"The client has paid the deposit, I started work but he is now asking for his money back. What should I do?"

"I'm a freelance designer and developer now and would like to run my own digital agency one day. But the gap between freelance and agency seems somewhat a stretch. What would you recommend for someone who seeks to grow into an agency?"

"One of my customers, who is currently doing well on Amazon (more than $10,000 per month in sales), wants to create his own website. He asked me if I'm interested taking over the whole website not just as a project, but as a long term partner, which means, I will do whatever I think will benefit the website in programming, design, and maintenance. He asked me if I want to do it with a fixed rate monthly or a profit share in revenue. Looks like he wants me treat the website as my own business, and invest as much as possible to bring more potential in this eCommerce business. Have anyone had experience like this?"

"We're a large web design company in NJ... We've got a full staff in our office and I think it's time to bring on an official sales person. Out of the companies who are fully staffed, how many of you have a salesperson? If you have one, what has been your experience: when did you hire and why?"

"I am seeking advice on finding clients who are not in your area of work. A few of my ideas that I have come up with is using listings that are in desired prospects' area's and writing emails/cold calling, using Facebook advertising to reach. I would prefer not to resort to using websites like Freelancer.com. I am just curious as to what others have done and found to be successful."

"Lets put aside client referrals... What are you doing to grow your freelance work? 1) Identify wealthy towns/cities near me and visit their towns Chamber of Commerce Business Directory. I go through the listing and quickly review each businesses website and then send them an email introducing myself, how I found their site and offer suggestions on how to improve their website, design, functionality, eCommerce, etc. 2) Networking events. What works for you? #1 is really time consuming and difficult."

"Curious to know how you respond to people who are trying to get your cost down or asking for something they can't afford. I mean other than just saying, 'sorry this is our cost, we can't do it any cheaper'. Do you accompany that with any explanations?"

Clients approach web developers with requests for specific technologies all the time. For example, PHP is a popular request and not everybody works with PHP; some people choose to specialize, i.e. for Python only. Could that minor difference disqualify you in your client’s eyes? Absolutely. Is that a good enough reason to give up immediately and send the client elsewhere? Of course not. Let’s explore a few approaches with word for word examples that should help you decide how to best serve that client and land good projects.

"Recurring Revenue for Web Agencies" is our first book about the business of website development. It's about creating profitable sources of recurring revenue and it's aimed at web agency owners and web professionals. This in-progress book is available for purchase right now on Leanpub.com.

A list of useful project management rules could be a mile long. But what good is a list that doesn't help you remember the truly immutable rules? You know: the ones that you shouldn't be ignoring, bending, twisting, breaking. In this article I give you the rules that we use in our digital agency and the exact explanation how they help us manage our web development projects better. I also mention what happens when you go around these rules.