I have decided that I will freelance myself for free.
The goal? Help companies automating their tasks and build some portfolio of my own.
I’ll target small companies that might not have the resources to hire full-time people.
Which types of automation would you say are more necessary when the company is 6-12 months old and has less than 10 people?
If you value your work so little that you are afraid to charge for it then why would I want to spend my time with you? My assumption would be that I’ll spend more time and money undoing the damage from the free service than I will gain. People aren’t going to value those who don’t value themselves.
The main issue here is that I don’t have a portfolio that I can use as “CV”. Is not that I don’t value the work I’ve done in other areas, is just that for this specific case is something where I cannot show expertise yet.
“I’ll target small companies that might not have the resources to hire full-time people.”
I know this is not the question but IMO dont target this group. There are bigger companies that dont hire for a variety of reasons and money is not one of them. They rather spend on outsourcing than in-house. You will be much richer targeting these folks. The hard part is getting an “IN” but worth it. You only need a few of these clients and your set.
Network before starting this at local meetup.com
Second, dont come up with solutions in an ivory tower (on your own). Find your first client and they will have not shortage of automation tasks they are ready to pay for.
Thanks for the reply. Rather than getting richer, for now, the goal is to have those first success cases in hand that might open the door for more significant projects.
Thanks for sharing meetup.com! will check it out.
If you work for free, realise that you’re basically telling these companies that what you do is not valuable. If it would save these companies 100k, then you could easily charge 25k as you’re providing value.
Sometimes selling something for cheap is telling you the quality is low too (even though it’s not necessarily true). Other times, something is actually really cheap, but putting a big price tag on it makes it perceived as valuable (perfume, LV bags).
A share of the money saved is an interesting approach, thanks for the feedback!