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Your website doesn't really matter. If you want to improve the quality of clients, try:

Give them quotes per project or part of project, not per day, or heaven forfend by the hour.

Don't find clients on odesk, find them anywhere else (referrals and contacts is the best way, you've already done some work, so work those contacts).

Don't do work and then walk away - build meaningful relationships and trust with clients over years, and keep delivering for them (and being paid). Trust is key. So don't drop clients unless they are toxic - aim to build up a stable of good clients with repeat work and income. You've probably already met your first consulting client.

Do drop clients who don't trust you or insist on lower prices. If they don't trust you, you can't work for them.

Don't talk technology to them unless necessary or requested. Your client doesn't care if you use odoo with git or poo with tigger, they care about what you can deliver. They won't even know what OpenERP is (I didn't either). You can do a lot of work for clients without them knowing or caring what tech is used as long as what you build is solid and solves the problem.

Discuss requirements with them first in an in-depth way, don't wait for them to give you a list of things that need done, have a discussion, and come back with a quote which details ways to improve their business (efficiencies, new features, new markets etc). Think of yourself and present yourself as a partner, not someone contracted to do some odd jobs.

PS Since you asked about your site, it is a little topsy turvy, it starts from top to bottom with stuff you care about, and only reaches stuff clients will care about at the bottom - consider instead having a set of case studies at the top with projects you have been paid for (just 3 is fine), and quotes from happy customers. Your clients are usually focussed on their business and making money for that business more efficiently. Your personal views, your favourite technologies, and even the types of work you do, come secondary to that.




> Give them quotes per project or part of project, not per day, or heaven forfend by the hour.

But if you do this, definitely have a strategy for when the project explodes, or when a client keeps asking for "just one more little fix" for months. I tend to summarise every new project (usually discussed over the phone) in an email, so that I can refer to what is and what isn't part of the quote later. I wonder if it comes across as lawyer-y, though.


I give them a written spec, I don't think it's lawyerly at all, just professional - it clarifies exactly what to expect and lets you control scope.




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