photo credit: Extra Ketchup

This blog has been up and running for over 2 years. There’s a lot of topics that I’ve covered in that time that could probably stand to be revisited. Since my time seems to be slipping through my fingers as we try to get the house ready to bring a baby home this December, this seems like a perfect time.

The next several weeks are going to be spent looking back at some of the early posts from Best Practices. As needed, I’ll be commenting on parts of the post that don’t necessarily hold up anymore. The ideas in this 2006 post on pricing are still a pretty accurate reflection of the approach I take when giving a customer a quote.

Pricing Your Web Design Service

Today is Blog Action Day. Each year an important topic is selected, and bloggers around the world who wish to participate post about that topic. This year’s subject is poverty. I thought about trying to do a post that ties into poverty, but I think it makes more sense to do a post on this blog that talks about using your skills to help any organization that is trying to make positive changes.

It seems like most successful freelancers I know end up doing at least a little bit of pro bono work from time to time. Usually for some noble cause that resonates with them. It’s seldom because they have so much extra time. So why do they do it?

• It’s the right thing to do. I imagine I’m not the only person who sleeps better at night if I feel like the world is a slightly better place because I’m on it.
• It raises your visibility. You can land projects with much more recognizable clients than you can at your regular billing rates. As a result, your portfolio gets stronger.
• It builds contacts. The decision makers at any organization that is worthy of pro bono consideration do not exist in a vacuum. They tend to know a lot of people and will recommend you if you’ve done a good job for them.

So you believe in the value, but there are thousands (probably tens of thousands) of worthy organizations to donate your services to. How do you figure out which one to work with?

• Need. Who actually needs your service right now? If the soup kitchen down the street already has a stable of freelance writers, they might not need another one.
• Personal connection. Does the mission of the organization resonate with you? If you hate cats and dogs, then doing something for your local animal shelter won’t be quite as satisfying. (Don’t worry. There are other freelancers out there who love cats and dogs, and they will take care of the animal shelters of the world.)
• Advancing business goals. You can do something good and grow your business at the same time. I would suggest working with an organization that brings you closer to your potential customers.

I recently got involved with the Indianapolis International Film Festival. I will be donating a considerable amount of my time over the next several months revamping their website. Right now the site is the responsibility of people who don’t have a ton of experience with this type of work, and they really have other things they need to be spending their time on for the festival. I’d call that a big need.

The objectives of the festival resonate with me: bringing some of the culture of the rest of the world into Indianapolis. I’m also a big movie buff. I get excited about being involved with this organization so that’s a match.

The film festival also advances my business goals. With Patron, I want to be in front of the people who care about promoting culture and entertainment in Indianapolis. The people involved with the film festival run in the same circles as my target market.

So take a second to brag in the comments below. What worthy organization do you donate your time to? Here’s a chance to give them a little free exposure.

photo credit: cambodia4kidsorg

It seems like several of the time management and professional blogs I read have recently talked about limiting how many online social networking sites you get involved with. Although I haven’t personally experienced this phenomenon, I guess some people are finding that after checking in with MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, a couple of niche communities on Ning, and Twitter there isn’t much time left in the day to do anything else. So the advice I’ve seen is to reign in and just pick one or two communities that you really want to become deeply involved with. Let the rest slide.

For online social networking, this makes a lot of sense to me. But networking in the real world strikes me a little different. For over two years I’ve spent most of my networking energy with a single group. It has about 30 people in it. We meet for lunch every week. I’ve gotten to know them pretty well. They’ve passed me some new business and vice versa. Unlike a social network that can have tens of thousands of active users at a given time, I really only have connections with 30 people.

Those 30 people already know each other, so I’m only bringing to the table my previous customers, friends, and family. But look at what happens when I get involved in a second networking group. Now there’s a room full of people who don’t know the 29 people that I’ve spent the last two years getting to know so well. The people in this new group don’t know my friend Allen, who offers exceptional IT support. I’m bringing value to both of my groups by introducing Allen to the people in the new group who need IT services.

If I was in a single group that had 60 members, everyone would already know Allen. Not much for me to do in the way of introductions. If I’m in two groups with 30 members, then I am the connection point. Business networking is based on the idea that if I help you find new customers, then you’ll help me find new customers. That means the more people I know that you don’t, the more likely I will be able to introduce you to a new customer, and the more likely you will be to return the favor.

So does this mean it’s even better to be in 4 groups with 15 members each? Or 6 groups with 10 members each? Depending on the time constraints, I would say yes. There’s a certainly a point at which your schedule does not allow you to keep committing to participate in groups (just like with online networks).

The key difference here is that with an online social networking site, you’re never going to meet all the people in the network. There’s always more strangers in the network for you to meet. So focusing your time and energy on doing just one network really well makes a lot of sense.

In the real world, networking groups are much smaller. Everyone gets to know each other pretty well. Two other people in the room can connect themselves without an introduction from you. The only way you can bring value to the group is to have other networks of people that you bring into the room with you.

There are certainly people who have spent more time than me on both online and offline networking, but that’s my experience.

photo credit: seeks2dream

Sometimes I feel like I’m riding on a pendulum that is swinging back and forth. At one end I have more websites in development than I can comfortably handle, and I’m working long hours just to meet my deadlines. In a relatively short period of time, though, things will shift to the other extreme where I find myself twiddling my thumbs and wondering how I’m going to earn enough to pay all the bills. From conversations I’ve had with other people who have gone into business for themselves, bouncing back and forth between these two scenarios is very common. It’s also very annoying.

Dissecting how this pattern gets established is easy. When I have nothing on my plate, I frantically scramble to get any and every project I possibly can. All of my time is spent on sales and marketing. Zero time on productive development.

This type of dedicated focus will eventually pay-off. Then I get a flood of projects requiring my immediate attention. All of my time is spent on productive development. Zero time on sales and marketing. You see where this is going. Once I complete all of these projects, there’s no new business coming in. So I start the cycle again, spending all my time trying desperately to attract some new clients.

What’s worse is I even recognize it while it’s happening. When I have a stack of projects that I’m working on, I know that there’s no marketing happening. But what can I do? I need to take care of the clients I already have on the line.

Finding Balance

The key is to always be spending some of my time on finding new business and some of my time working on the projects I currently have. It’s far easier for me to make the time to do the current development work I have. (After all, there are clients asking me when their sites are going to be ready.) It’s much more difficult to schedule time to do the sales and marketing when I’m busy.

I’m trying to find a window that I can treat as a dedicated block of time for building my sales pipeline. Maybe it will be from 3pm to 5pm every day. Maybe it’s all day Wednesday. I’m not sure, but I feel confident that it’s a necessary step for the evolution of my business.

When I’m busy it will be tempting to say I can skip the marketing this week because I really need to catch up on building all these websites. In fact that’s what happened last week. I had scheduled some time to do some sales calls, and I decided to work on projects instead. The result? I can already see that the work I have right now is probably going to be completed before I have any new projects coming in. Oops.

Why Is This So Hard?

I usually want to complete projects as quickly as I possibly can. The sooner I finish, the sooner I get paid. It can feel irresponsible to spend a few hours looking for new business, when I already have someone willing to pay me as soon as I’m done with their site. Part of me also doesn’t want to start a conversation with a client if I’m already booked up for the next few weeks. There’s a fear that if I tell them they are going to need to wait until next month for me to get started, they will just walk away.

The truth, though, is that most of the clients I work with aren’t ready for me to start working until at least a week or two after our initial contact. (Some of my past clients have taken months to pull the trigger.) And even if I did say that it was going to be a few weeks, I think most of my clients would have been okay with it. I’m sure there are exceptions, but here is another advantage of this approach.

When I’m in feast or famine mode, I’m a little desperate to land a customer. Since I have nothing to do and no revenue coming in, it’s critical that I close every sale. With a steady pipeline of new business coming in, it’s not as painful if a particular prospect turns out to be a bust because they need a new website today instead of next month.

Does it seem like I’m onto something here? Does anybody else have any insight or tips for getting over the hump of transitioning from a feast-or-famine business to a steady-pipeline business?

In some of the books I’ve read and conversations I’ve had with smart people, the idea has come up repeatedly of working on my business instead of in my business. I take that concept very seriously. I’ve heard horror stories of business owners across many industries who are locked into 80 hour work weeks just to keep their business from going into the red. In most cases, these owners are great at what they do. They just spend all their time concentrating on what they are building or providing, and there’s no time left to think about how they build or provide it.

I think sometimes I take that sentiment too far, though. If I had a team of developers working for me, it probably would be appropriate for me to devote all of my energy to the systems and legal and marketing and all the other “business” stuff. But I’m not there yet. Spending at least some of my time on creating websites is actually the best possible thing I can be doing to grow my business.

Once I considered that, I felt eager again to take on all kinds of new projects.

When I look back at those thoughts that had been running through my head not quite two years ago, my smile is almost as big. Only now I’m smiling because I’m amused at how ridiculous my plan was. As a freelancer, I am the one and only person who can act on behalf of my business.

• Who goes on sales calls to talk to potential customers? Me.
• Who answers the phone when someone has a problem with their website? Me.
• Who needs to network with other business owners in the community? Me.
• When does all this need to happen? Certainly not between the hours of midnight and 6am.

A few weeks ago, Noah wrote a guest post about turning projects down. I shared my own ideas on the topic a few months back. Today it occurred to me the posts on this blog are really focusing on one side of the story. Now this is exactly the stuff you need to hear if you are someone who is taking on every project that comes your way. But not everyone is in that predicament.

Some people have a crystal clear idea of what type of project they want to work on. Usually about 15 minutes into a meeting with a new potential client, they might realize this project isn’t going to fall within the perfect set of parameters they’ve defined. Maybe they aren’t going to be able to reuse that old block of code the way they want. Maybe the client wants to go in a dull design direction that is going to keep this project out of their portfolio. Whatever the reason is, this work is just not appealing.

If you’ve read the posts about turning down work, then you’ll probably walk away from that project and pat yourself on the back for standing tall. Good job! Now… how are you going to eat this month?

Passing on projects is a no-brainer when you have a lot of money in the bank. Unfortunately I don’t know many freelancers who are sitting on a large pile of cash. If a big financial safety net is the kind of security that attracts you, you probably didn’t make the jump into the uncertain world of freelancing in the first place.

It’s fine (and sometimes necessary) to decide that you aren’t willing to take on a bad project even when you really need the money. If you find yourself doing that on all of the potential work that comes your way, though, you’re business is probably going to struggle. So here are some factors to to consider when you are thinking about walking away:

• Your Bank Account – You got into this business because you love it, but it is still a business. If you’ve got bills to pay, you may just need to grit your teeth and do the work. Look at it this way, would you rather do this one unpleasant project or go back to your last job? (And what does your answer to that question tell you?)
• Who’s the Client? – Some clients are worth doing work for. A high profile client that will get you a lot of attention can be worth dealing with because it will get you more exposure to the type of client you do want to work with in the future. Maybe doing a project for your neighbor is a big pain, but he happens to work for the SBA advising startup businesses. If you want to work with startup businesses, this unpleasant job might be worth taking.
• Referral Source – If you’ve done a good job building word-of-mouth, then sometimes your business contacts will send new clients your way without lifting a finger. Don’t underestimate the value of these referral sources to your business. If you always reject the work that someone sends your way, they will simply stop sending work your way. If someone has the desire to help you but keeps sending you crap projects, the onus is on you to help that referral source understand how to send good projects your way.

These decisions are rarely black and white. A project is seldom 100% work you can’t wait to do or 100% work that will make you tear your hair out. There’s usually some of each. If you’ve already got more work than you know what to do with, maybe you hold out for those projects that are at least 90% awesome. If you’re going through a dry spell, maybe your standards drop to 70% or whatever works for you.

The bottom line is to be flexible. If all of the work available to you seems painful, maybe you need to be looking at a career switch. If everything that comes across your desk falls just short of perfect, though, consider taking on one of those less than ideal projects. That not-quite-great project will help you keep the lights on while you seek out jobs that are all the way perfect.

Dean Rieck, president of Direct Creative, was kind enough to answer a few of my questions about how he broke into copywriting and running his own business. One of Dean’s strengths is direct mail, and he has an email newsletter for anyone interested in tips on improving the response rate of their direct marketing campaign.

How did you end up in copywriting?
I was working as a writer / producer at an NBC affiliate. I created TV commercials and promotions for shows like the Dukes of Hazzard and The Muppet Show, which were popular at the time. The work was fun, but the money was lousy. So I left and tried various things before landing in Columbus, Ohio working for a “book packager” writing and editing school textbooks. The money was better, but the hours were killer. I’d work around the clock some days just to meet a deadline. I had heard of “copywriting” as a career and started looking for local clients. After I got a few, I cast my net farther to begin working regionally then nationally. Really, I had no plan. I did it because I was desperate and job prospects were bad at the time. Since I wasn’t making good money, any freelance work seemed to pay well. And the hours were pleasant and not at all stressful. I had nowhere to go but up, so freelancing worked for me. If I had a good job with high pay, I probably would never have taken the plunge.

How is freelance copywriting different than “corporate” copywriting? Or is freelance the only kind?
I assume you want to know the difference between being an employed copywriter working for a large corporation and doing copywriting on the outside as a freelancer. Actually, it can be the same in many respects. Many of the jobs, such as writing direct mail or brochures, are identical. The difference is that one is on a salary and the other takes a per project fee. From the corporate point of view, an employee is a known cost and can do more work for less money. But an outside freelancer, while usually charging more, can often offer higher quality and broader experience. Not every corporation hires freelancers. Some use only freelancers. And others use a mix. Ad agencies, for example, generally have writers on staff, but use freelancers to quickly scale up on a project when there is no time to hire a full time employee or when special expertise is needed for one project.

What’s the biggest challenge of running your own operation?
Scheduling is my biggest challenge. It may seem like you could just do projects in the order you get them, but that’s not the case. You have to look at specific deadlines for each project. You have to consider your level of expertise and how much time it will take to prepare for a job. You must also consider how a client works — do they like to make lots of changes or do they have a rigid review process? Size of projects factors in too. A project you can complete in an afternoon can be moved around to fill almost any time slot. But a big project needs a set block of time. In the end, you want to handle as many projects as you can while maintaining quality and sanity. And you don’t want to turn away too many clients or prospects. Often if you tell someone you’re too busy, they’ll never call you again. Clients sometimes don’t understand the scheduling challenges and expect you to drop everything and work for them exclusively whenever they call.

What would you have done differently if you were starting out today?
I wouldn’t have waited so long to start freelancing. It’s a wonderful way of life that fits my personality perfectly. I also would have specialized in a particular industry or area so that marketing my services would be easier. With my background I can handle a wide variety of projects, but I can’t market myself as a generalist. So I tend to focus on direct mail, which is what I’m now known for. But everyone from the local pizza shop to Microsoft uses direct mail, and that’s a lot of territory to cover.

Where do you see your freelance business 10 years from now?
Sheesh. That’s a job interview question! You’re giving me flashbacks to a time when I worked for a living.

I like what I’m doing, so I don’t see any radical changes. This is the sort of work I can do forever and have no plans to retire. I suppose I’ll just keep doing what I do and when I’m ancient I’ll just scale back a little. That’s the beauty of this sort of work. I can be totally lazy and still pull down a healthy six figures. Or I can get energetic and bring in more work if that’s what I feel like doing. One of the big benefits of freelancing is the control over your time and work environment. It’s not for everyone, since I think most people work better in a standard job setting. But if you have the right mindset, you can work for yourself and make up your own rules. It’s not something anyone can teach you.

Should you be more like Dr. House? Yes, if you possibly can. Now I’m not trying to say that you should be spiteful, difficult, or adopt any of the other character flaws of this character. But if you did, would people still work with you? Are you so talented and capable of producing at such a high quality that people will work with you despite any reason they may have not to? Because there’s always some reason not to work with you.

Hopefully the reason isn’t that you’re a big jerk. But maybe you have a different set of technical skills then what they envisioned for the project. Maybe you won’t be available for three more weeks. Maybe you are perfectly capable but don’t have any experience with the type of work that client needs. Maybe you’re a part-time freelancer with a 9 to 5 job that can’t take calls or schedule meetings during regular business hours. Maybe you cost more than all of your competition.

Whatever the “downside” is to working with you, are you so brilliant that customers are willing to work with you anyway?

I’ve applied this idea of diversifying revenue to my freelance business. Here are some of the different income streams I’ve worked on since I started The Web Shop Site Potion:

• Designing or redesigning web sites for clients
• Creating email templates for use in newsletter campaigns
• Retainer fees from marketing companies
• Custom Wordpress themes
• Subscription based web applications
• Monthly hosting fees
• Affiliate programs
• Google Adsense
• Email configuration

Wow. I didn’t realize how long that list was going to be until I started writing it. The problem here is that it takes a lot of energy to keep all these plates spinning. I’ve written before about how I moved away from hosting, and several of the other items on this list have already been relegated to the back burner.

I like all of these ideas. They all can be profitable. So it’s hard to say that I want to pick any to get the axe. But the simple fact is if I try to focus on all of them, I won’t be successful with any of them.