Archive:
March, 2011
After networking at professional gatherings, cold calling potential clients, and marketing your services to gain attention, you’ve finally landed your first client. The project is explained, you agree to a deadline, and then the dreaded question comes: “What are your rates?” Whether you’re new to freelancing or whether you’re branching into a new service area, learning how to price your services is a challenging but critical element to your business, and step one of that process is determining what you’re worth per hour.
Unfortunately, there’s no magic bullet that dictates your hourly rate, and speaking with other freelancers will only add to the confusion. Hourly rates vary considerably, and it’s easy to find freelancers who charge $30 an hour and others who charge $100 – and sometimes they’re the same person, but the hourly rate changes depending on the type of job. For instance, a wordsmith may charge $30 per for copy-editing, but $100 for media relations.
However, there’s some simple arithmetic that will help determine your base hourly rate, and then you can nudge it up or down depending the specific project you’re quoting.
Step one: What’s your expected salary?
Freelancers don’t take home a salary, but in their incredibly detailed (ha!) business plans, they more than likely have an annual revenue target that they want to hit. It may take a few years before those targets are achieved, but unless the expected annual gross revenue is unreasonable (it’s not impossible to hit six digits, though), chances are that great amounts of effort and good work will see your dream come to fruition.
But where to start? Freelancers need to determine what kind of “salary” they’ll need to pay bills and live comfortably while also keeping in mind that there will be times when work slows down, so setting a target that’s higher than a staff position is a good idea. Let’s say you set your annual income target at $50,000, which isn’t unreasonable. Many freelancers make twice that.
Step two: Billable hours
How many billable hours do you want to work per week? When answering this question, keep in mind that billable hours are different from work hours. Billable hours, as you likely know, are the number of hours you put into work for clients (read: they’re billable). Your actual work hours would include billable hours, as well as work on administration, marketing, business development, lead generation, accounting and everything else related to the operation of your business.
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One of the many blogs I follow, basically because it is so well done, is Idea Transplant, formerly known as Sticky Slides, by Jan Schultink. It is a blog about sales and investor presentations, but beyond that specialty, it has great PowerPoint tips. One of my favorite posts is 18 reasons why PowerPoint looks like PowerPoint.
Why does this matter?
What does Jan’s blog do for him apart from providing an outlet to share? It provides opportunities. Say if I, a potential client, needed an awesome presentation deck, or some consulting for a big presentation, who will I contact first? I’m going to get in touch someone who specializes and is passionate about it. Through Jan’s blog, I know he’s an expert and is super passionate about it. He’s engaged me even before I need his services.
How did I find his blog?
I organically found it through a friend. My friend is always looking for more sales presentation tips so he found Jan’s blog through search. Jan has great content that is worth sharing, so my friend naturally started to share some of the best blog posts on Google Reader. In fact, another friend, after discovering it, sat down and read every single post. So you can see how easily I could got hooked after taking a quick browse through his blog. What really got me was that the content is so niche, which makes it interesting and remarkable – it not just another blog. He has earned my attention.
What can a freelancer/agency take away from this?
As far as I can tell, Idea Transplant (great name), generates leads from his blog as well as other opportunities. Why? Because he differentiates himself through a niche powerful service and shares it. Further to that, he has educated me as a potential buyer. He’s actually creating a new market. I had no idea such a service existed, until I was educated through his blog. Who knew sharing knowledge could provide so much results.
He’s also a FreshBooks customer 
. If you’re a FreshBooks customer and have a blog, please leave a link below in the comments as I would love to check out your blog, as I am sure others do as well.
One Billion Dollars invoiced through FreshBooks is more than just a big number to us, it is a GIANT number. And the FreshBooks economy reached it in 33% less time than last year.
This is a HUGE deal as it is a yearly indication of our sustained growth over the past 7 years. And it’s an indication that (very) small businesses are using services like FreshBooks to save even more time and run successful businesses.
For those following FreshBooks over the years, you may already know this, but for the others, we are pretty excited to have met this milestone 6 full weeks sooner than last year. So we’ve circled February 14th on our calendar next year to be known as FreshBooks’ One Billion Invoiced day, because currently there is nothing important happening on February 14th.
Don't be afraid to ask!
Client relations can be tough. On one hand your customers expect you to quickly ramp up and practically join their teams – but there’s no denying the fact that you’re an outsider, and you likely lack the resources that the client gives its own internal staff members. This creates a difficult situation: you need as much information from the customer as you can get, but you gotta know that some information will simply never come your way.
That said, you can get ahead of this issue by keeping in mind five questions that you should always ask clients at the beginning of any project. These queries help you understand your customers better, and they go some way towards transforming you from short-term consultant into valuable team member in your clients’ eyes.
Q1: What needs to be done, when?
Chances are you’ll discuss the project deadline with the customer – but what about the deadlines behind the deadline? Do various components of the project have to be finished by certain points in time? The answer is probably yes. And if you know this up front, you’ll have an easier time meeting the client’s expectations. Consider creating a work-back schedule – a calendar indicating what needs to be done, when. Verify the schedule with the customer and you can rest assured that you and the client are at least starting from the same page in terms of desired project outcome.
Q2: Who are my contact people?
It’s easy to forget that your client isn’t just the person who hired you. It’s also that person’s supervisor and maybe some of her same-level colleagues in different departments as well. Who are you expected to talk to? Where is your information supposed to come from? Is your main contact supposed to represent your only interaction with the company, or are you actually expected to reach out to others as well for background data and raw material? Sometimes this important detail is missed in early project discussions. Clear it away as soon as possible, so you know who your go-to people are, and you can avoid pestering your main contact for this information later on.
Q3: Who are my backup contacts?
Read the rest of this entry »
Guest post by FreshBooks customer Jeremy J. Ulmer.
Mistake#1: Not Planning & Scheduling Time To Focus On Sales.
Solution: Create Time.
Business owners and solo entrepreneurs who achieve extraordinary levels of sales success have days just as hectic as everyone else, right? Yet somehow they make selling a part of their daily or weekly activities.
So how do they do it? They create the time. You can instantly create time if you begin to plan ahead and stay committed. This means planning your days and weeks. One of the best time-creating techniques is to schedule selling time on your calendar and delete unimportant activities.
Common sales activities can include: Prospecting, identifying new prospects, leveraging and using social media, networking, implementing a referral strategy, creating and promoting webinars, SEO strategy, and article marketing.
Schedule your most important sales tasks earlier in the day to ensure they get done. Set up a recurring event for focusing on sales activities and don’t miss it. To be successful with this, be sure to eliminate your distractions and ask yourself, “Where am I wasting time?” Make sure you remove those activities from your daily schedule right away.
Mistake #2: Not Staying Committed To Your Small Business Growth.
Solution: Find Compelling Reasons For Your Actions.
Read the rest of this entry »
FireFox 4 came out a few days ago (March 22 to be exact) and already has 15 million downloads.
One of the neatest, and probably most time saving feature is the new “App Tab”. The App Tab gives a permanent home to the Apps you use the most. Probably apps such as Gmail, some FreshBooks Add-ons or *cough* FreshBooks *cough.*
If you save FreshBooks in your App Tab, you can click the small icon in the top left corner of the browser, and it will bring you right back to FreshBooks. It essentially keeps FreshBooks and other Apps permanently open without the clutter of a new tab.
To save FreshBooks in your App Tab:
- Download FireFox 4 (in case you’re not one of the millions)
- Install FireFox 4 (Mozilla provides great instructions)
- Go to your FreshBooks Login
- Right click on the FreshBooks tab you have open
- Click “Pin as App Tab”
- You’re done!
This will make time tracking, expense logging and invoice creation even faster so you can get paid!
Update: This is also available in Google’s Chrome browser as a “Pin Tab”.
Hat-Tip to the Central Desktop Blog.
Hoping you can fill your fridge with more.
Does looking for freelance work online make you feel a little (or a lot) devalued? Do you get the feeling that some people just don’t understand the value of good writing, good art or good web design? If so, join the ranks of the rest of the freelance population that may feel a bit of amusement and a bit of annoyance over the low pay being offered on sites like Craiglist.
The growth of online content has not only created many more opportunities for freelancers, but it has also helped to create an environment that often devalues the work of talented creative individuals. Rates in the offline world have mostly remained steady for freelancers, but there’s an online trend that’s been escalating for years that shows a fair portion of those in need of freelancers not understanding the true value of the work they’re demanding.
Rates can drop as low as pennies per hour, and there have been numerous examples of new web producers with big hopes who think they can lure in highly talented individuals with the promise of a few bucks (maybe) and empty promises for several hours’ (or more) worth of work. These job postings often vanish as quickly as they appear, so linking to examples is pointless, but take a look at one of the writing, artist or web design job boards on Craiglist for plenty of examples (often followed by complaints from professionals about how insulting low rates are). Read the rest of this entry »
(click for a larger view)
Guest post by Matt Polo
No need for this.
Building and maintaining client relationships is a central part of working life, and this is particularly important for freelancers and small businesses. Whatever type of product or service you are providing it is an essential consideration that you have lasting and trusted relationships with the people who provide you with work. You can be the very best at what you do, but treat your clients badly and you’re going to lose valuable projects.
There are some simple steps you can take to build lasting client relationships. As with the relationships in other areas of our lives, the way we interact with work clients should be based on mutual trust and respect. By communicating openly and honestly we can quickly turn these interactions into something more personal, working together as people rather than business contacts. Providing the best work efficiently and on time are the basics of freelance work, but we can go beyond this by learning more about our customers, teaching skills and sharing knowledge, and creating networks.
This post outlines six steps to maintaining lasting relationships with your clients; simple yet powerful ideas that help everyone involved enjoy the best rewards.
Clearly Plan Projects
When you receive a brief or are asked to draw up a quote, it is crucial that you prepare a clear outline of the project. Maybe your client will provide an accurate and detailed set of specifications, or perhaps they will be a little vague in what they actually expect as a project outcome. Whatever the case, the sooner you establish a project outline the sooner both parties can see how the work will unfold. Read the rest of this entry »
Freelancers don’t want to raise (create) invoices. It’s an irritating necessity. It’s something we have to do if we want to get paid and that should be the main objective of any professional. While we do have to invoice our clients, there’s no reason why it should be such a lengthy task that it interferes with our ability to carry out paid work!
The tips below have been designed to save you time in the invoicing process. Remember, it’s not just the time it takes to create and organize your invoices that’s important. Perhaps the most crucial thing is making sure that your clients pay when you ask them to, as chasing up late payments – the bane of many a freelancer’s life – is the most time-consuming thing of all.
Be Clear About Your Payment Terms
State your invoice payment terms clearly on all invoices and keep them consistent. Make sure you outline your terms to your clients early on in the price negotiation process as this can limit disagreements further down the line. Be perfectly clear about how much you’re going to charge up front, how long clients have to pay, and any late payment fees they might suffer.
List acceptable payment methods on your invoices too. If you accept checks – say who checks should be payable to. If you’re using FreshBooks and online payment gateway, clients can even pay you online. Express your terms as simply and politely as possible. A happy client is a paying client, after all. Read the rest of this entry »
sends more invoices than there are 
