Plastering is the easy part of the job.
Finding jobs and having a good flow of work is the hard part.
I always preferred to work for a contractor as they do all that, the downside is they tell you what their willing to pay!
I agree. I've been self-employed for 10 years and finding/managing jobs is hard. I have always sold myself short when I was younger, and even though my work was good, it rarely lead to repeat business because I think people don't take you seriously if you don't make them pay. It's very paradoxical how pricing works, psychologically.
Working as a subcontractor for a contractor does provide you with steady income that's true. But one of the reasons I quit doing that is because they will pay you the bare minimum. And yeah sure, they take all the risk and have final responsibility but at the same time, if they want to keep their subcontractors, they need to motivate them as well. And seeing how they charged insane prices to their customers, it seemed rather selfish to not pay and treat their subcontractors better.
I think that the key to getting jobs is having good connections with other (local) businesses. For example: if you use a certain plastering product and have a good relationship with that company, they tend to refer you to their clients. Same with architects; if you build a good relationship with them, they tend to refer you. It seem like you kinda have to play ball and get some allies in the game.
Of course, being findable on google is also important... but getting referred by another professional in the business also works really well.
Trouble is, I've never been good at playing along.
An example.
Your 2 weeks in to your first job with a week left on target to finish on time to start your 2nd and only job booked in so far.
You 3rd quote for 6 months work is accepted but they want you to start in 3 days time.
What do you do?
me personally, I would tell them that I have a commitment that I need to finish first before I can start on theirs. If that is a problem, then they better find someone else. Also, I would ask them when they would like me to start before I price the job. And also, it is very common in Belgium to have to wait months for contractors to start. There's just a lot of shortage. People wait months for products to be delivered and months for contractors to be available. It's not unusual at all to see work sites completely abandoned for months at time. When they're building, things go fast, but in between work, things can take a very long time.
