Part time contracts how to find

[SueEllen]

Interesting. Do you have any links please?

Make friends off-line.

[northernladuk]

Make friends off-line.

Is that even a thing? You mean like in real life? <shudder>

[mudskipper]

You really are looking at retiring ASAP aren't you...

Yeah well gave clientB 3 months notice, but we've done nothing about a handover. TBF have been away much of June anyway, so have chased for next week to discuss a plan, but really want to get IT out my hair asap!

[GJABS]

Can you do a bit of .Net (old style webforms) as well as SQL?

I've done some .Net web pages at home projects, but nothing commercial. A few years ago I wrote a console-based C# application for a trading program at home. It worked technically and put trades over a $million onto my brokerage account, and was slightly profitable. But dealing costs turned those profits into slight losses..
But the structure of the code is probably atrocious because I learned to code it using Google search tips for the most part.
My next idea is to pull down sentiment about particular stocks from the Twitter API, and see whether this might be able to detect investor pessimism. Again the code isn't the neatest nor does it use the full hierarchy of functionalities such class inheritance.

[GJABS]

OK I'm now deciding to back-pedal on this idea, and suggest to clients not a 3-day week, but a 4-day week. I wonder whether this might bring more contracts into scope?

[ladymuck]

OK I'm now deciding to back-pedal on this idea, and suggest to clients not a 3-day week, but a 4-day week. I wonder whether this might bring more contracts into scope?

Four days a week is an easier sell, that's for sure.

[northernladuk]

OK I'm now deciding to back-pedal on this idea, and suggest to clients not a 3-day week, but a 4-day week. I wonder whether this might bring more contracts into scope?

Not really. I can't remember ever seeing a part time contract in all my years. The clients expectation is for a day rate contractor to do a weeks work. All that adding a day is that if a client that is desperate for you 'might' be more flexible for just one day. If you are up against similar skilled people that will do 5 days then you'll go to the bottom of the pile.

Best way to achieve 4 days is start off on 5, prove yourself and then drop it on the client later down the line and hope they will play ball because you've been valuable. Getting one through a cold application is going to be very difficult.

[quackhandle]

Remember to market yourself correctly you are not a SQL Dev but a DevOps Techy or Data Engineer or a Site Reliability Engineer or other crap like that.

qh

[courtg9000]

Late to the party on this one. To get business like this, the best way is existing contacts and referrals. LEt me know if you want me to teach you quickly how to set up a referral network - its not difficult and would take about an hour of your time. I can even do the teaching of it on this thread if you need it.
Secondly if you want lots of smaller projects, contracts and pieces do some marketing and learn a bit about selling.
Think about where you position yourself and why. You will probably need to invest in some marketing, especially your website and what google says about you (I don't know about your skill set, but think logos, web stuff, seo, brochure/copy writing).

[SueEllen]

courtg9000 maybe you need to schedule a webinar - if you think you will be well enough