Freelancing in a Conglomerate World
Category: Economy & Business...
Posted Wednesday, September 01, 2004 at 01:22 PM [GMT-6]

I was fired by a client last week, and a high profile client, at that.

Well, "fired" is probably a tad strong, but even though the parting was amicable, the end result is the same. Mike Conaway's congressional campaign manager notified me that he is moving the account to a company that provides a political website template with "all the bells and whistles."

I saw it coming a couple of months ago after a meeting in which a new vision for the site was presented to me by the campaign manager, and I argued against almost every one of his suggestions. I have yet to see a campaign website that would be improved by a Flash splash page, for example. I guess we'll see if the ranchers in Lampasas and Brady are impressed by the new-fangled technology.

Anyway, the point of this post is not to whine about losing a client; that's just business. But it did cause me to consider (again) whether there's really any future for one-man (or woman) freelance web designers.

When you consider the breadth of technologies and skills required to be a good designer, it's a bit intimidating. Besides the meat and potatoes of HTML and CSS, I've had to deal with PHP, PERL, ASP, mySQL, Access, Java, Javascript and Flash. Then there are the "softer" skills like graphic design, advertising and marketing acumen, business and promotional writing, copyright and privacy laws and issues and digital photography. I need to be up-to-date on the latest trends and best practices in website usability and accessibility and search engine optimization. I've had to advise clients about domain name selection and registration, webhosting considerations, email configuration, and why putting a hard line break between two specific words to make the paragraph look better on the client's monitor was not a good idea.

When I consider the scope of the things I'm expected to master in order to please 100% of my clients 100% of the time...well, it makes me feel old and busted.

Fortunately, my temperament and outlook are such that I can't get a good depression started, much less maintain one. So I focus on tiny accomplishments, one at a time, and hope that the arsenal of tools and tricks that I build will satisfy 90% of the clients 90% of the time. If I can do that, maybe that's good enough.

As I said, losing a client isn't the end of the world. On the upside, at least I can start blogging about the campaign and the candidates, now that I don't have that pesky consultant-client relationship to worry about.

Oh, then there's this. The "dear John" email came last Thursday. On Friday, I received a call from a political consultant in the Dallas area whom I hadn't heard from in more than six months. He wants me to design a website for a state congressional candidate in East Texas.

Easy come, easy go. And vice versa.