# of clients?
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- qbner
For those who run their own companies / freelance, how many clients do you typically have?
A. Tiny projects like spot illustrations, fast turnarounds.
B. A few small clients at a time, smaller projects.
C. One big client, many months, big invoice.
D. Mix of big and small clients. Big ones pay the bills.
- formed0
All of the above, but all of the above pay the bills, just smaller clients pay less (but it adds up). Small projects are generally to keep ongoing clients happy and open doors to larger ones.
- pressplay0
B. and the tip of the D.
- MrT0
A + mostly D.
- Fax_Benson0
E. Not enough of A-D.
- fadein110
B + D but mainly B. Big clients / projects do not always equal more money - lots of smaller quick turnaround projects can be more profitable from my experience.
- detritus0
Yeah, I had that realisation a couple of years back, fadein11 — business was quiet and I realised that I wasn't getting a good return on the investment in quoting/working on big projects.
So, that summer, I focused on all the wee ones coming in instead and found business picked up dramatically.
Now it's a balancing act of the two...
Fair enough, my business is a wee bit different to a lot of people's here, but same industry.... so where big projects are concerned, sometimes a middle agent will portion off an excess of the value in it, and haggle down all the suppliers (including me) underneath.
Othertimes, not. They're the good ones :)
- Big Projects = Kudos
That's the main benefit as I see it...detritus
- Big Projects = Kudos
- fadein110
^ yep agree. big job direct with client is a winner but still needs to be offset against time spent to manage it / endless meetings / Skype / calls etc. I generally like a small-medium website for startups nowadays. Least amount of headaches, although not always - still depends on the client.
- breadlegz0
E. Recurring monthly billed clients. Medium sized...
About 12 of them.