To all the IT contractors in the house...

I was wondering if any of you who do IT contract work could provide me with information about getting into the IT contract business in the UK? I've experience in web design and development. My web development skills include:

* HTML/XHTML
* CSS
* XML
* Javascript
* PHP
* ASP
* MySQL
* Access

Any information about rates per day or hour, approaching contracting, how to get contract work and anything that is likely to to be relevant will be much appreciated.

I don't know about the UK specificly, but my advice would be 'don't do it'. If you want to work in IT there are pretty much three realistic options that won't give you an ulcer (or at least it will take a longer time than contract work).

1) Create a company that provides web applications / CMS solutions (a suite of other peoples products) to individual customers.
2) Create a company that provides products to solutions companies (like WYSIWYG editors and such).
3) Get a job at a company like in options 1 or 2.

Also if you're going the option 1 or option 2 route, you may want to grab a copy of Geoffrey A. Moores book "Crossing the Chasm" of Amazon or something.

Wow, only 1 reply. Hey, thanks FlameDuck.

I've been working on my Evolution e-Business System - see http://www.leonbrown.info/projects_evolution.php . I've a number of tools in the works that could be of interest to general businesses aside from the Web-Pages tool also. Funny you should talk about starting a company, as I'm working in a partnership with a friend and we've got an investor who's going to help us set up.

I've also been speaking to some of the local web agencies and the response has been good so far.

I'd say option 1 has been done to death, its a *very* competitive market
creating a company is gonna give you ulcers, the first 5 years are the hardest and then it reduces in difficulty to near impossible!

I'd personally say option 3 for a company doing option 2, would be the less stress !!

I guess I fall into your IT contractors box. 5 years in the biz.

Here's how I started off.....

Starting off can be the hard part, getting those vital first few jobs. Go into small local businesses (forget big businesses for now) - briefly explain what you do (no long speeches) and ask if you can leave them a business card or some further info. While you are going around local businesses dress smart, look professional.

Charges....

When I have a very good idea what they are after I provide a project cost (I don't base it on a per hour thing). I ask for 50% of this as a development fee before I start any work. The other 50% is paid when the project is complete.

Advertising....

Apart from the initial business seeking 5 years ago, I don't advertise, in fact I don't even have a website (working on a support site for customers only atm though). All my work after the initial seeking have been through word of mouth recommendations. It's amazing how many businesses know the main people from other businesses who give the nod to finacing projects. So for me paying for adverts everywhere whould be a waste of money.

Freebies....

As I do mainly programming / web solutions - 99% of customers generally come to you with PC problems too. For me I offer that service for free as most of the time its a 10 minute phone call. This serves the purpose of keeping your business with them where possible and when they need work doing, the first person they thing of is you. I never offer freebie work though, but I do find the odd 10 minute call here and there from them pays dividends.


I'd say overall you have to be different from the zillions of other people out there offering the same things as you want to offer. Find your own unique angle and work on it. It certainly doesn't come overnight. For me the first year was slooooooowwww, the 2nd was ok and this year has been manic. Since Oct 2005 I've not had a spare day and all through word of mouth.

Anyway, thats probably aload of pointless waffle for what you asked but if you'd like anything specific answered then fire away :)

I'd say keep a steady full time job first, but sorta ease your way into the contract world by looking for posted opportunities. Yeah it'll be tough and you won't have a lot of free time, but at least you'll get a feel for what its like out there and have a steady back up job if things go sour (which it'll mostly likely will at the begining).

I've been working this industry for 15 years and I have to say it's treated me poorly both financially and in regards stability. I still get paid national minimum wage despite being a senior technican and, in my opinion, by far the most knowledgeable and customer friendly support engineer at the little firm I work for.

In terms of hourly rate when I started 15 years ago my boss charged £45 an hour for me, + VAT. (My wages then where £50 a week !).

These days my boss charges £50+VAT still for in house work, and £65+VAT for site work, but this is to contract customers only. The rate for besoke work is £110+VAT. Our contracts are a little different to most, conventionally labour costs are built into the cost of the contract. I dont go out on site anymore though anyway, I preffer to work in the office these days because i've done enough dual carriageways to last my prostrate several lifetimes...

I've known a lot of engineers who worked from home or ran small start up IT support businesses, there used to be reasonable money in it but since the government drive to boom general IT skills there's just too much competition and even big firms can struggle to stay competetive these days.

There is still a skill shortage though, because there's an aweful lot of enthusiasts and semi-skilled engineers and people holding IT qualifications who still dont really understand the job of support (which is my niche). Unfortunately, their customers cannot assertain the skill shortfall before they mess up their systems.

Mind you I work in a particular niche in the market, and I know little of the web market place, all of your skills are clearly web related.

In my experience web design/authoring companies consistently fail to grasp the customers design requirements, technical needs, and the dynamicism of web businesses. More often than not I speak to companies who cannot edit their web site, and who do not know their site login details or have a clue who their domain name is registered with.

They have to do all changes through their designer who's kept control of it, and dont realise the importance of domain name renewal or understand that they are dealing with 5 companies (ISP, web host, domain name, design agency, support firm).

This is bad for business, dynamicism and fluidity are important business concepts and if a firm cannot react quickly then it may aswell not act at all. There's nothing worse than seeing a spelling error on a web site and having to phone up somebody charging 40 quid an hour to fix it.

I've never personally been in favour of charging by the hour, mostly because i'm very experienced within my little field and often solve problems far too quickly to make a lot of money. I also think, especially with workshop work, that waiting time (such as waiting on a disk to install) shouldn't be charged because I can be doing something else (and usually am).

I like to charge by the job, but you can only do that if you've sufficient grasp of the problem itself, the solution required and all possible contingencies, and how problematical and time consuming that customer is. In short it takes experience to make money charging by the job.

Once you are experienced enough though you can make more money in the day simply by reading the situation and giving a fixed price to the customer for the specific solution, you can also offer fairer pricing rather than ask for an open ended cheque book.

Some customers have a wider view of what the problem involves, such as installing a DVD drive also meaning fix their printer, washing their trunking down, and waiting on a full hard disk defrag just for the cost of slapping in a DVD drive.

Or those situations where the customer completely fails to report an issue, such as a hard drive upgrade I was asked to do recently where the customer had run out of disk space causing the machine to hang so often it had actually wrecked the partition data on the drive, making it impossible to copy anything off it. Finding all this out resulted in several hours more work than I had charged for because I didn't know the machine was crashing before starting work.

Still, should the customer have paid more for the problems in recovering their data? I took responsibility for it when I took the machine. If I had charged by the hour the customer would have had a huge bill - but what if I only took so long because of a gap in my knowledge, what if there need not have been a problem if only I knew of something I have yet to descover?

I still think I did nothing wrong, but how would I know?

I think a job is worth what it's worth, and a tech's time is their business.

I'm an I.T. contractor, focusing primarily on C# and ASP.Net. Changing from a permanent position to contracting doubled my income and freed me up - I work when I want (or need) to work. That said, I've been contracting with my current "employers" for 15 months now, so it's starting to feel like a permanent position. A few of my contracting friends have said that it's been a tough five months, due to a shortage of roles (in the Midlands at least).

If you do not have any dependants, I wouldn't hesitate in recommending contracting to you. If, like me, you have a family (I have three children), I'd give it a little more thought. I was made redundant a few years ago, and I kinda fell into contracting. It's served me well so far.

I do contract work (in Delphi) and it rocks. Lots of money and I can do it from home. Downsides ... years of hard work and practice to get myself in this position ... also it's boring.

I use Delphi when doing apps for clients too. You'd have to drag me kicking and screaming before I changed languages.

Oddly enough, we got a strict Delphi guy at my work whose sole purpose in life is to support the MILCON contract we have with the US Navy. He's also very "supportive" of Delphi....unfortunately, the Navy decided to go all web based this year and well.....

Thanks for your advice guys. I didn't know so many of you done contract work. As for my position, I have no dependent or expensive habbit like drinking or smoking, so can pretty much get by on next to nothing. I have some savings too, which will be of help.

The interesting thing is that I've also got some lead from the job where I was previously working, and have contacts in the local business community that I should make use of.

Qube & Banshee - How do you go about clients who try to swindle you with regards to sneakly adding extras to a project if you charge on a fixed price?

Thats why I work on the 50% upfront. If they add extras in half way through, you invoice them for 50% of the additional extras they want.

If you clearly structure what you're commisioned to do and make it clear that any extras above that will change the project cost then there should be no problems.

You may come across those that say "Oh, add it to the end bill". If you've never delt with them before then use your own judgement, either say "Thats not the way we agreed to work at the start of the project", or take them at their word and see what happens. If it is a minor thing then again use your judgement if you wish to add it in for free as it can help to build a working relationship.

I do find that the 50% upfront system works very well for me and have not had any problems.

If you're really unsure about your clients paying you in the end, then build in a locking system. So after 30 days if they have not used the unlock code, the software, web app etc ceases to function. If they pay you, send the unlocking code, if they do not pay you, they either have to, or its useless to them.

I've never had to do that, but I definately would if I felt there was a chance they would not pay the remaining 50% project cost.

Yeah I charge for all the initial time chatting and making the plan on an hourly basis. Then they end up with a fixed price quote for the main work, which I take a 50% deposit for. Rest is payable on completion which makes them feel happy. Naturally the quote says that extras will be billed for etc and I make this clear verbally to so everyone knows where they stand.

Qube - That's a pretty cool idea regarding the key code. I will build a feature for that into the next release of the Evolution system.

Grey Alien - Thanks for the tip about mentioning about extras being billed both verbally and on the quote. I see that where many problems may lie is that if the client doesn't see it on the quote, many will assume you'll do it for free; the fact it's on paper will back you up later if needed.

The really frustrating thing about web development is that people often assume it takes a few minutes because it sounds easy, when infact it takes much longer - I once had a client where I used to work who though all I had to do was copy and paste her PowerPoint template concept into Dreamweaver to create the web template - sheesh! :-S

As for recenet developments, I've been continuously sending my CV out. I'm having some luck with it too - there's a possible opportunity to use Blitz for one company (though they wanted Flash & Director experience - but I spoke the guy and he may re-consider) and one of the agencies got back to me about a 3 month contract position not too far from me.

I shall keep you informed :-)

Experience, cross referencing body language and conversation directions for one, and understanding the task sufficiently to ask all the necessary questions. In terms of software, get the design complete and on paper or alternatively as concise as possible. Such as recently I had a full project spec which read, "Grant "read&write" access to "everyone" on all files uploaded onto the server regardless of OS permission settings.", thus PermissionsFixer was born, the single most ugliest software ever developed for any Unix derivative ever, in the history of software. But it works.

I dont do twiddly features when it comes to software, too often business customers say "we like it, but we want that button blue and we want the search results to return this item first..." - if I think i'm going to get any of that and the 6 months tinkering and backwards and forwards time dealing with ammendments makes, then I let some other mug get the job.

If i'm not totally confident i'm going to come out the far end smelling of roses then I dont bother with it, but i'm lucky enough to be able to pick and choose my work. So no, i'm not doing that blasted Karaoke system I keep getting asked for.