angryCoder on going Independent

 Jonathan Goodyear, aka angryCoder, has posted the second article in a series he’s doing on becoming an independent consultant (you can find the first part here). In this installment, Jon talks about marketing yourself, and about how to get your customers to come to you (rather than the other way around).

This is fairly good reading, although his marketing advice may not be quite as applicable to the average developer as he makes it seem. After all, we can’t all be columnists for aspnetPRO magazine, given that the business model doesn’t support that. But his larger point that keeping your name in the public eye, and making sure that when you spend time (or money, though he doesn’t discuss that part) on marketing yourself, you need to make sure that you do so efficiently, that is, in a way that maximizes your exposure while minimizing the effort it takes.

A case in point, and one that’s pretty close to home for me, is writing. I have written several books on web development, as well as a number of articles (see the Articles navigation section), and I can attest to the fact that both books and articles can help get you noticed. But that’s only part of the story. Writing a book, as Jon observes, is a lot more work, and unless your book sells extraordinarily well, will not be read by nearly as many people as a typical magazine article. So if you want to write a book because you want the challenge, or you think it will help you career-wise (it probably will), then go for it. But if your primary purpose is to become a recognized name, you may be better off focusing your attention on articles instead.

Finally, given the topic at hand, I would like to remind any of my readers who might be looking for consulting or training on ASP.NET and .NET that I’m available to help. I’m located in the Washington, DC metro area, but I can travel for short-term training and mentoring, and I’m happy to do remote development and/or debugging, for those who are open to that.

4 Comments

  • > I’m located in the Washington, DC metro area



    Awesome. I thought all the cool techie guys just lived in Redmond, San Fran, or Boston. Glad to know there's somebody local.

  • "I thought all the cool techie guys just lived in Redmond, San Fran, or Boston."



    Heh. The DC area may not be glamorous, but we've got one of the highest concentrations of POPs in the country. Lots of tech here...we just don't get the press that other areas do. :-)

  • I think that with a few exceptions, all of my current clients came about as a result of a couple of things:



    1. Previous Employment.

    2. Referred by someone I have previously worked with or done work for.



    There are a couple of exceptions. I do not believe that writing a book has gotten me any work directly (though it gives you credibility when you are talking to a potential client). However, from as far back as when I was a columnist for the Btrieve Developer's Journal, that DID get me a great number of gigs, and the magazine articles both pay better (word for word) to boot.

  • Heh! Don't know if you still visit this site, but thought I would drop you a line anyway. I was googling something an dran across this site.

    I am just a voice from your past - Boca Raton, FL. Think of Indian food and Jamaica & you might remember who this is.

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