Freelancer's toolbox

HandsOnWP.com @nick_batik @sandi_batik
Freelancer’s Toolbox
Austin WordPress Meetup 02-08-2016
Sandi & Nick Batik

Presenters
Sandi Batik
WordPress evangelist, consultant, trainer, curricula
developer, author, unapologetic geek, unrepentant
capitalist, lucky enough to do what I love everyday. I’ve
served as Austin WordPress Meetup co-organizer since
2010. With my husband Nick Batik, co-founded Pleiades
Publishing Services in 1992 and Hands-On WordPress
Training in 2010.
Follow me @sandi_batik / @WPATX
Contact me at: handsonwp.com
Nick Batik
Started in web development in 1994 and have been a
WordPress consultant, and web developer since
2007. A WordPress evangelist, I’ve served as Austin
WordPress Meetup co-organizer since 2010. With my
partner, co-founded Pleiades Publishing Services in
1992 and Hands-On WordPress Training in 2010.
Follow me @nick_batik / @WPATX
Contact me at: handsonwp.com

The WordPress Freelancer's
Life in One Slide
• Prospecting
• Marketing
• Client Interviews
• Bid / Proposal writing
• Statements of Work &
Contracts
• On Boarding Clients
• Project Management
• Client Management
• Project Close-out and
Invoicing
• Client Follow-up - Keeping
Relation Ship Warm for
repeat work and Referrals
• Rinse and Repeat

The First and Most Important Resource
in Your Freelancers Tools Box is You!
• Your Skill Set
• Your Work Habits
• Your Drive
• Your Goals
These determine the capacity & effectiveness of
your Freelancer's Toolbox

Lets start will Your Person Goals
for your Freelance WordPress
Venture
• Do you have written 2016 Goals
for our Freelance Business?
• If No,
Then do that tomorrow morning
• If Yes,
Then —

Steps to reach each goal
Start with questions.
• How much income do I need to clear, after taxes &
expenses, to live the way I want?
• How many hours do I need work to make that income?
• How many clients can I serve in that time frame— at
my current skill level, and still delight them?
• What web development tools will I use?

Steps to reach each goal
• Are their any tools I should avoid for now?
• How many 'paid services' should I use, if any?
• To reach my goal, will I need to out-source some
of the work I bring in?
• If so, to whom?
• Do I have the skill set and tools to manage a team
of distributed workers?

• Come up with Your Own Set of Questions
• WordPress Ecosystem has room for many
Niches
• Each Niche will lead to additional questions

PROSPECTING
Finding your Tribe

• Why should a WordPress Freelancer focus on
Niche opportunities?
• Since 2009, a Freelancer couldn’t say they could
do all things WordPress equally well
• Potential Clients are not looking for a
"Jack of All Trades"
• Clients want a professional with the resources
(team members) to get the job done right.

WordPress offers niche
opportunities for:
• Theme Designers
• Theme Developers
• UX/UI Developers
• Database / Backend
Developers
• Plugin Developers
• Social Media Specialists
• SEO / In-Bound Marketing
Specialists
• Content Developer and
Managers
• Site Administrators and
Maintenance Managers
• Consultants
• Trainers

Build a reputation as a professional
in your WordPress Niche
There are many ways to become known in your local and wider
WordPress Community
• Offer advice to those who need it on forums or comment sections of
other websites
• Volunteer to help others at local meetups
• Offer to present on your topic at a meetup, WordCamp, or other
professional conference
• Go outside the WordPress Bubble and offer to present at Chambers of
Commerce
• Do some free work for friends, family or a non-profit for a written
testimonial and referrals

Build a reputation as a professional
in your WordPress Niche
• Doing a "freebie" for a non-profit is a good way to, "Do well by
doing good."
• Post regular tips and new techniques on your blogs
• Offer to guest blog on a colleague’s site
• Figure out a reciprocal discounted "Trade' price for professional
partners
• Build a custom theme for free download
• Develop a plugin that solves a problem and submit it to the WP
Repository

Marketing you to your niche
How is your web presence doing?
The bare-foot shoemaker syndrome
• You need a presence on the web to get a web based job.
• Designers need a portfolio
• Developers need a cool site and a link to Github to
showcase your code chops
• Content Developers need a blog full of well organized
clearly written content.

Potential clients will judge you
by the work on your own site
• Which is bad news for those of us "too-busy" to
update our own, best marketing materials
• Using your own skill to attract clients to you, is
better then having to hunt them down
• Make time to be your own customer — design
and build ‘new shoes’ for your site

How to Interview Your
Client
Here are some questions we ask clients to build a reliable scope of work
• Are we discussing a new site or is this a rework to an existing site?
• What is your site's purpose?
• What do you want site visitors to do once the come to your site
• How much content do you have as of now and how much will need to be created?
• Text
• Special offer landing pages
• Are the site’s graphics created already?
• Logo
• Images

Client
• Will the site require multi media elements like video downloads?
• What is your budget?
• Are you looking multiple bids?
• If yes, have you prepared a requirements document to give to
potential bidders?
• Are you already familiar with WordPress?
• How familiar are you with WordPress?
• ⁃How much training will you need?

Client
• Do you plan to build a mailing list withMailChimp, Constant Contact, etc.?
• ⁃Are you already signed up with one of these services?
• What will you offer for sign up —newsletters, downloads, other marketing?
• Is that content created? Will you need help creating it?
• Do you want specific features such as SEO, Google Analytics, social
media channels and eCommerce?
• Do you want us to do the maintenance and security for the site once it has
been launched?
• Can you choose the three sites you like and tell me specifically, did you
like about each?

Special Features Cost Special Cash
Note to Specialty Niches:

Bid and Proposals
Identify "Time Wasters" when experiencing
these to "Client Tells”:
• Lack of communication
• Followed immediately by unreasonable demands
• Obvious low-balling
• Indecisive or constantly unclear or evasive
• Don’t waste your time - Move on

Your Proposals should contain scope, timeline and
requirements for BOTH parties
Proposal Guidelines

Project Scope
• This identifies what the work to be performed.

Timeline
• Provide a timeline so the client can know when to
expect things to take place.

Budget
• It is a good practice to provide a couple options
to the client — a complete proposal for the things
they request and an addition option for niche
support services for Hosting, WordPress
Training, Copywriting, In-bound Marketing
support etc…

Terms
Our proposals include:
• Details of how we will work together
• Our Payment terms including our deposit
policy.
• Our right to show our work to other clients
• etc…

Should Freelancers use
contracts with EVERY client?
• Yes, because you NEVER know when the only
thing between you and a toxic client is written
and signed rules of engagements.

Contract Killer is the contract that many WordPress
Professionals use
https://gist.github.com/malarkey/4031110
The popular open-source contract for web
designers and developers by Stuff & Nonsense

On-line Tool for Contracts
and Payments
Bonsai
https://www.hellobonsai.com/
This service helps with administrative minutiae of
negotiating client agreements. It is an e-sign-
enabled contract tool that have already been
attorney approved

On-Boarding and
ManagingClients
• Communicate clearly and have a written agenda for
ever meeting: on-line, phone or in person
• Send a bullet point summary email after the meeting
to be sure you both left with the same understanding
• STICK TO THE AGREED SCOPE OFF WORK IN
THE SIGN CONTRACT
• Signed change-orders that acknowledge change can
effect projected delivery date for ANY changes

" THAT is a fantastic idea.
I can hardly wait to do it in PHASE 2"
The Patented Pat Ramsey Response to
Client Add-ons

Project Management
• Freelancers Trade Hours for Dollars
• Even With a Value Pricing Model, Time IS Money
• That is why project management is a critical skill

• There are a number of Project Management and
Productivity tools for the WordPress Freelancer
• Some are Free — some have a monthly fee.
• You will have to decide which works best for your
particular Niche and volume of work

How can I manage my WordPress
projects more efficiently
Start automating some parts of your work flow
WordPress Developers can set up Capistrano or sign up for
DeployBot
• Automatically take care of your deployment to remote
servers
• Commit your latest version of the code
• Click a button and get your code live
• Caution: Learning Curve Involved

WordPress Site Practitioners / Site Managers can
manage multiple environments and client
websites,using website management platforms like:
• ManageWP ( now Orion) https://managewp.com
• WP Remote https://wpremote.com/
Helps you monitor all of your sites and lets you
update all of them at once.

• Theme Developers consider using a theme
framework instead and reuse components across
your sites
• Build a suite of plugins that could be bundled in
many sites instead of building all of them every
single time.
• Reuse code snippets that could be reused
across your different themes, and integrated with
your framework.

General Productivity
and Connectivity
• Gartner Research announced that by 2020,
customers will manage 85% of their relationship
without talking to a human...
• Using services like Zapier and IFTTT will connect
your apps and build trigger-based flows between
them.
• Example: Gravity Forms can connect client
request from your website to your CRM and
project management system.

Project management tickets and commits
• can be pushed to your HipChat room or Slack to
notifies your project team team members and
keep client connected with out a blizzard of
email.

• Use Boomerang for Gmail for scheduling emails
and reminders for conversations awaiting for
reply.

Project Closeout / Invoicing
• We keep job in a client accessible sandbox
• Once they approve the final site and we receive
our final payment we move it to their hosting
service
• Our invoice comes with the signed contract
• Change orders are invoiced and paid for before
the move

Project Closeout / Invoicing
• We test all the links and give client 30-days to test
the site to the AGREED scope of work.
• If they have opted for a maintenance contract we
set up our tools and monitoring schedule.
• If we discussed a phase two during development,
we ask when they would like to schedule that time
• Ask for a testimonial

Client Followup
• Did you have a great client experience?
• Polite, kind reasonable people need encouragement
• Send a Thank You Note
• A Nice Analog note - hand written - stamped-sent by snail
mail
• NextDayFlyers http://www.nextdayflyers.com/ produces
cheap, fast, customized note cards
• Find one way to help your client in their venture

A really helpful Blue Print
form by WPelevation

Freelancer's toolbox

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