Tips for Getting Your First Client

It is not easy for a new web developer to get clients for whom he can show off his debut of work. However uneasy, it doesn’t mean that there is no way to Rome. The following ideas to get the first client may be inspiring your new job to work better in market.

1. List the names of everyone you know. Try to get at least 100 names on the list. In order to get these names readable, you can use any techniques convenient for you, such as including the full name, nickname, profession, address, phone numbers, interest, organs, and may be social clubs also. The target audience of people could be your own relatives on the family tree given, neighbors, colleagues at work, your previous college mates and school mates, people who play the same hobbies with you, people at the place you have regular worship, and many more. To be more obvious, don’t forget to put down some particular characteristics and physical appearance like red-haired, good-humored, the skinny, Mr. Fatty, and so on. Some details might be sensitive to tell to person. That’s why you just keep these characteristics and physical appearances secret in your note book.
Soon after you have done these names listing, you can start to call them one by one in order to let them you are really doing at the moment. If possible, ask for recommending your service to any fellows they have got. Asking to these people about other counterparts in the same business which is just started recently will be useful as well. In case of getting bad response from an individual contact, try to cover this annoyance with another two or more people to introduce your profession. Doing listing step and socialization of your current business will the primary cornerstones where in need people might call you soon for carrying out some projects of web developing.

2. Local businesses are more feasible to reach than others. Get to know about them through their websites. Observe the performance, layout, structures, and eve traffics of their websites and put down the report obviously. Prepare an offering service email while attaching these few page report of your observations and send to them. Manage to set up a meeting face to face to discuss about your ideas on developing their websites. We cannot deny that this might be voluntary work at the beginning. It is the price to pay for as a new web developer. Somehow, be confident of what you harvest and thereby you can reap good values of devoted efforts.

3. Borrowing the idea from David Frey, you can take benefits from the available information provided by Yellow Pages. There are hundreds of names from which you can decide the prospective ones to bid. Since the writing on Yellow Pages looks very small, blow up 2-3 times bigger than the original fonts to make it more readable. Afterwards, circle the names of competitors you might have on these Yellow Pages sheets especially for your most potential clients to be. Write down a sheet of letter to your competitors saying that you would like to greatly help carry out one company’s project. State in your letter that the project would be for the development of company’s business while hoping that they were not one of the competitors who bid the same project.

It comes to a turn to reach a few names that you consider potential companies to offer you current service of web developing. If possible, arrange a meeting with them wherever convenient to discuss and explore more about your business.

These three tips are definitely cheap to carry out as the first move. The way will not always be as smooth as planned usually. No problem for this fact. Your determination to be a professional web developer will be appreciated in time by the people as soon as you begin to do the three steps above. Keep moving to make a success!

On Becoming a New Project Manager

“The new zone is always challenging for everybody”. This sentence might be an exact impression that I can say about my new profession as a Project Manager. Having 10 year experience in software programming and development, I’m not new actually in a professional world of company businesses. Approaching my second year of project manager, I’m still considered still green for this position. Never mind. It is not an obstacle for me anyway to share what I had learned from this job during my first days. I would like to share about tools, processes, principles, and best practices that were proven useful to support the position as a project manager. Those elements may not be an absolute model by which everybody can apply effectively for their different situation of work. Yet, my personal experience would be an enriching idea from which individual project manager could take one or two inspiring lessons to carry out their jobs.

 

My first debut as a project manager was begun by a question on how to decide on the best method to carry out my projects successfully. Consulting companies came to me with the suggestion of applying their powerful method to bring a success for my project. I wasn’t really assured that the advice would help much as there is no definite method of success that works for different forms of projects. Finally, I decide to neglect the suggestions and tried to find my own method of making a project a success instead.

Perfect planning was my first concern to set up besides several factors that I thought they would help contribute to the success of project management. A perfect plan, in my opinion at that time, would bring a good direction of the project. Yet, the plan given was still away from what my developers understood about the project. I missed an importance of goal setting that signified principal ground of working with the developers on the same track of success. An idea of perfect plan eventually left nothing but a waste of energy to my project.

Being challenged to work together with a few developers, I got to realize that project team are the soul of a project success. They need the best conditions whereby they can focus on jobs and carry out well the tasks given on schedule. The best conditions that enable comfort nuance of work exactly. Since then, I knew that project management is not simply about the accuracy of minds and perfectness of plan on paper. It is more about how to work in team with a clear cut direction and comfort environment to bring a success for a project.

In conclusion of my brief experience to be a project manager, the following lesson might be useful and valuable

“Leave to me everything that makes you difficult to carry out this project. I will handle it. So that, you don’t need to worry anymore”

How to make sure that Best Practices can be used again at the initial stage of a new project? Whether those ideas resemble in whole project?

The process of project delivery involves modification due to the client request, different ideas, new environment, and contracted timelines. So people consistently throughout the process of modification try to reach the effective way and new ideas to deliver a project in good quality. This is followed by all level of IT organizations.

Hence the question is how to confine these best practices? So that it can be instantly used by other batch of people for new projects.

The method of reusing the best practices is very helpful to complete the existing project in quick manner.

But it is not possible to completely rely on this method to produce the quality project through organization and no guarantee to get positive feedbacks from the clients. Of course it’s very important to confine the rare and vital source. So this recognized resource can be appended to the record of best practices to point out the corresponding person who learnt or who use it. Mean while discussion get started between peoples, which in turn will initiates the sharing of knowledge and other useful data.

After some period of time definitely people begins to utilize it as platform to quickly study the relevant concept before beginning the project.

Stumbling Blocks:

It is necessary to find all possible ways to reach the project peoples and make them to add their experiences into records of best practices. Certainly it’s some what hard to attain it, so be sure whether this effort is helpful for your organization for long time.

Benefits of doing it correctly:

This will pave way to complete the major part of the project soon. Hence through this the effort to apply the rework is tremendously reduced and by the way the quality of project is guaranteed. Ultimately it will increase the productivity with no defects in the stage of post delivery and in process of working.

How to Get Started as a Freelance Writer via the Internet

If you're new to freelance writing, you will find the internet to be a great resource to build a successful and profitable freelance writing career. Unlike writing for magazines, where you have to write query letters pitching ideas to editors and then wait months to find out whether or not the article will be assigned to you, most freelance writing jobs online offer virtually instant gigs and prompt payment. Here are some tips to help you learn how to get started as a freelance writer via the internet.

1. Look for online markets. Many magazines are online now, which means you can submit to these online markets via email and usually receive a response more quickly than you would if you were submitting to a print publication. There are online markets seeking all different types of articles, from corporate finance to parenting topics, so you can be sure to find online magazines looking for material on subject matter you already know.

2. Check job boards daily. The internet is full of job boards dedicated to freelancers. Some exclusively list freelance writing jobs, and others list all different types of freelance gigs. If you want to get first chance at the best paying freelance writing jobs, make sure to check the job boards once a day or even a few times a day if you have the time. Remember, there is a lot of online competition for freelance writing jobs, so being one of the first people to apply can ensure you are considered for the best gigs.

3. Join writing forums. Forums for writers allow you to interact with other freelance writers to benefit from their experience, share ideas, and even get an occasional referral for work. Many freelance writing forums offer listings of new paying markets and freelance writing job listings.


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How To Set Your Freelance Rates (An Overview)

One the hardest decisions that a freelancer will ever have to make is that of deciding what to charge for their services.

If you get this decision wrong, you could be paying for it for a long time. The wrong rate could ultimately even cause your freelancing business to fail.

There are many different opinions about what a freelancer should charge. No one rate fits every situation or every freelancing specialty. There are, however, certain general principles that every freelancer can use to determine what they should charge.

In general, setting your freelance rate should be based on three factors:
What you need
What your competition charges
What the market will bear

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