The feeling of being taken for a ride is unfortunately common to both freelancers AND new founders and experienced business owners alike. It's scary out there in the forest.

So this weeks email is 🕊️how to survive finding a freelancer, and come out it safely. (PS - the dove icon is a throwback to my favourite brothers grim story about being lost in the forest)

🗞 This weeks SubStack

Elon's Buyers Remorse as Threads Grows the Fediverse Threads brought a bomb to a knife fight with one click "follow all" Read article

Twitters biggest asset was the network effect. With the smaller fediverse apps pooling their users, and platforms like WordPress, Medium, and Tumblr joining.. that network effect won't hold when Bluesky and Threads join.

🕊️ How Do I Find a Reliable Freelancer? And 9 tips

You could look on freelance markets like Fivver and Upwork, but my honest feeling is that because the jobs there are unmoderated, the kinds of jobs posted there have this negative impact on the way freelancers who don't bail have to work to make the economics pan out, which results in shitty experiences for all clients.

Sounds dramatic, right?

I spent one day just reporting numerous job listings exactly like the one below.

In order to win this (VAGUE) bid, you need to submit a complete design. If the bid is even accepted - which is close to impossible, since you have no idea what the target audience is or the company is from this ad - you must complete the customisations within 24hrs.

For the grand sum or (coughs) 10 USD.

Just for reference: an empty WordPress template from Themeforest costs 40-80 USD.

In addition to being massively underpriced, the jobs on there would normally take several days to complete for a highly skilled designer at a professional quality.

Not 24 hrs as these jobs demanded.

Imagine doing this 8-10 times a day to make ends meet? The only way to win bids there is to use templates, AI generated work, or recycle past work. I.e work they did for someone like YOU.

Aww hell no!

It’s bad there. It’s so very bad. Each platform swears they will be different, but each platform makes makes the same mistake.

So what can you do instead??

1. Get Realistic about Prices & Skills

You need an idea of what you should be expecting for good work. I don’t mean “hand crafted Italian leather” quality work 🙄. NO!

I mean the difference between Sushi from the supermarket takeaway section and $2.99 gas station “Sushi”😭.

HelloBonsai Price checker lets you look up price ranges for the kinds of services you want, by skill, experience and region.

Now you know what “gas station sushi” looks like for the industry you want to hire in.

You need this for step 2.

2. Use Open Slacks to Put Word Out.

Slack isn’t as popular as it once was, and that’s a pro and a con: these channels are less active, but that means you’ll get less spam or noise. Admittedly my list is for what I do: I mostly hang out in UX and product places. But that’s also why I know these groups aren’t full of noobs.

1. ​TechLondon This is a group of different types of people - from soloprenuers, and bootstrapped startups bosses, coders, and other creatives- around or adjacent to the uk. I’m on there and I know another developer from Madrid who hangs out there. There’s a one-time £10 signup fee, which is remarkably effective at filtering who signs up.
2. ​Design News is a popular message board for designers and has a job board you can post to.
3. ​UX Design is a slack channel for user experience designers with a channel for jobs.
4. ​Design Hangout (Invite only for UX Designers, but I can get you an invite!) is another slack for UX designers where you can post jobs and ask for referrals to someone with availability.
5. Guild: Design Community Hub Guild is a separate app that works like LinkedIn Groups. Unlike linked in, this group has 681 members, so is still small enough to moderate.

3. Look for a partner on Indyhackers.com

​Indyhackers is a place for people who make their own products. Maybe someone wants do the work for you for a % of the shares or be a cofounder? People look for cofounders there all the time, or for collaborations. Don’t be shy!

4. Ask people on Twitter/Instagram/Threads

Coders, designers, marketers, copywriters, video editors.. if there is one thing you can be sure of, it’s that they know other people in their niche. Give them the price range you have in mind and ask if they can refer you to anyone. Don’t be afraid to DM them! Or me!

5. Join a No-Code community

Not every product requires a designer and developer. No-Code is a great way to validate your ideas and test out pricing options and target markets before hiring anyone. Even if you CAN code, its a great way to validate an idea without spending the time coding it yourself. Curious to try it out? Try NoCodeFounders as a starting point. Here are some other no code communities to try out. ​No-Code Founders also have a slack channel to ask questions.

6. Have a Contract Template Ready

Getting started with contracts is easiest with a service like pandadoc​hellobonsai, or kosmos as these tools allow you to drag and drop your own contract together from templates and also do e-signatures.

I personally prefer a free pandadoc account (integrates with Canva) and use their templates section for starting point. I use a variation of Contract Killer by Andy Clark over at stuffandnonsene (I’m biased, since I have his books and attended an html5 workshop with him in Manchester).

There’s also a free github repository of an earlier version of this contract. Its meant for websites, but I thinks it’s quite solid as a foundation of an easy to read and understand contract.

You can use my contract template in Canva to brainstorm what specific clauses to put in yours. I just have questions in there for you to think about.

I personally make sure to include a "right to display work", and a mutual ability to sever the contract and be paid hourly for work done. Sometimes things just don’t work out, and it’s easier to sever and find a better fit.

Always download a pdf of any contract you've created in an online tool. Do not rely on an online site to hold onto your contracts.

7. Use A Password Manager

So many contracts have sections about “Returning private information” which is mostly about passwords and access to accounts.

It’s so much easier to use a password manager to give someone temporary access to an account and then withdraw access after their work with you is done.

Just use something like Nordpass for €3.59 or Bitwarden Business for $3 per person per month (you + your freelancer) and then remove their account off the plan when you’re done.

So much easier, no worrying if they really deleted your passwords, if they can still log in..and so much safer than texting or emailing passwords.

8. Ask Them About Next Steps

An experienced professional won’t just talk about opening their code editor/project management tool/sound editing software or Figma. They will talk about:

• Sending you a proposal with some options for you to consider
• Sending you a contract if you accept the proposal (some people include a contract with the proposal)
• It is completely normal to as for 25% of the quoted price up front. Not doing so indicates inexperience.
• A kickoff meeting - getting access to passwords to any accounts they need, getting logos and brand work, getting copy or media for editing,
• Onboarding you to the project management system or tool/file sharing system /communication system
• The proposal or contract should have a timeline in it, and clear steps for what happens after work is done. What deliverables are you getting, in what format? What files or rights do you retain? What about small tweaks or bugs - is there a maintenance phase / option? or is it pay as you goAre there separate rates for different types of work.

9. Don’t fear giving them permission to share their work for you on their site

Understand that a good and reliable freelancer will want and in fact need to display the work process on their social media and website. That’s part of what made you want to work wth them, seeing the process and value they bring.

But moreover, you should really be hoping they want to display their work for you. That the work they intent to do for you will be so outstanding that they will WANT to show it off at every chance they get.

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Thanks for reading to the end, I know this was long, but it's based on things I wish I knew starting out, so there's a good chance you might not know either.

🔗 This weeks links

• ​Hackathon Ideas for Non-Coding Designers just cos you can't code, doesn't mean you can't build!
• ​Winner Takes All: Case Studies in how Online Marketplaces are Creating Modern Monopolies - book review - Kyle’s digest is more “how to replicate it” rather than “monopolies are bad”, but lets be honest, you and I are not going to replicate Alibaba’s or Amazon’s success by simply implementing the strategies in this book, because:
  1. The real winning moves are too cutthroat to be inspirational, or illegal (lawsuits were and are still being fought by Amazon).
  2. Sometimes the winning strategy is having enough funding to experiment until you get it right. Not everyone gets a third or fourth round. Acknowledging that isn’t de-inspirational, it’s just being humble.

We can acknowledge that AND be thankful to have the opportunities we do have. We’re still lucky.

• ​Fairphone’s Repairable Phone goes on sale - most phones are designed to fail after a period of time and force you to upgrade, so this is fresh.
• ​If You Want to Be a Creator, Delete All (But Two) Social Media Platforms A genuinely affirming read. She quit all channels except YouTube and her blog and didn’t see a dip in anything relating to business or social connections. When you’re a freelancer like me, there’s so much social media FOMO for platforms.Are you burnt out? Take this quiz.
• ​How susceptible are you to misinformation? Take this quiz to find out.

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🧪️ 💚 Things I'm testing

• ​Circle.so for communities and courses. Communities are a big way to grow a brand and test out paid ideas that can become apps later on.
• ​Financielle app. Not because fintec for women by women, but because I love that they grew the idea for the app by:
  • Starting an instagram account talking finance tips
  • Started a paid community (see why I'm checking out circle.so?), then launched a bootraped app, then got funding.
• ​Duolingo ABC: the same gamified design works to teach kids to read.
• The “time to read plugin” for obsidian, and this 80s neon theme. I apologise for the 10 minute read but I hope it was helpful to you or a friend? 🙏

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Anything you want me to talk about?

Say hi to me on Mastodon, Threads at wyld.media or contact me on my socials below

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113 Cherry St #92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2205
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