Thread

I know that many of the “regulars” here have small or solo web development shops. If this describes you, I am curious—especially if you are a generalist: What sorts of new clients have been adding to your bottom lines (if any) during this most trying past few months?

Have your new projects been upgrades to existing sites or entirely new sites? B2B or consumer?

My work is in the healthcare sector—and the Web is a relatively small part of what I do. It’s often a very atypical isolated niche and I am wondering how others are getting by.

My own experience of late (with respect to the Web development aspect of my business) is that clients are noticeably more scared of uncertainty and much more conscientious about scope changes. But fortunately, they continue to launch new sites and upgrade the security on existing ones.

How about in your world?

We have some clients cutting back on their advertising budgets (which is a bad idea, but it happens in recessions), but for the most part we’re still growing. We’re adding new clients and have lots of new projects for existing clients.

Honestly, I feel it is an opportunity for smaller developers provided they are capable of properly leveraging it. No matter what position we might be in the business cycle at any given time, opportunities still exist—they’re just sometimes more difficult to find and take advantage of. I’ve been working on a blog post that explores this subject, but suffice to say, I haven’t had time to finish that (or, for that matter, get my own site up and running!) because I’ve been so busy.

How’s that for irony? I’ll post a link and a summary to this thread once I get that (and, of course, my site) up later this week.

We just had a panel discussion at the RefreshPittsburgh meeting last week about surviving the recession.  It turns out that each of the five panelists said that their business is actually up now that the economy has taken a downturn.  They related it to the fact that companies are downsizing - often starting with their marketing departments (NOT the marketing budgets) - and are hiring contractors and freelancers to fill the spots.

We just had a panel discussion at the RefreshPittsburgh meeting last week about surviving the recession.  It turns out that each of the five panelists said that their business is actually up now that the economy has taken a downturn.  They related it to the fact that companies are downsizing - often starting with their marketing departments (NOT the marketing budgets) - and are hiring contractors and freelancers to fill the spots.

O/T: I’m curious as to what you think about the RefreshPittsburgh meetups. I’ve been curious about them since I’ve found out, but really haven’t had the ability to move things around to make any of them this year. Is it something I should try to get to?

We’re getting new clients in one of two categories:

1) Small businesses that want to hopefully boost revenue by revamping old websites and launching new ones
2) Medium-sized businesses that want to improve their websites to improve their bottom line

Neither of these types of clients though have the budgets that they need to get everything they want done.  I expected the size of clientele to drop but it’s actually increased way past our norm.  However, the average client has a smaller budget than they did a year ago. So, our profit per project is down but we have more (though smaller) projects.  In the end, we end up slightly ahead of last year.

I share similar experiences. I also have clients in europe. Even though they are also hit with an economic recession, it still seems to be a bit more stable over there.