[thelist] Out of area work

[Ben Henick]

On Mon, 19 Feb 2001, Beau Hartshorne wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I am trying to persuade my employer to seek out of area work. We are a
> talented web/print shop, but are based out of small town on a relatively
> small island. There seems to be quite a bit of work elsewhere in North
> America and in the world, but I have no idea how to tap into this market.

I'm somewhat on a limb here, but can't resist the urge to speak up.

Same as usual - network, network, network... little difference as I see
it, except that you might deal with higher overhead on out-of-town jobs,
and the bizdev that leads to them.

There are a lot of clients who insist on working with a vendor that's
local to them, but there are a lot of clients who don't.  Three
out-of-town clients are presently on my radar, and while I pay elevated
telephone bills by way of serving them properly it hardly hurts to make
the calls.

The one marked difference I can vouch for is that the distance tends to
slow down turnover time (at both ends) on requests.

With Seattle and Vancouver at spitting distance, you have a lot of
opportunities waiting to happen.  The fact that you're in Canada SHOULD
make you attractive to a lot of American clients; the media-fed perception
(as I suspect you know) is that the weakness of Canadian currency results
in cheaper rates.

Inquire to ad agencies about being their Web services vendor (or one of
several, if they're huge).

> flying all over the world, how would it be possible to meet these people?

If you must travel, enough of it can be done by ferry. :-)


-- 
Ben Henick
Web Author At-Large
http://www.io.com/persist1/
persist1 at io.com

"Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Pinky?"
"I think so, Brain, but... (snort) no, no, it's too stupid."
"We will disguise ourselves as a cow."
"Oh!" (giggles) "That was it exactly!"