Expert NoCoders is a Slack Community for NoCoders who do client work (or people interested in Freelancing/Starting an Agency)
Together we can help each other out and improve.
A thousand candles can be lit with a single candle! There are more than enough NoCode projects out there for everyone!
I started a NoCode agency in March 2020. I have hired people, fired people, people have left the business, clients have fired me, I have fired clients, we have changed many many systems and ways of working, we have tried many many different things. Some worked some did not.
Here are the type of questions that I feel like a community of NoCode freelancers and agencies can help each other with.
How to hire NoCoders?
It is hard to find the right skill set and right attitude that can learn Bubble. Bubble requires a very diverse skill set. Sometimes a person is fiddling with UI, sometimes APIs, sometimes databases. In a standard software engineering team, that is 3 people!
I've hired from an Electrical Engineering background, Arts background, Software Engineering background, Computer Science background. Some have worked some have not. I wish I could reach out to people and pick their brains on what to look for when hiring. What type of team structures have worked for other agencies?
How to deal with clients who fire us?
Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't work. We once tried 3 weeks to recover a client but it didn't work.
Pro tip, if your client has a graphic design background and is asking you to make a bubble app, double your project price. Then double it again. Maybe double it once more. The new responsive engine makes things much much easier and you can definitely extract a very very polished look and feel from bubble. But Graphic Designers who play in Figma/Xd/Sketch etc are unsatisfiable clients with a normal pace/price of work.
Some clients are wise and understand it. But some don't. I really wish this was something that could be shared and learned as a community of bubble freelancers and agencies. I'm sure other freelancers and agencies have learned this the hard way.
I wish I had negotiated better terms and break clauses. What do other people do and how?
How to fire clients and why?
It is hard to reflect on current workload/capability/capacity and request clients to find someone else.
I remember I requested a client to find someone else 3 days after starting the work. Sometimes it is a mismatch of expectations. Sometimes it is ways of working/communication. How do others qualify clients before it gets here/
Which NoCode Platform to use?
We have tried Bubble, Wappler, Adalo, Webflow, Zapier and AirTable. Now we primarily focus on bubble. I wish I had the foresight to speak with a fellow freelancer in other NoCode platforms. That would have been much faster than failing at delivering projects using Wappler and Adalo and wasting months of time.
Which Project Management system to use?
This is my favourite one. I have spoken to many people about this one. And we have used Basecamp, Notion, Asana, Trello and now use ClickUp in our agency.
I can probably write a separate article on the pros and cons of these overall. I am sure this is something others would be quite interested in.
How to scope apps before building them?
We have tried google sheets, detailed app planning, no app planning, wireframing, low fidelity wireframing, user stories by a business analyst, user story mapping and much more. I really would love the opportunity to see what everyone else does, what worked, what didn't etc.
How to price NoCode projects?
I let far too many free features slip into the build and definitely need help with this one..
Many more topics
Every NoCoder has their unique journey of how they found out about NoCode. Let's face it. We all love it and start screaming about it. I have been called Mr Bubble by my friends, a title I am happy to own!.
But it isn't that easy for people to know how to
- Start freelancing in the NoCode space
- Get a full time job in the NoCode space
- Handle problems associated with freelancing and/or running a NoCode agency
- Reach out to other NoCode freelancers to team up and collaborate on larger projects
This is small glimpse of why I have started the community and for who.
Join the Slack Community
Here is the link via join.slack.com/t/expertnocoders/shared_invi..