Hiya everyone, OP here. If you reached out to us in the last 14 hours, I'm sorry to say we probably haven't gotten back to you. We didn't anticipate this many responses-- we were expecting under 10 offers, and instead we got over 100-- and our management system is still really shoddy. For example, we're still copy and pasting your email into our admin dashboard to get your signup link.
We're working on fixing/scaling things, but in the meantime I didn't want to insult everyone with an automated message, so hopefully this message can catch you before that frustrated comment! Also, we do intend to get back to everyone eventually.
Just since we're on HN, if you have any thoughts to share feel free to reach out to me directly - [redacted]
Sounds like a well-defined task, so we've got you covered :) Send us an email and mention you're from HN in the subject line, and I'll take care of you myself.
Sorry to ask what are probably silly questions, but: how do I, uh, find these people? Like where do they gather? Should I look up local businesses in my area, call them, and talk about their problems?
Thanks for the advice. I'd like to take your suggestion to radically raise rates to prevent this from happening again. What do you suggest I do to get in touch with/market to/work for clients willing to pay that much?
It doesn't cost that much actually; once I find a permanent place and buy groceries etc. I can live off maybe $600-$700/month. The issue is really just that I need money last-minute.
I sit down with each person and agree on a specific list of features they want before I get started. I say explicitly on the site that the $2,345 is only for one iteration.
Hm, I was considering going from "$2,345 for 3 weeks" to "$2,345 per week, up to 3 weeks." But the fee right now isn't as low as it seems; I was planning on taking projects in parallel.
Thanks for all the helpful advice! Totally didn't expect so much feedback.
Question for the more experienced people here: if I changed it to "$2,345 per week, and it'll take 1-3 weeks" instead of "$2,345 for up to 3 weeks," would I lose anyone I shouldn't be losing?
I considered both when I first got started. Django was just too hard for me. When I read code using a framework I've never seen before, usually I can still kind of tell what it does. It might be my own stupidity, but when I read Django code I have no clue what it does.
I did consider Flask, which is much more similar to web.py, but eventually chose web.py because I was a fan of Aaron Swartz' work at the time.
To be honest, I said 3 weeks just to be safe (the old rule of doubling what you think you need). The plan was also to work on multiple projects in parallel.
You're right though, I am just starting off, and already feel a bit guilty asking for anything north of $5k.
We're working on fixing/scaling things, but in the meantime I didn't want to insult everyone with an automated message, so hopefully this message can catch you before that frustrated comment! Also, we do intend to get back to everyone eventually.
Just since we're on HN, if you have any thoughts to share feel free to reach out to me directly - [redacted]