A retainer, not hours
A retainer of 10 hours at a discount tells the client to do the sums and pay you ad hoc. Sell a monthly product with a clear list instead.
Agency (10 posts)
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Retainers: sell a monthly product, not discounted hours
Notes from 2017, when I was working out what a Siftware retainer should be. Much of the thinking came from Brennan Dunn's guide to retainer agreements; the opinions are mine. The trap"Ten hours a …
Maintenance is a market you have to make
Web application maintenance isn't a thing, but it should be. I was drafting an article with that title in October 2017. The problem for anyone selling it: hardly anyone searches for it. Owners don't …
Inherited a web app? A due-diligence checklist
I gave this as a talk in 2016, for anyone taking over a web application: the new agency, the new freelancer, or the manager who has just been told it's theirs now. Most applications I've taken over …
A positioning statement you can actually fill in
The template is Jonathan Stark's (I clipped it from his site in November 2015): I'm a DISCIPLINE who helps TARGET MARKET with EXPENSIVE PROBLEM. Unlike my competitors, UNIQUE DIFFERENCE. Jonathan …
Two hundred agencies
Contacted 200 web agencies. Half said good idea, not buying. Three in ten said no. A fifth wanted details. That's the market talking.
One problem, one person
We don't make PHP apps for anyone who asks any more. We solve one problem for one type of person. (How we picked it.)
Pick a niche in three steps
February 2015, a team meeting where we stopped making PHP apps for anyone who asked. The new rule: solve one particular pain for one particular type of person, and talk to them about it, not rattle …
New dev rules
New dev rules. No production deploys after 3pm or any time on a Friday. Devs push to test, never master. Thirty days free bug fixing on anything we ship. The full list.
Deploy rules for a small agency
The dev policy we set at Siftware in September 2014, with the release cycle I'd described in a talk that February. A small team and a handful of long-running client projects. Deploying No deploys to …