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A comment on Ask HN: How do you brand yourself as a freelancer?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: How do you brand yourself as a freelancer? by mgkimsal on Saturday May 23, 2020 @01:45PM (#23284870)
Most of the ones I've seen subcontract you out in one fashion or another, so they're constantly taking a cut of your billing (or... you're getting a cut of their billing). I don't recall seeing a 'service' that is just warm, qualified leads where you do the rest. They may exist, but I can't recall any, and I'd bet I know why. The qualifying/warm part is where you get to some degree of trust between two parties - for them to explicitly turn around and sell that to someone else they don't really know - it can potentially damage their brand. If they need to get to 'know' you as well (vetting/testing/etc), there's little reason for them to give up either end of that relationship - they're in control at that point.
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Re:Ask HN: How do you brand yourself as a freelancer? by brudgers on Saturday May 23, 2020 @03:14PM (#23285561)
To me, the main reason is nobody has a big pipeline of good shovel ready projects. Or rather anyone with such a pipeline would be better off keeping those projects in house instead of leaving money on the table for a freelancer. The hard part is selling. Doing the work is fungible.
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Re:Ask HN: How do you brand yourself as a freelancer? by amelius on Saturday May 23, 2020 @04:19PM (#23286024)
And here I was thinking that math and physics were the most important subjects in school. Now you are telling me that sales is even more important? Why don't they teach it?
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Re:Ask HN: How do you brand yourself as a freelancer? by amelius on Saturday May 23, 2020 @02:07PM (#23285029)
As someone who absolutely hates sales, I'd be happy with a service that takes, say, 10% of my income but takes care of all the sales issues.
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Re:Ask HN: How do you brand yourself as a freelancer? by brudgers on Saturday May 23, 2020 @03:19PM (#23285596)
If you’re ok with 10% fees, you’ll do well to get an App Store like 30%. And if 30% fees drives off half the freelancers so what?
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Re:Ask HN: How do you brand yourself as a freelancer? by amelius on Saturday May 23, 2020 @04:21PM (#23286050)
Freelancing and product development are two different things.

Also, getting an app in an App store requires a high-risk investment.

Further, I wouldn't want to support Apple's developer-unfriendly ecosystem.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you brand yourself as a freelancer? by brudgers on Sunday May 24, 2020 @09:47AM (#23291474)
Rent extraction is only one thing however.
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Re:Ask HN: How do you brand yourself as a freelancer? by mgkimsal on Sunday May 24, 2020 @09:52PM (#23296941)
find a subcontracting firm, and get in there. I've worked with a couple, and while they don't tell me what they bill me out at, in one case I was pretty sure there was a 20% buffer they'd built in. I suspect in other cases it's probably more like 25-30% - you'll get billed out at $100/hr, but they'll pay you $70/hr. But in those cases you don't own the relationship, nor necessarily have much visibility in to the business relationship. You're just a pair of hands at that point.
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