#TIPS ON GETTING SOFTWARE PROJECTS

• Spend time cultivating client contacts in your previous jobs and business relationships.

• Once a few successful projects have been completed for these appropriated contacts, word spreads and business grows.

• People signing the agreements on multi-million dollar contracts also expect a little wining and dining.

• Look up some VPs/CEOs/COOs/CTOs at various large or medium-sized software companies (lead411, jigsaw, linkedin can help find them) and present your services. Most of them are interested in hearing new ways to improve their processes.

• Being a company that just sells "software engineering" is far too generic. The key is to find a niche that just isn't big enough for the big boys.

• Sell yourself on being small, a botique service. There are very small startups that have done well.

• If you sign a sub-contract try to sign something that will in the end give you the right to use the end client name as a future reference, so that you can build up your portfolio.

• If you're as good as you think you are at your job right now, have you ever considered talking to your company about giving you a four day week? I negotiated a four day week instead of a raise at a previous job, and it was a great thing that let me concentrate on other projects I wanted to do. Some other friends did it as well, and others negotiated for 4 10 hour days.

• Before quitting- joining the local user groups, meeting the other nerds in your area, and making a significant effort to find local folks with interesting development projects in your area.

• Identify one or more clients before you quit the day job. The local nerd meetup, linux meetup, etc, will help you network. Check out meetup.com for your area.

• Project work comes in spurts, so you need to anticipate being extremely busy (sometimes) and extremely worried about the mortgage (pretty often)

• The most important thing is to have plenty of cushion. Make sure you have cash on hand to survive for many months- I'd recommend 6, but 3 may work- without pay.

• Almost all of my clients have come through word of mouth.

• Get comfortable with sporadic work.

• If you don't yet have the word-of-mouth network, it's going to be tough, but if you're reliable and diverse, meaning you aren't stuck on doing only Enterprise Java, I think you could make it work.

• It helps to have a lot of skills, especially when you're getting started.

• Make sure you have a well-tended profile on sites like linkedin.com. You should link with any recruiters that approach you on there, as well as all of the co-workers and ex-coworkers and friends you can find there.

• In my own freelancing career I've found that a lot of companies like to outsource work to people in their local area with whom they can meet face-to-face.

• Smaller companies in particular often find that they have times when there's just too much work to handle internally, and they often like to have a reserve of expertise they can call up when things get busy.

• Try to write up some case studies of the work you've done, and add to these as you finish new projects.

• Larger projects tend to require more of a time commitment; it may be a struggle to hold them down to five hours a day. It might be better to plan your self-generated work to fit into the gaps between paying jobs rather than trying to do both simultaneously.

• Keep your ears open. Two of my projects came from overhearing people talk about needing a website created or improved.

• Recruiters can help you. Tell them you are looking for contract development and can offer a percentage of the contract (perhaps 10%) to make up for their finders fee.

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