my blog. for you.

Let’s talk digital.

I’m an independent IT consultant and entrepreneur in the Internet and software business. I’m interested in design, enterprise applications, web apps and SaaS products. I design and develop business solutions and applications. I help companies in terms of software quality and knowledge transfer, e.g. with Angular and Spring Boot.

Recommendation: The Freelancer’s Show

If, like me, you're an independent consultant or freelancer I can highly recommend the podcast The Freelancer's Show, which is about the business of consulting and freelancing in the IT / software development industry. More than 300 episodes in it covers a wide range of subjects that are vital if you want to run a successful and sustainable software consulting business. Some of the questions the show tries to answer or at least help the listeners with are: How do I position myself? How ... Read more

So sollten Freelancer ihre Preise wirklich kalkulieren

Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.Vor kurzem machte ein Artikel auf dem Startup Blog Gründerszene die Runde, der behauptet: „So sollten Freelancer ihr Gehalt berechnen“. Darin geht es um den Preis, den Freiberufler in der IT Branche für ihre Leistungen verlangen können. Autor dieses Gastartikels ist Thomas Jajeh, Gründer und Geschäftsführer der Projekt-Vermittlungsplattform Twago. Eigentlich sollte man also meinen, dass hier ein Branchenkenner eine fundierte Analyse und sinnvolle Tipps für Freiberufler liefert. Allerdings verspricht bereits der Titel nichts Gutes. Die ... Read more

Survey for IT freelancers: How do you approach marketing and sales? – The results!

Ten days ago I published a survey for IT freelancers asking various questions about how they approach marketing and sales. As promised here are the results of the survey. Thanks a lot to everybody who participated: The survey was filled out by 31 freelancers, 22 of whom came via a link both posted on several forums and emailed to personal contacts directly. 8 participants clicked on the survey on Facebook while 1 filled it out on this website. Save for the last ... Read more

Survey for IT freelancers: How do you approach marketing and sales?

As you probably know, I'm an independent IT consultant. Recently, I've been researching how to do marketing and sales in the industry in a bit more detail. I tried different approaches and made some experience with what works - and especially with what doesn't ... I'd like to share this experience with other IT consultants (e.g. through tutorials, best practices and tools for supporting sales processes). In order to get a better picture of how others in the industry approach marketing and ... Read more

Arbeitnehmerüberlassung? Nein, danke!

Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.Der Markt für Aufträge für IT Berater wird ganz wesentlich von so genannten Vermittlern dominiert - Unternehmen, die als Mittelsmänner zwischen Dienstleistern und Kunden fungieren. Die Gründe dafür sind vielfältig, haben unter anderem mit dem deutschen Gesetz zur "Scheinselbständigkeit", aber auch mit der unzureichenden Positionierung vieler IT Freiberufler am Markt zu tun. In letzter Zeit häufen sich kuriose Auftragsanfragen einiger dieser Vermittler: In der Projekt-Ausschreibung wird zunächst eindeutig nach Freiberuflern gesucht. Kommt es dann im ... Read more

Freelance Developers: Get Your Act Together!

Time and time again I get emails starting like this: Good morning Harvey Nash Business Partner, I would like to make you aware of a new contract that we have open at the moment [ ... ] I didn't bother to anonymize this particular example because somebody who can't bother to look up a person's name on the Internet certainly doesn't care about some negative publicity either. So, go look up their website, I'm sure Harvey Nash are nice people after all. Anyway, I can only ... Read more