Finance for a Freelance Life» Freelance and Alternative Income

Take the Nickel and Dime Challenge: I Dare You

Emma Green — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:50:18 +0000

Now that I’m on my own and watching where every penny is going twice as close as I did before, I started noticing a disturbing trend. I’ve been working almost 70 hours a week, not getting as much work done as I should, and not billing anywhere near those 70 hours. Something just wasn’t adding up and I realized this had actually been going on for several months ever since I had dropped a fairly big client who was having money problems, and in place of this client brought on nine new clients sending me weekly ongoing work. I must have been in a very thick fog from the impact of my rocky home situation (which is actually my work situation too since I work from home) because it had gone on far too long.

Anyways, I told myself something had to give or I was going to die from staying up all night several nights a week trying to get my work done or from hunger, because I wasn’t bringing in enough to keep my new household going. So I started using a timer for every single thing I did during the workday and writing the time and details down. After several days, it was glaringly obvious where all my time and money was going. Care to take a guess? If you get it right let me know, because I totally never would have believed this myself.

The culprit was innocent enough—client calls and emails. I was completely amazed at the amount of time I was spending weekly with each client and not charging a dime for it, not one darn cent. One big client alone was responsible for 15 calls totaling 3.25 hours and there were 68 emails between us which I was taking an average of 5 minutes opening, reading, thinking over, then 5 minutes responding—at 5 minute increments it adds up to over 5 ½ hours! So I found in one week, I had spent almost 9 hours handling business I wasn’t charging for for a single client! Some of the projects I work on are pretty involved and take a lot of back and forth while others are more straightforward and don’t require more than the minimum emails and phone calls a week, but it still adds up to at least two hours per client for the more “normal” eight clients and well, the ninth obviously requires a lot of communication. I discovered after one week, averaged out over nine clients, I had spent no less than 25 hours on just client emails and calls alone, not to mention the mental exhaustion of being interrupted so many times a day and how much time it cost me to regain my concentration.

So now I fully understand why attorneys keep a minute to minute bill on every client. It isn’t petty or nickel and diming clients in the least (unless they are charging for things that you shouldn’t be paying for); it is just good business. I let all my clients know I am now charging for phone and email time for any hourly work I do, and for the fixed priced projects, I am working in the cost ahead of time. 25 hours of phone and emails a week may seem excessive to you, depending on what business you’re in, but in mine, constant communication can make each project successful.

So maybe your problem isn’t email or phone calls; maybe the big black void that is sucking up your precious time and money could be meeting clients in person for long lunches weekly, or if you work strictly online all day, maybe you are spending countless hours partaking in social media such as Facebook and Twitter to help your client’s business. Or maybe in your research for your specific task at hand you spend a bunch of time reading online reading blogs. It doesn’t matter the activity…if you aren’t billing those hours, you are paying for them in more ways than one. Lastly, maybe you are spending your time on completely non work related activities (chatting with friends, “friending” people on facebook, the list goes on). Even if these tasks are not something you should be billing for, you still need to realize where your time is being drained away so that you can reorganize yourself and start working more efficiently.

Take the Nickel and Dime Challenge

I challenge you to one week of timing yourself and writing down how you are spending the time you should be working and getting paid for it. Have a phone call from a client or a friend? Time it and write it down (I used my phone timer for this and tallied every call up at the end of the week). Hop on Facebook to check messages? Write it down. Don’t leave out any activity.

If you have your own business, this test will help you tremendously and start making you more money. If you work for someone else, it will show you why you aren’t being as productive as you should be or why it is taking you so long to get tasks completed. Either way, you’ll win. You either become super productive at work, knowing where your time needs to be spent and finally get noticed and get that long awaited promotion, or if you work for yourself, you start making a ton more money and stop checking email every five minutes. It’s a win-win.

Let me know after you’ve completed your week and if you are brave enough (yes I’m a bit of a voyeur), send me your time list, so I can see for myself where your time went and how much it cost you. I won’t share your information with anyone, I promise! And also be sure to comment here so the rest of us can learn from your experience.

This challenge is for everyone. You may think, if you are hyper organized and super efficient, that this exercise doesn’t apply to you—but listen up, you may have a hidden money and time waster yourself—and it might actually be all those lists and spreadsheets you’re making to stay so organized and efficient! I look forward to hearing your experiences….

Best,
Em

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Is It Possible to Mitigate Risk When Starting An Online Business?

Mrs. Micah — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 10:00:06 +0000

Steve at My Wife Quit Her Job (an excellent blog for freelancers and other entrepreneurs) came up with a list of 10 ways to mitigate risk when starting an online business. While risk is inherent in any endeavor, your options have to be either success or financial ruin.

Of what he listed, here are the steps that I’ve taken, why, and how they’ve worked out so far:

Keep a Nest Egg

Check! We have both an emergency fund and when I was only working part-time and freelancing more we had a freelance cushion too. I can’t recommend the cushion highly-enough when you’re getting started. Even if you never need it, it’s good to know that you won’t have to close up shop if you hit a dry spell. Don’t let your plans die early because you weren’t prepared for a drop in business.

Keep Your Full-Time Job

Initially, I was working two part-time jobs, though neither of them was 20 hours/week. Having a full-time job may not work for your type of business, but if you can ease into building it nights and weekends, it’s a good idea. You build a client list & portfolio, test your market (something that took me some trial and error), and really learn how to manage your time.

Right now I’m working full-time and doing consulting work. Can I do as much as I did when I wasn’t working as many hours? No. But some businesses allow you to schedule blocks of work time. If my clients want someone they can count on from 9-5, they’ll have to look elsewhere, but if they just need me to get a project done in a time-frame in which I can do it, there isn’t a conflict.

Even if you’re selling a physical product, lowering your volume initially (another one of his tips, though one that has less to do with my work) may be the way to go while you keep your full-time job. You don’t have to take on every client that asks and you don’t have to sell an infinite number of units if selling a set amount will keep you afloat.

Pick a Narrow Niche

While in my mind’s eye I see my start in freelancing as floundering wildly from one thing to another, I actually ended up in a rather narrow niche and one I’m pretty good at—blog migration. I do a fair amount of other work, but what I do for over 50% of my consulting projects.

Being so specific has helped me get good at doing it, too. Not every migration has been perfect, but I’ve learned to handle a number of hurdles that I’ve encountered along the way and have notes on method for dealing with X or Y in case I run into it again. I also know that I cannot move a 3000 post blog from Typepad to Blogger (in theory, it’s doable), no matter how hard I try and that I’m not ever going to try that again. In fact, I decided that my specialization didn’t include Typepad at all because their export system is very poorly-constructed.

Keep Spending Low

I really wish I could find the post, but over a year ago DebtKid outlined a number of things that he didn’t need to spend money on when starting his business. Instead of starting small in his parents’ large basement (and even renting that), he leased office space, bought nice new computers, and generally approached spending with the assumption that things would go great.

Depending on what you’re doing, you may need to buy supplies or rent space. But for an online business you rarely need to impress the customers with your workspace. Impress them with your product instead. I always feel frustrated at tax time because there’s so little I can deduct. The most money I spent last year on a single product was buying a developer’s copy of Thesis so that I could learn what made it tick and use it for clients. If I’d been feel really cheap, I could’ve justified playing around with a client’s copy, but I wanted forum access, etc.

Have a Backup Plan

This could also be filed under keeping your full-time job. Your backup plan doesn’t have to be a fleshed-out plan you fixate on (because if you spend a lot of time thinking about it, it’s likely to become your primary plan). Before I was working full-time, our backup plan if it didn’t worked out was to use the financial cushion and possibly emergency fund while I looked for a job.

As it was, I was able to find the full-time job I wanted and when I wanted it, rather than settle. And I was sure going into it that this was the right decision.

How Much Risk Is Already In Your Life?

Also, keep in mind that everything in this world is risky. Everything. Life is incredibly fragile and often hangs by a slenderer thread than we let ourselves realize. In March, our car suddenly turned off while driving on an interstate. I have never felt more vulnerable, especially since the place where we ended up left part of the car sticking into the road on a turn. At a minimum, I was sure our car would be destroyed by someone going too fast to see it in time. Everything turned out fine (thank you state of Connecticut for the roadside help that arrived before we’d even finished scrambling as far away from the car as possible).

People lose their jobs every day, discover they have cancer, get killed by an inattentive driver or a car malfunction. Houses burn down, CEOs drive their company into the ground, people’s hearts just stop beating—there’s no way you can actually avoid risk. Do your best to plan wisely for contingencies, but don’t let the riskiness stop you from undertaking a project/business you think is worthwhile.

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Content Â© Mrs. Micah 2007 – 2010. This content may only be reproduced in excerpts by legitimate bloggers.

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Why I’m not Worried About Teens With Debit Cards

Mrs. Micah — Wed, 12 May 2010 10:00:58 +0000

Kevin at No Debt Plan asks why more people aren’t worried about teens with debit and credit cards. Well, I’ll have to join him in being concerned about teens with credit cards. But I while I didn’t have a debit card in my early teens I got one in my late teens and did very well with it. In fact, I think it’s a valuable tool.

Kevin’s primary concern is a valid one. He fears that teens are being acculturated with the idea of just swiping for their purchases, not thinking about money as money. I wrote about this during the very nascence of my blog, that the well-oiled machine is threatened when we stop to think about a purchase. And that’s why I’m not sure if credit is as good a learning-tool, because it’s not as immediate.

What Having a Debit Card as a Teen Taught Me

Having a debit card taught me that once you spend the money, it’s gone. Boom.

I know cash is supposed to function that way too, but the truth is that when I take cash out of the bank, unless it’s for something specific, I have a hard time putting it in my mental register as “counting.” It’s already out of the bank and therefore as good as spent. Wrong? Yes, but it’s how I feel. Checks are more permanent, but they have that nervous, waiting period while you want the person to hurry up and cash them.

But debit? Instantly gone. It doesn’t sit in your pocket like cash and it can’t be canceled like a check (though debit transactions can be undone, it’s not as simple as calling the bank and canceling a check #).

Since my banking was online from the moment I got my debit card, I could see every purchase right after it was made and keep track of my account without using a register.

I also knew that I would lose money to fees if I over-spent or broke any of the other rules. And I knew about ATM charges, etc. My parents made sure that I knew and as a teen it really hit home because I wasn’t dealing with a large job or allowance income. I wanted to make it go as far as I could, and that meant not letting fees take away my spending money.

What Teens Still Need to Learn

I agree with Kevin that teens need to learn to think about goals, etc. My solution for this would be for their parents to limit how much is in their checking account at one time. Minors can’t have accounts without their parents’ partnership anyway, and it’s an excellent opportunity for parents to shape their kids’ spending habits.

Will most parents do this? I don’t know. I think I got a pretty good set and I know they did their best to teach me financial responsibility. I also know that I was a good saver and very goal-oriented in my teens, so I can’t speak for everyone.

But I think that giving teens a debit card for their checking account is an excellent way to teach them financial responsibility, even if they have to learn through the school of dumb mistakes at first. Better they learn about overdrafting when they’re 15 and not spending money on their rent, food, and other necessities than when they get older.

Why Credit Is More Dangerous

The immediacy of seeing my bank account balance drop brought home how spending affected the money I had. Credit, on the other hand, is precisely the opposite—it’s spending money you don’t have. There’s no good reason for a teen to use a credit card regularly. Rewards aren’t bad, but they’re not necessary for a teen.

At this stage, it’s better to learn that money spent = money you no longer have. Learning about credit cards is good and getting one with your parents to build a controlled credit history may be valuable. But for day-to-day use, there’s much more potential for spending what you don’t have, accruing interest, and generally messing up your financial situation before you’re even out of the gate.

What about you? Did you have a debit or credit card as a teen? Would you give your kid one?

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Content Â© Mrs. Micah 2007 – 2010. This content may only be reproduced in excerpts by legitimate bloggers.

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Is It Worth Taking a Part-Time Job to Pay Off Debt?

Mrs. Micah — Mon, 10 May 2010 10:00:54 +0000

Last week, I wrote an overview of some of my failures (or lack of successes) on my way to finding freelance work which was both enjoyable and profitable. Then, over the weekend, Kevin at Out of Your Rut wrote an excellent post on his own experience taking a part-time job that didn’t pay off.

In his case, he took on a job that’s supposed to be a good part-time source of income: delivering newspapers. But the time, energy, wear & tear on his car meant it wasn’t worth the money he was making. It’s worth a read.

On the other hand, Jeff of Deliver Away Debt has had success with another part-time job—pizza delivery. From reading how Jeff and Kevin describe the work they do/did, I think that pizzas offer a lot more return on the whole, especially with good tippers. But in some areas, pizza delivery just doesn’t pay off either (more driving, less tipping, fewer deliveries, etc).

Back when I was working several part-time jobs and freelancing instead of one full-time plus freelancing, I tried to calculate the real cost of my PRN job. The other was easy enough, I had set hours, generally set commuting costs, etc. But some weeks the PRN (per re nata — “as needed”) job just didn’t need me there long enough to make up for the time and cost of commuting there and back. Unfortunately, to keep the job I still needed to come in on those days.

So Is It Worth Taking a Part-Time Job to Pay Off Debt?

I’d say that yes, it is worth it. My consulting money has been great for paying down debt (and saving for grad school). Jeff of Deliver Away Debt has made phenomenal progress on getting his paid off.

BUT I think a critical caveat is that while a part-time job can be worthwhile, it depends entirely on the part-time job, how much it pays per real hours spent working (Kevin’s story illustrates how important it is to include that in your calculations), how much it costs you to do the work (commuting costs, clothing, equipment), and how much it wears you out and affects your ability to do your regular work.

The first two can be measured objectively, the third is even more important and harder to measure.

My boss has a small side business a well, so she understands if I mention that I was up late last night because someone’s site got hacked or I couldn’t get some piece of code to work. BUT that doesn’t mean she expects anything less than my best at work because my full-time job always comes first. If I were chronically exhausted from working too late, if my behavior showed that I cared more about consulting than my regular work, then I know she’d sit me down and tell me to shape up and find my priorities.

If you lose your full-time job because of your part-time job, it’s going to hurt your financial situation a lot more than not having a part-time job would.

Freelancing is actually better than a regular part-time job in this respect, because you can turn down gigs and clients more easily. Of course, if you turn down regular clients and refer away too many people, then you may find yourself left without any work to do.

Can You Tell Up Front if It’s Worth It?

Unfortunately, the way most of us learn our limits is through trial and error. Sometimes it may be readily apparent that a job is not going to be worth the time and money you put into it. Before taking it, calculate commuting costs and any other foreseeable expenses to come up with an estimated real hourly wage.

If it still looks good after calculating the real hourly wage, then the only way to tell whether it’s going to work out or not is to try. For a part-time job, worst case scenario is that you have to quit early on because it’s affecting your life in unforeseen ways.

If you’re trying hard to pay down debt, taking a part-time job can make a huge difference in speeding up your repayment. Don’t be afraid to try, just go into it ready to evaluate its real earnings and real affect on your other job and your life so that you can decide whether it’s right for you.

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Content Â© Mrs. Micah 2007 – 2010. This content may only be reproduced in excerpts by legitimate bloggers.

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How Many Times Do You Have to Fail Before You Succeed?

Mrs. Micah — Mon, 03 May 2010 10:00:17 +0000

I was recently sorting through the old e-mails in the two and a half years of this blog’s gmail account. Besides using it for the blog, I’ve got personal correspondence in there and a lot of freelance-related conversations. It’s given me a timeline/picture of my first 6 months trying to make freelancing work and how I failed and succeeded my way into something that worked for me.

Looking at the big picture nearly two years later later helps me see how the failures were as important to me as the successes. Sometimes I made the same mistake twice, other times I learned my lesson quickly. Even once I started BlogCrafted, I wasn’t immune to hitting snags.

Here’s a timeline of what I tried, why it did or didn’t work, and what I learned with a good dash of hindsight.

Copywriting — 6 months to fail

My logic was as follows: 1) I like writing. 2) I majored in English and can write quite well. 3) There are a lot of people looking for content.

First, I got involved with a content production company who paid an embarrassingly-low amount of money. This was late 2007, however, and for copywriters without much know-how, experience, and preparation, rates were pretty low. I managed to make it work for a while, but within a month I’d said “no no no no.” I just couldn’t write 400-word keyword-rich articles on any topic at the drop of a hat. The payment didn’t make it worth my time.

After a little writing here and there (among other things, I tried sites like Associated Content & Squidoo, which pay per view and such), I landed a gig for most of the spring of 2008, writing content for two blogs. This was easier as it was on a particular topic, but it was also generally soul-crushing. It wasn’t like writing for a lot of the personal finance blogs which have teams of writers who provide engaging content, it was just anything remotely-related to the products that I could put up there. I tried to take pride in my work, but it was hard.

The pay was reasonable, so I stuck with this gig until I made the transition to full-time site work.

In Hindsight:

1) I’m not cut out for it. I like blogging, but I’m not cut out for writing content just for search engines and especially not on topics I just don’t care about. I still can’t look at water filters or dried superfoods without feeling a little sick.

2) I should have tried getting hired as a real blogger. If I was going the blogging route, I should have actively sought out jobs writing for a site that interested me like Wisebread. It might’ve taken something away from my blog, but being part of a community and writing about something I cared about would have made a huge difference to my morale and endurance.

3) I should have marketed my work properly and networked. One of my biggest failings in all my early attempts was not marketing and networking properly. I should have built a portfolio site, maybe with a blog, and generally gotten my work out there. The gigs I did I found through places like Craigslist and eLance…not the best places to get work.

4) I should have researched. I should have researched more about the last two before I started. I was getting out of a job I really hated, but even then I should have taken more time to look at how the better-paid people did this instead of just figuring it out as I went along.

Crafting — 1 month(ish) to fail

The other and much more short-lived freelance area I entered right off the bat was crafting. I like to craft and I had a few little successes both with selling pieces and with doing commissions. But I figured out crafting wasn’t right for me in the long-term much faster than I figured out writing.

In Hindsight:

1) I think my biggest failure was in not wanting to market. I also think that crafting wouldn’t have been the right choice for me, but for some reason I was scared to death of marketing my stuff. I think I was afraid people would find flaws in my work. Whatever it was, I psyched myself out of this one.

2) I didn’t have any particular product or brand. I made some cute little iPod cases and some lovely bags, but I didn’t really have a product or brand to back it up. It would have been hard to market without that, even if I’d tried harder.

It’s likely that I could make this work, but only if I had an inspired idea and took the time to build a brand and do it right. At the time, I was doing it because I could and without everything I know now about blogging, networking, branding, etc.

Copyediting — 3 months to fail

Even though my own writing isn’t always perfect, I’m pretty good at cleaning up other people’s writing. It’s easier for me to see the flaws in other people’s work and when I’m getting paid to do it, I get even better.

This gig doesn’t even need a hindsight section, however, because I learned very quickly that while I could clean up bad writing, I really didn’t want to. I ended up feeling stressed about whether or not I’d caught every error. I also had a hard time focusing on it for long periods, so I had to break it up. That wasn’t very efficient.

I’d much rather scan code looking for errors than copyedit a Master’s thesis (which I did).

Unfailing at Web Consulting

Fortunately, all the skills I was building through running a WordPress site were valuable enough for me to switch my freelancing focus entirely to BlogCrafted.

I learned from my past errors by:

Doing work that I enjoy. It’s hard to explain how much more I love this work than any of the three failures.
Creating a site to advertise my services and portfolio (though I’ve let the latter slide a bit by not updating).
Promoting and networking, both with clients and with other awesome folks who do the same work.
Valuing my work at market price.

At first I worried about whether or not I’d be able to get clients if I charged what it was worth, but when I made myself do it anyway I found that my business didn’t suffer and I made accommodations for a few people. I also had an unpleasant incident last summer with a client who wouldn’t pay.

I continue to learn, but, after doing blog consulting for nearly two years, I feel like I’ve actually succeeded as a freelancer. I’m glad the most cringe-inducing memories are two years behind me.

…And I Survived

None of these failures were of the “hit rock bottom and failed completely.” I didn’t have money invested in any of them, so while I lost time, earning potential, and sometimes undersold myself, I didn’t lose a great deal of money.

Your goal shouldn’t be to fail. You need to throw all your energy into the projects when you start them, full of hope and enthusiasm. I’m glad that the first three didn’t work out for me because then I really prefer web consulting work. But I think if I’d thrown myself into them with more planning and less trepidation, I might have done better before I figured out they weren’t for me.

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Content Â© Mrs. Micah 2007 – 2010. This content may only be reproduced in excerpts by legitimate bloggers.

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Are You Ready to Be Your Own Boss?

Mrs. Micah — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 10:00:38 +0000

“Are you ready to be your own boss?” It’s a question one hears asked by people selling the entrepreneurial dream. And those who are quitting or planning to quit their jobs and start small businesses or freelance repeat it back, “I’m ready to be my own boss!”

But are you? Having a boss sometimes sucks (I’m currently quite lucky with mine but I’ve had bad ones in the past), but having a boss or working for an organization that’s more than just you also means that you have to do everything. Based on my own experience, I came up with four questions to help you assess whether or not you have the personality to be your own boss—or even the interest.

Fortunately, you can work on all of these areas or come up with strategies to deal with your shortcomings by collaborating or outsourcing. The key is to be aware before you start working for yourself and come up with a plan.

1) Who’s more critical of your work, you or your boss? Do you beat yourself up for mistakes or just recognize them and move on?

This can go either way. If you’re not critical enough of your work when it needs criticism and you’re not able to learn from your mistakes, then you’re not going to be able to be your own boss. You’ll always need someone outside of you to tell you when you’re screwing up. That person could be an equal partner, but they’ll need to fulfill something of a boss’s role in this area.

Or you may be the sort of person who beats herself up all the time for any error or potential error. You haven’t yet responded to the guy who e-mailed you 8 hours ago. You accidentally crashed a client’s site for an hour. Whether or not this caused an actual crisis, you’re still thinking about it days, weeks, or months later.

In this case, you’re going to be a much meaner boss than anyone else could ever be. Doesn’t mean you can’t overcome it but does mean you’ll have to work on it. Just don’t feel guilty because you have to work on it. Shame spirals handicap your productivity.

2) How’s your time management?

Can you work on a timetable and deliver products on time? Can you handle multiple clients/jobs at once? Do you feel overwhelmed all the time?

Good time management skills are valuable in any job, but if you’re working for yourself then they’re critical. You’re not on a team that keeps each other accountable (or if you are, you’re all working independently) and you don’t have someone to go to if your workload becomes too much.

You create your schedule, take on your clients, and hopefully deliver the expected results on time. And if it doesn’t work out, then the only person you’ll have to blame is you.

3) Do you like customer service?

You may not have a manager any more, but now every client is something between a customer and a boss. Do you like working with people to solve their problems or would you rather be doing the work itself?

You’ve become customer service, IT support, anything else that could be related to your line of work. If you’re making customized swim suits (and I know a woman who does), you may get some angry phone calls if the suit doesn’t fit right or wears out easily. You then have to solve the problem, if possible, and do your best to make the customer happy.

I actually like this part of freelance work, but that’s because I tend to have good clients with reasonable requests/problems. I’ve never had an abusive client.

4) Do you like sales?

Not only are you the customer service department, you’re also marketing your company. You’ll have to set aside time to apply, pitch, and otherwise market your work, at least until the business takes off and you’ve got enough work from old clients and referrals to keep you busy.

Not only do you have pitch, apply, and market, but you have to do the negotiating as well, or be the person who sets prices and sticks to them.

As I said above, none of these has to be a deal-breaker. Just start thinking now about how you’re going to handle it so that you will be ready to be your own boss.

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Content Â© Mrs. Micah 2007 – 2010. This content may only be reproduced in excerpts by legitimate bloggers.

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Friday Funny – Clients from Hell

Mrs. Micah — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 16:08:05 +0000

I’ve been on the go all week with a couple of clients and another big project which haven’t left me ~~much~~ any time (or, more importantly, brainpower) for writing. So I though I’d share a little bit of schaudenfreude I discovered this week: Clients from Hell.

The site is short excerpts of ridiculous things freelancers/contractors have heard from actual or prospective clients. Let me tell you, it makes me feel incredibly good about my clients. Sure I’ve had a couple off ones, but looking back it feels like 98% were thoroughly reasonable and pleasant to work with.

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Content Â© Mrs. Micah 2007 – 2010. This content may only be reproduced in excerpts by legitimate bloggers.

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Why I Don’t Want to Be an Entrepreneur

Mrs. Micah — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 10:00:53 +0000

Writing this blog means that I get a lot of pitches, some financial, some for freelancers, and some for entrepreneurs. When I see the word “entrepreneur” in a subject heading or the first few lines of an e-mail, I usually have the following sequence of thoughts:

I wouldn’t want to be an entrepreneur.

Wait, wait I run a blog & a consulting business. I am an entrepreneur.

crap.

I would guess that at least half of small business owners/entrepreneurs find themselves thinking the same thing now and then.

Reasons Why We Don’t Want to Be Entrepreneurs

It’s pretty simple:

Finding clients.
Negotiating prices.
Handling clients who don’t pay.
Keeping records.
Doing taxes (or at least getting together all our records at tax time and organized enough that someone else can do them).
Paying taxes.
Doing it all over again.

So Why Are We Entrepreneurs?

The one thing that was missing from that list was the work. Enjoying the work is the reason that entrepreneurs like us started our businesses in the first place. I love a smooth blog migration and I even enjoy the challenge of one that goes slightly awry. Helping people learn to use WordPress can be fun and it’s often rewarding to see how they build up from those basics to create their own awesome sites.

Other entrepreneurs I know have built successful websites and enjoy the writing or other aspects of running sites. I have an entrepreneurial coworker who has a small costume design business. Fortunately for her, it’s a partnership so she avoids some of the business responsibilities.

All of us, even if we don’t always love the nitty-gritty, love the overall scope of the work. (It doesn’t hurt that it pays either.) It’s likely that we got into our work in the first place because we were doing it as a hobby and it just grew. We are accidental entrepreneurs.

What About the Others?

There’s another type of entrepreneur—the intentional entrepreneur. For whatever reason, this person has decided to start a business. Maybe they want to make their own schedule. Maybe they want income in addition to another job. Maybe they like being the boss. Maybe they’ve got so much get-up-and-go that it’s just natural.

Normally these people have an idea and a vision, but they’re as driven by being an entrepreneur as they are by their company. If the one company fails, they’re just as likely to pick up and start a new company as to go back to a 9-to-5.

These people may not love the things that we accidental entrepreneurs dislike, but they view them as a package rather than unpleasant add-ons.

Which Is Better?

Is it better to be an accidental or intentional entrepreneur? It seems to me like neither’s better but that intentional entrepreneurs may be happier about the whole package. On the other hand, some accidental entrepreneurs are able to enjoy the small picture day-to-day stuff better (like I do) because that’s why we started it in the first place.

Like in any job, there’s plenty that makes us happy and plenty that makes us miserable.

I think the one upside to being an accidental entrepreneur is that you’ve got a disposition which means you can be happy in a 9-to-5 workplace as well, so long as the work is engaging. In a good workplace, with interesting work, the inherent negatives balance out with the negative sides of entrepreneurship.

The upside to being an intentional entrepreneur? You’re better-suited for the long run. In the end, it might be you hiring on the accidentals to do the work while you manage the business.

This wasn’t an April Fool’s day post despite the title, though I considered writing an April Fool’s day post on the subject and rejected it in favor of thoughtful consideration. Nor is it solid and fact-filled research, just observations over the last few years.

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Content Â© Mrs. Micah 2007 – 2010. This content may only be reproduced in excerpts by legitimate bloggers.

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27 Must-Check-Out Business Tools for Freelancers!

Mrs. Micah — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 10:00:40 +0000

I have the most fun freelancing when I’m actually working on a job. Sometimes I wish the business side of it would just go away. But being a freelancer means that you’re running your own small business and need the right tools, just like you need tools for the work you do. Here are 27 things that you probably need for your business or that you should at least look into. A lot of these tools are free or have free options; others are almost certainly business write-offs.

File Backups

No matter what kind of freelance work you do, you need to keep backups of all your business files—records, contracts, actual work, reference files, etc.

External hard drives

First, I like having a hard-copy backup of my files. Cloud computing and online storage have come a long way, but I still use an external hard drive to backup my computer. Some hard drives come with programs that allow you to synch—mine does but I prefer transferring folders manually.

Automatic online backup systems

The advantage of automatic online backup systems is that, well, they’re automatic and they backup your stuff somewhere other than your home, where whatever takes out your main computer could also get your backup. Right now, I’m using Mozy’s free 2GB backup to backup current client work & records. The downside of using their free program is that I have to change what’s getting backed up each month. If you’re a freelancer, you probably only need the home package, unless you have entire servers that need backing up.

I’ve also heard good things about Carbonite’s online backup system. So far nothing I’ve heard from other users I know indicates that one is better than the other. Prices are comparable, but Carbonite has you pay by the year & Mozy charges by the month.

File sharing/synching

Whether you’re sharing documents with clients or just working on multiple computers, there are some great free tools out there. When it comes to sharing files across multiple computers, I can’t get enough of Evernote & Dropbox! Both are free basic systems with paid options to raise your limits. I’ve found that the free version is just right for me.

Evernote

I’m not ashamed to be in love with Evernote. It’s not just a place to dump files, it has a delicious-like tag structure which allows you to organize them. You can also search within files.

Evernote has online access and a program you download to your computer in which you can create, organize, and search. If you have several computers, Evernote will synch the files. The paid service offers more upload/download bandwidth & types of files, but I’ve found the regular just fine. I store code snippets, clip web pages and how-to articles, lists of what’s involved in the different services I offer, and even to-do lists.

Dropbox

You can access files in Dropbox online and it serves as its own online backup, but I mostly use it to synch files between multiple computers. You can also have shared folder with other Dropbox users. Micah & I have a shared Dropbox folder for everyday stuff and I have Dropbox installed in my user on our tower PC.

Large files take a while to synch, but if you’re just dropping in a few documents or text files, they get there immediately. While a good home network (ours spazzes at lot) is better than Dropbox, it’s a great tool if your network is spazzy or you’re working with someone in a different location or if you’re trying to share files across different operating systems which don’t work together (i.e. Mac/Windows). Dropbox allows you to store/share up to 2GB free. It has several paid plans for more storage.

Google Docs

For ordinary documents, spreadsheets, PDFs, & presentations, Google Docs is a great way to access them anywhere and to share them with clients. You can make a file public or just invite a specific client/collaborator to read or edit it.

aDrive

I only became aware of aDrive recently. Unlike Dropbox & Mozy, who have 2GB limits on their free programs, it has 50GB of free space. It doesn’t do automatic backups like Mozy and the desktop application is limited to paying users, but as a place to put backups, it looks great.

Delicious

If you’re not using Delicious for your online bookmarking, you should be. It’s great for marking pages you can reference anywhere. There are Firefox plugins to let you share/synch your delicious bookmarks in browsers on multiple computers (and even different OSes) and you can also import all your Delicious bookmarks into Evernote for even more storage.

Invoicing, Records and Receipts

If you want to go bare-bones & free, the only program you need for invoicing, records, and receipts is Open Office, a free alternative to Microsoft Office. Here are some free spreadsheets I created to help: Freelance Income Spreadsheet, Potential Deductions Spreadsheet.

But if you’re willing to pay a little (and write it off), you can get some excellent programs to manage your client lists, invoicing, receipts, and bookkeeping (one of the bookkeeping ones is free).

Freshbooks

Freshbooks is a one-stop-shop for client management, invoicing, and even bookkeeping if you’re billing under $300k. It offers timesheets, including an iPhone app, which help you calculate and send your invoices. All accounts include your logo on the invoice and all except the free one support e-mails without the Freshbooks branding. If you want to have them mail the invoice via first class business snail mail (USPS), you can—though there is an extra fee for postage. The site offers import/export so that you can back things up for yourself.

I think the interface is really easy to use. The “Time Tracking” section allows you to add projects, tasks, and generate invoices right from there. Tasks are independent of projects and can have different hourly billing rates. So if I chose to bill my consulting work at $35/hour and client phone calls at $50/hour, then I can set up each of those as tasks, log the amount of time I spent doing each on a project, and voila—invoice! You can have as many tasks as you like. In an invoice, you can also group the amount of time you spent doing each task or have individual lines for each time you did a task, including the date and time. When scheduling a time block, you can also put in a note on what you were doing specifically, such as “working on revisions discussed in Mar 14th e-mail.”

You pay for a Freshbooks account on a monthly basis—based on how many clients you’re handling (and how many staff accounts you create). You can delete a client if you’re not working for them for a while & then restore again if you start up again. They have a free plan which allows you to try it out and manage 3 clients/month, sending unlimited invoices. And if you do sign up for a paid plan, you get 30 days to change your mind on it.

OutRight

OutRight.com is a completely free online bookkeeping service. It helps you track income and expenses for your small business, calculates estimated taxes (though they can’t guarantee accuracy for obvious reasons), and helps you file your Schedule C. It’s designed for sole proprietors and single-person LLCs who file Schedule C, perfect for a freelancer.

OutRight.com also has some special import features that help eBayers export their eBay records straight to their OutRight account. And if you’re using Freshbooks, you can export the data to OutRight in order to use their other services.

Quickbooks

Quickbooks Online (a more freelancer-friendly version than the heavy software) has most of the same features of the two programs dicussed above, but it also has an add-on option to include payroll for contracting employees. This is a bit more advanced than a Freshbooks option to let other Freshbooks users (presumably your contracters) invoice you.

Quickbooks Online Edition Basic is less expensive than the smallest paid Freshbooks account, but it does not allow you to have employees or other contractors enter time tracking. Quickbooks Online Edition Plus, allows you to track expenses, manage several employees, categorize your income and expenses.

If you use TurboTax Home & Business for your taxes, it has a place to import Quickbooks data to help with your Schedule C.

Shoeboxed

I first ran into Shoeboxed over two years ago as a way to track my online receipts. It’s a nice free service for regular people, but they also have a service which could be quite useful for freelancers with a lot of receipts (both physical and electronic) to get organized.

Mail them your physical receipts (in pre-paid envelopes) to get them scanned. Send them PDFs or other electronic receipts to have them added to your account. Take & send a picture with certain smart phones & have the receipt added to your account. They do automatic categorization, but allow you to create your own categories and organize things in a way that makes sense to you.

Shoeboxed is compatible with Freshbooks, OutRight.com, Evernote, Quicken, and Quickbooks. As a plus, they’ll also scan & organize business cards if you want to have them keep track of your contacts.

There is a DIY plan which lets you use their organization system for free, but you have to scan and upload your own stuff. The other plans offer 30-day trials and their monthly billing currently gives you 2 free months/year if you buy a year up front.

Web Promotion & Analysis

Unless you get all your clients by word-of-mouth or seeking out job postings, you probably need a website for your small business. Sites can showcase your portfolio, outline your services and pricing, include testimonials and contact, and extend your client base to anyone who’s searching for someone like you.

Buying a Domain

Even if you use a free website service like Blogger or WordPress.com (though WordPress.com doesn’t like hosting commercial sites), having your own domain is a must for appearing professional. You can get domains fairly inexpensively through services like GoDaddy (though I don’t recommend GoDaddy for hosting).

Google Apps for Your Domain

With your own domain name, you can sign up for Google Apps Standard Edition (free) to send & receive your own e-mail through the easy-to-use Google interface. You can also use Google Docs & Calendar for your site.

Easy Site Hosting With Typepad

I’ll make no bones about it, I dislike Typepad/Movable Type. A lot. Its system is inferior to WordPress (though it’s started copying some of WordPress’s look and feel) and it doesn’t always import cleanly if you want to move to a WordPress system. Plus its development community just isn’t as big, so it doesn’t have as many awesome add-ons.

However for some people who want nothing to do with the business of hosting a website and don’t want to pay someone to do it for them, then Typepad is a workable solution and a step up from free blogging platforms. It’s not great hosting, but it’s easy.

Creating a Site on WordPress

WordPress software from WordPress.org is entirely distinct from WordPress.com. Rather than hosting at WordPress.org, you download software and extensions from it and create an entirely distinct site on your own hosting. This is a step up from free services and allows you a great deal more flexibility in look and feel as well as add-ons.

I could talk about WordPress sites all day, since I build WordPress sites, so I’m going to keep this brief. The advantage of WordPress over create a site in HTML is that once you get the look and feel the way you like it (by uploading a free or premium theme or by hiring a consultant to adapt it for you), you can add as much content as you like and modify things like the sidebar without knowing a think about HTML or CSS.

In order to host WordPress, you need to buy your own hosting. For smaller sites, shared accounts with companies like Bluehost, HostGator, HostMonster, and LunarPages provide everything you need to handle your traffic.

Analytics

If you put up a business website, don’t just throw it up and leave it—use tracking software to find out who’s visiting, what they searched for, and what they did while on the site. I recommend using Google Analytics—one of the most nuanced free visitor tracking tools out there. It shows who’s driving your traffic, what your top keywords are, and you can integrate it with an AdSense account (even if they’re under separate users) to find out what keywords are driving clicks, if you’re using AdSense on your site.

Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg takes a more visual approach to visitor tracking. It allows you to track clicks on a number of pages on your domain (the number is determined by the plan you buy, as is the number of visits it will track) and see where users are clicking on the page. Is everyone clicking on the top part? No one clicking on the sidebar? Crazy Egg uses “confetti” map of clicks as well as heat maps of regions to show you what’s getting the most clicks and what isn’t.

It’s useful primarily when you’re trying to drive particular campaigns and user actions on your site—like getting people to subscribe to something or to click through from your homepage to a service you’re promoting.

Contact & Scheduling

If you’re like me, you’re not wild about talking with people on the phone. I prefer to have records of conversations or to write things out—especially when we’re talking about code or something else that the client may need to reference later, like a link.

gChat

One of my favorite methods of chatting, when e-mail won’t do, is the gChat function built right into Gmail. It’s searchable, it can pop out or be used right there in the Gmail screen, and, in an age when many people have Gmail accounts, it’s something almost everyone has.

Skype

When I have to talk on the phone, or want to chat with someone who doesn’t use Gmail, my favorite application is Skype. Skype-to-skype calls are free, you can alternate calling and chatting (and again, it’s saved). There’s also a video chat feature which I almost never use with clients, but it could be a way for some freelancers to make a connection.

Skype has a page for small business owners and options to upgrade so that you can call landlines/cell phones or have your own phone number and receive calls from clients. If you want to call from your computer but most of your clients don’t have Skype, it’s a decent alternative to a business landline.

Google Calendar

For scheduling, my favorite tool is Google Calendar. I’ve given all my e-mail accounts privileges to access the account with the calendar (and each other’s accounts, while I was at it) and even create events. That way I can block out dates on the same calendar whether I’m logged into one of my business-related accounts or my personal ones. If you use two different accounts’ calendars (but allow them access to each other), you can distinguish between business and personal events by color.

I have a widget in each of my Gmail inboxes’ sidebars which tells me what’s coming up in the next few days on the shared calendar.

Remember the Milk

I used to use GoPingMe for reminders and to-dos, but since it’s ending soon I’ve started using Remember the Milk again. RTM is a nice, free program which allows you to add tasks, get e-mail reminders, and even synch up with Google Calendar. It can also be installed in your Gmail to sit beside your inbox.

Why do I use RTM when I’m already using Google Calendar? I like keeping to-do lists separate from my calendar, I see the calendar as a place for events. Gmail has a tasks add-on, but I like that I can access the same list on RTM no matter which Gmail account I’m logged into.

Security

Besides backing up your data, it’s important to keep your computer itself secure. Backups are good for cleaning up after viruses or trojans which destroy your data, but you want to keep your computer free of spyware and other malicious programs which can steal your and your clients’ data!

Fortunately, there are a lot of good and free anti-virus, anti-spyware, & anti-malware programs out there today. Right now, I’m using a combination of AVG free (which also has an upgrade to a paid program), the free version of MalwareBytes, and the classic Spybot Search & Destroy (though I turn off its annoying monitoring service). I keep AVG running at all times and use the other two for periodic scans. Works like a charm.

There’s also Norton by Symantec, the granddaddy of all anti-virus software. While in college, I had a free copy which my college required and while it worked very well I found it a bit slow. But it was top-of-the-line protection.

Of course, these aren’t all the tools you might possibly need for your small business. But this list is a start. What else are you using?

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Remembering that Freelance Is a “Real Job”

Mrs. Micah — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:00:11 +0000

If you asked me if I work 2 jobs, my first response would probably be “no.” I’d say that I have a full-time job in the field that I want to work in. Oh, I’d then add, but I do a little work on the side to bring in extra money for debt repayment, grad school, etc. How much? Not every day, three or four days a week maybe. Well, last weekend I worked 14 hours for two clients.

Besides following 5 days of 8-hour shifts, an average 7 hours of freelancing is very different from an average 7 hours at my day job. No coworkers, fewer distractions, and a lot more time spent focused on the work. Sure, working with Mr. J. Money (who apparently covets my external hard drive) in person was a lot of fun, but we were also focused on a huge project—the most complicated Blogger to WordPress migration I’ve ever done (Blogger FTP vs. regular Blogger).

Half the time, I remember that it’s very much a real job (with real clients and real taxes and real work that gets done). The other half, I find myself wondering why I’m so tired or why I can’t find time to do something (until I look at my schedule). It’s not that I neglect the work itself, I find the work very engaging and prioritize it in my schedule, I just neglect the so-called “work/life balance.”

I still haven’t figured out how to keep myself fully aware that I have two jobs, but it’s something I’m working on both for now and for when I start grad school in the Fall. Things that I’ve found help include:

Using a Calendar to Manage All My Clients — Some weeks I don’t, and even if I just have one client that’s just dumb. I also grant all my google accounts access to each other’s calendars & store my events on one calendar which I can access from any of them.
Using a Calendar to Schedule My Personal Life — I’m not an extremely social person & a week can go by without my having any commitments. But when I do make them, I hate to have to cancel because I realized I scheduled a client. And I hate having to move a client even more. So I combine my business and pleasure calendars to make sure that I avoid scheduling conflicts to begin with.
Taking Time Off Between Clients — This is something I need to do because I have a full-time day job as well. I can’t work every night and weekend or 1) I don’t fulfill my other responsibilities & 2) I start to go a little nuts. But even full-time freelancers need to consider their time off between clients. Whether it’s scheduling an hour for a breather, making sure that you’re not working 7 days/week (unless it works for you), or just finding a few minutes here and there, try purposefully taking time off between clients & projects.
Book Myself — If I didn’t freelance, I’d have a lot more time to write for this blog (and I’d have to write about a different topic) as well as more time to work on my other projects. As it is, I try to schedule blocks of time where I update plugins, do theme work I need to get done, and just write. Otherwise, doing one kind of project can take away from your other projects.

This is what works for me. What matters the most is that I always keep in mind that what I’m doing has the same effect on my life as working any other real job would.

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