I’m still loving Freshbooks, the online accounts / invoice / time tracking solution that’s saving me a good bit of time this week when it comes to invoicing.

Having toyed around with the free version for long enough, I’ve decided that I can divert some of my monthly advertising revenues from other blogs (namely those sporting Text Link Ads) to cover the small sum of $14 per month to allow me increase my client count online.

The free version of Freshbooks limits you to three clients while the entry level solution at $14 expands that to 25 clients. As it happens the three clients I had been storing in Freshbooks for the past few months are all quite active this month along with new clients I’ve picked up of late so rather than deleting existing ones I’ve opted to upgrade to the entry level account.

Of course, there are options available for everyone whether you’ve got up to 25 clients or 5,000 and counting. For ease of invoicing, providing quotes and estimates for work and keeping track of revenue generated from freelancing during the year I’m glad I made the choice to go with Freshbooks.

If you want to try it for yourself, you can sign up here for free (free up to 3 clients).

Popularity: 3% [?]

I’ve long proclaimed I’m a music junkie. Through school age, music was everywhere. Through college, I couldn’t study without music by my side. When I opened the doors of my office over three years ago the only sounds you could hear were coming from Air’s ‘Talkie Walkie“>Talkie Walkie‘ album which saw me through my first two client products.

Of course, musical choice will be dictated by the type of project I’m working on and the time of day or night I’m working on it.

Day time music I tend to jump anywhere from Air to Bruce Springsteen to Newton Faulkner to The Killers. One of my favourite night time pieces of listening for those coding and design projects that take you into the wee hours would be the soundtrack to The Animatrix movie, a great collection of downtempo and off-kilter dance tracks. I’m also known to dabble in a little Yann Tiersen or Michael Giacchino

I’ve worked in places where the only thing to listen to was the local radio or the nagging afternoon agony aunt. Another perk of working for yourself, minor as it may seem, is being able to dictate the music on offer, especially if it such a vital part of your day.

The musician in me also keeps a guitar near my workspace. When Winamp, iTunes or Last.fm just aren’t doing the trick or I’ve hit a rut, I’ll use a guitar to work out kinks in a project. I’ll often take five minutes out to play through a tune, think over the current obstacle and return with a music-based solution.

I know well that music boosts my productivity. I get more done. I can manage more tasks. I’m more at ease with my day. I’m less likely to get bogged down in a project as the music “keeps me going”. How about you?

Popularity: 3% [?]

“Can you do a mockup for me?”

“Can you do a template design for me?”

“Why can’t I click anything in this? What did you send me?”

If you’ve ever had the first two questions thrown at you as a web designer, it is quite possible you’ve also had the third question fired at you as well.

I read a post from Verne Ho at Creative Briefing a few weeks ago in relation to managing mockups. Depending on the client, and the delivery (am I delivering a strict skin/template in Photoshop or do I need to make up a html/css bundle), my preference has been to develop in Photoshop and like Verne, export as a high quality JPG for approval.

However, in more recent projects I’ve found myself skipping photoshop altogether and going straight to designing through html/css.

Verne posed the question “how do you manage mockups?”. I now manage mockups by going straight to the build. Particularly if I’m doing any Wordpress development work. It is becoming increasingly easier for me to progress through Wordpress template development and while it is nice to start out in Photoshop and look pretty in a bitmap environment I, much like my client, would rather see something working.

So rather than deliver a flattened JPG file dumped from Photoshop, I prefer to deliver some class of interactive template design - working links, browser-safe colours, web page look and feel. I find that it also gives the sense you’re getting value for your time or money when at an early stage you can get the grasp of how something actually looks as opposed to how something might look when rendered in a browser.

Does the more interactive you get mean your mockup is no longer a mockup? Was it every a mockup to begin with?

Popularity: 4% [?]

I’ve spent the last twelve days in a relatively disconnected world working up to 20 hours a day, taking time away from work to chase a dream, one I certainly managed to catch by last weekend.

While I may well have been relatively disconnected, my pen and notebook were never too far from my side and I’m slowly piecing together the July series of blog posts.

However, my one piece of advice to cover the entire last twelve days away from the blog is this - do theatre.

As a means to escape work, as a means to discover and express yourself creatively and in a new medium (possibly a new medium), I would recommend a theatre run to anybody - whether you’re working on or off the stage.

Now, where did I put my notebook.

Popularity: 5% [?]

If, as a designer, you’ve been looking for a little creative inspiration, then take a look at this article from Web Designer Wall on 2008 Design Trends.

I’m a big fan of those who go out of their way to put a unique twist, look or feel on their blog design and some of the designs are quite staggering in their display.

There’s a fantastic selection of themes ranging from grunge to handwritten notes, paper clips, retro and vintage designs, splattered ink layouts, watercolours, sketches and more.

Check the above link or alternatively check an even bigger collection at the Best Web Gallery.

It feels great to be inspired!

Popularity: 13% [?]

One question to ask yourself before embarking on a freelance career is “how well do you work on your own?”.

This can be looked on from two perspectives.

Firstly, when you’re left to your own devices, how likely are you to press on with work at hand. If you’re currently in an office environment or working with a group of people and you find you’re the only one in the room, are you likely to maintain you’re current work level or slack off a bit, starting browsing the web, maybe dip into an online game or two? Would you get distracted easily or look for a distraction?

Secondly, are you fond of your own company? While you might be able to press ahead with the work, are you too much of a people-person to be able to work on your own? Do you need the company of others around you, the human interaction?

Working on my own is something I adjusted to rather quickly and entering the world of work as a freelance anything (designer, writer, photographer), I think you’ve got to get used to working on your own a lot. It’s not a scare tactic to put you off working for yourself, but I’ve found over the last few years that you do spend a lot of time working by yourself.

Of course, if you do need the water-cooler morning chats, you could look at something like co-working or hot-desking in a local business centre.

When you’ve been a few days on a particular job and haven’t seen sunlight, you’ll want to hope you’re good company to yourself!

Me? My CD collection keeps me going.

Popularity: 12% [?]

After waiting a while for a beta account (to no joy), I was happy to discover at the weekend that QIK.com has been opened to the public (and has had a bit of a facelift since v1 of the site).

I’ve been following a number of bloggers via QIK over the last couple of months and have to say that I’m extremely impressed with what’s been delivered. At the core of things, QIK installs as an application on your mobile phone (I’m using the Nokia N95 8GB) and allows you to stream video direct from your handset.

For this it is recommended that you have either

• an unlimited data plan with your mobile provider
• or a WiFi internet access point

given the large nature of streaming video content.

Further to that, you can also tie in with online networks like Blogger, Twitter, Pownce, YouTube, Seesmic and others to cross-post your QIK videos, with Twitter being used to alert your followers that you’re currently streaming and invite them into the conversation.

QIK also supports comments on archived videos as well as live chat on streaming videos, so the longer you stream, the higher the chances of getting into a conversation or being able to to-and-fro on points of your video. They’ve also just been nominated as one of the best mobile application companies at VentureBeat’s MobileBeat 2008 awards. It also turns out you can run QIK from your iPhone.

At present I’m testing the service on a home/office WiFi node though an unlimited data plan would certainly make things more flexible for me as a potential long-term user. I’m also exploring options on using mobile video streaming to enhance the work I do with bands, gigs and the theatre. Let’s see how that goes.

Sign up for free and give it a try yourself at QIK.com or keep an eye on my profile here.

Popularity: 13% [?]

About ten years ago I was given a brilliant piece of advice…

If you don’t have confidence, fake it

The idea being that if you can’t be confident, at the very least you could pretend you’re confident. If success breeds success then confidence certainly breeds confidence. The more people can see from an outward perspective that you appear visibly confident in the work you do, the more confidence they have in you.

Eventually you’ll realise that you’re no longer faking it and you’re entirely confident in the work you do.

You’re not lying to yourself, you’re simply using other people’s confidence in yourself to build your own self-confidence. Nothing wrong with that, right?

Popularity: 12% [?]

I’m looking to put together a list of freelance Wordpress theme developers who have experience in or have developed music-centric themes for Wordpress, namely themes for bands or musicians.

You wouldn’t need to worry about content or anything that goes into the site, so long as you can deliver a theme based on a short brief from the band (colours, music genre, etc.) and make allowances for the MP3 player plugin of your choosing. Unless specific to your theme, you need not worry about additional plugins as they can be catered for after the fact.

If you fit the bill and would like to get your name on the list (the list would be used in conjunction with a project I’m currently working on) as a possible go-to designer then email me (ken at profreelanceblogger dot com), contact me here, or leave a comment with your details including

• 3-5 samples of previous work
• Expected turnaround (hours / days)
• Cost per theme

If you don’t want to disclose these details in public comments then I’m happy to get them by email.

Popularity: 14% [?]

If there’s something I’ve found effective for promoting for offline enterprises, it has to be custom tshirts. I’ve got no problem in walking down the street as a human billboard for my own wares - get a name on the front and my URL on the back and I’m sorted, especially in the summer.

For me it relates more to music and events that I organise. I’ll get the name of the event or organistation printed up on the front of the tshirt and the vitals on the back. Going for a front and back print at least I know that those walking in front of me and behind me have something to see!

Whats more is you’ll know you’re on a winner with your tshirt when someone comes up asking where they can buy some - now you’ve the possibility of a new revenue stream.

Where To Go For Custom Clothes

Two online services I’ve been using over the past few years are Spreadshirt and Cafepress, both of whom I’ve had great success with in the printing of custom tshirts. Outside of tshirts, both offer additional items like bags, cups, pens, clocks, mousemats, all the things you could give away (or sell) in promotion of your own blog, gig, book, business or event.

Both services offer an easy upload feature too for your designs, though I will admit I found Cafepress.com that bit easier thanks to the ability to upload PNG images for designs with no turnaround (uploading a vector image on Spreadshirt can take up to 48 hours for approval / denial).

You can also use the interactive designers on the site - drag and drop free custom images and designs, different styles of text and font and place your order once you’re done.

Find me at a gig or event or strolling around town in the run up to a gigI’m running then I’m likely to have one of my own tees on me. In fact, I’m already working on a new batch of tshirts for MyMusicPR. If you’re a social person and like to get out and about, then don’t overlook the opportunity using yourself as a walking billboard for your business!

Popularity: 17% [?]