8 hours.

I'm wanting to potentially do some sort of hosting/support plan...and work on a site that has a ton more inbound marketing related articles on my biz. Then hire some offshore or jr devs or techs wanting to become devs to support the easy issues, I'll take care of the harder stuff, or hire some tier 2 people to do that... basically have something like $200/month for hosting, unlimited non-coding issues, change fonts, update settings, fix white screen of death, etc...w/ backups/malware scans/etc... -- the idea being get some recurring income.

Then I can up-sell people who need custom apps, full-design, etc... But before I can move into agency, I need solid/steady income. I had a bunch of imposter syndrome/depression but I'm depression free since August (therapy), and I've lost 90 pounds, and just have more energy, and I'm a lot more focused now, and just want to take freelancing to where I know it can go.

Does this involve making themes? Plugins? Is it only client billing or are you selling anything else like, reselling themes, affiliate etc?

My clients are a mix of agencies

I've heard this mentioned many times. How does one get agencies as clients?

There is a small split for how you would freelancing vs. consulting via agencies in my experience.

For consulting, you will usually only be brought on if you have a special skill set that the agency themselves can't fill out, and often only if their client specially requests those services. So consulting work via agencies is much rarer in my experience.

For freelancing, as long as the agency is doing well there is almost always something to do, and ~20% of their tech teams consist of freelancers, so it's not really "surplus work" but more their part of their normal mode of operation.

Of course, all of this are just anecdotal data, and may vary widely from region to region.

A cold email better be great to work. A better bet is to go to meetups and local conferences for like Wordpress or SEO or digital marketing. You’re likely to meet some agency folks or people who contract with agencies. Chat them up, offer to buy them lunch, stay in contact.

Or, just look up agencies who are hiring for developers. Contact them and offer your contracting services.

A good portfolio is key. Strong client references are even better but it takes time to build those.

You can also do thought leadership type stuff like blog about topics, or participate in regional online communities.

I’m familiar with agencies because I have hired and worked with a lot of them recently.

For example: One of our oldest business associates, who has passed over a lot of work over the years, we met volunteering for the local seafood festival.

I imagine there's a longer selling cycle for the mid-sized business, offset by higher pricing? Which group is harder to serve? (eg. more iterations and drama inserted into the job vs. shaking hands, getting it done, and getting paid)

My sales cycle is very short. I usually close the sale in the first meeting - or walk away knowing that a PO is imminent. Or I finish that meeting knowing that there’s no real opportunity there. Over many years I’ve developed a pretty good instinct of what is an opportunity and what isn’t, and where there’s a good fit and isn’t. Wish I could be more prescriptive, but it seems to be one of my magic powers.

The older I get, the more I value clients who are willing to shake hands once and let us handle it from there (or better yet, send me an email before a project and a check after it).

Having some 23 year old AE clumsily attempt to "manage" us is a recipe for imminent violence.... (us => spouse and I)

I agree with the first part, but disagree with the second. Rather, partially disagree. Most agencies are inept. There are some out there that run a very tight ship and it is a pleasure to work for them. They tend to be larger and have a system for handling contractors.

That said, since it's always less profitable, you're always better off having your own clients.

The junior marketing person you are working with at one company a few years later may be head of marketing at a much larger company.

It can also work in reverse when your contact moves on and their replacement comes in with a pre-existing relationship with a competitor. Then it's nothing but work to keep them - same can happen when a small business sells and you have a new owner to build a new relationship with.

Have a client that is in the process of selling to what will be the fourth owner since I built their management software 12 or so years ago.

1) Why do you use your name for your site ( jasonpomerleau.com ) rather than something easy to remember? For example I run into cases where people are going to need a wordpress site but no way I am going to remember that when I need it.

2) Why does your site have a big picture of you as the homepage image? And I do mean a big picture of you? What is that your unique selling point?

Not intended to be snarky and what you have done is great just curious.

2) See 1). By the time a prospect reaches me, there’s already been a warm introduction of some kind. The big photo is the human you’re going to end up working with. I’m not super handsome but nevertheless i think it communicates that human component rather well. I do get teased occasionally about my “Steve Jobs” headshot but it doesn’t seem to have impacted sales.

If I was trying to grow and build out a team I would have taken a very different approach.

My growth strategy is oriented around productivity and workflow improvements, not adding heads. I’ve managed to become very fast and quite efficient, such that I usually blow my competitors completely out of the water. I’m only one semi-ugly dude, and thus every component of what I do has to be ruthlessly focused on what matters most.

I know a great deal about this topic. It always pays to make it easy for people to find or remember you. Even if you get primarily word of mouth.

> Plus I really suck at naming things. :)

Well then you should do what people who use you are doing. Find someone who does and pay them for the advice (per what I say about 'it always pays to make it easy for people to find or remember you).

Even if you already have more customers than you can service having more potential customers allows you to charge a higher price for what you do. There is no reason to have friction in marketing. It's not the same as HN trying to use a hard to find name to keep people out and have only higher quality comments (reason it's still probably news.ycombinator.com instead of something easier to find for newbies)

My friends who have consulted have pulled in some seemingly hefty sums, only to feel like they came out behind a good salary with good benefits.

Generally you pay less in taxes for an equivalent net profit as a small business than you would with that amount as a pre-tax salary. You pay slightly more in SE tax (~8%) but you get access to other write offs that more than make up for it, especially with the recent tax reform (huge deduction for pass-through businesses). And you can take as much time off as you want, which may cost you, but the flexibility is nice.

And operating expenses for most consultants are very low. For me it’s just been a new computer every couple years and a tiny bit of software and hosting. Basically nothing.

Healthcare is a big one though, if you’re not covered via a spouse or something.

There are benefits. Like matching 401K, paid vacation (though if this isn’t long enough it can be a negative), and mainly, health insurance. Those should be counted for a normal salaried job. Otherwise taxes should be compared the same way, no?

You also need to pay for your own computers, SAAS services you use, etc. The more you make, the less this becomes an issue.

How can a 7% difference mean you compare non tax salary to taxed self employed income? As was the point of my comment. It doesn’t make sense. The disparity is way worse if you do that.

Also it was never said to compare revenue to salary. I assumed profit would be compared to salary.

Interested in how you off-board those opportunities? Do you have a referral network who'll take on the lower-end prospects, or just offer them some guidance?

1. Are you based in an urban area like SF or NYC?

2. How long did it take you to build up your clientele?

2. Several years. First couple were tough. I took a 66% pay cut on Year 1 from my role as a senior developer at a Fortune 50 company.

I should add - I’ve never met about 30% of my customers in person, and interact with them strictly by phone. I’m presently sitting in Mexico on vacation, and met one of my clients for the first time in the airport in the way here.

My company targeting this kind of cold outreach can typically pull one or 2 recurring paying client out of 100 cold emails. That's 100 outreach which products approx 15 people who give the affirmative reply (15%) which leads to 3 or 4 calls which leads to 1 or 2 clients.

It's a slog. But the math works and we have a system down for the outreach so it's very repeatable.