That's not to say you won't ever find a good client in a coffee shop, but I suspect it has a lower viability rate than a Craigslist ad, and at least on Craigslist I don't have to spend any real time talking to the people who are clearly not serious clients.
@spqr Your comment is informative, but your account has been hellbanned for quite a while it seems. Only users with showdead can read your replies. Maybe you'd like to look into that.
https://twitter.com/iWaffles/status/256984030552129537/photo...
Why do you feel it's overpriced exactly? If someone thinks it's a good idea to try $5 isn't exactly a big risk to take to have a turnkey product.
If you really want people in coffeeshops to approach you try something more personal and direct. "I'm xxxx. I build websites/applications, feel free to say hi,let's chat!" or whatever.
It doesn't mean anything; I bought this laptop & went directly to a conference, and just wanted it to look slightly distinctive, and the duct tape was all I had. It does cover the Apple logo so it looks like I hate Apple or something (I do hate excessive and ostentatious branding).
I kept it because I kept having conversations about it. Even baristas remember me as the guy with the X.
It's odd but I don't think a logo has any meaning any more, because real life turned into Nascar.
If I saw that, I would probably have assumed you were just a huge X-Files fan or something.
Actually, thinking about it now, I think the next laptop I buy, I'm going to put an X like that on there, along with a small sticker that just says "I Want To Believe".
I would question, however, whether putting a sticker of any kind is gonna help you score gigs. I mean, if you were looking for a coder, would you really approach some random guy/gal in a coffee shop based solely on a sticker on their laptop and knowing nothing else about them?
Maybe having a sticker with a link to your github, as suggested by others, would be more useful (if your user id is memorable).
I full sentence briefly explaining what you do, and more importantly giving people permission to interrupt you would stand out more than just some random sticker.
Other possible downsides include, people coming up to you and bothering you with non-relevant "work" or "free work for equity" which you're not interested in.
There is also the exclusivity thing, where a potential client might perceive you as "too eager" for work, and you end up loosing a gig you might have gotten otherwise. (Granted, I'm reaching on this one).
I think it's a neat idea, but you have to be judicious when putting on any overt "label" on yourself or on the tools of your trade. I only bring this up due to my own experiences with stickers on my laptop. Getting them off is no easy task either (glue residue and such).
Wouldn't coffee shop owners use this to kick you out?
The stuff some coffee shops put up with is truly bewildering.
Good idea but you need some contact info on your site and please remove the "whois privacy" from your whois record for the domain.
In all but a limited amount of cases you don't need that. Use a separate gmail account that forwards to your real email to filter if you are worried about spam. Put another address into the whois and google voice number if you are worried about phone calls. To begin you won't get that many with one domain and you also are preventing anyone who wants to get in touch with you from contacting you.
Also, why should someone give you money if you don't even have any info as to who you are that they can trace on your website? (which to repeat I like the idea).
Registrars (I run an ICANN registrar) typically push privacy because it's good for them. I've seen privacy on records with businesses that want the exact opposite.
Anyone who disagrees please post your thoughts and I will address them individually based on my years in this business. (I'd actually like to hear new reasons why people do this that I haven't heard before).
I agree about publicly displaying contact info, but would like to know some good suggestions for filtering out the crap that comes with it.
Gmail account which is setup to forward to your regular email account. Or simply change to a new gmail if you get to much spam. I register domains all the time and have a single email account that represents a large quantity of domains. I don't find the spam to be a big problem at all.
If you run an ICANN registrar, you should be aware that ICANN requires whois information to be accurate. Providing incorrect data is grounds for cancellation of your domain name. I guess long as you can still be reached from the address it would be fine though?
Personally, I use whois privacy because I don't want my physical address (and identity) to be publicly available. I had one domain that didn't have privacy years ago, and I kept getting snail-mail spam every year asking me to "renew" it, from some registrar I'd never heard of.
Not speaking for other registrars of course but what's the chance that we will cancel your domain because there is "inaccurate" info?
In order to do that someone would have to file a complaint with ICANN then ICANN contacts us and we send you an email telling you to fix the info. And we would bend over backwards before cancelling the domain because who wants to deal with how pissed you'd be if we did that? What do we have to gain vs. what do we have to lose.
Do a test. Register a name with, say namecheap or godaddy. Purposely put in bad info (not bogus looking but just wrong). The file an complaint with ICANN. See what happens. (And that's after someone files a complaint how or why would someone care to do that?)
I think we got the WHOIS privacy by default on NameCheap. We're not hiding from anyone - our names and profiles are linked on the bottom of the page. I would, however, advise domain owners to be wary of information registered, as they may find their home address and phone number propagated all across the web, mirrored by tons of whois/rtld sites, never to be removed again.
Funny how that happens now isn't it? You have to ask yourself why are they so eager to give you that?
"our names and profiles are linked on the bottom of the page"
I was only able to bring up one profile. The rest you have to be connected or logged into linkedin. You have to link in to the linked in public profile. But even then the amount of info is limited unless you pay for the enhanced extra linkedin paid service. Makes much more sense to simply have some info on your site. And certainly not way at the bottom "below" the fold.
"as they may find their home address and phone number propagated all across the web"
That's definitely a valid concern.
My suggestion is simply to use a school address, po box or other contact address. For phone number as mentioned get a google voice number (or another service if you already have google voice.)
While it isn't advised and there are reasons not to do the following I can tell you that if you simply made up an address somewhere that would be fine as well. Nobody is policing that. In theory you could lose your domain but in practice that will never happen.
