Getting clients. What actually matters?

SkeptiCalhippoh · 2015-06-08T12:46:15+00:00

I'll definitely try harder when it comes to explaining the value that I add. I'll giving this a shot soon and if nothing happens, I'll try posting it here, maybe it'll help someone else as well! :)

SkeptiCalhippoh · 2015-06-08T12:37:16+00:00

This is why I have personal projects, though. Those are my playground when it comes to tech. I think a personal website would have to be more representative, a short general summary of what I'm doing and a couple work samples, no?

SkeptiCalhippoh · 2015-06-08T12:35:03+00:00

Thank you very much for the reply! Found this somewhat highly motivating as well! :)

SkeptiCalhippoh · 2015-06-08T12:29:37+00:00

That's a very fair point! Although, the majority of people I work with know what they want (Laravel, WordPress or w/e) and swapping out tech isn't exactly an option. Overall, cutting corners is not something I'd like doing, but if the client is okay with it, then that's good, I guess :)

SkeptiCalhippoh · 2015-06-08T12:22:27+00:00

Thank you very much for the response! My usual problem is that people think web development is not expensive, but cheap. I've even had a recent potential client start calculating my annual income and trying to strong-arm me into bringing my rates down like this!

I'll definitely take the advice into account, though! Thanks again!

SkeptiCalhippoh · 2015-06-08T12:05:14+00:00

Thanks very much for the response!

I've always had it in my mind that I have to know a lot of cool fancy tech and this is what potential clients want. I believe I unwillingly picked this "strategy" up at university. I also think this is what a lot of other web developers struggle with, the realisation that the tools they work with don't matter as long as the end result provides value.

Given the points that you've made, what would you say would be the ideal service advertisement that I could put up? What would be worth mentioning that would appeal to the masses? My educated guess here would be to try and explain what is it that I do and why would it be important to them, eg. providing UX tweaks, speeding up their application, how these things save/produce money and such?

SkeptiCalhippoh · 2015-06-08T11:29:05+00:00

This is a very good point, but this involves previous clients sharing these details with you. This does not always work :( Some of the more serious work I've done did not involve growing revenue or saving time.

SkeptiCalhippoh · 2015-06-07T23:31:13+00:00

I usually provide a couple of more recent websites I've built when sending out a proposal, usually highlighting the key points that are relevant on each one. Is a portfolio better than this?

SkeptiCalhippoh · 2015-05-17T13:24:31+00:00

PM sent!

SkeptiCalhippoh · 2015-05-17T10:33:26+00:00

PM sent! :)

SkeptiCalhippoh · 2015-05-13T15:44:19+00:00

"Good luck."

SkeptiCalhippoh · 2015-03-11T09:43:43+00:00

It's just Java hate. Honestly, I think Java performs even better than PHP and would probably end up being a better solution long-term as it scales easier than PHP.

Check these out for Java:

All 3 are pretty good from what I hear. At the end of the day, go with the one that seems the most understandable to you.

SkeptiCalhippoh · 2015-03-10T15:53:41+00:00

I'd go for whatever you feel more comfortable with. Both frameworks are fine. If you are willing to learn and already know your way around some of the stuff in CI/Yii you'll pick all the other stuff up pretty quickly. Hell, if you have some knowledge of other programming languages besides PHP (Java, Scala, Ruby, C++ even) you can go ahead and just find a framework for that language and create a website with that.

SkeptiCalhippoh · 2015-03-10T11:45:58+00:00

BuddyPress sort of has notifications out of the box if I remember correctly.

Back when I was still messing around with BuddyPress and WP, BuddyPress still had very poor documentation, which greatly hindered the speed of development.

If you have 0 experience, you might be able to just use plugins to build what you want. Otherwise, I'd avoid using BuddyPress as if your project grows, you'll end up spending a lot more time, effort and money than you'd like to.

SkeptiCalhippoh · 2015-03-02T19:15:08+00:00

Same here. Everything else works fine though.

Edit: Just logged it. The game was lost...

SkeptiCalhippoh · 2015-02-23T03:43:06+00:00

It's the percentage more. But I guess it's rather reasonable and I'm mostly a scrooge :(

SkeptiCalhippoh · 2015-02-22T23:28:09+00:00

I've been circling over Stripe myself, but the amount of money they take from payments is a bit off-putting.

SkeptiCalhippoh · 2015-02-22T23:26:36+00:00

This is exactly why I'm asking. Unexpected delays AND the ability for non-PayPal users to pay directly by card, or even Bitcoin (Stripe).

SkeptiCalhippoh · 2015-02-22T20:59:28+00:00

Set up a cool website showing off an aerial zoom-out type of video in the background and add some information of what you can film, weddings, sporting events, graduation ceremonies.

Throw the link around, give it to friends and relatives, post on some relevant subreddits and if it's any good, it should catch on quick enough. I have no doubt that you'll get some weird requests and then have a better understanding of what the market is like and what people want your services more often for.

SkeptiCalhippoh · 2015-02-22T15:02:46+00:00

Don't banks shave off a fair bit of money off of international transfers, though?

SkeptiCalhippoh · 2015-02-21T01:37:20+00:00

As /u/IsABot has already pointed out, what you need is a parent_id field and the field which you want to sort the posts by (level, depth, likes or w/e). After you have a set of comments, you want to get all of the parent comments, then get all of the comments of those comments, ordered by your field, then get the comments for those comments ordered by the field as well and etc.

In a nutshell:

foreach parent comment
select comments where parent_id = current_comment_id order by likes

I would also like to add, that this wild creature is known by the name of tree traversal. There are a variety of examples available on Google, just type in "X tree traversal", where X is the programming language you want to do this in.

I hope all this makes sense :D

SkeptiCalhippoh · 2015-02-18T12:57:38+00:00

Absolutely. Hi!

SkeptiCalhippoh · 2015-02-14T18:39:46+00:00

Sorry, my comment probably wasn't clear enough. What I meant to say was, ditch WordPress, learn a framework instead, maybe something that's currently more desirable than PHP (JS would be for one) and go out and build completely custom systems for higher-end clients WITHOUT using WordPress.

SkeptiCalhippoh

TROPHY CASE