How we picked the developer
As we decided to hire freelancers, instead of fulltime employees, it was time to find a developer and get him or her on board.
Here’s how we decided who to hire …
Plum Digital Media was the amazing team that we hired to build DropSend, our first web app. They had too many projects to be able to work on this second app, so we started looking elsewhere.
I sat down to have a think about who we could hire and I drew a total blank. This was a bit disconcerting, as I should know a ton of developers because we run Carson Workshops. The only thing I could think of was to send out an email to the Carson Workshops newsletter, as there are a ton of freelance developers that subscribe and are always looking for work.
Here’s what I said:
Hey everyone!
We’re getting ready to build our second web application, and we’re looking for a developer to build it.
If you’re a freelance LAMP developer, with some basic AJAX skills, we’d love to hear from you. We’ll need you for around 3 - 4 weeks, full time. You can telecommute - no problem.
We’ll need you to start around April 10th.
If you’re interested, please send the following:
- URL to your site
- Approximate cost for 4 weeks full time work
- City and Country
- Phone number
- List of previous projects (with URLs) and your exact role in them
Looking forward to hearing from you!
It was great, as I received 10 replies in the first five minutes! Interestingly enough, one of them was from David Stone, a developer who’d attended one of our workshops. He had made the effort of chatting to me at our summit, “The Future of Web Apps”, so I remembered who he was immediately.
We received quotes anywhere from $5,000 - $25,000, so it was quite a range. David came in at $8,688 and he was available when we needed him. One of the biggest factors in us choosing him is that we knew him and felt we could trust him (it also helped that he was somewhat local).
If you’re a freelancer, I guess my advice to you would be: Make the effort to get to know your potential clients personally - it’s usually the deciding factor.
P.S. Photo by Peter J. Lambert
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