Ghost Coding
Clear Your Backlog Without Growing the Payroll.
Ghost coding for agencies that need extra dev hands, not another full-time hire. I build it, you ship it, and your clients never know I was there.
THE PROBLEM:
Too much work for your team to keep up, but not enough to justify a whole new hire.
Every agency hits it. The Q4 rush, a big launch, three clients who all need something this week. Hiring someone full-time is a big commitment for a workload that goes up and down. Turning work away hurts even more.
That’s where I come in.
WHAT IS GHOST CODING?
Like a ghostwriter, but for code.
You hand me the work. I do it to your standards, in your process, under your name. When it’s done, it’s yours. Your client sees your agency and nothing else. Check out this blog post I wrote about it when I first started offering this service to my clients.
How It Works:
1. We talk.
A quick call to learn how your team works, what platforms you’re on, and where you’re getting stuck.
2. You send tasks.
One project, a steady stream of tickets, or something in between. Whatever fits.
3. I deliver. You get the credit.
Clean, tested work that ships under your name. Your clients won’t even know we were there.
However your team works, so will I.
Your team already has their project management workflow in place. We’ll slot right in so you don’t have to change a thing.
We can also help dial in your project management pipeline if you don’t have one already
Ghost Coding FAQs
Nope! We’ll hop on for even the smallest tasks. Many of our agency partners only need a couple hours a month, while others send us full projects. You’re never locked into a set number of hours or a long-term contract.
We send invoices out on the 1st and the 15th of every month for any hours accrued since the last invoice. If no work is requested, then no invoice is sent.
Not from us! Work we do for you stays off our portfolio, and we’re happy to sign an NDA. The one place a client could spot us is in the code itself, like commit history or author names in a repo. If that matters to you, we can commit under an account on your team and follow your coding style so everything looks like it came from in-house.
By default we don’t talk to your clients at all. If you’d rather we communicate with them directly, we’re happy to jump into your regular channels and represent your agency.
That’s totally fine. Plenty of agencies keep us on call just for the busy seasons, like the Q4 holiday rush or a big launch. Reach out whenever something comes up, and we’ll pick up right where we left off, based on availability.
It depends on the size of the task and our current workload, but we’ll always give you an honest timeline before starting. For urgent fixes, let us know as soon as possible. Rush or weekend fees may apply.
You do. Once an invoice is paid, everything we build for you belongs to your agency (or your client, depending on your agreement with them).
You can find our current hourly and retainer rates on our Rates page.
Committing to a set number of hours for a fixed term can help save on our hourly rate. Check out our Retainer packages if you know you’re going to need a steady amount of extra help