Freelance Q & A
  • Email
  • Twitter
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Recommendations
  • Ask a Question

How can I keep track of projects between revisions?

Posted on September 11, 2015 by Betty in Client Management, Clients, Freelance Business, Organizing, Technology and Software, Time Management, Time Tracking No Comments

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 […]

View Post

Big Tax Surprise

Posted on July 3, 2015 by Betty in Freelance Business, Mistakes, Taxes in the USA No Comments
Dice

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 […]

View Post

How can a freelancer take a vacation?

Posted on June 30, 2015 by Betty in Client Management, Clients, Free Time!, Freelance Business, Mistakes, Working with Others 1 Comment
Summit of Pikes Peak

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 […]

View Post

Rush jobs, rush policies, and rush fees

Posted on June 20, 2015 by Betty in Client Management, Clients, Contracts, Freelance Business, Pricing & Rates No Comments
Hurry ASAP! Rush fees.

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. […]

View Post

Employee or Independent Contractor (Freelancer)?

Posted on June 19, 2015 by Betty in Clients, Freelance Business, Taxes in the USA, Working with Others No Comments
Is this dog an employee or a freelancer?

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 […]

View Post

How I got an office assistant

Posted on June 17, 2015 by Betty in Freelance Business, Organizing, Time Management No Comments
An assistant can help with bookkeeping

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 […]

View Post

Two Takeaways from WordCamp Denver

Posted on June 15, 2015 by Betty in Freelance Business, Inspiration, Learning No Comments
Denver Skyline and Mountains

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 […]

View Post

Work for free 10% of the time. This is a joke, right?

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Betty in Contests and Spec Work, Freelance Business, Pricing & Rates 22 Comments
Sad doggie

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 […]

View Post

How do I become a designer?

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Betty in Books, Freelance Business, How To..., Learning No Comments
Apple with a crayon for the (design) teacher

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. […]

View Post

Start With Why (Book by Simon Sinek)

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Betty in Books, Freelance Business, Inspiration No Comments
Start with Why by Simon Sinek

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 […]

View Post
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

About me

I'm Betty, and I created Freelance Q & A to share what I've learned as a successful freelance graphic designer.

I'm based in Boulder, CO and work with clients across the USA. You can visit my business site and see my portfolio at
Betty Taylor Design.

What are you looking for?

Categories

  • Backup (1)
  • Books (3)
  • Client Management (7)
  • Clients (5)
  • Conferences (1)
  • Contests and Spec Work (3)
  • Contracts (3)
  • Copyright Issues (2)
  • Free Time! (1)
  • Freelance Business (50)
  • Freelance Q & A Recommends (3)
  • Gadgets (1)
  • How To… (1)
  • Inspiration (3)
  • Learning (2)
  • Marketing (1)
  • Mileage (2)
  • Mistakes (4)
  • Networking (3)
  • Organizing (4)
  • Pricing & Rates (11)
  • Sick Days (1)
  • Taxes in the USA (7)
  • Technology and Software (5)
  • The Rest of Your Life (1)
  • Time Management (5)
  • Time Tracking (3)
  • Where to Work (1)
  • Working with Others (2)

(c) 2011 - 2019 Freelance Q & A, Elizabeth O Taylor