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When you're first starting out and building your website, how should you position yourself? Specifically, should you talk about yourself as "I" or should you talk about yourself as "we," the way an agency or larger business might? I definitely have an opinion on this one.     --------------------------------------------------------------------   This Week's Picks: San...

In this installment of our community guest speaker series, we talked to Swizec Teller about balancing serious side hustles with full time employment. He has balanced a career working for startups in Silicon Valley with building info products and businesses on the side. To find out more about Swiz: Check out his latest project, defining the senior mindset for software engineers, to help get you ahe...

Not all clients are created equal. Many are great, but some you'd rather avoid. How do you tell the difference ahead of time, in order to avoid the headache of having nightmare clients? _____________________________________________________________________________   This Week's Picks: This easy to digest post on event-driven architecture Check out Enov8's Top 10 Cloud Optimization Tr...

If you're used to salaried employment, especially in the US, you're used to having a lot of stuff taken care of for you when it comes to benefits. Medical, dental, vision insurance covered and mostly paid for, retirement savings, and more. But what do you do when you go freelance and this goes away?   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- T...

I get a lot of questions about freelancing, but this is both one of the most interesting that I get and the least-asked. When should you quit freelancing? People set out with nothing but plans for success, so the "when do I do something else" is infrequently considered until things are ugly. I'll walk through how to assess what you should do when things are ugly, but also encourage...

Invoicing Basics for New Freelancers   ------------------------------------------------------ This Week's Picks Deploy a Django app with Kubernetes in 20 minutes Data Compliance: A Detailed Guide for IT Leaders Episode 15: Simple Cookie Based Authentication in ASP.NET Core Tricentis Tosca: Mobile application testing A Guide to Integrating Slack and Zendesk

In this installment of our community guest speaker series, we talked to Cory Koehler about how he went from being an employee to running a collective of application development freelancers. A lot of folks in our community are interested in exploring models like this, so tune in to hear about Cory's journey.  You can find out more about Cory: * Reaching out to him through LinkedIn: https://www...

In this installment of our community guest speaker series, we talked to Cory Koehler about how he went from being an employee to running a collective of application development freelancers. A lot of folks in our community are interested in exploring models like this, so tune in to hear about Cory's journey. You can find out more about Cory: * Reaching out to him through LinkedIn: https://www....

Subcontracting? Bringing on a VA or a bookkeeper? As a freelancer, when does the time come to start hiring people to do other things? Join us to learn more. This weeks picks: This Appium tutorial that explains how Appium helps with cross-platform mobile testing, and how to get started with it Guide to columnar databases How to create a Kubernetes cluster in AWS: A walkthrough IT Environments: What...

If you're a new or aspiring freelancer, this is probably one of your worst nightmares. What do you do when a client won't pay? What options do you have and what recourse?   Picks ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This offering from Tricentis that provides ServiceNow test automation And this offering from Tricentis, that...

In this video, I field a specific question about how to structure pricing for an offering around legacy code remediation. But because that's very specific, I lead up to it, spending most of the video talking about the different pricing models and options available to you as a freelancer.   Picks --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------...

As a freelancer, winding up with bad clients can be the bane of your existence or even drive you back to the salaried world. So what can you do to avoid having bad clients? I walk you through my tactics to help toward this goal.   Picks ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This new offering from RequestMetrics, around user experience...

How do you go about building an audience to help with your marketing efforts for your business or freelance practice?  I'll go through all sorts of things that you can do in general, but the most powerful thing you can do is find a niche and be specific about what you offer.   Picks ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This post...

How do you go about closing the deal as a freelancer? Do you agree to interviews? Do you have some kind of sales that you do? And, in either case, how does negotiation work during the process? In this video I walk you through how all of that good stuff works.   Picks ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This post, teaching you to use...

Have you historically been a salaried employee, but are curious about dipping your toes in the water of freelancing? In this video I take on a "compare and contrast" of freelancing and salaried employment, and how to figure out which makes the most sense for you.   Picks ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RequestMetrics h...

It's near universal to wonder whether and how to incorporate when you start a freelance practice. In this installment of the freelancer Q&A Facebook Lives, I walk through the options that you have, and weigh in on what I'd recommend, base on my experience (starting 4 different business entities of 3 different varieties over the years).   This video walks you though how things work in...

Another episode from our Q&A series, where I take on Q&A about business and freelancing from authors in our author pool. If you're going to moonlight or go into business for yourself freelancing, should you use Upwork or sites like it? I think there are certain specific situations make this a good fit for you, but generally and on a long timeline, I'd avoid sites like this.   Pic...

If you're going to freelance, do you need to make a website, and what should that website look like? I actually don't think it's a super high priority for a new freelancer, and you honestly don't need one to get started. But you will need one, eventually, so I talk about when and how to make one.   Show Notes ---------------------------------------------------------------------...

Moonlighting is a specific flavor of working that involves working in addition to a normal, full time job. In this episode, I take on a question about how to get started with moonlighting as a freelancer, and what to consider. Join us to learn more. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Picks: I just learned that risk-based testing wa...

If you're a relatively new freelancer, how do you go about marketing yourself? The answer is simple, but not easy. Marketing is about being memorable, and being a generalist isn't memorable, so one of the most powerful things you can do is identify a niche. But, if you haven't done that or don't know how, I have some tips you can use while still in generalist-land. Join us to l...

If you're just getting started as a freelancer, you might wonder what you need a lawyer's help with. Do you need a contract? Help setting up an LLC? In this video I offer a take based on my experience setting up multiple businesses of what you do and don't need a lawyer for. Join us to learn more. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------...

Are you thinking about hanging out your shingle and don't know how taxes work? Maybe you've never thought about how taxes work (you should, though). In this video, I walk you through how taxes work for freelancers in the US. Join us to learn more. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Picks this episode: A while back, one of...

Are you just starting out as a freelancer or moonlighter, and wondering how to go about finding clients? In this video I lay out a series of fairly specific tactics freelancers can use for finding clients. Join us to learn more. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Picks this episode: This is a little older, but here's an articl...

How do you set your rate as a freelancer? I offer two things in this video: A detailed explanation of the philosophical with the idea of "having a rate" A super actionable piece of easy advice for setting it, if you insist on doing this. Join us to learn more. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Picks this episode: I'...

In this edition, I tackled the subject of dos and don'ts for starting a new business. Join me for a list of things that I think you ought to do, and a list of things I don't think you should bother with -- some of those might surprise you. Join us to learn more. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Picks this episode: One o...