My Secret Weapon to Getting Contracts | Hacker News Reader

My Secret Weapon to Getting Contracts

smashingmagazine.com

40 pointsjmorin00712 comments

I found out in college that I made more friends when I went out of my way to introduce myself to people. Business works in a similar way.

That's good for starting, but not for big contracts, as it shows you as an idle developer, and that isn't good for bargaining in my opinion.

it shows you as an idle developer

Not really. Not any more than cold-calling does, anyway. It shows you have spare bandwidth. That doesn't mean you're idle, it just means you have some room to do additional work - which, if they happen to need something, is just peachy perfect.

Yes, it might be true. I guess it depends on how you present yourself for doing the sell.

Selling and marketing, knocking on doors, and touting your products and services "shows you as an idle developer"?

Actually, it shows you as a go-getter, exactly the type of person I'd want working for me.

The biggest difference between the top 1% and everyone else? They never stop selling.

I've done the same thing as OP and it works. Better yet, if you have office space, invite your neighbors over for wine and cheese (or beer and soda) Friday after work. Socialize and share. They may not become customers that day, but when they (or someone they know) needs what you offer, who do you think they're gonna call?

Hmmm... I think you are right in some way. However you'll probably agree with me that you are going to think that a developer that hasn't to go after you is probably more successful than the one that does. Of course you'll need to do networking and all that... but cold calls aren't going to be very expensive sells according to my experience, at least not if you show yourself as desperate for selling (and going for a walk to sell web development surely looks desperate).

I'd much rather bring on a contract developer who has the time to work on my project rather than one who is slammed and will likely not deliver on time because of it.

Yes, but who'd you rather be? The idle developer that obviously needs the job so is going to be cheaper, or the more expensive and busy one? That's the successful one afaik.

Anyone tried to do this with programming contracts instead of design contracts?

I'm curious too. It would be harder to look through the phone book to find companies with bad programs :-)

I tried this with some lawyers once back in the day when I just finished college ... needless to say these are some cheap ass motherf*ckrs ... they wanted almost everything for free - setting up their network, fixing their printer, calling comcast when internet was down etc. All this just because I wrote them a small desktop application.

Yes! Pretty much all I've done for years. An old hn post of mine...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=182489

[Edit: Oops, almost forgot that this was one of those posts where someone picked up on a seemingly insignificant detail and started a big debate over it. I posted the link to save myself from cutting and pasting. The "debate" below it is pointless.]

Reply on news.ycombinator.com