Here are the best books I’ve read recently that have helped to improve aspects of my freelancing career.

E-Myth Revisited

I could have done without the cringeworthy tales of “Sarah’s Pies”, but there many nuggets of advice in this book about creating processes and systems to grow your business.

The Checklist Manifesto

Related to the above, Atul Gawande gives some real-world examples of where the humble checklist have helped improve many situations — and this is something that can easily be applied to freelancing.

Winning Without Losing

How to grow a successful business without having to work every hour in the day. I found this book aligned with my philosophy about building a business without impacting on my family life.

Switch

Changing behaviour — for example in your client’s businesses — is difficult, and this book gives a solid framework to ease any transitions.

4-Hour Work Week

More good advice on creating processes and systems in order to free yourself from the more mundane aspects of running a business.

Book Yourself Solid

Describes a system whereby you can become an expert or authority in a particular market, and solve problems experienced within that field. Good advice about building up an audience that trusts you.

What books have you found helpful in your freelancing career?

Glen Scott

I’m a freelance software developer with 18 years’ professional experience in web development. I specialise in creating tailor-made, web-based systems that can help your business run like clockwork. I am the Managing Director of Yellow Square Development.

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Getting away from my home office is a nice treat. One of the perks of being a member of the PCG is their offer of flexible workspaces. Here’s a map I’ve put together to show the London locations:

View PCG Flexible Workspace in a larger map

For more information, please see the Flexible Workspace page on the PCG site.

Glen Scott

I’m a freelance software developer with 18 years’ professional experience in web development. I specialise in creating tailor-made, web-based systems that can help your business run like clockwork. I am the Managing Director of Yellow Square Development.

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If you are a freelancer or contracter in the UK, it’s important to know if you fall under the IR35 legislation. This legislation was put in place to stop “disguised employees” — that is, workers who are invoicing companies but working as if they are employees. The legislation has been quite a grey area in the past, but guidance has been recently published which helps to clarify the levels of risk.

Using this guidance, I’ve put together a tool which asks a series of questions and then rates you as either low, medium or high risk.

You can find the tool at ir35risk.co.uk

Even with this tool, I would recommend speaking with an accountant if you have any concerns about whether you are at risk.

Glen Scott

I’m a freelance software developer with 18 years’ professional experience in web development. I specialise in creating tailor-made, web-based systems that can help your business run like clockwork. I am the Managing Director of Yellow Square Development.

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Are you a business owner looking to take on a freelance developer? If so, I am sure you have many questions about how such a relationship might work. Perhaps you have had a bad experience working with a freelancer before? If so, this report is going to be helpful to you.

It lists 10 questions that you can ask the freelance developer in order to clarify whether they will be a good fit for your business.

It’s free to download: simply sign up with a valid e-mail address and you’ll get the link.

Glen Scott

I’m a freelance software developer with 18 years’ professional experience in web development. I specialise in creating tailor-made, web-based systems that can help your business run like clockwork. I am the Managing Director of Yellow Square Development.

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I recently moved my glenscott.co.uk domain over to Google Apps and have created a Google+ account using an e-mail address under this domain. The problem is that I already have a Google+ account associated to an old GMail account, and I don’t want to manage both.

Thankfully, there is a relatively simple solution.

You will need to designate one of your accounts as the “primary” account. All circles from other accounts can be transferred over — effectively merging the two accounts.

Visit Google Takeout

Choose the Transfer your Google+ connections to another account option.

At this point you will be promoted for a source and destination (“primary”) account. Fill in these details and click the Transfer button. The transfer process will take at least a week.

Glen Scott

I’m a freelance software developer with 18 years’ professional experience in web development. I specialise in creating tailor-made, web-based systems that can help your business run like clockwork. I am the Managing Director of Yellow Square Development.

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Inspired in part by my previous success in getting a side-project released in one day, and also by Sacha Greif’s Side-Project Project, I’m releasing another small app.

This time, I thought I’d create an app that can visualise a Facebook friends network — that is, a way of seeing how are your friends connected. This can produce some interesting information, such as clustering together different groups of people such as your work colleagues and old school friends, for example.

Anyway, it’s not quite finished… but I’m nearly there. Here is a sneak peak at what it’s going to look like:

In this screen, the friend’s network is being constructed — circles represent friends and the lines between them represent a friendship. Hovering over the circles shows the actual person’s name. Once this has been calculated, the visualisation is re-arranged to show how friends are grouped together:

This was the perfect project to put into practice what I’ve learnt so far on the Social Network Analysis course that I’m currently studying.

I’ve spent around 6 hours on it so far, and imagine will get some time next week to finish it off.

Anyway, if you are interested in playing around with the finished app, please let me know. Just follow this blog, or alternative sign up for my newsletter using the form below — you’ll be the first to hear about it!

Next time, I’ll explain how I built it.

Glen Scott

I’m a freelance software developer with 18 years’ professional experience in web development. I specialise in creating tailor-made, web-based systems that can help your business run like clockwork. I am the Managing Director of Yellow Square Development.

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I get a steady flow of enquiries from prospective clients through my site, but not all turn out to be worthwhile. Here are a few examples of projects that I had to say no to over the past year.

Project 1 – Shopping cart toolbar

This project was about creating a toolbar that sat above a variety of websites, including Amazon and Tesco, that provided a “meta shopping cart”. Essentially allowing a user to add products from multiple sites. The products were then to be shipping to a third party before being sent to the customer.

Why did I turn it down?

The project would have breached the terms and conditions of the sites being aggregated. Using a middle-man for shipping was also potentially illegal.

Project 2 – Google Adwords Accounts Aggregator

This project was all about combining multiple Adwords accounts into one payment source, with the ability to set budget limits per account.

Why did I turn it down?

The service required by the client already existed — and it’s provided by Google!

Project 3 – Business partner

One enquiry was from a business owner wanting a partner with technical knowledge in order to build and sell an online training course.

Why did I turn it down?

The project was highly risky — it was an all-or-nothing type project that required a massive amount of time investment. At the time, I preferred to work on several smaller, lower risk, projects to keep my income at a steady level.

In summary

It’s always exciting to get a new enquiry, but sometimes scratching beneath the surface reveals details that are off-putting.

I always make sure I’ve researched new clients thoroughly before choosing to work with them, and have steered away from projects that sound too good to be true.

I’d love to hear about the freelance projects you’ve turned down, and why — please use the comments section below.

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Photo credit: no? by fotogail, on Flickr

Glen Scott

I’m a freelance software developer with 18 years’ professional experience in web development. I specialise in creating tailor-made, web-based systems that can help your business run like clockwork. I am the Managing Director of Yellow Square Development.

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I can’t quite believe it, but a year has now passed since I started working on a freelance basis. I feel I’ve learnt a huge amount in this time, so I’d like to share my experiences in the hope that they might be useful to others.

Things that have gone well

The freedom

This was always the aspect that excited me about freelancing — that of being able to pick and choose work, and decide your own hours. And, by and large, it has worked out as well as I had hoped.

Being able to work on pet projects

I’ve built up an insane number of ideas for sites and apps over the years, but never had any time or motivation to build them. Now I’m freelancing, I’ve been able to revisit these ideas and actually build some. I’ve been able to look at them from a business perspective and decide which ones may actually be able to make some money.

Working from home

Being able to work from home and spend more time with my young son has been fabulous, but it hasn’t been without its downsides. It can get pretty lonely at times, but I’ve made good use of co-working sessions to keep things interesting.

Finding work

On the whole, I have been able to find work when I’ve needed it. That’s not to say it’s been simple — I’ve certainly not sat back and waited for the work to find me. However, I’ve been hunting down interesting work through a variety of different methods, some of which are more successful than others. I’ll dedicate a future blog post to this subject.

Invoicing and accounting

I don’t have an accountant yet, so have needed software to help me through this area. I use FreeAgent for this purpose, and I can thoroughly recommend it.

Things that have not gone so well

Building my own website

It’s taken most of the year to get my own site released, but I wanted it up and running much earlier. It’s taken so long because I put paid client work, and other pet projects before it.

Working with clients on-site

My preference has always been to work from home wherever possible, but I also recognise the need to work onsite in certain situations — for example, at the beginning of projects. One mistake I’ve made is agreeing to work onsite every day for the duration of a project. During this time, I was the only non-permanent employee working in the office, so I felt like an outsider. Furthermore, the client insisted that I used their own hardware and software for developing — a compromise that I will not make again.

What next?

It’s been a fantastic year, and I can’t imagine going back to traditional employment. As long as the challenges are keeping me interested, I’ll continue down the freelance route. My plan is to grow out from “Glen Scott the Freelancer” to “Glen Scott, the Business” and that will be my focus of my second year.

Glen Scott

I’m a freelance software developer with 18 years’ professional experience in web development. I specialise in creating tailor-made, web-based systems that can help your business run like clockwork. I am the Managing Director of Yellow Square Development.

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