You Can Help by Referring Clients

Have you found any of the articles I write helpful, such as GoingWare's Bag of Programming Tricks or those at the Linux Quality Database? Have I helped you solve a problem after you posted a question to a newsgroup or mailing list? Would you like to return the favor? I would be very grateful if you did.

If you work for a company that could possibly use my software consulting services, or you know someone who does, I'd like to ask you to mention me to your manager or to your contact at the company. It could be as simple as asking them to look at my website at www.goingware.com and suggesting I might be able to help out with a project.

Alternatively you can email me at crawford@goingware.com or telephone me at +1 (831) 401-3790 and give me the name and contact information of someone who might be interested in having me consult for them. With your permission I will call or email to say you referred me and ask what I might do to help.

If you are not sure whether someone might be able to use me, then look around my website to check out the kinds of things I do and what I know. I've been working as a software engineer since 1987 and have quite a wide variety of skills to offer. See for example my homepage, About GoingWare Inc. and my resume.

I have done a lot of work to make my website useful to visitors. While I do genuinely want to help other programmers, other self-employed people and the public, I work so hard on my website in part because sometimes a potential client will visit my site and contact me about doing a project. (I explain what I do to promote my website in this article.)

My experience in the five years I've been consulting full-time is that I get about two thirds of my business through personal referrals, mostly former coworkers, friends who are also consultants, or former clients. So although my website receives many visitors, it is not responsible for attracting a majority of my new clients.

Finding new work when projects are complete is a constant challenge for every self-employed consultant. I prefer to spend my time either working on my clients' projects, or when I have some free time, writing new articles. You can help me out in a tremendous way by doing me the simple favor of suggesting me to someone who might be able to use my services.

Thank you for your help.

-- Michael D. Crawford