Best Practices

Sometimes the simplest items end up making the best blog posts. Lately I’ve really started to enjoy giving a mouse-over effect to each row in a table. (This could be in part because I frequently include links in my tables.) This practice certainly can’t replace the techniques that a web designer uses to make tables legible when the mouse pointer is off on some other part of the screen, but I think of it as a nice little extra.

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Since I’ve hit the one-year anniversary of being a full-time freelancer, it seems like a fitting time to look back on this blog. Enjoy some of my favorite best practices posts:

Pricing Your Web Design Service
I wrote in this post that I prefer to give clients a fixed price per project, and that’s still true today. I did talk to a lawyer recently who preferred that I charge an hourly rate. That’s the world a lawyer lives in, so that isn’t too surprising. I’ve also worked a few times with a client who prefers me to give 3 different prices for best case, worst case, and expected case. I do that in my quotes, but so far the actual invoice has always been for the expected case.

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This week marks the 12-month anniversary of the day I left my safe cubicle in corporate America for the more adventurous world of freelance web design. I’ve already posted some of the things I’ve learned at the 2 month and 8 month marks. Here’s a look back at what I’ve learned with the wise and venerable eyes of someone who’s been at this for a full year.

• Working from home is hard. It is so easy to get distracted by household chores that need doing, pets that need petting, comfy sofas in need of a sleeping inhabitant, and my personal bugaboo: video games that suck time into a black hole.
• Relationship are a big key to getting work. For most people starting out as a freelancer there isn’t much room in the budget for advertising, and I’m no exception. That’s why it’s critical that you develop ongoing relationships with folks who can send you work, for example small marketing firms.
• Being in control is great motivation. I used to drag my feet getting out of bed in the morning, but this past year I’ve started facing the day with a little more spring in my step. I’m eager to go to work in part because I know as soon as I get my work done I can go home. There’s no need to stick around until 5pm if I’ve done everything that needed doing.
• Freelancing is not for the lonely. Some days I don’t see or talk to another person until my wife comes home from work in the evening. For someone with my particular personality that isn’t really a problem as long as I get social interaction on the weekends, but for other people it could be misery.
• Personal projects are important. You need to be working on sites that you care about. If those happen to be the sites that you are doing for paying clients, so much the better, but you need to have at least one project on your plate that makes you happy even if it’s just a site that you create for yourself. (see Single Sentence Movie Review.)

When I look at the comments people have left on this site, it seems like a lot of readers are where I was a little over a year ago. You have a job in a cublicle somewhere that’s not very fulfilling. Part of you really likes the idea of striking out on your own and being in control of your own life. Maybe you’ve already done some freelance work on the side, but certainly not consistent enough to pay your bills.

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If you are a freelancer or even a small business, one of the first ideas you have to get used to is that you can’t be everything to everyone. If you want to be a database guru, you may not have time to learn everything there is to know about Flash. If you want to know Photoshop so thoroughly that you could teach a class on the subject, you may not have time to get your sales and marketing plan as polished as it needs to be. My point being it’s extremely difficult to run a thriving business that provides every possible service without outside help.

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