The relationship between a freelancer or agency and their clients is a true partnership. It’s a customer service dynamic, and there are ways that you can build your revenue by providing a top-notch customer experience.
You also become a business partner, advising clients on how to use software to take better advantage of their data, improve their workflows, and grow their business. You have opportunities to build significant revenue streams for your own agency by nailing both sides of that equation.
Following the advice below will help you build a loyal client base. As their businesses grow, you get more opportunities to provide value and grow your revenue alongside them. Some of our Experts have grown their businesses exponentially over time, like Jesus Varga, who went from freelance Glide development to founding LowCode Agency with a staff of over 20 people.
This advice comes straight from the Glide agencies and freelancers who have learned from direct experience how to work effectively with clients and how to build a successful business for themselves.
For information on how to grow your revenue with the Glide Experts program, read Part 1.
Set a clear scope and deliverables
Ensure you and your client are on the same page for a project from the beginning by setting a clear scope for the project in a contract. Provide clear milestones in the form of set deliverables as well. During your build, stay focused on the agreed scope of the app and provide regular updates to your client throughout. This workflow will protect your work by preventing scope creep and also help ensure the client is happy with their results since you have shared expectations for the project.
Set payments at specified intervals throughout your project and get them in writing. For additional assurance, many experts only grant the client admin access to the team once the final payment is received. Consistency and clarity up front are key to creating a positive client-provider relationship and upping the likelihood of repeat business.
Don’t sell yourself short
Many no code freelancers and agencies underestimate what their services are worth to businesses and inadvertently undercut their own rates as a result. Chances are you should (and could) be charging more.
Charging more will increase your revenue, but it will also build you a better client base. You want to be working with customers who value software, want to develop and maintain a broader range of apps, and have the funding to invest in your services long-term.
As an Expert building on Glide, you have immense value. Your clients depend on your knowledge of Glide to unlock the full potential of both Glide and their business. The more proficient you are in Glide, the more you should make, even if new builds take you less time. One of Glide’s greatest strengths is the ability to create a powerful software solution in a fraction of the time it takes for traditional development, but that doesn’t mean it’s less valuable.
Understanding what businesses spend on software will help you assess your value to your customers and charge accordingly. Most B2B SaaS products price their products per user. How some of the most common business tools price per user monthly:
$18-19 user/month - Simple productivity tools like ClickUp, Notion, Zoom, and Mural
$30 user/month - More complex tools like Asana
$59 user/month - Comprehensive tools with additional support like Justworks
With your Glide build, businesses get custom tools that do exactly what they need. Their tools fit their workflows instead of having to adjust their whole team around a piece of software. They don’t have to pay for unnecessary features and bloatware. Plus, they get the services of a skilled professional who can refine and adjust that tool when they need it changed.
Even with your fees, they would be spending more long-term on off-the-shelf software and a lot more for something created without the help of Glide, given the cost of building an app with custom coding.
Form long-term alliances with customers
Don’t just build one-and-done tools. Instead, work to become a consultant of sorts for your clients, helping them develop successful workflows, processes, and software solutions. You can help them improve their use of data and find new opportunities to use it by building out their tech stack over time.
Building a good relationship with a business puts you front and center for every decision they make. You are a workflow advisor and solution provider, not just a technician hired to complete a single job. Glide Expert Megann Lock describes this relationship building as the most rewarding part of her job, but also the key to building a lucrative and sustainable business model.
I help them finish out one app and then recommend the next project they should build with Glide. We create this alliance that ends up lasting years. It's really beautiful. You finish a project, and you're already on to the next one because you've become this integral part of their business.
Document your builds
Document every one of your builds for the benefit of both your clients and yourself. Documentation of your build is a helpful deliverable for your client since it gives them a detailed source of reference for their new app. It can be outlined as part of the scope of every project.
Documentation also helps you recall what you’ve built in the past and more easily jump back into a project if you’re hired to update a specific project. When you have built multiple apps over the years for multiple clients, it gets difficult to remember the why and what of every app unless you’ve documented it. When a client returns a year later and asks for a change, it will be easy to refresh yourself.
Documenting your builds will help set you up for success in the future - especially as your business grows. When you grow and begin adding more developers to your team, this will help provide reference and maintain consistency between your developers. Jesus Varga, Founder of LowCode Agency, says documentation is the best piece of advice he can offer other Glide developers:
Some people say we have too many steps, comparing how we build apps at LowCode to other freelancers. We spend a couple of days scoping each project up front and wireframing. In the beginning, the output of putting in those hours is worth it. Spending time on scoping and wireframing dramatically affects the time saved. I think that's why we as an agency have been able to grow and get better, larger clients because they have confident expectations regarding quality and professionalism.
Plan a comprehensive handoff at the end of a project
Plan a handoff session for the end of each project, setting up the new users and operators of your app for success. A great way to do this is by creating a Loom recording of yourself walking through all the elements of your build. Customers can reference that recording instead of having to run back to you whenever they have follow-up questions.
Depending on how savvy your client is, you might want to teach them some details of how to make light edits or updates to their own app. Plan a handoff session with the technical point person on their team and walk them through the basic edits they might need to make.
“I like teaching clients how to do things themselves because that opens up my time to work on the more complex things they need,” Megann Lock explained. This empowers clients and makes your services faster and more cost-effective for them.
Simple admin is also an upsell opportunity for you when working with teams without the ability or time to make updates to the Builder themselves. Create an admin portion of the app or build your own admin portal to give their team the power to change things without getting into the actual editor. This way, they can’t break things — you only give them access to edit certain things within the app, and you gate everything else.
Continually expand your knowledge of Glide
Make an effort to stay up to date with Glide’s tech so that your business becomes more valuable to your clients. Glide is always improving, evolving, and introducing new capabilities to the platform. Make an effort to stay up to date. New launches, like SQL or SSO, expand what Glide apps can do, which expands your potential business opportunities.
Being in the Experts program and getting the latest Glide Certifications in Glide University will help keep you up to date with product announcements, roundtables with your peers, and access to early product betas. You also want to seek out opportunities to learn and construct apps with the new capabilities that launch.
Building smaller apps to showcase specific features to clients can help keep your skills sharp. Some agencies will create an app to run their agency and client relationships and consistently update it when features are released. This kills two birds with one stone — giving you an opportunity to practice and show off new capabilities to clients in the process.
Develop a business that will grow
The best thing you can do for yourself is to position yourself to be your client's solutions expert. You solve one problem for them and then become the center point for developing solutions for all the challenges they encounter.
Find clients with the ability and willingness to invest in their software. Find clients you can grow with. Build partnerships with them, growing their business and yours. Create a solid client base that becomes a solid revenue stream and foundation for your success.
