Kath Pelletti
KP at sdsonline.net
Sun Feb 20 04:44:00 CST 2005
Hi Paul - I think the best piece of advice is to establish your hourly rate and stick with it - make it a rate which is what you would expect to pay an external consultant if you were to hire one on behalf of a client. Don't go too low or you will be ignored - don't go too high if the client can see that there is no normal office infrastructure to support (rental, reception staff etc. which your competition may pay). Once you establish the rate don't change it for at least 3 years - it's too difficult to justify to the client. If ever you want to 'discount' a job reduce the no. of hours - never the rate. If you really aren't sure of the rate then tell us where you're working and get some locals to give you their rates to strike a balance (I'm in Australia so probably can't help). One of my personal bugbears is appearing too greedy - everyone hates it. A couple of years ago I was charged 4 full hours by a developer who had given me 3 hours 10 minutes - I never used him again. I think the thing which will give you the most repeat business (which is what you need) is to always look at things from your client's point of view - try to be a Yes person and present choices rather than say 'I don't do that....'. They will appreciate it. The other thing I see really successful developers do which I still haven't started myself is to get out a regular newsletter to clients. There was a really good post to the list by William Hindman a while back on this topic - thread was 'OT:Building your business was... Rate for first time'. If you can't find it in the archive let me know - HTH Kath ----- Original Message ----- From: paul.hartland at fsmail.net To: accessd Sent: Sunday, February 20, 2005 4:03 AM Subject: [AccessD] Starting Up On Your Own To all, I'm thinking of starting up on my own (part-time at first) as an Access developer. I have experience in most platforms of Access, and am basically looking for advice on how to go about this (how to cost a product, or how to work out my hourly rate etc) Any help and advice will be received with many thanks. Please feel free to email me off list with this if preferred. Thanks in advance.... Paul Hartland -- Whatever you Wanadoo: http://www.wanadoo.co.uk/time/ This email has been checked for most known viruses - find out more at: http://www.wanadoo.co.uk/help/id/7098.htm -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com