Online, there are several ways you can contribute to your community no matter what you do as a freelancer. The trick is doing something you love, offering it for free and distributing it to everyone you can.

Giving back to the community leads to multiple benefits. You’re not only giving to the community–you’re increasing your professionalism, ...

While most sites will post a boring write-up on being on time, being nice and networking, I’m here to tell you the “real” nitty gritty of just what it takes to become a “real” professional freelancer. Here’s your very own copy of the Professional Freelancer’s Guide To Professional Freelancing.

But beware, ignore these steps, skip over a few, or do them out of order and you’re doomed to fail and return to that crappy cubicle making logos bigger and adding pictures of cute animals ...

I’ve never been a big fan of video on the web either, since I’m never at my computer unless I’m working so I never have time to watch. However, upon learning that Think Vitamin created a new membership service, called Think Vitamin Membership...

It’s interesting to see how many freelancers just work wherever they can, be it the local Starbucks, a spare bedroom or even the kitchen table. From my experience though, it’s extremely important to have a nice dedicated space, preferably filled with your favorite things.

While I don’t do any sort of graphic design, interior design is one of my favorite hobbies so I thought I’d share some tips and inspiration with you.

(That’s my office in the picture to ...

So what do we do when we begin to get the tugging feeling that things aren’t going quite so well? What if we’re already at the brink of quitting?

Everyone fails at something, but the trick is to keep trying to make it a success. No one is ...

One of the best things about being a freelancer is that when you get the ball rolling with clients, you don’t have to go looking for work or advertise often. However, if you’re not careful to keep up with the industry, you can find your skills behind the curve, and your clients ...

I never thought about this issue until about eight months ago when I got engaged. In another month, we’re going on a Caribbean cruise for our honeymoon, and I have no idea if I’ll even have a phone, much less internet access. But then again, do I really want to?

I don’t know about you guys, but it’s insanely ...

Working from home is one of my favorite things about being a freelancer. However, it can end up being a distraction if you’re not careful. There have been plenty of times that the whole day has gone by before I even got started working–simply because I decided to play around the house or on the internet.

While it’s okay to do this from time-to-time, it’s not okay on a regular basis, your projects either start being late or you’re forced to work off-hours to make up for it. The way your office is set up plays a big part in ...

Personally, I have a tendency to overschedule myself–which is normally a good thing because clients usually take longer than they think they will to get the project to me. However, every so often it seems everyone does decide to start their projects on time and I end up working 15 hour days with little sleep.

No one likes working overtime, least of all a freelancer, so what do we do when we have too much work? How do we get our schedules on track?

When I have a normal or a slow week, I tend to be more relaxed about my schedule. While I always have my calendar filled with each client I’m going to be working with each day, I don’t normally ever plan an hour-by-hour schedule.

However, when I’ve found that there’s way too much work for one week, I plan my day out in the shower (make use of all the time you’ve got!). I simply decide which projects I’m going to work on first until lunch, and which are going after lunch. I try to get the small, quick projects done first and out of the way, so I can send them off to the client while I start on the larger projects.

I don’t like starting a new site in the middle of each of my two slow work times (before and after lunch), so I’ll make sure to plan a brand new project first thing in the morning, or right after lunch.

You probably don’t realize how much time you spend every day on apps that interrupt your work. These normally include IM clients, Skype, Twitter, Facebook and Apple’s Mail app. I’ve found that I can be a lot more productive by turning off everything (unless I’m waiting for a client call) except my mail.

I don’t like closing my mail app, because I use it way too often and I like to pop in every once in a while to check it. However, I found that by constantly hearing the “ping” noise Apple mail makes, and seeing the red circle icon with “600″ new messages, I simply couldn’t get any work done. I favor a clean inbox so I would immediately answer my emails.

I found that you can hide the red circle notification and remove the new mail sound in preferences. I also decided to only check my mail a couple of times a day, and I really only answer them in the evening or right before lunch. While this has slowed my response time to clients, it’s allowed me to get a lot more work done.

The type of music I’m listening to also seems to affect both my concentration and speed of coding. Even though I prefer to listen to rock, I’ve found that by turning on some bubble gum pop or poppy rap music, I actually code faster and am in a better mood. If I’m stressed out I’ll turn on classical or techno, but these actually tend to calm me down too much–and consequently I work at a much slower pace.

The same music may not work for you, but it’s worth it to try and listen to different genres and figure out how they affect the way you work.

Working longer hours and on the weekend can’t always be avoided, so this may need to be something you think about. It also seems like you can get a lot more work done during the evening, simply because you have less distractions. Often a project I’m dreading on starting gets finished really quickly when I start it after dinner.

If you do need to work longer hours, try to get up and take a two to three minute break once an hour. While this seems counterproductive, it actually allows your mind to rest and allows you to concentrate better when you get back to work. Plus, sitting for 15 hours straight isn’t exactly healthy, so it’s good to get up and move around, even if just for a bit.

If there’s simply no way you can get all of the work done, you can always outsource it. It’s up to you whether to inform the client that you’re doing this. If it’s a new client, it’s probably best to let them know you’re bringing on some help. If it’s a client you know well and you know they won’t mind as long as the quality’s the same, you can probably skip telling them.

Have you ever overscheduled yourself? How did you make it through? What tricks helped you to get work done faster?

Image by Dru Bloomfield – At Home in Scottsdale

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But have you heard about Keeping up with the Joneses of the Web? Every day there seems to be some new cool trend out there than can be accomplished with CSS3, HTML5 or a bit of Photoshop trickery. Five minutes after one person accomplishes this, it seems that it somehow has made it on to everyone else’s site. You know, things like gradients and drop shadows were once just on one or two sites on the web.

Keeping up with the Joneses online is just as dangerous as it is offline. Yes, you may have something shiny and new, but does it really help your business? Does it hurt your customers? What do they think when they see on your site the same thing they’ve seen on 300 other portfolios?

Everyone wants to be first, and I admit I’m not an exception. Last year when the iPhone4 came out, I begged my fiance to let me use his upgrade for myself. I pre-ordered the phone, and then took pride in walking past the thousands of people in line at our local Apple store (yes the line was wrapped TWICE around the mall) with my shiny new phone they didn’t have….I admit I like to be the Jones’s of Apple products. (I am terrible, you don’t have to tell me!)

Keeping up with the Joneses presents a problem both in the real and virtual worlds. You end up spending a ton of money on something you don’t need that only lasts a little while. Yes, gradients were cool for a little while, but now they’re a cliche. What about those people who paid $10,000+ for a redesign to put some gradients and rounded corners in?

If you check out the best sites of the web, they’re always one step ahead of us. You could say they themselves are the ‘Joneses.’ Just as you get what they have, they move on to something new. You can never keep up. It’s impossible.

At this point, you may be shrugging your shoulders and asking yourself, “so what?” So what if you copy from the greats and get your design clues from them. Does it really hurt anyone?

Yes, yes it does. It hurts both you and your customers. It hurts you because you end up spending time and money on something that’s not important, instead of spending resources on really bettering your company and getting your name in front of clients. It hurts your clients because they end up seeing the same thing everyone else has, and then end up moving on (and therefor missing your business, which might have the solution).

Your website’s design is important whether or not you offer design services. For example, even though I’m a developer, I only put the sites that I’ve coded with the best designs in my portfolio. I didn’t design them, but the client will still base their decision to hire me or not based on the design of the site, not just on the design of my code.

If you can’t keep up with the Joneses, can you become the Joneses? What if you were the one everyone copied and looked up to? This is certainly possible, albeit very difficult and a waste of time to try to accomplish. I’ve watched several of the big names in my industry (The Joneses, if you will) and have discovered one important thing that makes them who they are–they don’t try. While they do try to be the best, they better themselves and the work they produce for their clients. They don’t care about becoming famous or “Keeping up with the Joneses.” That’s not why they do what they do.

If you seek to become famous, you’ll never really make it. You’re too focused on the outcome and not focused enough on the work it takes to get there. Become better and seek to do work that will enable your clients and colleagues to excel, not to just pretty up their site and keep up with the newest trends.

I have to admit something else–I’m tired of hearing about CSS3 and HTML5. In reality, both CSS3 and HTML5 aren’t radically different from the previous versions, they just add on some needed functionality (i.e., they aren’t totally new languages, just updates). Yet everyone on the web is running around like a chicken with their heads cut off freaking out about the new awesomeness that comes. Yes, CSS3 and HTML5 are awesome. But why are you really using it on your site? Ask yourself–am I using it to be the coolest or because it is the best tool?

One person makes a Twitter icon completely out of CSS3 and all of a sudden, everyone else has to make one. A client hears about HTML5 canvas and assumes it should be used on his site because the “Joneses” are talking about it. Many freelance designers don’t stop to think about the most important thing a website is for–your customers. Do your customers even care about or want these things? Will it help them to buy more of your product or service? Or will it just get in the way?

What do you think about the trend of keeping up with the online Joneses? Are you guilty?

Image by xlibber

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Unfortunately, just because we stay at home it doesn’t mean that we save more money than someone who works outside of the home. Yes, we have to pay for less gas, we don’t have to pay to eat out, nor do we have as many car expenses. But if you’re not careful, you can actually spend a lot more than someone who does drive 30 minutes away to work.

Here are ten of the ways I’ve found to save money for everything we deal with as business owners.

One of the reasons a lot of people decide not to become freelancers, is because they believe they can’t find affordable health insurance. However, this is really really wrong! Depending on your company, a lot of times you can find comparable or even cheaper insurance on your own.

Being a freelancer means you have a lot of different expenses than the average eight to five worker. It’s tempting to go out there and buy all the cool office supplies you had at the old office, but in reality, you’ll often only need some lined paper and a pen. Anything else can be overkill.

Here’s some other tips for saving on expenses:

Taxes sound like a scary thing to freelancers, but they’re actually quite easy to deal with. Here are a few ways to save some money in this area:

The problem with freelancing is that you can get pretty lonely. You have a tendency to want to go out more, therefore spending more money on gas and eating out then you would at a normal job! It’s important to recognize this behavior and stop it immediately! Here’s what I’ve done myself to limit the amount of money I spend on going out.

Working from home has its own expenses as well, that can quickly get out of hand. Here’s how you can save some much-needed dough.

There you have it–a total of ten money-saving tips.

Now it’s your turn to share.

How do you save money as a freelancer?

Image by yomanimus

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To be seen as an expert in the community, it’s important to take the time to help others out. This can be done by helping them with issues, supporting one of their causes or just giving them some advice. People will remember that it was you who helped and will be more likely to return the favor and even to refer clients to you.

But what happens when the community asks for too much? When one person in the community is too demanding or rude? When your schedule is genuinely filled up? Sometimes you’ll find it necessary to decline the requests for help, and it isn’t always pretty.

Sometimes I get requests for help on Twitter. I enjoy helping people on Twitter and often the questions require a quick answer. Unfortunately, though, I tend to stay pretty busy during the work day, and if I’m out of the office, I normally can’t help with anything code related.

Not too long ago, I got a request from someone on Twitter that I’ve never heard of or spoken to. He asked me a question related to code. I happened to be out of the office that day and running a million errands. When I hadn’t answered after around 20 minutes after he asked the original question, he replied back:

Something about this reply really irked me, and I found it kind of rude to be accused of ignoring someone just because I hadn’t had the time in 20 minutes to answer their question. I replied kindly, that unfortunately, I was too busy to look at his question right at the moment. Instead of replying that he understood that I was busy with other work and he would be patient, he replied:

This really offended me because he obviously didn’t value my time and expected me to drop everything I was doing to help him with his problem. After that, I told him he was being rude and decided to quit talking to him at all when he responded with:

Just wow…

This is one of those times where you need to decide whether or not to help the person out. You don’t need to demean yourself to work with someone who has no respect for you or your time. No one in the community is more important than your #1 asset, your clients.

I get a lot of emails from people who are just starting out in the freelance or web development world. I love the fact that these people trusted me enough to choose me for guidance, therefore I try to answer each and every question as soon as possible. But again, my clients take precedence over my community and sometimes it’s impossible for me to answer quickly, or even at all.

If the email is short and sweet, then I’ll always make time to answer it, as long as they aren’t asking for an entire book. However, if the person writes me a huge email, or asks for an insane amount of advice, or even asks me to fix their code or recode something for them (for free), I often won’t answer. Again, this small percentage of users in the community doesn’t respect your time. There’s nothing wrong with asking for help, but you should never ask someone to do your job for you.

I used to keep all of my IM windows open, so that clients could contact me anytime they needed me. I quickly found out, however, that I was wasting so much time on my instant messengers, not because of clients, but because of people asking for help or advice. I would get a ton of IMs every day, and instead of the person asking if I had a minute or some time available, they would immediately launch into what they wanted, and would get annoyed or angry if I didn’t answer. I quickly took the IM details off my site.

I didn’t want to write this post solely to complain about people asking me for help. I love it when people in the community come to me for advice and help. But there’s a right way and a very, very rude way to do it.

You’ll no doubt come across this problem yourself as you put yourself out there in social media. It’s important to understand how to handle the refusal without it coming back on you and making you look bad. I admit I haven’t always been the most gracious in declining a user, especially if they’ve been a bit rude to me themselves, but I have learned over time how to do it with the least amount of damage as possible.

Show the user that you appreciate them choosing you to ask for advice by starting out your reply with a thank you, or even an “I’m sorry, but.” This lets the user know you’ve heard their issue. If you plan on answering the question eventually, let them know when you think you might be able to get back to them. If not, let them know why you can’t help them, or send them to a place or person who can.

It’s important to save face in these situations, as you don’t want your spotless freelance reputation tarnished by trolls or angry users.

Have you ever dealt with someone in your community who was too demanding or even rude? How did you handle it?

Image by fotogail

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Fortunately for us, we’re freelancers which means we don’t have to work Monday thru Friday, eight to five. We can take off on Tuesday at 11 am. And you should–you deserve it.

Instead of feeling guilty for it, enjoy it, there are a ton of other things you can be doing today instead of client work that will not only be enjoyable and fun, but will actually help you along as a freelancer. See, you can have fun and grow your business at the same time!

1. Catch Up

A lot of the time when I find myself unable to concentrate on work, I also feel obligated to stay at my desk, or that I really don’t want to do anything else. I try to use this time to catch up on everything I’ve been missing, from blog posts, to tweets, to even my personal Facebook updates.

Getting busy with work is great, but it can often lead to a period of disconnectedness. You’re so focused on getting your work finished and dealing with clients, that you step away from the social aspect of the web, which if you’re like me, is one of the few ways we actually get to talk to people.

Therefore, if you find yourself unable to concentrate on work, spend the time simply catching up, chat with your followers, get involved in a debate in your industry or find out what other people are working on. This fosters relationships and is great for both your personal and business health. No one wants to be a lonely freelance hermit!

2. Get Lost in a Bookstore

We stay stuck inside of our office or our coffee shops all the time, sometimes longer than 14 hours a day. Do you remember what it was like to step inside a huge library as a kid? To see the thousands of books and feel the uncertainty of where to start first?

Getting lost in a large bookstore or library is one of my favorite things to do. I’m a huge book worm and I believe it’s one of the main reasons I’ve been so successful in what I do. I’m not just talking about business or development books either, I love all kinds of books from the historical to the supernatural. The more you read, the better you become at communication and writing, which are two very essential skills for the freelancer. Plus, it’s a very relaxing past time that gets you away from the hectic drama of work.

3. Work on Yourself

What things have you been wanting to do lately that you’ve been putting off for work?  Working on yourself can not only make you look or feel better, but can also increase your productivity and make you look forward to going into work. I’m talking about improving yourself both online and off of it. When was the last time you:

• Updated your portfolio?
• Got a hair cut?
• Cut those nails?
• Got a mani/pedi? (guys, this is for you too!)
• Took a bath? (yuck!)
• Updated your social profiles on sites?
• Bought some clothes?
• Dressed in anything other than PJs?
• Went on a date?
• Changed your Gravatar/online image?

The better you look online and off, the better you’ll feel, the more confidence you’ll emit and the more you’ll attract awesome clients. There’s your excuse for a spa day!

4. Enjoy a Hobby

Some days, you really are wound so tight that you shouldn’t do anything other than something you really love to do. Do you love to read or go fishing? Hunt or build things?

Whatever your hobby is, take some time to enjoy it, even if you’re really busy with work. The break from work will allow your mind to rest and let you come back ready to finish work quicker than you thought possible.

If you don’t have a hobby (Yes some people claim not to!) Try out something you’ve been thinking about. Take some cooking lessons or join a gym or something.

5. Do Something with Your Office

Stop and take a look around your office. When was the last time it was cleaned? Organized? Is it even decorated? You spend most of your time in your office so it should be the best looking room in your entire house. It’s been several months since I moved and redid my office, and it’s still my favorite place to go to every day. Talk about a motivation to work!

6. Spend Time with Family and Friends

When I first started freelancing, I got so caught up with work and clients that I neglected the most important things in my life–my family and friends. For awhile there, I didn’t really have any friends anymore because I worked so much.

This, of course, isn’t healthy at all. Everyone needs a social life, a real social life that doesn’t include Twitter or Facebook! Take time often to visit your family and hang out with friends. One of the things I look forward to most is my weekly coffee with my best friend at Starbucks. It gives me some time to take a break from the office and unwind from work, so I’m ready to come back fresh.

What Are You Doing?

What are you doing instead of working? Is it person, for business or both?

Image by pixietart

Related posts:

1. There’s More to Freelancing Than Working from Home
2. Working on Your Business, Not Just in It
3. How to Keep Working at Home from Destroying Your Life

While you should be working on your business throughout the year, nothing is more important than sitting down and taking a good hard look at where you are and where you want to be.

A year ago to the exact date (of when I wrote this article!) I wrote an article about setting goals for your business in 2010. In it, I described both how to set a goal and how to work towards reaching it. I’d now like to talk about what happens after that first year–were the goals met and what to do about them now.

Where Are You Now?

Before you can look at where you want to be, you have to first figure out where you are right now. Take a step back from working and give your business a hard look. Ask yourself these questions:

• Are you working with the kinds of projects you really want?
• The clients of clients you really love?
• What about the amount of work?
• The amount of money?

If you planned well the year before, you might be happy with all of the above, but if not, it’s time to put a real plan into action and to make sure you’re happier next New Year’s.

What Happened with Your Goals Last Year?

If you happened to have done some goal-making last year, now’s the time to see if you made it or not. For 2010, I had several goals I wanted to reach:

• To make $100,000 in my first year of business
• To work with only design agencies and freelancers
• To be in the position to accept or decline any project I wanted

The last two goals were something that I could easily reach with a bit of strategic planning, however the first goal seemed impossible to me. It’s good to make goals you know you can reach, but it’s even better to make something you think is impossible (within reason of course). Knowing that I wanted to bring home that much money meant I made sure I took on as many profitable projects as possible. It’s what drove me to make sure I succeeded in my first full year of business.

Of course, goals are useless if you don’t try to fulfill them or examine them one their time’s up (and every goal must have a deadline.). So how did I do? All of my clients are now agencies and freelancers only, and for the past six months, I’ve been able to accept or decline projects without hurting my schedule.

I didn’t make it to $100,000, unfortunately. There’s a couple weeks left in the year and it looks like I’m going to be $15,000 short. However, without that goal, I don’t think I would’ve made half that much!

Where Would You Like to Be Next Year?

If you made it to your goals last year, congrats! But, now it’s time to start some new ones. It’s never a good idea to stay stagnant in your skills or business, no matter how awesome you think you are.

If you didn’t make your goals last year, it’s time to examine the old with the new. Why didn’t you make your goals? Were they too high? Too unreasonable? Or, did you slack off? For this year, I would continue with the goals you didn’t make, but modify them in a way that will allow you to reach them.

For example, I’m still going to try to make it to $100,000 in 2011. I’m now going to have an entire year of charging the rates I do, so with some hard work I think I can make it.

What about the new goals? It can be tough to think of these if you’re already happy with where you are, like I’ve been. I have the clients I want and the projects I want, so what do I have left to make goals of? Off the top of my head, I’d love to:

• Never work past five or on weekends
• Take on more mobile projects
• Get good enough to make my own iPhone apps
• Get Codesnipp.it up to a high level of participation.

If you look at my goals, half of them deal with personal projects! You see, I’d eventually love to get to the point where I no longer need clients, but can make a living off the apps, plugins and other items I create! I know this won’t happen for a few years, but I’m already taking steps to make it happen.

So what is it you want to do next year? Where do you want to be?

Ensuring You Make It

You can’t just make a goal and then continue on with your normal routine. You have to take steps everyday in order to reach them. For my $100,000 goal, I knew I’d never make it charging only $30 an hour, so I slowly raised my rates to $100 an hour and charged a flat project fee to make sure I made as much as possibly while being worth it to the client.

For my other two goals, I slowly wedged out my normal clients and replaced them with agencies and freelancers, while declining any project that wasn’t from that source. Making your goals is going to take some adjustments to your business, but these should be welcomed. After all, you’re moving yourself onward towards a better working life!

Your Goals

So what are you goals for 2011? Please share!

Image is Mozilla’s 2010 Goals for Firefox by Phillie Casablanca

Related posts:

1. 5 Surprising Questions to Ask Before You Set Next Year’s Goals
2. Three Steps to Set Freelancing Goals You Can Achieve
3. How to Upgrade Your Freelancing Business in 2011

So let’s take a look at this season’s most desirable gifts–or, at least, the gifts I wouldn’t mind getting!

VMWare Fusion

For all of those Mac developers out there who wish there was an easier to way to test your sites on Internet Explorer, fret no more! VMWare Fusion is an awesome application that allows you to install as many versions of Windows as you like on your Mac. Took me only 10 minutes to install Windows 7, which allows me to view both Internet Explorer 8 and 7 in one app. It runs really fast and smooth.

Cost: $49.99 with $30 rebate

iPad

I’ve checked out every sort of tablet device–from the failed Windows devices of yesteryear, to the Kindle($139) and Books-a-Million’s new Nook($150-$250) device. For the price and features though, you can’t beat an iPad. (Hint: you can run the Kindle app on it as well). The other devices are too expensive and can do only one thing – read books. The iPad allows thousands of apps and is awesome for HD video.

Cost: $499

New Books

I’m a huge book lover and books are always included in my shopping list. What’s cool about this year is that we have a ton of awesome new books that just starting shipping – right in time for the holidays!

Smashing CSS

Written by the CSS master himself, Eric Meyer, Smashing CSS is a new book that covers the basics to the advanced selectors of CSS and CSS3. I just started reading this book myself, and can’t wait to finish!

He also takes you through several awesome tools, including Firefox’s Web Developer Tools and Firebug, and gives you an in-depth tutorial on how to use them. The book is printed well with full color glossy pages, plenty of example images and plenty of how-tos, although the print is a little small.

Cost: $26.39

Hardboiled Web Design

This book was pretty pricey to get to the States, but I’m told it’s well worth it. Written by Andy Clarke and is apparently supposed to be huge in terms of pages.

Hardboiled Web design goes through the latest in HTML5 and CSS3 and shows us how we can use them today and what’s in store for us in the future. I’m also told it comes with some great illustrations and written in easy to understand code language.

Cost: $75.00~ with shipping to the states

CSS3 For Web Designers

A follow up to HTML5 for Web Designers, CSS3 for Web Designers is a promising sequel to the series. These books are short and sweet, giving a general, but in-depth overview, with glossy full color pages.

The book is affordable and well worth the time it takes to read (which isn’t that long), great for any book-loving developer.

Cost: $18.00

Cut The Rope

Ask any developer and they’ll tell you they need breaks too. What better way to spend that break than by playing Cut The Rope on your iPad, iPhone or iPod (coming to Android soon, too!).

Created by the makers of the popular game, Angry Birds, Cut The Rope centers on this cute creature, Om Nom, and the objective is to get the peppermint candies to him by cutting ropes, avoiding spiders, spikes and electrical charges. Cut The Rope has some of the most awesome looking graphics I’ve seen in a game. And Om Nom is just plain cute.

Bonus: You can put together your own Om Nom pet too!

Cost: $.99

Give a Gift

Regardless of what it is, any developer would be happy with a gift from their clients thanking them for all the hard work they’ve done throughout the year. Don’t forget to thank a developer in your life! (I take cash and checks, LOL!)

Your Gifts

What are you wanting for Christmas? Please share a link!

Related posts:

1. 12 Gifts Most Freelance Designers Only Dare to Dream About
2. Open Thread: What Are Your Favorite Books About Freelancing?
3. 8 Great Apps that Every Freelance Developer Needs

If you’ve never heard of an unconference before, it basically entails Barcamp, Podcamp and WordCamp. Unconferences are informal get togethers where freelancers and web professional come together to network, attend informative 25-minute talks and come out with some neat swag.

Most cities offer these unconferences once a year and they’re the perfect place to get out there and meet your community. While I don’t go there expecting to get any work out of it, I find these are important events to attend–you never know when someone local will need your services. Plus, the cool swag and t-shirts are too awesome to pass up

So how can you make the most out of these unconferences and use them to your benefit?

Note–I recently attended WordCamp Louisville!

Business Cards

I never ever use business cards–except for unconferences. You’ll be meeting a ton of awesome people, from business owners to fellow freelancers and business cards are still the easiest way to keep track of those you meet after the event.

In order to make use of your business cards though, you need to make sure you actually use them. As you introduce yourself to a new person, hand them a card right away. This makes sure they remember who you are and allows them to take a note or two about you. However, make sure you don’t talk too much about yourself and NEVER “sell” your services to anyone at any unconference. There are hundreds of people who attend these just to find some work and they end up being the annoying guy no wants to talk to.

Similarly, make sure you get a card from everyone you meet as well. Make sure you follow up your talks after the event with a quick “was nice to meet you email”. I’ve actually been able to make some close relationships with local businesses and freelancers this way, and have been able to connect people as well as get some local work from it.

Attend the Speaking Events–Only If You’re a N00b

The main feature of the unconferences are the speaking events. There are normally several rooms dedicated for people who give around 25-minute talks on some kind of web-related subject. While some of these speakers are pretty awesome to listen to every time, more times than not, the talks center around pretty basic concepts that you probably already know about. Many of them are simply on social media and how to use it for your business.

The best part of an unconference isn’t in one of the speaking rooms–it’s in the halls or main hang out room. This is where all of the cool contests and networking goes on. This is where you’re likely to meet some colleagues or help someone out. Stay in the main rooms as much as possible.

Speak at the Unconference

I admit I’m too shy to do this myself, but if you’re braver than me, speaking at one of these events is the perfect way to get noticed. I know several of my colleagues who actually travel around the US speaking at different unconferences–and that makes them very well known and recognizable, which is a must for any successful freelancer.

What should you speak about? In my opinion, the best speakers are those that pick a niche topic, something that isn’t general and is unique. I love listening to Justin Davis’s talks on user experience. This guy has to be an awesome speaker if he can keep someone like me from falling asleep. He interjects jokes, varies his pitch and uses other techniques to make his talks interesting. I suggest watching a few of his videos to get a feel for how to be a great speaker.

Sponsor If You Can

If you have the budget for it, sponsoring the unconference is another great way to get your name out. Depending on the event itself and your level of sponsorship, you can get your logo on the event’s t-shirts, on swag and on the several cards, banners and promotional materials around the event itself. It’s also a great way to support your local web community.

If you do decide to sponsor, I suggest you also add something neat to the swag bags to give away. Emma in Nashville always has the coolest swag, including their famous Emma face moustache pins. The cooler the swag, the more of a chance you have that the attendees will both use your swag and check out your company.

For example, CarlSays sent a giant green octopus to our Barcamp last year–he was so awesome I decided to check out and sign up for their service. Make sure you do something funny and memorable.

Your Thoughts

Do you attend unconferences? How do you make sure you get the most out of them?

Image by Lisa Brewster

Related posts:

1. Making Your Code as Beautiful as the Design Itself
2. Networking 101 (Plus 15 Great Freelance Networking Strategies)
3. How to Find Work Without Using the Freelance Job Boards

Being a busy freelancer is much better than being a bored freelancer, but like with everything, it comes with its own set of problems. How do you deal when you have several projects going on at one time, and several more potential projects in the works? Most importantly, how do you keep your sanity?

Learning To Schedule

Learning to schedule both your daily, weekly and monthly time slots is probably one of the most important business tasks you’ll ever need to do. It’s yet another skill you have to learn as you go along in day-to-day business. Mishandling this can cause late projects, late payments, no personal life–and the worst of all–angry clients.

Here are some tips that have helped me get a handle on scheduling:

• Find a simple app–I don’t believe in using project management software, especially as a freelancer. Those apps are often bloated, unnecessary, and they actually take more time to use than they save. You get more caught up in creating to-dos and details for your client than actually working. Instead, I would find a simple calendar app. Personally, I use iCal that comes free on a Mac, and I keep it on the monthly view.
• Look at your schedule in week chunks–The majority of my projects last a week or less. So, instead of worrying about a whole month, I look at my schedule in week-long chunks. When a client needs to schedule a project in, unless it’s a small revision, I’ll schedule them in for a Monday and for it to end on a Friday. This way, you’re not shortchanging your schedule or getting projects mixed up.
• Cut your schedule in half–It’s true I get more work done if I over-schedule myself than when I only schedule one client a week. However, I’ve found that it’s no longer fun to work from the time you wake up until the time you go to bed–which ends up happening quite frequently if you’re not careful. Take a look at your past projects and determine how many you can do in a week. I can normally take on about one to two full coding projects a week. Make sure to only schedule those one to two projects and no more. Believe me, you’ll ALWAYS have a client who needs something at the last minute–and if you’re already over-scheduled that means you could lose out.
• Tell clients no–I always try my hardest to fit clients in as soon as they need their projects. Currently, I have a very large name client that wanted a project done at the very last minute. What I thought was a week-long project has now turned into a month-long project–which means all of the clients I already had scheduled are getting pushed to the back burner. This also means I’ve been working from sun up to sun down and all the way through the weekends. I was so stressed out from trying to get both their work and my regular work done, that I finally had to tell them no. I told them I was leaving the office for the weekend and wouldn’t be checking my email. Don’t let clients dictate your schedule or you’ll never have a life.
• Don’t over promise your schedule–I used to tell several potential clients that I was open for week A, because it was almost always likely that only one or two of the clients would go ahead with their projects. Now however, I have a very low reject rate, which means if I have next week open for work, I can only tell one or two clients about it. If you tell six clients that next week is open and all six want to go ahead and get started – what would you do then? Don’t forget who you’ve already promised to schedule that week, by going ahead and putting them on the schedule even before they give the go ahead. You can always erase their names later and get a last minute project if they decide not to work with you.

In Times of Crisis

There have been times were I was too over-scheduled, tired or sick to finish a project that due a few days later. Thankfully, I have a large network of freelancers who are ready and willing to take on last minute projects. It’s good to network with a few other freelancers with similar skills to yours so you can always have a back up in times of need. Remember, there’s no such thing as paid sick leave and getting your work done on time or ahead of schedule if the #1 way to truly WOW a client. Yes, this means you’ll make less money on the project, but it’s a lot better than missing that deadline and ending up with an angry client.

There’s nothing wrong with hiring another freelancer to help out without you telling the client. Of course, if they ask, don’t lie to them and let them know you brought on another expert to help out. They’ll appreciate the honesty.

Your Tricks

How do you manage your client schedule?

Image by ASurroca

Related posts:

1. 3+ Ways Finishing Projects Ahead of Schedule Can Hurt You
2. How I Work Less and Accomplish More (by Managing My Energy)
3. Is That Client Legit or Just a Tire Kicker?

I know some of you are still skeptics as to how social media can do anything for your business.

I assure you the few minutes spent on Twitter throughout the day are well worth it. Thanks to the site, I’ve been able to get my personal blog read, which lead to lots of paid guest writing positions, I’ve gained several clients who’ve heard of me on Twitter, as well as several other freelancers who share work with me.

It’s still not easy to get heard on Twitter though, as there are millions of accounts and it can seem like you’re screaming in a crowd to make yourself heard. However, most of the people who are successful on Twitter are so for a few good reasons.

So how can you get yourself heard? Here are six tips:

1. Share Your Knowledge

People enjoy following other freelancers, not because they want to hear what you’re eating for lunch, but because they want to learn from you. Make it a habit to share things you’ve learned in small tweets.

For example, when I finally figure out a tough CSS issue, I tweet about it how I fixed it and what it was. While it can sound difficult to try and explain problems in 140 characters or less, it actually ends up making you a better writer in the long run, since you’re forced to get to the point.

2. Share Links

One of the ways I gained my initial thousand followers was by tweeting about a lot of interesting articles every hour or so. Of course, this was done when I first started out freelancing and didn’t have much client work, so I had the time to invest in reading, commenting and tweeting blogs.

I don’t do this much now since I’m busy, but other freelancers, and even clients, like to follow an industry expert, and you can come off as an expert by staying on top of the latest trends, events and articles.

Don’t spam your followers though, keep it to once or twice an hour and only tweet high quality article. No one wants to follow someone who tweets about “30 Coffee Shop Designs” all the time.

3. Share Your Work

I’ve lately gotten into the habit of sharing what I’m working on at the time. Even if the site is only have coded, with a bunch of errors, I go ahead and tweet out the link. People seem to love watching how others work, so it’s greatly appreciated, even if there’s not much to show. It’s kind of like the mentality of dribbble, or showing a part of something you’re doing.

Potential clients also love to see this. It shows you’ve got real clients and your services are in demand. It also gives them an idea of how you work and the process you go through to get to the finished product.

4. Talk to People

No one likes following a robot. Make sure you engage with people and reply to their tweets, as well as replying to all of those people who tweet back at you. This makes you seem more personable and you’re more likely to find help when you need it, as well as plenty of clients and friends.

5. Offer Advice & Tips

A lot of times when people are having problems in their work, they’ll send out a tweet asking for help. If you’ve got some spare time or knowledge in the area, offer to help them through Twitter for free. Eventually, you’ll need help and they’re more likely to help back.

Also, if it’s a potential client asking for a bit of advice or criticism, make sure you do everything you can to be the first to respond. They’ll remember you later when they need to hire a new freelancer.

6. Respond to Requests for Work

The easiest way to get work is to ask for it. And no, I don’t mean sending out a bunch of tweets literally asking someone to send something your way. Subscribe to a Twitter feed with keywords in your area and respond to those tweets.

For example, if you’re a graphic designer, you may subscribe to a feed with the keywords “looking” “hire” “designer”. There are seriously hundreds of “I need a designer” tweets going out every day, and that’s a lot of work you could be missing!

Ways Twitter Has Helped Other Freelancers

I’m not unique in getting a business boost from Twitter. Other freelancers have benefitted as well. Here some comments from my friends and colleagues:

• @Kajrietberg. I do get all my work through Twitter. People on Twitter know that I’m a WordPress man. So people do send people with WordPress questions to me. Otherwise, when people on Twitter ask for a WordPress person, I mostly react on those questions and tell them I’m a WP man.
• @jeremiahx. It has allowed me to communicate with like minded creatives/devs that are in my city, but who I wouldn’t normally run into, thus helping me create my “brand” and thus creating more visibility.
• @adrinahdesign. Twitter helped me build a community of leads, resources, and friends that in hindsight turned out to be invaluable.
• @courtenayrogers. Twitter has led me to more influential people in my community than all of my networking events combined.
• @AndrewChamp. Search terms to find people in your field. The API has helped me a lot.
• @missrachilli. I’ve made great friends with people I wouldn’t otherwise have known. It’s also gave me such exposure–so many people know who I am and about my work. It’s great!
• @ryanolson. Twitter helps online visibility by allowing me to converse with experts in my area and share with others as I learn. Thus creating a circle of knowledge that, while maybe not immediately, inevitably leads to new people finding you. :D

What About You?

Has Twitter played a role in your freelancing success?

Share your stories and tips.

Related posts:

1. Five Ways to Generate Referrals or Followers with Twitter
2. MarketMeTweet: Will It Help You Find Clients on Twitter?
3. Calling All Freelancers On Twitter

But, what do you do when you’re just starting out or not well known? Before you begin getting clients, it can be tough to figure out what to do all day. That’s the perfect time to make yourself well known.

Finding clients is different for everyone and what works for some doesn’t always for others. However, I’d like to share several of the ways I got work in the beginning.

Don’t Focus on Bidding Sites

When you don’t have anything to do all day, it can be tempting to check out bidding sites like eLance, Guru or Freelancer. I mean, there are a ton of clients asking for work right there, right?

In reality, bidding sites can be a lot of trouble for freelancers, and so should be approached with caution. The hours you spend going through the site, making bids, and the low (sometimes criminal) pay you often receive is rarely worth it. You’re usually much better off spending that time marketing yourself.

Appear to Be Everywhere, All the Time

The reason that clients began finding me was because I seemed to be everywhere they were, all the time. I was commenting on blogs they commented on. Then I was writing for those blogs. I was tweeting useful articles and tips throughout the day and I started my own blog with unique articles.

Everyone always asks me how I stay online so much. The truth is, I’m often not online after business hours or on the weekend, but I continue to tweet. My Twitter is hooked up to Facebook, my website, LinkedIn and a few other social networks, so it looks like I’m always everywhere. By doing this, the client remembers who you are, considers you an expert and comes to you with work.

Optimize Your Portfolio

I have a lot of interests and hobbies. When I put up my first portfolio site, I included everything I made: print design, web design, logos, coding, photography and drawing. Even some crafts!

Funny thing is, I wasn’t getting any work, even though I had a lot of talents. This also ties into finding a specialty, but clients were confused as to what it was I did. Now I keep it simple and only include the best projects of the one service I offer–coding. And clients can tell exactly what it is I do.

Write, Write, Write, and Write Some More!

Clients want to know that they’re being taken care of by the best in the industry. If they’re trying to choose between one freelancer who they never heard of, and one who’s written on several popular blogs and has a published book, who do you think appears to be more of an expert?

You don’t have to write a book, but blogs are a fantastic way to get your name known. Most sites will even pay you to write articles, which ends up being a great way to earn some extra income.

Old-Fashioned Marketing

Social media won’t make you rich, nor does it solve all of your marketing problems. Sometimes some good old-fashioned marketing techniques can be the best source of new clients.

• Job Boards–Job boards differ from bidding sites because they’re just short descriptions of the company and what it is they need done. These clients are often much more willing to pay fair rates than on bidding sites.
• Cold Emails–The best source of clients I received in my early days was by cold emailing them. I simply googled the type of client I was after and sent them a pre-written pitch. I’m still getting work from this, even though I stopped doing it over a year ago.
• In-Person–I know most of us freelancers are hermits, but going out to events are a great way to find local clients. Unconferences like Barcamp and Podcamp are even fun to attend and the networking with other freelancers is invaluable.

Finding Clients with RSS Feeds

Most social websites have feeds you can subscribe to and they can be super useful to use them for finding new clients.

For example, if you go to Twitter and search for “looking freelancer,” what posts show up? What other phrases could you use to find clients?

You’ll see an RSS button for each search you do on Twitter, so it’s good to subscribe to these so you can keep track of potential client posts.

Likewise, almost all job boards also have feeds. It will save you valuable time to subscribe to them, so you never miss a good posting or have to remember to keep up with each site every day.

Tell Everyone What You Do

When first starting out, let everyone you know what it is that you do. Chances are that someone knows someone who needs what it is that you do, so be sure you let everyone know you’re in business!

Put Your Info Everywhere You Can

There are literally thousands of sites that let you put your name and websites on there. Not only is this good practice for getting linkbacks to your site for SEO, it goes back to the idea of being everywhere. Here are some ideas:

• CSS Galleries
• Behance
• One Thing
• Sortfolio
• Carbonmade
• Google Maps
• Google Business
• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Flickr
• Codesnipp.it
• Forrst
• Dribbble

Don’t Appear Desperate

It’s true that the more work you have (or appear to have), the more work that comes in. Desperation turns clients off quickly, so never act like you have no work to do.

For example, if you’re schedule is finally freed up after several months of back-to-back work, it’s ok to tweet that you’re got an opening. But, freelancers who tweet it weekly or monthly appear like they aren’t doing anything (so they look like they’re bad at what they do).

Your Thoughts

How did you find clients when you were first starting out?

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Did you know it’s Client Week on FreelanceFolder? That’s right, in order to celebrate the upcoming launch of The Client Machine (our new client-getting product), we’re writing exclusively about getting clients all week long. Make sure you sign up to be notified about The Client Machine, and come back every day for more articles about finding clients!

Related posts:

1. It’s Client Week at FreelanceFolder!
2. How to Use Elance and Guru to Land That Client Every Time
3. The Best of FreelanceFolder: Our Top 10 Resources for Getting Clients

Reading is essential to any developer’s improvement. While blogs and magazines are great to read for a quick update, nothing replaces a good informative book. Even though web development isn’t the most interesting topic to read about, I’ve been able to find a lot of interesting and informative books over the years that have helped me to improve both my dev and business skills.

Books That I Liked

1. Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel
   A great business book on how to use social media to connect with your users, improve your business image and repair customer relations.
2. Digging Into WordPress by Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr
   This book is a must-have for any WordPress fan. Without being overly technical and with a ton of great humor, Chris explains WordPress from the basic setup to some great advanced functions. The actual printed book is really pricey, but well worth it!.
3. The Smashing Book by Smashing Magazine
   Printing issues aside, The Smashing Book contains several great articles on a wide range of web topics, from design, to development to usability practices.
4. 10 Steps To Powerful Self Promotion For Creatives by Alex Mathers
   A great eBook all about marketing for creative types. It covers several topics on how to setup your social media profiles, how to market yourself online and off and how to approach advertising.
5. The Designer’s Guide To Marketing & Pricing By Ilise Benun
   Another great book for any designer or developer, The Designer’s Guide contains a ton of informative and helpful forms for the beginning or rebranding freelancer.
6. Purple Cow by Seth Godin
   Marketing genius Seth Godin goes into great detail in this short book about how to stand out from every other business and get noticed.
7. Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith
   Learn how to become visible on the web by using social media and marketing principles from Chris Brogan.
8. Rework by 37signals
   A must have book for any developer, Rework is one of the best business books I’ve read. It’s geared towards app developers, but will work for any business or freelancer and contains lots of great unconventional wisdom and funny swearing.
9. Advanced CSS by Joseph Lewis
   It’s tough to find a good coding book if you already have a lot of experience in the development world, but Advanced CSS contained a lot of great information on microformats, mobile development, CSS3 and more. A bit dry in some parts, but a recommended read nonetheless.
10. Linchpin by Seth Godin
    Seth’s newest book, Linchpin touches on the subject that we’ve been trained all of our lives from kindergarten on to blend in and be a busy worker bee. Linchpin explains the importance of sticking out and being indispensable in today’s tough market.
11. Getting Real by 37signals
    Similar to Rework, Getting Real was their first book for app developers. While somewhat similar in content, Getting Real is a bit more technical. Plus, it’s free to read online!
12. WordPress & Ajax by Ronald Huereca
    This eBook goes into depth about using Ajax and WordPress together. Easy to read and contains several great examples, including using Ajax in plugins and functions.
13. 41 Questions To Ask Before You Start A Web Project by Justin Davis
    I know Justin personally and he’s an awesome UX expert. His new eBook is a quick read and contains several sections of questions for beginning web projects. Mostly geared to business, but would make a great potential client questionnaire for any freelancer.
14. HTML5 For Web Designers by Jeremy Keith
    The book from A List Apart, HTML5 For Web Designers is a must-read for any front-end dev. Only 85 pages long, but chock full of great information. The chapters on the history of HTML and the W3C are my favorites.
15. Beginning iPhone 3 Development by Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche
    If you’ve been interested in iPhone development, start with this book. Even if you have no Objective C experience, the chapters are easy to understand and the apps are fun to build.

Books I’ve Yet to Read

I’ve purchased several of these books and the rest are all on my wish list. According to several of our readers, all of these books are must-reads, so I can’t wait to get to them!

1. jQuery: Novice to Ninja by Earl Castledine
2. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
3. Nudge by Richard Thaler
4. Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk
5. Made To Stick by Chip Heath
6. Website Owners Manul by Paul Boag
7. More iPhone 3 Development
8. Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
9. Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky
10. Designing With Web Standards by Jefferey Zeldman
11. Handcrafted CSS by Dan Cederholm
12. Practical Guide To Designing For The Web by Mark Boulton – Free!
13. The Wealthy Freelancer by Steve Slaunwhite
14. The Unlimited Freelancer by…FreelanceFolder!
15. Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
16. Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm
17. Smashing WordPress by Thord Helengren
18. HTML Dog: Best Practices Guide by Patrick Giffiths
19. No Logo by Naomi Kelin
20. Building Findable Websites by Aaron Walter

Your Books

What are some of the awesome web development or business books you’ve read?

Share your favorites in the comments.

Image by Dennis from Atlanta

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3. Smashing Book Winners Announced!

That was until I started listening to a bunch of podcasts that mentioned app development and read some books by 37signals. Several months and long nights later, I launched my first web app with Nikita (the wonderful programmer in my life) called CodeSnipp.it.

Freelancing without Clients?

Working on and bootstrapping this app lead us to thinking of how we could make money from it (more on this in a later post). That kind of thinking quickly lead to a new thought–what if we could do this kind of stuff and never have to work for a client ever again?

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love my clients. But, imagine waking up every morning ready to work on something YOU wanted to work on, something you loved and were passionate about. Isn’t that really everyone’s goal?

More than Just Development

Making money without clients is more than just web apps. No matter what kind of freelancer you are, there’s something you can do to make money without clients. Here are some ideas of these you could make money from full-time:

• Web apps
• iPhone/iPad/mobile apps
• How-to books
• WordPress/Joomla/Drupal templates
• Stock graphics

Starting Out

The cool thing about these ideas is that it isn’t terribly hard to get started or to make money from them. I know several freelancers who’ve stopped taking on client work, because they make much more money producing cool stuff that they like and sell to others. So how do you get started?

• Have an idea–You can’t do anything without having an idea. My main idea was that I wanted to create both web and mobile apps (which meant I had to learn a new language, Objective C). To create apps, I had to have a cool idea for one. My first idea was to create a code snippet sharing site that also allowed people to follow each other and ask questions. Other snippet sites were jumbled, complicated, ugly and missing the social sharing aspect of code. That’s how our web app came into being.
• Reduce work load–I normally stay insanely busy with client work. In order to have enough time to create and maintain an app, I had to reduce my workload and raise my rates. Taking both of these steps ensured that I had both time and money.
• Get others excited–Of course, although I stay busy, I’m not rich. There was no way I could afford to do an app (even though we would be doing all the dev work) without the awesome help of clients (yes, clients!) and my community. One of my clients donated a beautiful design and another client donated free hosting. Several people from my Twitter community have donated Twitter graphics, APIs and additional code. This is why building your social media community is so important. We wouldn’t have our app without them!
• Just get started–The biggest wall that stops almost everyone from doing something is the beginning, so just get started. Get sketching, code or drafting. It doesn’t have to be pretty or perfect, just get started!

The Future

I’m looking forward to the day where I can really have the perfect freelance business of creating something I want every day. Remember, if the idea is something you’ve always wanted, chances are that there are several other people who’d want it too!

Your Thoughts

I’ve shared the process of how I developed an app.

Have you done something similar? What are your thoughts about freelancing without clients?

Leave your answers in the comments.

Image by foxypar4

Related posts:

1. Learning How To Get The Most From Your Freelance Dream
2. Doing the Little Things to Please Clients
3. 15 Sites for Learning and Mastering SEO

What’s worse is that we often get several clients who seemed to need babysitting on the web. While I don’t mind teaching my clients how to use their new sites, I’ve come across several clients that would literally email me at least 10-15 times ...

That being said, I’m still a fan of beautifully designed pieces of work, and it’s disheartening to see so many terrible designs out there today. While the community has definitely gotten better in terms of quality, we all still have a long way to go.

If you’re new to the web design world, or if you have no formal education in design, it can seem a daunting task to get started. After all, its one of the hardest things in the world to please both a client and yourself design-wise.

There are several common mistakes I see designers do that can really hamper their design quality.

Designing for trends

We’ve all seen the recent backlash against the horrid “Web 2.0″ type of design. During the past few years, gradients, shiny buttons and rounded corners became a trend on almost every site. Instead of designing for the client’s audience, these designers were designing for trends instead.

The problem with designing for trends is that by the time you’ve done yours, the trend is already overused and outdated. Instead of trying to keep up with the trends, you should instead be focusing on balanced, meaningful designs – and perhaps your work will eventually become the trend!

Copying other designs

I’m guilty of this one myself. Since I don’t design very often, I’m a bit rusty (especially when it comes to content/UI layouts), so my natural response is to look at other sites with designs I like to see how they did it.

While there’s nothing wrong with getting inspiration (not copying) from other sites, this practice can actually influence our work too much and hold us back from doing our own layouts. For example, if you like the way site A’s call to action button is designed and decide to do something similar, you miss out on coming up with your own, and potentially better, design.

Listening to your clients

This may go against most conventional freelance advice, but you really should stop listening to your clients – at least you should stop listening to them so much. While it’s important to physically listen to what they’d like and to take note of it – the reality is that they came to you for dsign work. You’re a designer, not a pixel pusher, and it should be your job to figure out what the clients and the client’s intended audience really need.

Just like looking at other websites for design inspiration, designing solely based on what the client says he wants (or thinks he wants) can hold back your quality. Yes, its important to do something they like, but isn’t it also as important to exceed their expectations? While you can certainly get by with giving the client exactly what he wants, will he come back to you for more work? While it be something you’re proud of?

So how should we go about designing?

Eveyone starts their designs off differently. But we should also focus on beginning the projects off the computer first, which includes sketching, brainstorming and research. I learned this the hard way after launching my first web app, Codesnipp.it. I had focused on getting the designed down first, instead of working on the UI and the layout. Now when we realized we missed some features, it’s that much harder to implement into the current design.

You should also try to focus part of your free time in learning new things. Read books and blogs, watch movies with great cinematography, listen to podcasts, go to parks or visit a bookstore. All of these things actually influence your creativeness and are a big help when starting a new project.

What makes the great designers great?

What makes the great designers great? Is it their knowledge of typography and how they use white space? Quite possibly. Or is it because they go their own way in the design world? What would Elliot Jay Stock’s or Chris Spooners’s designs look like if they decided to follow trends, base their designs off of others or listen fully to their clients? Would we still be calling them great?

Your thoughts

What do you think distinguishes mediocre designers from great ones? How can we improve our designs?

However, when you move past the beginning stage of freelancing, it’s important that you don’t waste time with the clients who aren’t serious about using your services, because that means lost time and productivity.

These kinds of clients are called tire kickers because they contact us knowing full well they don’t intend to use our services. Why do they do this? I don’t believe they really intend to waste our time, but are just sending out “maybe-kinda feelers.” As in, “I maybe-kinda want to do this project and if the price is super cheap, I maybe-kinda will buy.”

How Tire Kickers Affect Your Freelancing Business

A few months back, I started to realize how much time I was wasting by emailing these tire kickers. I was probably spending half a day emailing a client back and forth who’d never intended on purchasing. Couple that with five to six different tire kicker emails a day, and you’ve got a lot of wasted time.

So how do you tell if that potential client is legit or not? It’s almost always easy to tell in the first email they send you. Here are some common tire kicker emails:

• I want a website, how much does that cost? Any serious client would send you a detailed email of what they wanted, because they would know that every site isn’t the same.
• I don’t have a budget, but…. Stay far away from these ones, even if they did intend to buy, it would only be if you discounted your services to slave labor wages.
• I have 300 other projects to give you… They never do, I promise.
• I’m shopping around with 10 other developers/designers/whatever. These people NEVER purchase, because they normally purchase solely on price and they end up wanting a ton more of work than the higher paying clients.
• I want a website, can we have a meeting? I don’t know what it is about these kind of tire kickers, but these really do intend to waste your time. It seems that clients who ask for some kind of meeting right away never purchase and are always a waste of time.

What to Do with These Emails

While I think we shouldn’t waste time dealing with clients who don’t intend to buy, I don’t think we should completely ignore them either. You never know when it could really be a client who wants to purchase, but who just doesn’t have an idea of the way websites work. We don’t want to lose those guys!

My goal with these clients is to spend the least amount of time as possible with them, but still answer them politely and quickly–just in case they might actually be serious. I also try to be proactive in reducing these kind of requests before they even begin.

• Place a set of standards on your contact page. Since I’ve done this, I’ve had almost NO tire kickers contact me. I’ve done this by placing a list of polite, but firm specifications on my contact page. These include: a minimum price of accepted projects, the kinds of clients I only work with, and that I DONT do design work (I got five to six emails a day asking for design!)
• Send one sentence emails back to them. If they ask for a price, ask them for details. If they say they don’t have a budget, give them the minimum project rates you have, or tell them your work ranges from $xxx-$xxxx.
• Refer them to someone else if you’re sure they aren’t a fit for you (like asking for services you don’t offer).

Turning Clients Down without Being Snooty

I want to give my clients the best service ever so I try to answer emails as quickly and thoroughly as possible. But, I have to make sure I’m spending time as wisely as possible. So I’m not telling you to be elitist or snooty in manner to these potential clients, I’m just letting you in on the sad fact–there are thousands of tire kickers out there and they will take a lot of your time if you let them.

Your Thoughts

How have you been able to spot and deal with tire kicker clients?

Image by www.ericcastro.biz

Related posts:

1. What to Do When Constant Client Emails Keep You from Working
2. How to Use Elance and Guru to Land That Client Every Time
3. Pros and Cons of a Public Price List

I hate, absolutely hate, the management part of projects and of business in general. If I had my way, projects would beam down from the sky on to my desk with perfect budgets and perfectly detailed specs. I would never again have to answer 100 emails about why you can’t do a full site in Flash or why it’s not OK to hand me 100 mockups when they paid for three.

Unfortunately though, that will never happen. So I’ve spent a considerable amount of time reading up on different practices to decrease the amount of time I spend doing something other than development. I’ve found that you can actually apply the basic principles of Zen living to your office to reduce up your management time.

Less is More

The main principle of Zen living is that less is more. This can apply to our business in several different ways. You should aim to find ways of reducing your management time to increase your productivity. Some things you can do:

• Find apps that do more than one thing. Aim to find one app that can management your entire client process. I use Billings, but Basecamp is also a great alternative.
• Reduce the time spent moving files from one computer to another by using Dropbox. It’s free and it syncs automatically.
• Get rid of all your paper files and keep digital copies. This also helps reduce waste and paper/ink costs.

Tranquility in Folders

Cut your time searching for files by making sure your desktop stays clear of any files. Create a folder for each client inside of a “Business” or “Clients” folder, then create folders for each project under that client. This allows you to find old files quickly and gives you a system for organizing the hundred of projects you’ll work on in your business.

Short Emails

Everyone’s biggest monster is the dreaded email. It seems that after we spend an hour going through 100 emails to finally get a clear inbox–another 100 emails show up! You can either choose to ignore this monster, let it overtake you or choose to conquer it. And conquer it we must!

• Organize your email like you organize your files–by client.
• Set up your computers to pull your email via IMAP so your emails and folders are synced together.
• Aim to respond to each email as you come to it in a few sentences or less.
• Check your email only during certain time periods everyday (I do first thing in the morning, right before lunch and right before quitting time).

Relax Client Meetings

I’m going to let you on on another secret–90% of all clients that demand to have in person or hour long phone meeting before a project even begins doesn’t end up buying. They’re tire kickers. So aim to weed these people out early and often as time spent in these pointless meetings means time lost for paid work.

I tell all of my local clients up front–I don’t do any in-person meetings. This doesn’t tend to be a problem as most of my clients aren’t local anyways. I also try to discourage phone meetings by asking the client to email me a detailed description of the work they need, or even to IM me instead.

Of course, there are still plenty of clients who prefer to use the phone. Try to keep the conversations short by staying on topic. Of course, be friendly and ask how they’re doing, but don’t get into a 30 minute conversation about baseball either.

Meditation in Work

I am the most relaxed during business when I’m spending 3+ hours coding with some loud music on. Aim to chunk out blocks of time where nothing can interrupt you. Turn off your email, phone and IM programs and do what you do best during that time.

Calendars and To-Dos Fluidity

Calendars and to-dos are awesome for keeping you on track and letting you know what you need to do that day. But don’t let them be too detailed or you’ll lock yourself to it. Instead, aim to make your schedule more general and fluid, so you can change if needed.

For example, when I schedule my clients, I schedule them for the whole week and I don’t put a to-do on certain days for items (like complete homepage on Monday, subs on Tuesday, etc). This allows me to move my time around and stay productive.

Zen-like Offices

I’m a neat freak when it comes to organization and I can’t concentrate if I see stuff all over my desk, clothes on the floor or clutter in general. Aim to keep nothing on your desk but what you need at the moment–and put it away when your finished.

Always Improve

I’m still struggling with freeing up more time. At best I only get one to three hours a day to code! This will always be a work in progress, so make sure you constantly try to improve how you work.

Your Zen Tips

Do you have some organizational or productive tips? Please share them below as I could always use more time! :)

Image by josh.liba

Related posts:

1. 10 Ways To Increase Traffic By Changing Your Code
2. How to Improve Your Productivity Using Agile Techniques
3. When Does Pen and Paper Slow a Freelancer’s Productivity?

Why? Not because they loved their 9-5 jobs or because they thought the idea of running their own business was a bad one–but because they were scared. Several people asked the same questions over and over:

• “How much savings did you have?”
• “How did you pay your bills?”
• “Weren’t you scared to leave your guaranteed paycheck?”

Thousands of people who have the potential to make it on their own don’t and they don’t for one reason–fear.

The Myth of the “Guaranteed” Income

Most people say they don’t want to make the jump into freelancing because they’re afraid of leaving their job. After all, their job gives them a guaranteed paycheck every two weeks, right? Unfortunately, this mindset is misleading. Income from a full-time job is not any more, and in some cases actually less, guaranteed than freelance income.

Especially in today’s volatile market, a full time job doesn’t guarantee you anything beyond the work you’ve already done for that week. It used to be that you could find a good job, show up and do passable work, and then get paid for the rest of your life. Nowadays though, you could be the best designer, writer, developer or whatever, but if the company no longer has the money to pay you–well you could be let go tomorrow.

So why wouldn’t you want to control your own business to ensure this doesn’t happen to you?

The Fear of Fear Is Anxiety

I’ll let you on in a little secret. I’ve been struggling with anxiety and panic attacks. I hate conflict and I’m scared of fear. However, for some reason, this anxiety does not enter into my business at all–in fact, it’s allowed me to see why my personal anxiety is ridiculous and has helped me towards recovery.

What does this have to do with you? When you tell me you want to start your own business, but are afraid of losing your house, bills or whatever–you’re experiencing anxiety. Don’t let this fear consume you or you could be stuck in that job you hate for the rest of your life.

The Fear of Being Poor

Anxiety phobes in business and personal situations focus on one thing–fear. They avoid doing something because they want to avoid that fear of the unknown. I’m going to talk about a touchy subject here–the idea of being poor.

When I was leaving the nest to start off on my own, I was scared. I was scared I would be a failure and would live in a cardboard box. I’d say that’s probably a pretty common fear for any college graduate, right?

However, I realized that I could never be poor if I truly didn’t want to be poor. Sure, I could be fired from my job and be temporarily broke–but I would always have the drive to make sure I would never live in a cardboard box. This is a good kind of fear that motivated me to be where I am today.

This could be you too. If you truly have the drive to succeed, you’ll never be a failure. You may figure out a couple of ways something shouldn’t be done–but eventually you’ll find the right way. You’ll never be poor because you’d do anything it takes to not be poor. Temporarily broke is a situation. Poor is a mindset.

How to Get Over this Fear

While my fear of being poor became a motivator for me to succeed, it can also go the other way and be a demotivator. If you decide not to take a risk or try something because you’re afraid it will make you poor, then that’s a demotivator.

The first thing you should do is to try to figure out your worse case scenario and then the likelihood of it actually happening. What’s the worst case scenario that could happen if you leave your job for freelancing? That you had no clients, work or money coming in right?

Let’s analyze that fear. Let’s say that six months after you started freelancing, you still have no money coming in. Bills are starting to be overdue and your wife/husband/kids are getting angry. Okay, fine. So go find another full-time job. It’s not the end of the world.

Think about this–what’s the likelihood of you actually going six months without any work? If you sit at your desk everyday and play on twitter, it’s a pretty high chance you’ll fail. If you actually push yourself to be where your clients are on the web, to make contacts and to work while you have no work–it’s a slim chance you’ll fail.

Stop Making Excuses

Freelancing is not a scary thing. In fact, I’d almost say it was pretty easy after the first two months. That’s not to say it didn’t require a whole lot of hard work, but I don’t have a business, financial or marketing degree, but I still figured it out.

Some people tell me they’re saving up money to freelance. That’s okay, but if you’re still saying that after a year, then you have an excuse, not a plan. Some people tell me it’s “not the right time.” Okay, so when is it the right time? Did you know that more small business are started in recession times than in times of plenty?

It’ll never be the right time, you’ll never have the right amount of money and the weather will never be perfect for freelancing. If you really want to do it, do it now.

Have you ever seen the movie Idiocracy? In the beginning, it showed a very intelligent upper class family who were waiting for the perfect time to have a baby. First, they got good careers. Then, they were saving up for a house. Then, for money for the nursery and then they waited for the perfect time. By the time they were “ready” to have a baby–they were too old to make one. That will be your business if you wait too long to start it.

I’ll let you in on another secret–I didn’t do anything the freelance books told me to do. I quit my job on a whim one day (thanks to my anxiety) and I had zero savings, zero clients and not even a proper desk for my laptop. But, here I am eight months later and I have so much work, I’m booked for a month and turning away people. Of course, I could still fail six months from now, but then I’d just try again–or get a job somewhere. It’s not really that scary!

Your Turn

How did you get over your fear of freelancing? Or, are you still stuck in that fear? What are you really afraid of?

Image by Capture Queen ™

Related posts:

1. Is Freelancing Hurting Your Health?
2. Is Fear Stopping You From Being Successful?
3. Earn More Money by Growing Your Freelancing Business

Who are these confused clients? If you’re a freelance designer or developer, you probably come across these every day. These are the clients who don’t understand much about the web or the services you offer, so they send you requests for services you don’t offer.

For example, I’m a web developer who specifically states on my website that I offer CSS, XHTML and WordPress development. I don’t offer any design services and there’s nowhere on my entire site, except for a couple of blog articles, that mentions design. However, I get at least two requests a day from potential clients that ask me for design services.

What Do We Do with These Clients?

I used to get somewhat upset by those confused potential clients, because it seemed like they didn’t even take the time to look or read anything on my portfolio. I believe, however, that it’s just a misunderstanding as most people don’t understand the difference between design and development.

I used to politely reply to these requests that I was sorry, but I didn’t offer those services, only development. The clients would then thank me and disappear–and I would never hear from them again.

I quickly realized that I was losing tons of potential business by doing this. After all, if they need a web designer, then they’re going to need a developer soon after.

While I’ve never wanted to design or offer those services, I decided that I could benefit by teaming up with some other talented freelancers and send those clients their way. By doing this, I would still get to develop their site, therefore helping my client and another freelancer, while benefitting myself.

I did some research and teamed up with three different designers in different budget ranges and with different skills. Now, each request I get for design work goes to one of them, or all of them if I’m unsure of their needs and budget, and the client then comes back to me to develop what the freelancer designed. It’s a win-win scenario for all of us.

Finding Who to Partner With

Finding another good freelancer to partner with can be both tricky and scary. It’s tough to depend on someone else with your reputation.

If you’re looking for someone to pass your work on to:

1. Thoroughly check out their portfolio and make sure they have the work to back up what they say.
2. Have several chats with them on both business and non-business topics. While you don’t have to be best friends, getting along well makes things much smoother.
3. Check out their references and past clients. Were they happy with the work and service they got?
4. Pass a small job on to them first to see how well they do.
5. Have the client pay the freelancer separately from you. This means the contracts stay separate in case there’s a disagreement or fallout.

If you’re looking for work from other freelancers:

1. Freelancers aren’t like agencies, who tend to have plenty of overflow work and welcome cold emails from others asking for work. Only offer your services to other freelancers who are actively asking for someone to partner with. Otherwise, the email just annoys the freelancers and gets trashed, wasting your time.
2. Send them your best work and plenty of testimonials. Treat them like you’re applying for a huge job or bidding on a big project. Be professional.
3. Realize that their work and referrals may be few and far between, but try to make yourself available when they do need you, to ensure they don’t find someone else.

How to Work with Others

Even as a freelancer, we can benefit by working with others. However, there are several things to keep in mind.

1. What is the freelancer’s skill set? Does it fit what the client needs?
2. Can you trust them to treat the client well? It’s your reputation on the line if you referred the client to them.
3. What are their payment terms? Don’t forget to modify your contract to accommodate them, if you’re managing the project by yourself.
4. Don’t forget to ask them about their availability before you give the client a set schedule.
5. Explain clearly to the client that you’ll be using another freelancer for part of the project.

If the request is something completely outside of what you do and there’s nothing in the project for your services, pass them on to your freelance partners anyway. That way, they’ll think about you first when deciding who to send their own confused clients to!

Work Well and Share!

Working together can be a great way to expand your services and clientele. It’s also a way to ensure some repeat work, as well as gain some professional relationships.

Your Tips

Do you work well with other freelancers? What are your tips for keeping a good relationship?

Image by eschipul

Related posts:

1. How What You Don’t Know Can Help Your Freelancing Business
2. How To Avoid Monumental Screw Ups When Working On Projects
3. Working With Friends and Family — Can It Ever Work?

Properly setting up both your physical and virtual desks can make you more productive while also helping you avoid serious injury like frequent headaches and carpal tunnel syndrome.

While I’m no ergonomic expert, I’ve spent several days over the years tweaking my setup to be the quickest it can be. I’ll show you my own setup and give you some tips for your own.

My Physical Desk Setup

1. Ergonomic & comfy chair–Chairs are not cheap, but you’re going to be spending lots of time sitting in one, so make sure you get a proper computer chair that won’t hurt your butt after sitting in the same place for 6 hours straight.
2. Dual monitors–An absolute must for a developer, I seriously don’t know how I coded without one. This is probably the biggest productivity increaser besides Spaces (discussed below). However, I wouldn’t recommend going any larger than dual 22″ because you run the risk of painful neck strain.
3. Wireless Keyboard & Mouse–No clutter means you’re not wasting time going through junk, unplugging or tangling up cords, or even falling off mousepads.
4. Laptop–Quick and easy to take to client meetings or for working out of the office to stay sane. Having its designated resting space means it’s also out of the way when I don’t need it. My laptop has the same exact setup as my desktop, so there’s no adjustment or mistakes when switching back and forth.
5. Wireless router/backup/printing–All-in-one devices mean less clutter and wires. Try finding products that do more than one thing at a time to reduce the visual clutter you have to deal with. Also, automatic backups are every computer user’s best friend!

My Virtual Desk Setup

Now that you’ve seen my physical desk, let’s look at my virtual one. The way your desktop is organized can greatly help or hinder your productivity and workflow.

Try to keep your desktop free of any apps. Keep your dock (in both Mac and PC) only filled with the apps you use daily, or at least more than once a week. This will help you find things quickly and easily.

The Layout of Apps

If you’re a Mac user, you probably already know what Spaces is. If you’re on a PC instead of Mac, Spaces won’t work for you. I haven’t tried it, but SourceForge offers a virtual desktop manager, VirtuaWin, that you might find helpful. (If you use VirtuaWin, or a similar PC app, let us know how you like it in the comments.)

Spaces is awesome for productivity because it gives you four virtual desktops that you can switch between with a set command (I use Apple + Arrow key for speed). If you’ve got a second monitor hooked up, that means you technically get eight desktops to work from!

While this may sound daunting and like overkill at first, it’s perfect for organizing your apps in designated areas by task. Here’s how my Spaces are organized:

Space 1 (top left)

Space 1 is my development area. I leave Coda on the left monitor and FireFox on the right. This allows me to view the site I’m working on almost simultaneously. It also makes using Firebug easier because I can view what changes I made in the browser while typing them into Coda.

Space 2 (top right)

Space 2 is my browsing and communications area. I keep my email app on the left monitor opened to about 3/4 of the monitor space. The rest of the left hand monitor is taken up by Adium and Skype. The right monitor is taken up by Chrome.

Space 3 (bottom left)

Space 3 is entirely for Photoshop in both the left and right monitors. Normally, the menus are located on the right side and the design on the left.

Space 4 (bottom right)

Space 4 is for client management. On the left monitor, Billings takes up the whole screen, and on the right is iCal, so I can view my schedule while writing out contracts and quotes.

More Tips

• If you’re able to use Spaces, or its equivalent, set up your apps to automatically open in their proper space. This prevents cluttering up of one space and wasting time having to move the apps.
• If you don’t have access to Spaces, keep all the apps closed that you aren’t using right at the moment to avoid window clutter.
• Try finding all in one apps to reduce the clutter of apps you use. Some examples are:
  • All in one IDEs that have FTP built in
  • Multiple chat client apps
  • Project management that includes billing and time tracking
  • Browsers with web dev tools
• Do what feels natural and if you keep clicking in the wrong area for something, that means it probably needs to be moved.
• Give yourself a couple of days to get used to a new layout or piece of equipment before you think it doesn’t work for you.
• The less clicks or app switches you need to make, the faster you’ll work.

Just like our code does, our setups also need to be tweaked and perfected over time to get it right. Do what feels comfortable for your workflow!

Your Turn

Do you have any productivity tips? What have you done that’s helped you work faster?

Related posts:

1. The Freelancer’s Battle: Fighting Distractions and Staying Productive
2. The 20 Best Productivity and Personal Development Blogs
3. Using Zen Practices to Increase Your Organization & Productivity

Taking care of your taxes shouldn’t be scary. Especially if you’re a one person business, filing your taxes can easily be done in less than 30 minutes.

In this post, I’ll share some of my tips for filing taxes, as well as some great tools to help make tax time painless and easy.

1. Keep Everything Organized

At the start of each year, I grab a manila envelope and label it with the current year. In this envelope, I keep medical, business and home improvement receipts that I can use to write-off on my taxes. At the end of the year, I also use this envelope to store all the 1099’s I get from agencies I work with.

For all my business receipts, I record these in my client billing app (I use Billings, but there are other great ones out there). Client billing software is great to use around tax time because it allows you to track all your income, expenses and fees in one place.

Most apps also come with a powerful report generator, so you can quickly view everything at once. This is great, because when it’s time to do taxes, everything is together and organized for you.

2. Use a Tax Program Made for Businesses

I don’t want to spend the money on hiring an accountant or tax professional, but I also don’t want to spend ages on filing my taxes, or make a mistake resulting in me over or underpaying them either. That’s why I recommend using some tax software and filing your taxes electronically.

Personally, I love using TurboTax For Business. It quickly walks you through every part of filing your taxes and helps you find all your write-offs. It even does the math for you when calculating home office write-offs (more on that below). And, it only costs around $70 to use.

3. Print Your Reports

Remember the reports we talked about in the first tip? If you’re already using some client billing software, now’s the time to print those handy reports. The two reports I recommend printing are:

• Payments By Client–This report is better than a general income report, because it lists the income separately by client, which allows you to easily mark the clients off that sent you a 1099, making sure that you don’t count the client’s income twice and overpay!
• Expenses–Billings doesn’t have a strong interface for expenses, but if yours does, try to download a report that lists the expenses by type. This will save you time since you won’t have to sort them manually, since expenses are claimed by type in your taxes.

4. What Can a Freelancer Write Off?

The cool thing about being self-employed, is that you can write everything off that you spend on or while doing business.

Here’s a handy list of some of the things you could write off:

• Rent, utilities and renovations to your home office (taken as a percentage of the whole house) or all your expenses for your separate office
• Care expenses or mileage if used for business
• Internet, landline and cellphone
• Expenses incurred while traveling for business
• Convention fees and expenses (Barcamp, SXSW, etc)
• Business books, tutoring or mentoring
• Printers, computers, monitors, faxes and other electronic equipment
• Paper, ink, stamps, envelopes and other supplies
• Paypal, Google or other expenses incurred while collecting payment
• Stock photos, templates, etc
• Payments you’ve made to over freelancers or contractors
• Software
• Advertising expenses
• Printed materials

5. Actually Pay Your Taxes Before Tax Time

While most of us probably prefer to pay our taxes once a year, and normally after we find out the actual bill, this makes Uncle Sam jealous. Therefore, if you make any kind of real money and haven’t paid quarterly payments, you’ll be subject to a pretty hefty fee.

So make sure around the beginning of the year, that you download and use Form 1040-ES (PDF) to pay your quarterlies. This will also dampen the amount you’ll owe when you file.

In the same note, make sure you set aside money for taxes throughout the year! I once talked about setting up an automatic budget and the very first envelope I have money go to is taxes.

With every business deposit you make, you should put 20-40% away for taxes. I like to keep mine in a savings account to earn a bit of interest until it’s due, and also to stop me from spending it on something else.

*Disclaimer: I’m not a tax professional or licensed to give tax advice, so make sure you consult a professional before following this advice!

Your Thoughts

What problems do you have with taxes? Do you have any tax tips? Please share!

Image by Cleaver

Related posts:

1. Open Thread: How Are You Handling Your Taxes This Year?
2. 10 Tax Tips You Can Use Now To Avoid Pitfalls Later
3. Budgeting for Freelancers

Unfortunately, the more you put yourself out there, the more you open yourself up to those people. You know who they are–the ones who disagree with you and aren’t afraid to point that out, the ones who hate your work, writing and thoughts.

While not the same as outright rejection, negative criticism can be just as upsetting and hurtful. So how do we deal with it while staying professional and cool headed? Here are some tips from someone who’s also received lots of criticism in her freelancing career.

Six Tips to Help You Deal with Critics

Here are six tips to help you deal with criticism:

• Don’t take it personally.
  The person may disagree with your work or what you said, but that doesn’t mean they’re attacking you personally.
• Calm down
  Take a deep breath. Even if the person is being unfair or just trying to pick a fight, keep your calm. Fighting with the person will not only result in you losing work if it’s a client, but will also ruin your reputation and make you look like the bad guy.
• Could they be right?
  Try to see the criticism objectively. Can you turn it into something good? What would happen if you tried to follow their advice? If the criticism comes from an industry expert, try following it to see if it would make you better at what you do.
• Could you be wrong?
  If you’re dealing with a client, could you be in the wrong? Having an angry client is definitely not going to be something you want to deal with. Is it worth fighting about and losing their business? Make sure you listen to their criticism very carefully, they could be right and you could learn something.
• What if you’re right?
  Is it worth arguing about and wasting valuable time you could be spending working? Would it make you seem petty or immature if you do argue it? If so, it may be better to just move on. If you firmly believe it’s worth addressing, calm down first and remember to behave professionally. Explain your methodology and why you believe it to be correct. Don’t shout or call names. Most people actually enjoy hearing others’ point of views, so don’t be afraid to express yours.
• Shrug it off
  If all else fails, shrug it off. Not everyone is going to agree with what you say or do, nor should they. If it’s not something you can learn from, or just from an internet bully, ignore it and move on. You’ll probably never see or hear from them again anyways, so there’s no point in worrying about what they think, or wasting your day trying to change it.

It’s tough dealing with criticism. It’s even tougher when you know you’re right. Personally, I’m the kind of person who’ll fight with you all day to prove my point, so I have to remind myself that I’ve got plenty of client work I should be doing instead.

But, don’t let that spoil your freelancing spirit. Just remember that you’re awesome at what you do, otherwise you’d have no clients! So don’t let anyone make you think otherwise. There’s enough room in the internet world for everyone’s opinions, so take a deep breath, smile and move on!

Your Thoughts

Have you had to deal with negative criticism? How did you do it?

Image by Robert Couse-Baker

Related posts:

1. A Freelancer’s Guide to Dealing with Difficult People
2. Uh-oh! Seven Steps to Deal with an Unhappy Client
3. What To Do When You Don’t Get The Job

As freelancers, no matter how much money we make, we’re always budget-conscience. Unfortunately, in this day and age of technology, we can no longer get by with just a copy of Microsoft Windows and Notepad. We need software–and lots of it.

I counted over 18 applications that I use daily and that that doesn’t even include the 20+ apps on my iPhone. So, it’s probably safe to say these are all free apps, right? Wrong.

The Case for Open Source Software

The biggest pro to open source software is obviously the price of free. But, what other pros are there with going open source?

• The community–The best open source software is, without a doubt, WordPress. The coolest thing about WordPress is the community. Since everyone can download it for free, and it’s a great framework, it has a huge support community. You can easily and quickly find a tutorial on anything you’d ever want to do in WordPress.
• No risk–Open source software comes with no risk. Don’t like the program? Just uninstall it and find something else. It was free so you haven’t lost any money.
• Variety–There are often open source alternatives to most paid apps if you search hard enough. So, any freelancer can have billing, coding or management software.

Why Free Isn’t Always the Best

Free almost always comes with a price, although it may not be monetary. There are several drawbacks to using open source software.

• Little or no support–With the exception of a few, most free software I’ve tried have no, or crappy, support.
• Ugly interface–Since the developers aren’t making money from the app, most don’t hire designers and the apps often look ugly or have poor layouts.
• Terrible file structures or code–If you’re dealing with an actual framework, the code and file structure can be impossible to navigate and work around easily. So much so, you’d often feel that you’d rather pay for something than deal with the free stuff. This happened to me when dealing with ZenCart and Joomla.
• Lack of updates  and bugs–When you upgrade your OS, your free software may take its time upgrading–or never even upgrade at all, then you’re stuck looking for something else. What’s worse, it might have a terrible bug that’s never fixed.

Paid Apps Are Often Worth the Price

Sometimes, a free app gets the job done, and does it well. But, sometimes paying for an app will save you both time and money in the long run.

Purchasing apps can be scary though, as it’s normally a pretty long commitment, especially if you’re short on funds. What if you pay for an app and it stinks or doesn’t work right on your system? Try looking for an app that offers a demo, or even better, a full-featured trial. Ask around for opinions and see what people say.

Paid apps are often better than their free counterparts. If I find a bug or problem with the software, I’m much more likely to get a solution from someone I’ve paid. The act of receiving money for something you’ve done is a huge motivator in how well you take care of the product and its customers. Most apps you come across are less than $100 and easily affordable by the novice freelancer. (Go ahead and shake your fist at Adobe now.)

I came across the problem of finding the right app very recently when looking for a new code editor. There are several free and paid apps to choose from. I couldn’t find an all-in-one solution that was free, so I went ahead and paid for an app. However, had I been looking for a standalone editor, there were several free apps that were just as awesome as the paid ones. It all comes down to what you need and what works for you.

Almost all of my favorite apps are paid apps, even though I normally look for an open source solution first. The interfaces are sleek and well thought out. Most of them are bug free and provide great support. (Except, ironically enough, the most expensive app ever, Photoshop. Shake them fists again for me.)

Your Thoughts

What have been your experiences in dealing with paid and open source software? Have you found trends between what one has and the other lacks?

Image by jmarty

Related posts:

1. Ten Terrific Apps to Help You Keep Track of Your Time
2. 8 Great Apps that Every Freelance Developer Needs
3. 25 iPhone Apps For The Mobile Web Worker

Regular people can’t see code, nor do they care to see it or what it looks like. It’s precisely this reason that there’s so much ugly code in the web world today. People don’t see it so developers don’t believe that clean code is important, but it is.

It’s quite rare to find a clean coded site, even from huge companies who should have the budget to pay for a good developer. However, it’s just as important to have beautiful code as it is to have a beautiful design.

Why Should It Matter?

Most of the time, messy code works just as well as clean code. So why should it matter if it’s pretty or not?

• Quicker to update–Organized code is easy to navigate and update. Save yourself some time in the future by making stuff easier to find now.
• Faster loads–Often, clean coding uses less code, which means it’s faster to load.
• Professionally–Would you rather pay someone who gives you a junk heap of code you can’t read, or someone who hands you correctly nested and organized code? Which one would make your life easier? Which one shows more professionalism?
• Find errors–With organized code, there’s less of a chance you forgot to close a tag or that you closed them in the wrong order. Plus, if you do make a mistake, it’s a lot quicker to find it.

Beautify Your CSS

There are several ways that I’ll show you how to organize your CSS. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so you may not find that what works for me, works for you. Experiment with a few different ways you can organize your code to find what works for you.

• All in one line–Placing the entire rule on one line shortens the document, making it a smaller file size, easier to read and quicker to locate what you need. For example, instead of:
  • div {
background: #FFF;
font-style: italic;
font-size: 18px;
margin: 20px;
padding: 10px;
font-weight: bold;
}

  Try doing this instead:

  • div { background: #FFF; font-style: italic; font-size: 18px; margin: 20px; }
• Group like elements–I like to group similar rules together so that I can find everything I’m looking for in one section. For example:
  • div.element {}
div.element a {}
div.element ul {}
div.element .class p {}

    div.other {}
div.other a {}
div.other p.class {}

• Sectioning–It’s also good to section off your CSS by the area of the website where it is located. I use comments to call attention to the sections and usually section them off by header, nav, footer, main page and subpages.
• Semantics–Semantics are all about giving your items proper names. Name your classes and IDs with pertinent names, such as “header”, “nav”, or “bkg.jpg”. This allows anyone who needs to make updates to the site to find what they’re looking for quickly.
• Shorthand–Shorten your background, font, padding, margin and border properties by using shorthands. Instead of using a single property for each, combine them into one. Instead of:
  • div { padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 30px;  padding-top: 50px; padding-bottom: 10px; }

  do this:

  • div { padding: 50px 30px 10px 20px; }

One CSS organization “tip” I personally hate is tabbing your rules into a hierarchy. In my opinion, this wastes space and makes it harder to read, but you can try that out and see if it works for you.

Organizing Your HTML

Organizing HTML is pretty quick and easy. Here are a few tips.

• Tabbing–It’s important to properly tab your HTML code, otherwise it becomes almost impossible to read or find that one missing closed div. Convention says to tab once for each nested div, or div inside of a div.
• Space sparing–It’s good to put some blank lines in between sections of your code, but too many can be counterproductive. I tend to space out separate main divs.
• Semantics–Like your CSS class and ID names, everything should be named properly, including images and video. This can save you loads of time in the future. Your main background image should be name bkg.jpg (or something similar), not image2345.jpg.

Do I Hafta??

Of course, you don’t have to organize your code or make it look good. After all, no one is really going to look at it, right?

Wrong. If you’re planning on coding for a living, lots of people are going to look at your code. In fact, you may be losing business without even knowing it! A lot of potential clients will pass on a coder if their portfolio and own site are filled with nasty code.

Share Your Tips!

What are some of your tips for great looking code?

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1. 10 Ways To Increase Traffic By Changing Your Code
2. The Freelancing Success Code
3. The $37 Money-Making Secret: “Cloud Living” by Glen Allsopp

The problem, however, lies in getting clients to understand this. This is particularly hard if you’re still in the start-up stage, where you’re having to find the clients, instead of them coming to you.

In certain industries, like design, it’s easier to get the client to understand the difference in quality and rates (although designers still get rate-comparing clients), but if you’re a developer or writer, it’s tougher to get the client to understand the difference.

So how do you convince the client that your $100 an hour services are better than the other guy’s $30 an hour services?

Think Like a Consumer

We are all consumers of products. A client-freelancer relationship is much the same as a consumer-product relationship.

When the consumer (the client) shops around for a product (the freelancer), several factors are taken into account before the consumer purchases anything. What are these factors?

Let’s pretend our consumer is shopping for a car. All cars are essentially the same in that they have four wheels, some seats, a radio and a windshield. They all get your from Point A to Point B in the same amount of time. So what makes a consumer pay $60,000 for a BMW when they can get a Yaris for $8,000? Perception.

• Perceived Value–A consumer generally believes that the more expensive product is of better quality.
• Perceived Status–A consumer generally believes the more expensive product makes him better looking, cooler or more accepted by society.

So how does this apply to a freelancer? You must make a client believe they are going to get a lot more with your services (the BMW) than the other guy’s (the Yaris).

Of course, perception is nothing without reality. If consumers found out that the BMW breaks down every week, uses cheap materials and was missing seat warmers, a premium stereo and other gadgets we’ve come to expect from luxury cars, the BMW would quickly lose its “luxury” perception.

Make sure you, as a freelancer, really are providing your clients with “BMW” services before you start charging that premium price.

Get Clients to Come to You

The best way to get clients to stop rate-comparing is to get them to come to you. This can be done several different ways.

• Referrals–If your client tells a friend that your work is super-awesome and that friend comes to you for some work–they’re less likely to haggle prices. This is because they already know you do awesome work and there’s no one else to compare your rates to, since they’re probably not shopping around. They’ve already seen the product and know how it awesome it is.
• Testimonials–Testimonials work similarly to referrals, but are less effective. Testimonials are especially effective when they can be tied to actual pieces in your portfolio.
• Through the grapevine–You hear other freelancers and experts talk about the importance of social media–and they’re right. If a client sees you active on Twitter, with lots of followers and professional conversations, and then sees that you have a popular blog, they’re going to know that you’re one of those experts. And they’ll pay more for that.

Don’t Use an Hourly Rate

Hourly versus set rates have been debated plenty of times before, but if you want to set yourself above other freelancers, you need to stop using hourly rates. This is important for several reasons:

• If you’re faster at what you do than most other freelancers, you can shortchange yourself by completing projects too quickly.
• Clients like to know what they’ll have to pay up front. What sounds better? “I charge $50 an hour and it will probably take me 10 to 20 hours to get that done.” Or, “That project will cost $1,000?”
• Hourly rates can be limiting. When you tell a client that you charge $100 an hour, a client only sees that hourly number. They don’t see that while you charge twice as much as the other guy, you’ll get it done in half the time (and do it better).
• There’s a cap to how much you can set your hourly rates–certainly no one will pay you $300 an hour for your services, but you can charge a $300 flat fee for something you know will only take you an hour to complete.

Go Above & Beyond

Don’t just offer your clients a design, development or writing service. Give them more and don’t charge for it. For example:

• Offer business or web-related advice.
• Deliver your product ahead of schedule.
• Tweet or blog about the clients’ site or business.
• Always answer the phone and emails with a smile on your face. It shows.

Make sure you’re giving them those luxury features to remind them of why they’re paying you more.

Focus on Benefits, Not Prices

A client once told me that although I charge a lot more than other developers, I was worth it because my work was great and I was easy to work with. This is the kind of response you want from all your clients.

Unfortunately, you’ll always have those low, or no, budget clients that always choose the cheapest freelancer, irregardless of the quality of services you provide. But, the great clients that you really want will recognize the quality you provide and are willing to pay more for it.

Don’t be sneaky about your prices, but try not to focus on it. State your price, but then talk about the benefits and ROI you can give that client. Why should he hire you and not the other guy?

Share Your Experiences

How did you get your clients to pay your higher rates? Are you still stuck trying to accomplish this?

Image by refractedmoments

Related posts:

1. Will You Raise Your Rates in 2010?
2. How To Set Your Freelance Rates (An Overview)
3. Why You Are Losing Clients (How to Stop)

While much of what makes up a portfolio is both subjective and based on personal preferences, there are still several surefire ways to distinguish yourself in the sea of freelancers.

Let’s takes a look at some ways you can make your portfolio better than your competition’s portfolio.

A Great Design

Sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many terrible freelance portfolios are on the web. Even if you aren’t offering design services, you should still have a great looking design for your portfolio.

A great design helps increase your professionalism and legitimacy as a business. How many times have you come across a site with a spotty design that made you wonder if the products were scams? The same applies to freelancers.

Great Looking Code

You may not know this, but clients, especially web agencies looking to contract out some work, really do look at your code, so make sure it’s as great as the design. Follow basic semantics, validation and coding practices, especially if you offer any sort of web development services.

Even if you don’t code, good code can have an impact on your SEO, download times and ease of updating. I’ve gotten lots of great compliments, some criticisms and a few bug notifications from clients in the past, so code-inspecting is not a rare occurrence!

Share Some

Talk about the actual work you did and why you did it. Many portfolios I’ve seen have their work categorized well, such as in web design or logos, but then only have thumbnails and a light box pop feature of the actual work. Try including an actual link, if it’s a website, and talk about what you specifically did and why you chose to do it that way.

Be Personal

Too many portfolios sound like they’ve been written by space robots. It’s important to sound professional, but it’s equally important to sound human.

I’ve felt this way about my own portfolio when redesigning it, so I included a picture of myself along with some few interesting facts in the footer of my subpages — just enough so my clients realize I’m both professional and fun to work with.

Contact Points

Try to include multiple ways to contact you on your site. Some clients prefer emailing only, some prefer to only work by phone. Try having an email address, contact form and some instant messenger IDs as well. You want to make it as easy and comfortable as possible for a potential client to contact you.

Have a Blog

It may sound cliché, but having a blog on your portfolio can help you in several ways:

• Gives visitors a reason to return to your site often, which means your name will stay in their head. It’s more likely they’ll see your new work (and want to hire you).
• Content helps boost SEO, since portfolios are normally not content-heavy by themselves.
• It helps establish you as an expert in the clients’ eyes and many of them will subscribe to your blog, even if they don’t understand all the jargon.

Keeping It Clean

It’s important to not junk up your portfolio with too much useless clutter. Showing your latest Twitter stream on your homepage is helpful, as it shows you’re active on the web. However, showing your Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Stumbleupon AND Digg streams isn’t helpful and just becomes unsightly clutter on your homepage.

Remember, the point of your portfolio is to gain clients and show off your work — not to show how much time you waste on social media every day.

Some Great Examples

Here are a few great examples of portfolios on the web for some inspiration. Enjoy!

Nine Lion Design

Finch

Sensis

HeaderFooter

Your Turn

What’s your advice for creating a great portfolio? Don’t be afraid to share links to great portfolios!

Top image by kubina

Related posts:

1. Redesign Your Portfolio Site: 4 Tips To Make It Better And Get More Business
2. Open Thread: Do You Have a PDF or Web Portfolio?
3. Building Your Portfolio With Zero Clients & No Spec Work

What are some of these perks of freelancing?

• You can choose your own hours
• You can choose your own clients
• You can choose the type of work you do
• You can choose your rates

We’ve discussed great reasons to start freelancing, but we haven’t really talked about why you shouldn’t start freelancing. Let’s take a look at some of the worst reasons to go into business for yourself.

Reason 1: To Sleep in All Day and Leave Work Early

It’s true that as a freelancer, you can set the hours you work. However, if you think that means you can sleep in all day and get off early, you’ll be sadly disappointed.

Clients still expect you to keep some normal business hours. While it’s ok to shift your schedule to times where you’re most productive, you’ll still have clients who request to speak to you by phone during nine to five hours. Limiting your work hours to starting at midnight and ending at 3 a.m. will cause you to lose a lot of potential business.

Reason 2: Freelancing Will Make You Rich

If you want to start freelancing, you shouldn’t do it solely for the money. While you’re free to set your rates, chances are you’ll have little or no money when starting out. Making tons of cash, even if you’re a seasoned professional, is pretty unlikely.

Reason 3: You Hate Working with People

Sorry to burst your bubble, but even if you plan on working by yourself, you still have to work with people. You may have to work with clients, agencies or other freelancers.

Reason 4: To Spend the Day with Your Kids

Unless you’re planning on only working part-time, expecting to be able to spend ample amounts of time with your kids is a huge potential pitfall. Once you get your business going, you’ll rarely have time for lunch and bathroom breaks; much less to change diapers, have playtime and offer help with homework.

Plus, if you’re not careful, staying at home with your kids can be a huge distraction and prevent you from getting any work done. Especially with younger kids, the temptation to spend time with them can often throw a productive day out the door.

This isn’t to say freelancing isn’t a good option for stay-at-home parents. You just have to be realistic in your goal settings and realize you’re not going to be able to be as productive, busy or profitable as a regular freelancer.

Reason 5: You Can Charge Whatever You Want

Related to Reason 2 above, you can’t simply charge any amount of money for your work and expect anyone to hire you. Your rates have to fall into what the market can bear and take into account your quality of work and experience you offer.

Of course, the busier and more well known you become the more you can charge to “fit” in those clients or schedule them in months ahead of time.

Reason 6: Freelancing Is An Easy Job

Freelancing is one of the hardest jobs out there. It’s one of the few careers where you’re truly alone, in the sense that you’re responsible for everything. This includes finding the work, doing the work, billing for it, tracking down late payments and taking care of the books and taxes. That’s a lot of work for one person!

Reason 7: To Keep Up with the Household Chores

It drives me nuts to wake up to a kitchen full of dishes or stuff where it shouldn’t be. However, I often have to hold back this urge until lunchtime or after work. Just like kids, it can be tempting to take just a “few” minutes to pick up the house and promise yourself you’ll get “right” back to work. Before you know it, half the day is gone and you haven’t done any work…paid work that is.

Personally, I try to have the dishes from the night before finished that night so I don’t wake up with them in the sink. I try to pick up as I go throughout the day so there isn’t a mess, or I wait until my lunch break to clean up what’s needed.

Reason 8: Work Will Just Come to You

It takes a lot of work to freelance before you even start “working”. Just sitting at your computer everyday and staring at your screen won’t get you clients.

Reason 9: No Boss!

Without having someone behind you to make sure you’re staying productive, it can be tough to stay motivated and on target. You have to make sure you have enough drive to push yourself to make it through the boring everyday tasks of freelancing.

Reason 10: You’ll Save Lots of Money

While it’s true you’ll no longer have to fight morning or evening traffic, that doesn’t mean you can sell the car and save lots of money. It gets lonely in your own office so you’ll want to work remotely a few times a week.

Often, you’ll find yourself going to your local bookstore, cafe, or restaurant to work for a few hours and you’ll probably end up spending some money there as well. After you factor in this spending money and gas, plus the extra money you’ll spend on electricity and water now that you’re home more often, freelancing can easily add up to be more expensive than a nine to five job.

I once spent a ton of money at Target when I had no money coming in because I was “bored” from being at home all the time. Don’t make the same mistake!

Reason 11: You’ll Have More Free Time

When you’re a freelancer, you’ll actually have a lot less free time than when you were working a regular nine to five job, even if you keep the same or less hours than before.

Why? The biggest reasons are overscheduling and procrastinating. It’ll take some time to properly schedule your work, but even then it’s impossible to predict if a client is going to have last minute changes or a rush project. You may even end up working nights and weekends.

Reason 12: Your Family Will Respect You More

Most non-web people don’t understand what we do at all. They understand even less what we do as freelancers. You’ll probably have some difficulty getting your family members to understand that you’re really working, even if you’re at home. They may not understand you’re running a real business and trying to make some real money.

To this day, my mom still doesn’t understand that I can’t just drop everything I’m doing in the middle of the day to do something with her. Just because I set my own hours, doesn’t mean I can make myself free whenever I want to, as I still have to take care of my clients.

If you’re married, or living with a significant other, it’s easier for them to see you’re doing real work if bills are getting paid, but sometimes they forget and may try to talk to you or ask you to do things around the house. The best thing to do is to try and talk to them and explain that you need to be left alone, as if you’re working at a regular job, during your office hours. You may need to close and/or lock the office door while you’re working to prevent interruptions.

Freelancing Is the Best Job Ever

But, it’s also the hardest and most demanding job ever. It can be frustrating because you have no one else to share the business duties with. People, including clients, misunderstand what you do and may not think you’re a real business who charges real rates for real work.

That being said, I do believe it’s the best job ever. Really, I wouldn’t go back to a full-time job, even if they offered me a six figure salary. Like everything else, it has it’s drawbacks but it also has lots of good perks.

The important thing is to make sure you really like working independently and you have the drive to do this all by yourself. The freedom and satisfaction from being able to control your own career is reward in itself.

What About You?

What were some of the reasons you started freelancing? Where they good or bad reasons? Did they work out? Please share you experiences!

Image by joeyparsons

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1. Freelancing — A Career Choice or Lifestyle?
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3. Six Foundations of Freelance Success

What do you do with all that money you make, now that you’re a fabulous freelancer? Do you throw it in a bank account and pray there’s enough for that flat screen you’ve been wanting and this month’s rent? Are you saving or always coming up short with your bills?

I’d like to show you a great budget system I use for myself. I’ve tried lots of different budgets, but this one is by far the best. It works great with my irregular income and helps find every free penny, so I have enough for bills, spending and saving. What is this system?

The Modified Envelope System

I use a modified version of the envelope system. The envelope system used to mean that you’d literally take all your money out in cash, place it all in an envelope with the name of the bill on the front and only spend what was in that envelope.

But, it’s almost 2010 and I don’t know about you — but I hate carrying cash and definitely don’t want to carry 20 envelopes around with me everywhere. Enter Snowmint’s Budget.

It works on both the envelope system and has an irregular income section called Pay/Deposit Rules. This is what I’ll be showing you how to set up. I don’t want to show you how to use the actual program, so make sure you familiarize yourself with the basic workings of Budget. You can download a free trial for both Macs and PCs.

Of course, if you don’t want to try out Budget, you can use old-fashioned paper and some math or the regular envelopes. Another budgeting program may also offer something similar.

Getting Started

First, you need to take out a regular piece of paper and a pen. What are your bills? Let’s start with the mandatory monthly ones. I’ll use my own budget for an example so you can see how it works in real life. Here are my mandatory monthly bills:

Now, what are some of your regular expenses? Do you have pets or children? Make sure you include their expenses as well. I also like to keep some extra envelopes for “blow” money (That’s fun money), for gift money, for random expenses that might pop up and for savings and taxes. Most of these expenses vary by month and many like gas, may need to be filled more than once a month. Here are mine:

Now, with regular budgets, you’d now write down your income and compare it to your expenses and adjust from there. How do you do this when your income changes from week to week and instead of two paychecks a month, you may make 20 to 30 or more deposits a month?

I base my income off my expenses. To comfortably make all my expenses outlined above, I know I have to sell at least four sites a month. This is a pretty reasonable way to base your freelance income if you know you normally sell that much or more a month. You can also base it on average of the last three months income you’ve brought in.

At this stage, the goal is to have the least possible amount of things to pay and a good savings system (like my 20% of every deposit), in case of a slow month, so you can still pay everything.

If you know your expenses are more than what you’ve been making, it’s time to cut back and save money. Check for things you can cancel like unused gym or Netflix subscriptions. Make sure your budget is as close to realistic as possible. For example, if you normally spend $100 a month eating out, don’t budget in $20. Therefore, you may need to monitor your expenses for a couple of months and adjust where needed.

Setting Up the Rules for Irregular Income

After you’ve set up your basic envelopes, it’s time to budget for your irregular income.  Pay/Deposit Rules allow us to set up the envelopes to be filled in order of importance and stops filling them once they’ve reached the limit amount. You can also set it to fill by percentage, which is great for taxes and savings.

I set my incomes to fill at half with each deposit. That way, if I’m paid $600, the whole deposit doesn’t get stuck in the rent envelope, but gets distributed a bit more evenly between multiple envelopes. This helps for envelopes that are used more than once a month like gas and groceries. The example deposit we’ll use is $550.

Let’s start by setting up our most important bill: Taxes (remember, you can do ALL of these steps by paper, you don’t have to have Budget, but I recommend at least trying it).

So, we’ll tell Pay/Deposit to start there. If you expand the menu, you can see all of the options it offers. We’ll set it to deposit 20% of the deposit into our Tax envelope, with no limit to how much can accumulate in it. The settings should look like this:

Allocation shows how much is going into the envelope with that deposit.

The next most important bill is savings. Hit the plus button on the right to add a new rule and drag it under the taxes one. I like to put 20% after taxes into my “Snowball” envelope (which is my savings and extra debt payments envelope). Now to set it to 20% after taxes, not 20% of the total deposit, make sure you choose the “percent of remainder” option.

Let’s set up out third envelope, Rent. This is a fixed amount every month, so we’ll put in $325 (half) per deposit. Now, we don’t want any more than $650 to be put into that envelope until we empty it out. So, we need to set a limit of $650 of target envelope balance. After you’ve received $650 in that envelope, your next deposit will skip that envelope and put the money in the next envelope that needs it. Your set amount envelope should look something like:

You can see that the allocation of our $550 is set to zero, which means I already have $650 in that envelope. Pretty neat huh?

Continue doing this for each bill until you’ve set every envelope in the order you want the money to go in. Let’s take that $550 and see what happens when we already have money in envelopes:

You can see it automatically skips down to the bill that doesn’t have enough money in its envelope. This system is great because once you set it up, it requires almost NO tinkering, unless you need to add or delete a bill!

Let’s pretend we’re broke freelancers and have $0 in our checking account. What happens when we put $550 in the amount field? Try it and see how the money gets broken up.

Why the Envelope System?

After doing the envelope system for so many years, I really don’t understand how people pay bills without it.

In a regular bank account, you may see $2,000 in your balance, but how do you know if you have money for bills and that $800 toy?

The envelope system lets you see immediately how much you have to spend on anything. It shows you if you have money for all bills and toys, or none at all. It also shows you that you may have $800 in your toy envelope, but your $100 short in rent, so you would need to adjust.

Some Other Budgeting Packages

There are several other free and low cost budget programs available. You may wish to consider one of the following budget programs:

• mvelopes
• Account Xpress
• gnucash

We haven’t tried these particular programs personally, but they have a good reputation online. If you do try them, let us know what you think.

Your Turn

Do you have any great budget systems you use? What are they? What do you think of this modified envelope system?

What are some of the problems you’ve had with trying to budget your freelance income? Did you figure out a way to fix it?

Image by unconstructive_bry

Related posts:

1. 5 Tips For Filing Your Taxes Easily
2. Open Thread: How Are You Handling Your Taxes This Year?
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1. I would not have any clients.
2. I would only do the work I wanted to do.

In this post, I’ll explain how I met both of these goals.

Agencies: A Different Kind of Client

I’m sure right now you’re trying to figure out how I’m surviving without any clients, right? When I say the word “client,” what comes to mind? You’re probably thinking either of these things:

• A small business owner with little to no web experience
• A medium to large business or organization
• Someone looking for a redesign or the next “big” web application

None of my clients are these. In fact — all of my clients are web agencies.

Freelancing for web agencies instead of the typical client has changed my business in multiple ways. While there are ups and downs to every kind of work, working solely for agencies has definitely been a rewarding experience.

Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of working with agencies.

The Pros

There are many pros to working only with agencies. Here are some of them:

• You control the type of work you do. You’re no longer expected to carry the website from start to finish. Instead, you can fully niche yourself into only designing, only front-end development or only programming.
• Agencies won’t haggle you to death. While I still get an agency from time to time who tries to talk down my rates, most agencies already anticipate and understand your rates and what they’re paying for.
• No hand-holding required. Web agencies are just as knowledgeable about your work as you are; therefore you don’t have to spend time explaining “Where do I buy the PHP?” or other questions that arise from non-web savvy clients.
• You get paid faster. I require that my clients pay 50% up front and most are required to pay the other 50% before I release the final files. While I may bend these rules and agree to net-15 invoicing terms, I still get paid quicker than freelancers who have regular clients. How is this? Often you have to wait for your client to send you content and files.
• They don’t throw you in the lion’s den. I’ve never had to pitch to an agency against a million other freelancers like I’ve had to with regular clients. Agencies come to me because they’re specifically looking for someone with my expertise and they can quickly tell if I’m good for them or not. I also don’t have to spend tons of time emailing back and forth, only so the “client” can go work with someone else. Chances are, if the agency is talking to you, they’re going to hire you.
• They bring in LOTS of work. If you do a great job for the agency and they’re not going out of business, they should be coming to you for multiple jobs. With regular clients, you build them a site, launch it and then never see them again. While you may sell them some maintenance packages, SEO or social media services, most of the time these aren’t as profitable as the original job. Web agencies keep bringing you full job after job!
• Agencies bring less stress. Agencies work just like you do — so they know if they want to make you change that background 100 times, they’ll have to pay for the revisions. Quite often, regular clients don’t understand that what we do isn’t just “copy and paste” and will argue over revision costs.

Now, that we’ve discussed the pros of working with agencies, it’s time to look at some of the cons.

The Cons

There are also a few cons to working with agencies. Here are a few of those:

• Paperwork death. Sometimes web agencies come with a lot of nasty paperwork. Some freelancers refuse to sign non-competes and non-disclosures. Just make sure you read what you’re signing. Many of these state that you can’t use the project in your portfolio, or work with those clients in the future.
• Portfolio bummers. Even if they do let you use the piece, sometimes it can mess up your portfolio, especially if you’re a developer. I like to link to the live websites, so the client can see that I do real work. Often I find that the agencies have changed the code. Unfortunately, many agencies don’t care about semantics or validation and hire developers who also don’t care, so the changes they make to the website after you’ve finished often lead to unvalidated sites — which in turn can make you look bad. After all, your portfolio says your sites are validated and you claimed to code that site, so why isn’t it validating? I’ve had to put a disclaimer on my site because I’ve actually lost work due to this.
• Bureaucracy. While not much of a con for developer, if you’re a freelance designer or writer this can really stink. Not only do you have to please the client — when freelancing for an agency you have to please a client and the agency itself.
• You can’t charge as much. When I was freelancing for regular clients, I charged double what I charge now. Unfortunately, with agencies, you have more overhead to deal with. Most can’t afford higher hourly rates. However, it honestly doesn’t feel like I’ve halved my rates, considering I’ve got more work than ever and I’m doing the work I really want to do.
• Rush Jobs. Agencies are notorious for asking projects to be done by the end of this week, by tomorrow, or even by the end of today. I still can’t figure out why they always wait till the last minute to hire a freelancer…
• You’re on their schedule. You have to wait on the client to provide your deposit and send you files. This can really mess up your schedule if you’re already booked solid. You have to remember to include a project that you are waiting on in your schedule every week until they actually hand you the files.

While I don’t specifically turn down work from non-agency regular clients, I don’t advertise or apply for those kinds of jobs either. If I find the client’s business interesting, I’ll probably take on the job anyway. If I’m too busy, I’ll refer them to a fellow freelancer.

Freelancing for agencies only has been a lot more rewarding for me and my business. I’m doing the work I enjoy at the rates I want and am finding that I don’t need to advertise as much as I used to. That’s not to say you can be lax in your business, but to me freelancing for agencies is definitely a lot less stressful than dealing with regular clients!

Your Turn

We’ve examined the pros and cons of working for agencies, now it’s time for you to share your perspective.

Do you work for agencies? How has your experience been?

Share your thoughts the comments.

Image by independantman