My First Client

Ok so the title might be misleading. They aren't paying me and I know them so the lead was very warm. But I am making a website for a real business. This might not feel like a big deal to someone with experience but its a big deal to me. I am self thought this is my chance to prove I can do this. This is part of my plan to build a portfolio that will get me hired as a freelancer. Do 10 site for free and then use that portfolio of actually functioning sites for real businesses to promote myself and my work. Each new client will be a learning experience, and here are 3 things about freelancing I learned already.

Manage Expectations

Learning how to professionally communicate why something is a good or bad idea to non technical people is hard. It's also an invaluable skill in the industry of tech. Having a library of micro descriptions and infographics of technologies in layman's terms might prove to be a valuable thing for me. This got me thinking about the client intake process over all. Having some pre-written documentation of what the client can expect from each step of the process would be a big time saver. I might do this as a static page on my site or as a pdf I can send to the client.

Do you know, what you want?

This ties in with the above but deserves its own category. Getting the client to communicate what they actually need in terms you can understand and implement is probably the biggest challenge facing freelance devs. I thought that this was mostly hyped up on internet posts by people with bad experiences. But here it is day one staring me in the face. They have an idea of what it might look like and some of the things it might do but the funny thing is they expect you to figure out the rest. This In my case this wasn't much and they have been very communicative about any new info required. I can just foresee some nightmare situations in the future if this stage is not handled with care though.

Deadlines

This one can really only be fixed with experience. I don't know how long it will take me to do things. Often it's my first time doing it that way. I work in a factory so I understand project management quite well. But this is different, right now I guess and then double my estimate. I am also thinking about how once your done with the site you will have to document it and make sure that those updating it know what they are doing. This will probably take more time than you think. I am already planning on next time doing docs as I go along not at the end.

When the site is finished and with their permission I might share the results here if people would be interested. Maybe share some if the problem solving process I went through to get the product to where it is. Anyways thanks for reading I hope you have fun on the internet.