There's a ton written about running a startup, but there is amazingly little written about doing a professional services design / development firm. Anybody know of good sources for running a good services firm?
The basics are:
1) Get good clients. Low-end clients typically aren't worth your time, and it will be hard to make money.
2) The best way to get new business is via referrals. The best business can found through happy customers
3) Don't try to compete on price, or hire the cheapest the employees. It doesn't work well in this business.
4) Have contracts and get everything agreed to in writing
5) Pay careful attention to your costs, and learn basic accounting. Overhead for offices and such costs money. You also need to overhead to cover downtime, sales, project management, and collections. You may need 100% overhead.
If you agree to do a project for $3000, make sure you can really get it done for that prices. You also need to figure out how to deal with change-requests. If you allow too many free change requests, you will lose money.
When setting the prices, you need to think like a businessperson. A lot of designers and programmers don't understand how to price their work very well.
>If you agree to do a project for $3000, make sure you can really get it done for that prices.
Yes, and to repeat another point you made earlier, the price you need to charge includes the associated overhead. I have seen many people start in consulting only to fail because they didn't take their overhead costs into account, or at least enough into account, when billing. The only real difference between failing to bill for overhead costs at all and not billing enough is how long it takes you to fail.
This is what indieconf was set up to help address last year, and we'll be doing another one this fall. Videos of some of the sessions will be coming soon - http://indieconf.com and sign up on the email list to be notified (yes this is a bit of a blatant early plug!)
