Freelancing Weekly

Articles

Is Your Home Office Leaving a Bad Impression?

Entertaining clients in your home office just sounds crazy to me.

How to Manage an Entire Agency and Still Get Work Done

So, assuming you have the work for an agency, here’s some tips on how to manage them without spending your whole day on it.

Why Real Businesses Don’t Charge $5/month

Because it limits your options for customer acquisition and maybe gets you customers you don’t want.

9.5 Realistic Ways to a Higher Freelance Rate

Say no. Lots.

Tips for work-life balance

Some thoughts from an academic.

A Freelancer’s Guide to Creating a Revenue Stream and Passive Income

“Usually these strategies are far from passive”.

Three Upgrades Your Small Business Needs — And Fast

A bit colorful but sometimes you need to hear it a different way to hear it at all.

10 Confidence-Building Exercises for New Freelancers

Because there are other skills we need to practice too.

Every aspect of your freelance business is about marketing. At least, it should be.

Marketing and promotion aren’t the same thing.

Resources

Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2013 edition

More SaaS services than you can shake a stick at. Or read through in less than 15 minutes.

What to Ask a Client Before You Start Their Project

Some onboarding questions with a slant towards web design projects.

8 Ways to Get More Leads for Your Business on LinkedIn

What it says.

Freelance Freedom 297: Hired Gun, Part 1

There’s a new sheriff in town.

Freelance Freedom 298: Hired Gun, Part 2

Part 2

Listening & Watching

How To Name Your Business: Should You Choose Your Name or Something Else?

Marie Forleo answers this question.

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This week’s newsletter is brought to you by me. I built Freelance Funnel, a service that takes the headaches out of finding new leads. If you’re a new freelancer, or don’t have a big enough referral network to keep your pipeline full, you’ll definitely want to check it out. There’s even a 30 day free trial, so there’s nothing to lose.

Articles

Putting Clients in their place

Anyone can contribute good ideas, so don’t be so quick to rule out that possibility.

Killing Contracts: An Interview With Andy Clarke

Andy’s the guy behind “Contract Killer” which is now in version 3.

How To Guarantee Your Income With Agile Billing

Agile here really just refers to billing for “sprints”. 1 week, 2 week or month long iterations with a fixed scope.

Tools of the Trade: What Tools I Use for iOS Consulting

I must be doing something wrong, LinkedIn and I just don’t get along.

How to Know if You’re Entering a Viable Niche

Competition isn’t a bad thing.

How to Find Enough Work to Keep an Entire Agency Busy

Seems like maintaining a balance of utilization and keeping to deadlines would be an interesting exercise.

Resources

8 reasons you should throw away your cash-back credit card if you love to travel

If you want to do something with your credit card, here’s an idea.

30 Pounds in 30 Days

If your clients talk about mobile this might help bring a bit of reality to the budget required for native mobile apps (iOS specifically in this case).

Understand the Favicon

More than you ever wanted to know.

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This week’s newsletter is brought to you by me. I built Freelance Funnel, a service that takes the headaches out of finding new leads. If you’re a new freelancer, or don’t have a big enough referral network to keep your pipeline full, you’ll definitely want to check it out. There’s even a 30 day free trial, so there’s nothing to lose.

Articles

11 Obvious A/B Tests You Should Try

Exactly what it says.

Seven A/B testing mistakes you need to stop making in 2013

Some things to think about when you’re trying out the aforementioned obvious tests.

3 Step Action Plan To Get The Best Work Environment

Do yourself a favor and skip the video, unless you want a laugh. Just check out the links from the video.

19 Things We Can Learn From Numerous Heatmap Tests

A bunch of information gleaned from heatmap testing.

How to Evolve from Freelancer to Agency

If you’re looking to expand beyond a solo offering.

Resources

Freelance Freedom 293: Casual Perspective

Trading one for the other.

rubytune — rails devops/sysadmin cheat sheet

Handy cheatsheet if you’re responsible for linux servers.

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This week’s newsletter is brought to you by me. I built Freelance Funnel, a service that takes the headaches out of finding new leads. If you’re a new freelancer, or don’t have a big enough referral network to keep your pipeline full, you’ll definitely want to check it out. There’s even a 30 day free trial, so there’s nothing to lose.

Articles

9 Steps to Starting Your Freelance Web Design Business

A broad overview of what it takes to start up a business.

Here’s what I learned hanging out with Jason Fried

Lesson’s learned about selling.

5 Design Tips Every Developer Should Know

And now you know.

How To Become a Successful Freelance Web Developer (and Not Kill Your Career)

Another take on how to get started, slowly, with a “regular” job to get you started.

Resources

Freelance Freedom 292: The Sickness

Timely, we just finished up rounds of a 24 hour stomach virus and the littlest got the flu.

Sponsor

This week’s newsletter is brought to you by me. I built Freelance Funnel, a service that takes the headaches out of finding new leads. If you’re a new freelancer, or don’t have a big enough referral network to keep your pipeline full, you’ll definitely want to check it out. There’s even a 30 day free trial, so there’s nothing to lose.

Articles

5 Pricing Tips to Earn More on Client Projects

I’d argue that bonuses are better than discounts, if you can manage them.

The 5 Most Persuasive Words in the English Language

The mini-study on using free is pretty interesting.

4 Ways to Profit From LinkedIn

Some more strategies for LinkedIn.

Preparing for the New LinkedIn Design: How to Optimize Your Page and Profile

If you’re keeping up with LinkedIn, you probably already know most of this.

SEO: What Keywords Should a Freelancer Try to Rank for?

If you set up a website and wondered why your inbox isn’t flooded with requests to do business with you, not getting any traffic may be a small part of the problem.

Starting an Online Show: How to Quickly Grow Your Platform

Podcasting is great fun. I wish my schedule coincided more with The Ruby Freelancers, I miss being a regular. I might start up something on my own.

Resources

A 50-Point Checklist For Creating The Ultimate Landing Page

If you’re into checklists…

Freelance Freedom 288: Iconic Holiday

Freelance Freedom 291: Resolutely Irresolute

Sponsor

This week’s newsletter is brought to you by me. I built Freelance Funnel, a service that takes the headaches out of finding new leads. If you’re a new freelancer, or don’t have a big enough referral network to keep your pipeline full, you’ll definitely want to check it out. There’s even a 30 day free trial, so there’s nothing to lose.

Articles

You don’t have to be local

Be aware of how you choose to focus your time.

3 Unconventional Ways to Boost Your Facebook Engagement

What it says.

Taking a Stand for Office Ergonomics

Still not convinced you shouldn’t be sitting at a computer all day?

Designing Contracts for the XXI Century

The interesting part for me is towards the end, non-legalese renditions of your contract.

7 Lessons I Learned From My Very First Customer

Important point about maintaining your relationships.

Case-Study: How A Scrappy Bootstrapped Team In The Middle Of Nowhere Used Lean Startup To Achieve Startup Success

Talking to your customers is a good idea. Comments are pretty active and interesting too.

Resources

The Cost of Poor Web Performance

An infographic.

7 Resources New Freelancers Can Use to Figure Out What to Charge

Some general resources and advice if you’re just starting out.

Freelance Freedom 287: Future Past

It never ends.

Sponsor

This week’s newsletter is brought to you by me. I built Freelance Funnel, a service that takes the headaches out of finding new leads. If you’re a new freelancer, or don’t have a big enough referral network to keep your pipeline full, you’ll definitely want to check it out. There’s even a 30 day free trial, so there’s nothing to lose.

Articles

How to Communicate Your Core Difference

We’re unique, just like everyone else.

How to Configure Your Freelancer Facebook Page

I don’t even know what to do with Facebook, but if you do this might help.

How to Get More From Every Piece of Content You Produce

A little bit more than the typical, screencast/podcast/article triumvirate.

Resources

Suite of 300 icons for web and user interface design

PSDs, SVGs, all free.

ByPeople PreLaunch Bundle

If 300 icons isn’t enough, how about 5 GB of menus, patterns, search bars, etc.

Freelance Freedom 286: Interconnectivity

Having never met 90% of my clients I could totally see this happening.

CoderSumo

Interesting community of coders where coding is your key to the community. Not sure what it is beyond what the landing page but might be interesting.

Startup Tools

Holy links, bat person. Loads and loads of resources. You don’t have to be running a startup to find them useful.

Listening & Watching

How to Learn Anything

Tim Ferriss’ new book The Four Hour Chef is supposed to be equal parts cookbook and learning manual. Here’s a video with Leo Babauta of Zen Habits.

Sponsor

This week’s newsletter is brought to you by me. I built Freelance Funnel, a service that takes the headaches out of finding new leads. If you’re a new freelancer, or don’t have a big enough referral network to keep your pipeline full, you’ll definitely want to check it out. There’s even a 30 day free trial, so there’s nothing to lose.

Editor’s Note

Thanksgiving in the US means we’re closing in on the end of the year. Time to start thinking about your taxes and figuring out what your goals are for next year. That and consuming a ridiculous amount of calories in a short period of time, tryptophan induced naps while watching American Football.

Articles

7 Effortless Ways to Find New Ideas for Your Blog

An interesting list.

Becoming Better Communicators

At the root of a lot of problems you’ll find communication failures.

You Need to Think Like a Customer: The Concepts You May be Missing

Again, communication issues.

7 Pricing Strategies Based on Research Studies

Like focus on time savings and resetting the price anchors set by your competitors.

10 Tips To Convert More Customers With Psychology [Infographic]

Yes, it’s an infographic. No, it’s not in the Resources section.

Unlocking the Science of Habits: How to Hack the Habit Loop & Become the Man You Want to Be

Yes, it’s from a site devoted to Manliness but it’s about The Power of Habit and we could all benefit from planning and engineering our habits to drive us towards our goals.

Mastermind Groups and Mentors – Why You Need Them and How to Find Them

Masterminds: Find one and join one.

How to name your startup

A 9 month first-hand journey through rebranding. I needed this a year ago. And six years ago.

Resources

Inspiritas – a free Bootstrap theme by Ripple

With source on Github, pretty cool.

Bones – The HTML5 WordPress Starter Theme

A free, mobile & responsive first WordPress theme.

Arq cloud backup adds low-cost Amazon Glacier support

With Amazon’s new low cost infrequent access Glacier storage service using Arq now becomes a bit more affordable if you’re looking for a non-service based backup solution on the mac.

Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE

Hopefully this makes your life easier if you have to do this.

Unheap

Really interesting way to show jQuery plugins.

9 Tips for Integrating Your Facebook Page With Your Facebook Profile

How to handle the dual roles as “you” and “your page” and what happens when you interact as one or the other.

Listening & Watching

Episode 43 – Creating a Repeatable Sales Process…

If it’s not predictable, it’s not repeatable.

50 entrepreneurial podcasts to listen to over Thanksgiving weekend

Here are a lot of podcasts, if you’re into that thing and are interested in other resources.

Episode 104: Podcasts for Startup Founders

Mike and Rob also weigh in with over 40 podcasts for startup founders.

Sponsor

This week’s newsletter is brought to you by me. I built Freelance Funnel, a service that takes the headaches out of finding new leads. If you’re a new freelancer, or don’t have a big enough referral network to keep your pipeline full, you’ll definitely want to check it out. There’s even a 30 day free trial, so there’s nothing to lose.

Editor’s Note

I wanted to take a moment to thank you publically (I should have thanked you privately) if you submitted feedback to me on the direction of Freelancing Weekly. I’m still digesting the suggestions, I’ll let you know more soon. Feel free to shoot me an email any time to let me know what you think, or just to say “What’s up?”

Articles

How Zappos’ User Agreement Failed In Court and Left Zappos Legally Naked

The risk aversion part is for you to decide, this article talks about the various ways of presenting your “Terms of Use” and the level of “agreement” you require of your users. If your client (or you) have a SaaS app or eCommerce site, this should be required reading (and is a great reason to get in touch, reinforce your worth).

Keeping Your Files Secure: What Obligations Does a Freelancer Have?

Mostly it depends, but some good ideas.

5 Goals Every Blogger Should Set Up in Google Analytics

Even if you have Analytics set up, it never hurts to see how other people use tools.

Advanced LinkedIn Techniques for Getting More Clients

This focuses primarily on getting in touch with potential clients.

5 Tips for Optimizing Your LinkedIn Company Page

Some comment about how I should use LinkedIn more.

How to Set Up Your LinkedIn Profile: A Freelancer’s Guide

And for your personal profile. Trying to figure out how he styled his the way he did.

How to Build a Dominant Google+ Presence

If you’re not there yet, this might help you sort some things out.

10 Things Every Freelancer Should Try at Least Once

Web Developer Economics: Monthly Service Costs

I’ve included this again because we have the whole series now.

Web Developer Economics: One Off Software Costs

Not subscriptions, and only listing paid software.

Web Developer Economics: Hardware Costs

And hardware.

How to Present Your Freelance Services on Your Website

If you haven’t “nailed” your website yet, there is some good general discussion on how to organize your services here.

Resources

How to Name your Company

Not sure I’m up for another rename, but I’d like to.

16 Productivity Apps Used By Shopify

I use a lot of these.

5 Google Analytics Reports and Tips You Should Embrace Now

Multi-channel funnels look interesting.

Freelance Freedom 282: Postage Proficiency

I hesitate to believe the USPS can actually schedule something online, I’m still waiting for email notifications that I have mail in my PO BOX (6 months and no notifications)

Freelance Freedom 283: Conventional Wisdom

At a loss for comments.

Freelance Freedom 284: Unacceptable Excuses

Evolution at it’s worse.

Developer Color Picker

A color picker with output in NSColor, UIColor, CGColorRef, CSS and HTML styles.

Sponsor

This week’s newsletter is brought to you by me. I built Freelance Funnel, a service that takes the headaches out of finding new leads. If you’re a new freelancer, or don’t have a big enough referral network to keep your pipeline full, you’ll definitely want to check it out. There’s even a 30 day free trial, so there’s nothing to lose.