What non programming skills have you found most useful for freelancing apart from general business stuff?
For example when I have looked at freelance web programming jobs, especially for smaller companies who don't have an in house team they seem to also expect you to do the design work.
Do you have other freelancers that you sub-contract out to, do some yourself or stick to strictly scoped (programming only) projects?
I explain very clearly that I am not a designer right from the start. Again I've lost projects to digital agencies because of this, which is sad, and is another problem I'd like to solve but haven't yet.
The biggest non programming skill I have, and something that I appear to be okay at, is in face to face meetings. I've not yet walked out of one meeting where I haven't then got a job.
There's probably a few things that have helped here.
1. It's easy to demonstrate my knowledge face to face.
2. I repeat in my head "be confident" throughout the entire meeting.
How do you explain the value add that you provide or do you stick mainly to marketing yourself in terms of selling a certain skill per hour?
I ask mainly because of recent patio11 posts about emphasizing value in terms like "I can increase sign ups by x% by doing Y". This would seem to require a lot of experience and analytical/stats knowledge that a programmer might not necessarily possess however.
When I say I'm not marketing myself correctly, it's exactly this point I'm talking about.
At the moment my value add for my clients is my previous experience and my communication skills. I try to reply to emails as fast as I can, that alone sets me apart from most other freelancers.
I would love to be able to sell myself in similar terms to the way patio11 does, but as you rightly state it takes a lot of experience that I for one don't have, yet.
That being said, I've read so much information about on-line conversions techniques, have run successful (profitable) affiliate PPC campaigns, got on the front page of hacker news multiple times and done other things that maybe 99% of other people on the planet have never done.
I'm sure there's something in there that I can sell as a value add.
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What non programming skills have you found most useful for freelancing apart from general business stuff?
For example when I have looked at freelance web programming jobs, especially for smaller companies who don't have an in house team they seem to also expect you to do the design work.
Do you have other freelancers that you sub-contract out to, do some yourself or stick to strictly scoped (programming only) projects?
I explain very clearly that I am not a designer right from the start. Again I've lost projects to digital agencies because of this, which is sad, and is another problem I'd like to solve but haven't yet.
The biggest non programming skill I have, and something that I appear to be okay at, is in face to face meetings. I've not yet walked out of one meeting where I haven't then got a job.
There's probably a few things that have helped here.
1. It's easy to demonstrate my knowledge face to face.
2. I repeat in my head "be confident" throughout the entire meeting.
3. I dress smartly.
How do you explain the value add that you provide or do you stick mainly to marketing yourself in terms of selling a certain skill per hour?
I ask mainly because of recent patio11 posts about emphasizing value in terms like "I can increase sign ups by x% by doing Y". This would seem to require a lot of experience and analytical/stats knowledge that a programmer might not necessarily possess however.
When I say I'm not marketing myself correctly, it's exactly this point I'm talking about.
At the moment my value add for my clients is my previous experience and my communication skills. I try to reply to emails as fast as I can, that alone sets me apart from most other freelancers.
I would love to be able to sell myself in similar terms to the way patio11 does, but as you rightly state it takes a lot of experience that I for one don't have, yet.
That being said, I've read so much information about on-line conversions techniques, have run successful (profitable) affiliate PPC campaigns, got on the front page of hacker news multiple times and done other things that maybe 99% of other people on the planet have never done.
I'm sure there's something in there that I can sell as a value add.
What kind of design work do they expect from you?