This is in reponse to a question from Dina. She is having problems with her client, going back and forth on the designs she has given them for the website. He is saying they are not flashy enough, but is not being clear about what he wants.

My guess in this case is that you may have jumped into implementation a little too quickly, without a thorough discovery up front. You should be sure to have some design comparables from him, so that you can have an example of what he means when he says “flashy” - because two different people could mean two totally different things by that.

The important thing is to stop where you are and get a clear discovery done. Make sure to get storyboards for the animation and decide on a technology to use - ajax vs. flash. The challenging thing is that the client just wants it to get done but you have to force them to clarify their needs. It’s the only way the project will get done right.

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If not…you better! It’s critical for any computer user with important files to do backups, and how much more freelancers who have valuable client assets to take care of!

I offer some simple ways for you to get started today doing backups, such as gmail drive. In my opinion it’s always best to store off-site as opposed to burning discs or even using a backup drive.

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One of the major themes of my blog is, of course, navigating the dangerous waters of working with your clients. I want to talk a little bit about about understanding your client’s expectations. You have to realize going into this thing that your client’s idea for their website is going to have a certain degree of uncertainty, and it’s your job to pick their brains and turn that into a well-formed project scope.

It’s like peeling back the layers of an onion. At first, your client will come at you with very large and sweeping ideas. You need to get excited about those ideas along with your client, and not immediately bum rush them with the reality and all the gory detail that will be required to inevitably implement their idea. Enjoy it with them, linger on it a bit.

Then, it’s time to swoop in like an eagle and break that thing down to size! (I have no idea where that eagle analogy came from but I’m running with it). You’ve got to be persistent in pushing them to define their idea. Get down to specifics, get down to numbers with them. Try to close all the open features - when they are foggy on something, you have to bring them back and nail it down. It’s a bit of an art form - doing this while at the same time remaining flexible to their needs as a business person to keep their ideas open. Ultimately, the project will fail if not clearly defined.

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Some people are saying that Google’s latest offering is nothing more than an over-hyped me-too of Amazon’s S3 service. I’m almost tempted to think that said people are just playing the devil’s advocate. No knowing that much about either S3 or the Google app engine, I still have to chime in on this matter, being the google fanboy that I am!

I mean, seriously people, when was the last time Google did a me-too of anything? They don’t do me-too’s. The make acquisitions, and they do it the right way as a win-win for everyone. They buy out the company, pay them all mucho bucks, keep them all on staff and just give them more resources to improve their tool in the way they always wanted to anyways. And then, of course, they offer it for free to the public, so everyone wins.

If it’s not an acquisition, then it’s some amazingly awesome engineer’s 20% project that takes off.

And in either case, every single product they offer blows everyone else completely out of the water. I mean…completely. They just entirely annihalate all the competition, make it look easy, and slap a very nice, clean, and now-familiar user interface on the thing to boot!

So, I’m sorry, call me one of the mindless followers of all that is Google, but I can’t help it they just rock that much. I mean - gmail, google docs, the calendar, gears…all their API’s, oh did I forget search?

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Sometimes you may be “encouraged” by your client to use their standard agreement as opposed to yours.  I want to offer some points to focus in on when trying to make this decision.

First of all, I think its important to avoid jumping to an emotional response.  You may feel offended, or that they are pushing you into a corner.  Take a step back and realize that they are just trying to keep themselves covered.  There may not even be a lot of specific reasons they don’t want to use your contract, but you need to find that out for sure.

So, find out what it is they don’t like about your contract.  This is where you need to get specific and avoid hand-waving as much as possible.  Get them to list out exactly the things they don’t like about to you can be clear on it.  It may end up boiling down to one or two simple items which aren’t a big deal for you.

Some of the things I like to have in my contracts are:

• Credit - ability to post a link in their footer or at least on my portfolio.  Sometimes this isn’t possible when working through agencies
• Penalties for late client deliverables.  I like to have a clause in there to remind them that there are consequences for them not moving things along, don’t usually need to use this, but you never know.
• Browser support - I like to have some limitations here otherwise clients can go a little nuts on having you support all kinds of browsers.

There are tons of other things to consider, this is just a list to get you started.  If you have further, detailed questions, please comment on the post.  The bottom line is how bad do you want the job, and is it paying enough for you to warrant taking a bit of a risk on their contract.

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I remember back when I spent all my time coding - thinking that I could never find enough time to be active in any online forums. While I still feel that as a coder you should be more focused on development, I definitely think there is a place for maintaining a presence on social networks and twitter in particular.

• Expose yourself to great thinkers. There are all types on twitter - markers and social media types, but also everything else from hackers to artists and beyond. You can find yourself a great little community of developers. And among them you may be surprised to find many of the thought leaders in the development world. You can get an inside peak at their brain on a daily basis. You can see how they are thinking and see what tools and methodologies they’re using.
• Get answers to questions. From time to time when you run into that gnarly bug in your code or some strange limitation of whatever platform you’re coding on, you may want to reach out and ask for some quick help. Forums are great for this but you can’t expect a very prompt response. In twitter, if someone following you has the answer you will find out in about 20 seconds
• Potential job leads. Get yourself out there and get to know others in your industry, network a bit. You never know when you will need your next job and it helps to be in touch with others. You may find yourself offering help when people ask and that could put you in a very good light - they will think of you next time they are hiring.
• It’s fast! You don’t need to write a whole book just to seem like you have something intelligent to offer to the conversation. In fact its just the opposite - a premium is placed on brevity!

So jump onto twitter, and start building a community so you can experience some of these benefits for yourself!

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PPC Campaigns can be a great way to generate leads for yourself as a freelancer. If you haven’t already tried a campaign or two, you should throw $20 or $30 into the pot and get your feet wet - who knows, you might land a good sized project with that amount!

Targeted. The great thing about PPC campaigns, of course, is that you can target exactly the type of potential customer you want to. You can choose to only show your ad in a certain city if you are only looking for local business. And more importantly, you can target your ad in a way that only the people you want to click will click. And…you only pay when they click! It’s pretty awesome - I had some great results with the small amount of PPC stuff I did, and I’m surprised I don’t do more really.

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I did a video summary of these three blog posts:

1. Getting Business Using Craigslist and Others
2. Testing Your Web Applications
3. The Role of Project Management

Enjoy the video!

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Have a question? Ask away. As long as it is on the topic of my blog, I will consider writing a blog post about it to address your question in as much detail as possible. Here are some example types of questions that would work:

• I have a tricky client situation - how to deal with it?
• I have a development problem - how to fix? Or how to find someone who can fix?
• I am having problems managing a project, what can I do?
• I need some direction with my legal forms, contract, etc?

I look forward to hearing from you and helping you out!  To submit your question, just comment on this post!

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First off, congratulations on taking the step to hire a subcontractor and grow your business! This can be very exciting for yourself and for the long term growth of your company - and I want to give you some tips to maximize your efforts.

It can be difficult to work with your subs. First of all they are people, and people are always a little bit unpredictable. They say they will get you something on time, but something comes up. They forget to meet with you. They deliver work to you that’s lower quality than you would expect. Well, the trick is to expect these things coming and put some practices in place to balance things out.

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