1. Presented by:
Andy Walters - Sailboat Media, LLC
Steve Kessler - Denver DataMan, LLC

3. www.denverdataman.com/dc2010
or
Drupal Camp Colorado site

5. Who are we and why should you listen
to us?
Meet Steve Kessler
Owner and Lead Consultant of Denver DataMan
@denverdataman
denverdataman.com
Meet Andy Walters
President and developer at Sailboat Media, LLC
@andywalters
andy-walters.com

6. Will Drupal work for me?
What is Drupal?
Why open source?
What do you need your site to do?
Why Drupal?

7. What is Drupal?
http://www.tradeshow.co.za/chinese-car-parts/Chinese-Car-Images/Chinese-Cars-South-Africa.jpg

8. Why Open Source?

9. What do you need your site to do?

10. Why Drupal?
For the client
For the end-user
For the freelancer or small shop

11. Why small shops and freelancers?
Pricing
Timelines
Niches
Customer Service

12. Pricing
Hourly
Advantage: Straightforward for developer
Disadvantage: Difficult for clients to budget
Flat
Advantage: Straightforward for client
Disadvantage: Difficult for developer to budget time

13. Pricing
Velocity
Advantage: Developer gets money regardless
Disadvantage: Client has little guarantee
Retainer
Advantage: Developer gets money regardless
Disadvantage: Client can pay too much

14. Timelines
SS/F can be available faster
Clients: be realistic, but take advantage!
SS/F’s: learn to estimate your time correctly, or find
someone who can.

15. Niches
Niches can affect pricing and quality
Example: DDM’s Niche
Developers: Find a niche
Clients: Find someone in a niche, if possible
Gotcha: make sure you hire a Drupal shop, not just a
php shop

16. Relational
Clients: Make sure you’re not going to be a number.
SS/F: Treat your clients like they’re not a number!

17. How to find a small shop
groups.drupal.org
http://groups.drupal.org/node/15685
Drupal Association members
http://association.drupal.org/membership
Google
Referrals
LinkedIn & Twitter (other social media)
Craigslist
eLance, etc.

18. How to market as a small shop?
Make your profiles
Link your profiles to your website
Become a member of the Drupal Association (its
cheaper now with the Euro falling)
Optimize for Google
Make clients happy so you get referrals
Use social media - think Geek vs. marketing
Contribute

19. Qualifying questions to ask SS/F’s
What referrals or references can you provide me?
What experience does your company have doing
Drupal sites like the one I want?
Can you speak English and Geek?
Ask about their development process (more to come).
What regular communication practices do you have
with clients?

20. Requirements
Get to know your users story.
What do they want the site to do?
Why do they want the site to do it?
Can you achieve ROI with this use case?

21. Proposal and clarifications
Tell them what you are going to do.
Let them know its iterative as you better understand
their project.
Meet in person!

22. SOW
Clarity!
English and Geek.
Remember it’s a contract!

23. Site Plan
Tell your client what you are going to do
Specific details like fields, roles, etc.
Wireframes
Mockups
Workflows
Menu/page structures
For DDM this overrides the SOW

24. Implementation
Development.
Design.
Iterations in the implementation.

25. Site review and testing
Make sure the client knows what there getting.
Be approachable.
Be reasonable but not a push over for changes. Stand
your ground.

26. Training
Manuals.
English and Geek.
Teach each type of user.

27. Maintenance
Year 1
Out years

28. How to be a rock star client
You get for what you pay for.
Drupal is free like kittens are free.
Beware of unreasonable project timelines.
Beware of scope creep.
Communicate clearly -- SS/F's aren't psychic!

29. How to be a rock star SS/F
Have a process, and sell your process.
Be able to say “no”.
Learn your limits—bandwidth, client communication,
etc.
Beware of scope creep.
Communicate clearly -- clients aren't psychic!