A reader wrote in: I’m looking for a web app (cheap or free) that will allow me to enter projects as they come in and track how long they have been incomplete. Since part of the project involves waiting for client revisions, I can’t set a completion deadline, but I would like to track which […]
I’ve been very careful about taxes my entire freelance career. With every check I receive, I set aside a percentage for taxes and business expense before I pay myself. I pay my quarterly estimated payments. And most years I’ve received a small refund or owed just a little. This year, I filed taxes late (with […]
I’m on vacation. I arranged for other freelancers to help my clients while I am spending time with family. And today I spent about an hour working. Mostly I was sending files to others so they could make changes for the clients. Some of the time was spent on the phone with the freelancers, helping […]
ASAP! Need this today! Urgent! Top Priority! A lot of my projects have quick deadlines. And I’m happy to accommodate those when I can. But doing rush projects makes it difficult to schedule other work, and often means that I will be pushing off other client work and working long hours or on the weekends. […]
My last post was about working with an office assistant. One huge consideration for me was to be sure that anyone who worked with me would be considered an independent contractor, not an employee. Laws vary by country so everything I am talking about here only applies in the USA. The IRS has rules that […]
My clients keep me pretty busy. That’s great. But it means that some of my business tasks get pushed to the bottom of the to do list. That’s not good: I need to manage my business in order to keep it going and really know how I am doing. I recently realized that I need […]
Last weekend, I went to my first WordCamp. These events take place around the country, and are an opportunity for people who use WordPress to meet and learn. A lot of the sessions at WordCamp Denver 2015 had little to do with WordPress and building websites. Before I left, I wrote down two goals inspired […]
A writer friend mentioned that she had read an article about a website, and she was horrified. The website is BlogMutt, a blog writing service. Their headline says “Weekly, all-original content for your business blog for $79 a month.” Sounds good. As you can tell by the (in)frequency of my blog posts, I could seriously […]
I’m on an email list for graphic designers. “How do I become a designer” comes up again and again. And again this morning. The person who asked the question used Adobe Pagemaker a long time ago, and was familiar with the concept of “desktop publishing.” So his skills and familiarity with the industry are out-of-date. […]
I just finished reading Start With Why by Simon Sinek. Sinek writes that “…people don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.” Every company knows WHAT they do. Some companies know HOW they do it. But very few companies truly know WHY: Why does the company exist? What is the purpose? Why […]
It’s funny how many different meanings words can have. A backup could be a person who provides help, musicians who play behind the main person in a band, a traffic jam, or a copy of computer data. If you haven’t already guessed, that last one is what I’m talking about here. My computer setup: A […]
You probably track your business mileage. At least you should, or you could be paying more in taxes. The 2012 IRS mileage rate is 55.5¢ a mile: that means that you get to deduct 55.5¢ from your taxable income for every mile you drive for business. It’s gone up to 56.5¢ for 2013. Going to […]
