> I spent the next six weeks building. By that point, my customers were loving the product – even my largest customer that started out highly skeptical of the paradigm. Everyone who had converted so far applauded the user experience and agreed Level was a beautiful product.
I wonder why they switched to Level and loved it when most were fine with Slack. Is it because they were fans, or do they have some real pain that drive them to action? Maybe the author accidentally hit a niche?
If it's me, I'd find that out before giving up. So most people are fine with what they have and won't switch, so what? Isn't that to be expected? Aren't you supposed to find some earlier adopters and grow from there?
CN2 is basically a fast lane to China that you can buy from one of China's biggest internet providers (China Telecom). It has two flavors, CN2GT[0] and CN2GIA[1], CN2GIA is said to be faster.
Some vps providers buy these fast lanes, make their vps fast to access in China, and sell them to hungry Chinese users. The most popular one is Bandwagon[2].
As far as I know, you can't do that, since your ICP license is tied to a host provider (like Aliyun), if you host your site somewhere else, you risk having your license revoked.
> If I host in Europe or US would the speed of traffic going into China be very slow?
I'm not sure, but I guess it should be nowhere near 1Gbps. You'll have to test it to find out.
> How can startups in China handle that kind of hosting cost?
It's mainly bandwidth that's expensive, but there is cheap cdn/cloud storage for static files, like videos. Then you can also pay by traffic, which is around $0.12/Gb.
* I've been hosting my Chinese blog in US vps since 2009 and it works fine.
* I have Gitea hosted in US vps and it works fine too.
* GoDaddy has Alipay (sort of China's PayPal) up for a long time.
* ICP Licenses are easy to get (at least for Chinese) and typically take less a month. I've done it for my company's websites and my clients' websites.
* ICP licenses are required only if you want to host your website in China. Hosting in China is ridiculously expensive and many Chinese go out of their way to host elsewhere. For 9$ a month you get 1 cpu, 1G ram and 1MBit bandwidth, which translates to 128kb/s.
To make your website load, and load fast in China:
* Remove Google fonts, Google cdn, resources from FB, twitter, etc. this should fix 95% of your problem.
* Avoid well-known host providers (AWS, Vultr, Linode) if you can, they tend to get banned.
* Get a host with CN2. I heard hosting in Hong Kong is fast too. It's only necessary if you really want your site to be lightning fast. As a Chinese, if I'm visiting your website and your website is in English, then I probably expect it to be slow, so...
It could be, if you do it right. As a former freelancer and now consultancy owner, I suggest you to:
1. Avoid cheap freelancers.
2. Always start with small tasks to test a freelancer. Assume a freelancer is unreliable until proven otherwise by his actions.
3. Make a wireframe yourself, then hire a designer to design it, then hire a developer to develop it. To save money, you can skip the designer, but the end result will be ugly. You need to decide what you want to build and specify how it will look like BEFORE hiring someone to build it.
4. If you don't want to or don't know how to make a wireframe, consider hiring a good consultancy to do it with you. They're more likely to have this skill than freelancers.
I believe essentially you need help building your MVP, and your options (freelancing, full-time employee, co-founder, or consultancy) are just different ways of getting that help, they don't matter as much as finding someone you can trust, and managing expectations, especially your expectations.
I was in a similar situation in a kind of reversed way several years ago. I was good at coding, but had no interest in it, since I had started learning it around 8 years before. The passion just wasn't there any more.
But I was struggling financially so I took a freelance gig and turned out I enjoyed it pretty much.
I believe you are pretty screwed if you want to only work on what you are passionate about. Things can stay new and exciting for only so long.
I recommend reading the book So Good They Cannot Ignore You.
After reading your comment about more context. I honestly feel you should seriously consider learning how to manage people/projects. Or, how to bring in help without bringing in problems.
Ask yourself is this increase of work temporary. After all current deadlines are met, will you still be as busy? Can you expect to relax and rest, or are you expecting as much new work waiting for you? Will there be as much work two months later? six months later? Will there be more work? Will there be new clients?
If it's not temporary, if there will be only more work, then it's only reasonable to focus on seeking help now. You can't handle the workload you can't handle forever.
You probably need to change your mindset too. From "what do I need to do to solve this problem?" to "what help do I need to solve this problem?"
I recommend reading E-Myth Revisited, exactly the book for small business owners facing too much work to do.
1. Learn management. If you want people to do things to your satisfaction, you have to be explicit about your expectations, communicate it, monitor progress, and review results. Even if you get a talented coder to help you, he probably has different ideas about how things need to be done, and you still need to clarify who's responsible for what.
2. Give some of your projects to others. Instead of split a 50k project, you give this entire project to others, maybe charge a fee. You'll earn less and have less headaches.
I started with no connections too. I've been a freelancer since 2015 and I recently started my own consulting firm. Here's how I got clients.
1. I contacted someone on a PHP forum looking for coders, we chatted and he turned out to own a consultancy and one of his clients was looking for .Net coder. He referred me and I got my first client as a freelancer.
2. I attended a frontend meetup and met another consultancy owner and I freelanced for him for about a year.
3. Last year I sent out around 50 proposals on Upwork and got several people talking to me and 1 client. It was not terrible, just very frustrating, and there were people who were only looking for US/European freelancers so you are not always competing with, say, Indians. Eventually Upwork asked for my id card, electricity bills and I left.
4. When I was starting my own consultancy, I wrote an ad and asked everyone I knew to post it on their social media. I also asked my girlfriend to ask everyone she knew too. 500 people saw it and I got my company's first two clients.
Key insights:
1. Consultancies/agencies are easy targets, when they need coders, they REALLY need coders NOW. You won't get paid as much, but a subcontract is better than no contract. And they might even refer clients to you.
2. Keep meeting people, and talking to them about your service. Know that forums, Upwork, networking are all just means for meeting people. How you do it doesn't matter, what matters is that you keep meeting people. Congratulations on becoming a salesperson and yeah, it's less sexy than writing code.
I'm a Chinese, and I'm a gamer, I can help. I'm mainly a developer so I can take this gig if it doesn't take too much time. Or I can ask around for you.
You can send me an email (see my profile) about the details.
I used to do English to Chinese translation jobs on Upwork, the pay was reasonable (translators are very under-paid in China) so there were some good translators. Nowadays Upwork are much more hostile to freelancers (or just Chinese freelancers?) and Chinese translators are leaving the platform.
You should be able to easily find a freelancer by asking any Chinese people. Just look for someone who speaks very good English. Incompetent translators usually don't understand what they're translating.
Also, I suggest you to spend time communicating with your translator, instead of simply providing an excel. Translators need to know the context of the material they're translating. If they're translating a game, show them the game, if they're translating the app, show them the app and explain to them what it does. Or they will make hilarious mistakes. For example, "The Elder Scroll" was once translated to Chinese as "Old Man Scrollbar", "Lord of the Ring" as "Lord of Horse Racing Track".
As a freelancer from China who is starting my own agency, I've developed many outsourced projects for my clients, or my clients' clients. Here's my advice.
0. Sometimes it takes MORE time and effort if you outsource it. It might take as long to find candidates and describe your requirements as if you build it yourself. And you might choose an incompetent freelancer/company and have to restart the search again. I feel it's only worth the effort to find a good developer if you plan to work with him for more than just several months.
1. Try to get a referral. It's way easier to find a reliable developer this way.
2. Avoid popular freelance marketplaces like Upwork. The competition tends to drive away non-desperate developers (like me).
3. Be as specific as possible in describing what you want to build, provide a mockup if possible. Especially if you won't meet the developer IRL.
4. Find someone who speaks English and communicates proactively, who reports progresses and delays without you asking. It'll drive you nuts if you don't know if a deadline will be met and your developer won't reply to your email.
Finally, you can send me an email if you're interested in having my company build your MVP for you.
I also wonder if there's really a market for such a tool? Who needs to optimize for China EVERY MONTH? Besides Cloudflare (which sucks)?
I had a similar idea of offering a service to make websites fast in China. Seems more viable.