Hi Kyle. Congrats on this very well put-together article. You’ve covered quite a lot of ground with this, and many simple practical examples to illustrate your points. I like that most of this advice to can apply to any service (design, etc.), not just web development. Very nice work mate.

I loved your points about how people who are commodities will be cut out by technology, but people who are creative experts in their field will always have plenty of work. I can already see that trend starting and it will only get worse.

I also loved your point about how business skills, communication, professionalism, and all those so called “soft skills” are equally (or more) important. That explains why a developer who appears to be less technically skilled may in fact me far more successful.

However, there are one or two points that I didn’t quite agree with, and I’d be interested to hear your take on these:

1. You strongly emphasised the value of finding a niche. Yet I worry that the way people talk about niches confuses people into thinking that have to to limit themselves to one niche. When in reality each niche is simply another marketing channel, you don’t have to pivot your entire business to that niche. Is that how you feel about niche marketing too, or do you advice you focus your entire business on a single niche?
2. You seems to heavily favour value-based pricing, which I have no qualms with. I think it’s a great method, and I’m trying to implement it more often myself. But you’ve glossed over quite quickly how to actually work through the process of assessing a project’s value to your client (and the type of commitment it requires from your client). I know from experience that there are far more complex hurdles to value-based pricing than you’re letting on. I’d love to hear more from you about how you overcome those challenges and make value based pricing work for most of your clients.