Why you should subscribe

From time to time people ask me why they should subscribe to Developer Connection when they can't see a catalogue of developers and clients that are using the platform. This, of course, does differ from other platforms you might have used, but it's actually a very deliberate choice not to have a huge catalogue of projects and developers freely browse-able on Developer Connection.

Why? Well, we believe that having the ability to browse and apply for any project you want to is the root cause of some of the primary issues you find on with other platforms - you can read more detail on our thinking here.  Some of the problems you might encounter regularly include things like:

• Other platforms all force you to write a proposal for every project you are interested in, and because every project attracts a large number of proposals you find yourself having to write a huge number of these across many projects which takes time, costs you money in development time lost and means the quality of each proposal suffers because you have had to do it so many times.  Add to this the fact that because there are often so many proposals, the chance of you landing any one project is slim and so you have a system which is fundamentally flawed. So there is no reason not to move away from this method. The reality is that often clients who choose to use other platforms are only interested in the lowest-priced proposals making it nearly impossible to compete on price for high quality, experienced developers, and yet there are so many client benefits to finding a local, high-quality Magento developers.  See the clients page for more on that.  Basically the developer profile ends up playing second fiddle when compared to the proposal rather than the profile being the primary source of details for the developers skills and experience.
• Our experience is that other platforms primarily attract the cheaper end of the market, and the quality of the development work done reflects this.  So on a platform where low price is much more of a driving factor than quality development work, you regularly find that the project proposals are often 'sparse' to say the least, regularly being nothing more than a couple of sentences with not nearly enough detail about the project to allow developers to determine if the project is a suitable fit or not, and this, in turn, compounds the problem above forcing you to write more proposals.
• Because price is such a driving factor with other platforms the only real way for an experienced developer to attempt to land a project is to compete in the lowest price bidding war which often ensues, but this means you are underselling your skills and experience, and also means that you will regularly find the project is not a good fit anyway because you don't have nearly enough detail on the project in the first place.

All of the above results in what we like to call 'moon on a stick' projects and just doesn't work in the UK market for either client or developer.  We wanted to structure things differently and remove the major blockers you get with other platforms.  We are targetted specifically at the UK market and very much looking for developers and clients who are a cut above what you find on other platforms.  Our target market is the middle ground between those projects where the absolute lowest price is the main consideration, and those larger companies who can afford to go straight to an affiliated Magento agency.  This middle ground includes a vast range of high-quality developers with years of development skill under their belt, and clients who recognise that, while cost is a definite factor, are willing to pay fairly and know that the skills and experience of a developer are a much more valuable consideration than 'how cheaply can I get this done for'.  So by using Developer Connection you will be getting great working relationships with top clients who recognise your value, and who you can give a great end result to.  Win-win.

So we differ at Developer Connection because:

• Each developer has one, complete, detailed profile showcasing all their work and skillset to date.  This should be kept up to date and forms the primary initial (before actually talking to you) source of detail for clients for their project.  So the client sees this profile and what's more only sees profiles which are relevant to their project according to the project spec they have chosen.  Intelligent matching looks at the spec, and each developer profile and only matches developers with the relevant skills.  It's worth noting that the matching is wide, but if for instance a project specifies needing an M2 Commerce developer, M2 Open Source only developers won't be matched.  The approach here is very much quality over quantity, so you can be sure that for every client project you are matched to, you are already a great fit.
• Every project has a full, detailed project spec and when developers get matched, the developer can see this full project spec so it's much more readily clear if the project is attractive or not.  Also there is an initial limit on the number of developers matched to each project (though the client can buy further matches if they want to) meaning you have a much higher chance of being considered for every project as the client isn't having to battle through countless applications, just a smaller number of very much higher quality applications increasing your chances of landing the project hugely.
• Though the project can optionally specify a desired price estimate for the project resulting in matching against an estimated hourly rate, this again is broadened to matched against developers a little outside of this estimated rate as well.  This is because we know that clients recognise that relevant skills and experience should be considered before price, giving the client a better choice of developers for consideration.  When being matched to a project, client and developer get each others direct contact details so prices and cost can form part of the discussions at this stage rather than making it the overarching primary consideration to deciding on a developer.
• Developer Connection has intelligent automatic matching to projects giving every subscribed developer an equally a fair chance of being in the running for each project.  Developers and clients can review each other so while this might form part of the decision-making process for a client, the intelligent matching means that newly subscribed quality devs have an equal chance at being matched to a project compared to those who already have many good reviews.  Another crucial point here is that because matching is automatic, you will always be in the running for being matched to projects, even when not logged in.

The reality is that when you have to pay for something rather than it being free, the purchase should obviously be considered, however you know that when you make that purchase the quality of the product you get compared a free equivalent will be that much higher.  At Developer Connection we don't want to feed into the unhealthy purely low price driven dynamic of other options.  We know that both you and clients recognise that by paying for a subscription or a project post you are actively making a choice to move out of that massively overcrowded, purely rock bottom price-driven low end of the market where end results are often poor.  Instead, you move into a place where there is a higher grade of both clients and developers and while cost is rightly still a definite consideration, it doesn't come ahead of first finding a range of developers with the right skills and experience to do the job.

So are you one of that higher grade of Magento developer who is looking for UK clients after quality work and are willing to pay fairly for it?  We think you are and that's exactly the reason why you should subscribe.