undefined | Better HN

0 pointserikw5y ago0 comments

It looks like you're in Ecuador, and that makes it a lot tougher.

1. Are you an agency or a solo developer? If it's just you or you and a friend or two, you might get a better response building up your personal brand rather than representing yourself as an agency.

2. I can't judge your technical chops, but I can see that you have room to grow in UI design. I like this youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/DesignCourse, but there are tons of design resources available.

3. You might need to focus more on sales. Is there a small business you like that doesn't have an online store? Call them, email them, go visit them in person- try to make a sale. You could offer the work in exchange for products at first- once they are happily selling online, they will tell other business owners, and you can get more referrals and raise your prices.

0 comments

1 comments · 1 top-level

erdos4d5y ago

Thank you for your feedback, it is very appreciated. Some answers:

1) I work with my wife at this, so we are a team, though web development is new to us. I got a PhD (math), used to be a backend, and then a data scientist for awhile, but I do not know how to sell these things at all, so we tried web dev, since it seems some people do apparently live off it. I've tried marketing myself as a freelancer in the past and have made literally zero cash from it, so we gave up on that and rebranded as a web dev shop. The rewards seem the exact same, though I can pretend to be a CEO now:)

2) We will check this channel out, thank you. I don't think either of us is strong on design, so this is a valid criticism. It is a goal of ours to improve in this dimension.

3) Neither of us has any contacts who want to buy any software, so we agree with you on the importance of cold selling. We are starting up this process now, and trying to run some ads, but Ecuador has only a 30% online presence anyway, so yeah...

Please keep us in mind if you need anything though, our entire family lives on 300 dollars a month, so I'm quite sure we can undercut virtually any competitor's deal. Thanks:)

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse