It seems like everywhere I turn these days, people are talking about freelancing, running their own businesses, and escaping the rat race. Though I enjoy being a bit contrarian regarding trends, in this case I’m totally on board.

So here’s my contribution to the trend, my Ultimate List of Freelance Resources.

1. Identity Spectrum
   Mark Bixby discusses how to use an identity spectrum in design, but most of his insights can also be applied to figuring out where your business fits in the grand scheme of things.
2. What Does Your Business Card Say About You?
   Neil Patel of Quick Sprout covers the basics of figuring out how to create a business card that sends the message you want.
3. The Freelancer’s Toolset: 100 Web Apps for Everything You Will Possibly Need
   Since I’m focusing on freelancing information rather than tools, this list from Codswallop helps fill the gap.
4. 10 (More) Tips on Doing Productive Web Work with Kids in the House
   Do you have kids in (or near) your workspace? Leo Babauta has some great suggestions on making it manageable.
5. Earn More Money by Demanding It | Wise Bread
   Andrea Dickson discusses how to effectively ask for more money in a salary or contract situation.
6. 101 Ideas to Get More Freelance Work and Generate New Client Leads
   Just what the title says. And you know it’s good since it’s by Cyan Ta’eed of Freelance Switch.
7. The Monster List of Freelancing Job Sites
   Another great list by Cyan for when it’s time to hit the streets looking for work.
8. Jason Fried, 37signals Video Interview
   Insight into the business mindset of 37signals, whose lightweight approach is a great fit for many freelancers.
9. 7 Habits of a Highly Successful Freelance Web Designer
   Well known web designer Andy Budd shares his thoughts on freelancing.
10. You don’t need a plan, you need skills and a problem.
    Dushan Wegner of Shtikl.com addresses the problem of overplanning.
11. 10 Essential Steps to Making the Perfect Pitch
    Leo’s step by step guide to pitching your work.
12. Taking The Leap Into Entrepreneurship: Where Is That Financial Safety Net?
    Trent at the Simple Dollar discusses how to get started with a new business.
13. Coworking Wiki
    “Coworking is cafe-like community/collaboration space for developers, writers and independents. Or, it’s like this: start with a shared office and add cafe culture. Which is the opposite of most modern cafes. ;)” This wiki is the place to start if you’re looking for a relaxed office setting.
14. 5 Steps for Simple and Effective Marketing
    Eric Davis posts at the Shane & Peter Blog with an overview of the Get Clients Now! marketing process.
15. Freelancer’s Guide to Sales: Using Which-Craft
    Shane of Shane & Peter offers an excellent guide to using the word “which” to achieve the results you want.
16. 5 Things I Had to Unlearn to Become Self Made
    Sometimes the hardest part about going freelance isn’t learning new things, but unlearning old ones. Christine OKelly, the Self Made Chick tells about five things she had to unlearn.
17. 32 Must Reads To Ensure Small Business Success
    Naomi at IttyBiz has compiled a list of 32 excellent small biz resources. (Somehow I got an article into the list.)
18. 2008 Goals: Scare Yourself at The Shane & Peter Inc. Blog
    Another great post from Shane, this time on the subject of setting goals that make you a little bit afraid.
19. How I made $100,000 by spending 25 minutes and $0 on Marketing
    Christine points out the power of taking your first small steps. Sometimes the results you get will be amazingly out of proportion to the effort you put in. So why not try it?
20. How to get featured in magazines and newspapers with no connections…and turn it into mega-bucks
    Think you need great connections to make it into print? Jonathan Fields doesn’t think so.
21. Freelancer’s Guide to Sales: Making Friends
    Shane points out that all the techniques in the world won’t help you with sales if you can’t make friends.
22. One Word that Can Change Your Reality and Perception of What Is Possible
    Ever think about how the words you use change your perception of reality? Christine teaches her readers how to avoid constraining the possibilities.
23. Become A Master Networker By Changing These 3 Beliefs
    Dave Navarro rocks my day by challenging the myths of networking. Sample myth: networking is a natural skill.
24. New Opportunity For Tech-Savvy Bloggers: Remote Digital Coaching | Performancing.com
    Raj Dash points to an emerging market that freelancers are ideally positioned to fill.
25. How I Stopped Listening To Experts And Started Making Money
    Christine tackles more myths purveyed by the “experts.” You don’t need a fancy website (though if you want one give me a call ); you don’t need first page search rankings. You just need to get started.

That’s it the first installment of the Ultimate List of Freelancing Resources, but there’s a lot still to come. Go ahead and subscribe so you don’t miss anything!

Popularity: 20% [?]

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As you’ve probably noticed, I haven’t been updating the blog very much recently. Between a part-time job, working like crazy on freelance projects, moving to a new apartment, and preparing for a wedding at the beginning of August, something had to give. In this case, it was actually two somethings: the blog, and my “top secret” product.

Now that things are beginning to settle down a bit from my move, I’m planning to bring a regular schedule back to the blog. But this whole experience got me thinking about the times when life gets in the way of our Big Plans.

When that happens, it’s really tempting to respond by trying to force things or give up completely. Unfortunately, those extremes don’t usually help. But here are three ideas that do.

1. Don’t try to force things

Though trying to force things by working ridiculous hours may produce results temporarily, long-term it isn’t a viable solution, and is likely to leave you disillusioned and discouraged. Remember, there is a reason you’re having difficulty with your Big Plans right now. Trying to solve it by just “buckling down” won’t solve things if you aren’t addressing the underlying problem.

2. Take baby steps

While trying to force things isn’t such a great idea, neither is just giving up. Do you really want to walk around with a question mark hanging over your head constantly asking “What might have been?” A better idea is to break down your Big Plan into the smallest possible component tasks and work on one task a day until you’ve accomplished your goal. This way you have the satisfaction of know that even if you aren’t moving as fast as you’d like, you’re still making progress.

3. Live your life

The most important thing to remember, though, is to live your life. Sometimes we can get so caught up in our Big Plans that we start living in the future and ignoring the present. But the present is a precious thing, and fleeting. If we’re always living for the future, what happens when that future becomes present?

Take time to play with your kids, go out with your spouse, or hang out with your friends. After all, it is these things that make all our Big Plans worthwhile.

Photo by jazzmasterson (license)

Popularity: 7% [?]

It seems like every day I see another batch of articles about the power of engagement, and the benefits of being permanently connected to the latest social networks, lifestreaming feeds, or Web 3.0 applications. There’s no denying that they can be wonderful tools, but just because you can be constantly connected doesn’t mean that you should be. What I want to focus on is the power of disengagement.

Photo by Fanboy30 (license)

More time

If there’s one resource that’s in short supply these days, it’s time. Yet for some reason, many people are willing to give massive amounts this resource to social networks without any clear idea of the benefits. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with this as long as you remain aware of the cost.

But if you’ve been spending all your time on forums, Facebook, or Twitter, maybe it’s time to consider taking it back. Imagine what you could do if you devoted all that time to a business or personal project.

Fewer distractions to interrupt flow

Social networks aren’t just a time sink. They’re also amazingly adept at reducing mental flow from a stream to a trickle.

It isn’t hard to see why. Flow requires sustained concentration on a single task (or group of tasks). When that concentration is broken, it can be extremely difficult to return to a state of flow. This means that non-trivial tasks become much harder to accomplish.

The short version? Even if social media distractions take only a few seconds at a time, you can get much more done without them.

Greater perception of value

Constant involvement in the social side of the web is often touted as a way of promoting yourself to more people. It’s certainly very good at that, but there’s a downside. When people see you spending huge amounts of time on socializing, they often begin to question the value of your products, services, or even your blog posts. After all, the reasoning goes, if you’re always instantly available via Twitter or Plurk, how in-demand can you actually be?

Obviously there are exceptions, particularly if your service is social media, or if you’re an insanely social person and everyone knows it.

On the other hand, if you’re only available occasionally, and always produce something of value, people will catch on to that fact. And when you speak, they’ll listen.

How to disengage

You might think that disengaging is relatively easy. But when you’ve built up weeks or months of habits, it can be much harder than it sounds. Here are a few suggestions to make it easier.

• Hide or uninstall any social toolbars
• Delete any shortcuts or bookmarks to social media services
• Set your computer not to start social apps on boot up

The point of all this is to make it just a little bit more inconvenient to return to old habits. If this isn’t enough, you might consider installing parental controls and blocking your favorite haunts. And if you really need help, have your spouse or a friend set the password.

What do you think? Do you prefer to use the power of engagement or the power of disengagement? Why? Let’s discuss it in the comments.

Popularity: 16% [?]

It’s been a little while since I posted a linklist, so I’ve got some pretty nice links for you to check out.

• 8 fonts you probably don’t use in css, but should - Web Design Marketing Podcast & Blog
  Feel like you’re being too constrained by limiting yourself to Times/Georgia and Arial/Helvetica? Check out this list of well-supported web fonts.
• SEO School Is Now In Session
  On SEO, Snake Oil, Ninjas, and How IttyBiz Came to Be (with coupon code)
  Naomi’s new ebook explains SEO in plain English. Highly recommended if you want to move beyond the “It’s all voodoo” explanation.
  
• HELLO, my name is BLOG!: I just can’t help but to…
  What is it that you can’t help doing? That’s part of your identity.
• Selene M. Bowlby | Taking The Plunge… I Am FREE!
  Selene goes freelance!
• It’s The Journey, Stupid — Jarkko Laine - Insanely interested
  Jarkko reminds us that dreaming is important for right now.
• The secret to making money online - (37signals)
  In this presentation, David introduces a groundbreaking new way of making money online. Charge for your service! Hilarious to watch, and also has plenty of good advice.

My Recent Guest Posts on Daily Blog Tips

• Star Trek Blogging: The Klingon Way
• Star Trek Blogging: The Vulcan Way

Popularity: 11% [?]

Over the past couple of days I’ve been trying to make a list of all the software that I need to reinstall or transfer to my shiny new Dell* laptop. In the course of this list-making, I realized that though I have a lot of software that I use occasionally, there are a handful that I use almost every day. Here are seven pieces of software that I can’t live without:

1. Adobe Creative Suite - Yes, I’m cheating by including an entire suite, but it’s the suite as a whole that I find useful. If I had to pick just part of the suite, I’d go with Photoshop.
   Price: Ridiculous.
2. E-TextEditor - Despite the fact that I use Dreamweaver quite often, E is still my text editor of choice, especially now that it has the ability to open remote folders as a project.
   Price: $34.95
3. iTunes - When I’m working intently on a design, I find that the right mood music can really help my productivity. It also manages all of the web design and business podcasts that I listen to.
   Price: Free.
4. Virtual PC - This is what I use to do all of my IE6 testing. While there are standalone versions of the browser out there, they aren’t 100% reliable. If you want to test with the actual browser, Microsoft offers a free image of XP with IE6.
   Price: Free.
5. Humanized Enso - Enso is a little hard to describe. It is a combination of program launcher, spellchecker, calculator, and more, all rolled into the most unobtrusive interface I’ve ever seen. It is a thing of beauty.
   Price: Open source.
6. FileZilla - For reliable FTP uploading, FileZilla is my savior. When Dreamweaver is throwing a fit and refusing to upload, or I don’t need to work with a Dreamweaver project, this is what I use.
   Price: Open source.
7. Flock - As I’ve mentioned before, Flock is my browser of choice. Built on the FireFox engine, it adds tons of extra features, mostly around social networking, though my favorite feature is the Web Clipboard.
   Price: Open source.

What about you? What software do you use so often that you just can’t live without it?

* Yes, I know Windows is uncool, but I still can’t get used to OSX.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Ah, the benefits of Twirling Brides. Just throw a few of them into your designs and you’re sure to win accolades, increase return on investment, and become the most sought after designer in your industry. Well, maybe not, but it sure can’t hurt.

The question you’re probably asking yourself right now is, “What’s all this business about Twirling Brides?” It’s quite simple really.

What is a Twirling Bride?

It all comes of visiting the David’s Bridal website with my fiancee to get ideas for wedding dresses. We were expecting something just like every other bridal website: relatively nice look, pictures that are nice but need more angles, etc. Instead what we got was a page full of Twirling Brides. (After getting through the interstitials, click on “Play Video” beneath one of the dresses.)

The concept is really simple. Instead of using static images that are limited at best, they’ve given their buyers a chance to see how the dress actually looks, not just on a posed human manikin, but in motion. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 17% [?]

I’m a bit late with this progress review, but better late than never, right? I’ve been amazingly busy with freelance jobs recently, and while things are closer to normal now, I expect to be busy again by the end of this month or the beginning of next. Let’s look at the goals I set for last month.

May Goals

• Add 50 new subscribers
• Write 5 new guest posts
• Create at least 1/2 of the materials for a course product

The first two goals fell a bit by the wayside this month. (However, my subscriber base did grow by 15.) The fact that I didn’t reach those goals doesn’t really bother me, though, since growing my blog is merely a means to the end of more and better business.

You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned the last goal yet. That’s because despite being amazingly busy, I managed to dedicate enough time to accomplish it. This means that I’m still on track to release it by the end of June or beginning of July.

What are my goals for this month?

June Goals

• Finish the rest of the course materials
• Add 20 new subscribers
• Write 2 guest posts
• Just be around and interacting in the blogosphere (unlike the past month)

Lesson learned

• Don’t worry about failing to achieve a “means” goal if you’ve achieved the “end.”

Popularity: 10% [?]

Recently, I was given the opportunity to work on a fairly long-term project that would have guaranteed a significant chunk of income for a few months. The catch? It would eat up an equally significant chunk of the time that I use for freelancing and pursuing personal projects (like my currently-top-secret-but-coming-soon-product).

Ultimately I decided to turn the project down. I chose freedom over stability. But that got me thinking, what can I do to ensure that I continue to choose freedom in the future? Here is what I came up with.

1. Find a little stability

You may be thinking that this sounds like a bit of a contradiction, but I don’t think so. Consider it an innoculation. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 12% [?]

Though there has been a great deal of talk about typography on web design blogs recently, one area that hasn’t really received much attention is the differences in anti-aliasing fonts across different systems.

What is anti-aliasing?

Because computer displays are based on pixels and fonts are forced into that square grid, on-screen type tends to naturally look a bit blocky. Anti-aliasing technology blurs the font’s edges slightly, allowing it to look fuller and more closely match the appearance of the printed page.

Differences between systems

Besides the differences between systems that use anti-aliasing and those that don’t, there are also different styles of anti-aliasing depending on whether you are using a Mac or Windows system.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 31% [?]

Those of you who are regular readers may remember that I’ve been working on a free WordPress theme for a while. Today, you finally get to see some of the work. I call it Vitruvian Theme.

Inspired by Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, the idea of balance and proportion is built into the structure itself. The columns and typography are related by approximations of the golden ratio to give the theme a sense of visual harmony.

I plan to release Vitruvian Theme within the next week. Thoughts and suggestions are welcome.

Popularity: 18% [?]