Archive for August, 2008
If there’s one tip I can give you about scheduling posts to go live in Wordpress it’s this - double-check your dates.
Why would I say that?
Because yesterday’s post, knowing I would be away from the web and out of the county for at least 24 hours, never surfaced though it might well do sometime this December!
That said, it brings a relative end to my ‘post a day’ series for August which has managed to kick me back into the blogging groove. A notepad chock full of ideas, some new clients because of the posting series and some nice introductions via email over the month have created a nice additional direction for the blog.
If you want to check back over the ‘post a day’ series for August simply look through the archives or August specifically right here. I’ll drop in yesterday’s post later tonight but right now, I’m off to live-blog a music event (another post on this coming soon).
Popularity: 40% [?]
I’ve often thought about publishing an ebook online or getting something into print media (a physical book). Getting an ebook together wouldn’t be a difficult feat for me. I’ve read enough of them to recognise the layout, I’m quite comfortable in a variety of publishing and layout packages - convert the end product to PDF and find a home for it online.
So this morning I collect my mail and find a question from someone interested in publishing a book but also looking for illustrators for their book so I thought, why not make some suggestions through a post and share the information.
Publishing Your Book
I won’t lie - I’ve never dealt with physical book publishers. However, at CreativeCamp in March (I was one of the three main organisers of the conference), we had a talk on self-publishing books and what your options are online for print-on-demand books.
One option is Lulu.com who offer a variety of paperback books, hardbacks, photobooks, cookbooks and more. If you have all your files ready to go, you can upload the individual pages of your book to Lulu.com and get instant quotes on how many books you need.
My query for a 68 page (consider 4 belong to the cover, inside and out) colour A5 book, perfect bound, worked out at €281 for 20 copies of the book, meaning the manufacturing cost per book would be €14.05. Buy in bulk and save, opt for black and white and save, change your stitching types and save, change your page size and save.
Lulu.com also allows you to define your own price, sell the books online from your own store front, get your own ISBN number and look at distribution options in up to 60,000 outlets online and off.
Another company in the self-publishing marketplace is InstantPublisher.com who will turn around a minimum order of 25 copies of your book at trade quality in 7-10 days. For 25 books at 68 pages, colour cover, black and white content, perfect-bound in similar size the cost was significantly lower - at just $113.50.
Freelance Illustrators
So you’ve found a publisher you’re happy with and you now need an illustrator for your book. Why not explore the options provided by the many freelance illustrators working online?
The NJ Creatives Network, based in New Jersey, is home to several freelance illustrators whose samples of work and contact details can be found here.
Creative Freelance are a UK-based organisation drawing on freelance artists and illustrators from the Ipswich and Suffolk area of the UK. You can find some of their freelance illustrators here.
The Freelance Alliance (creative freelancer network) also plays home to a number of freelance illustrators working online, again all with samples of their work, viewable CVs and direct contacts for the illustrators in question.
Something To Add?
If you’ve got something to add or would like to share a resource on self-publishing or sourcing freelance illustrators for books, then leave a comment or drop me an email and I’ll get your link added.
Popularity: 43% [?]
Tonight’s post (I say night as I’m late in the door once again) is more of a question than anything - what would stop you going freelance?
Is it the security issue? The lack of a regular paycheck or a reduction in income from a more stable corporate source? Are you worried that you may not have enough contacts in order to start sourcing work, at least initially? Is it a health insurance issue? Worried about family support or burning bridges with your current employer?
If you’re out of work already or currently not in the workforce is it more a case of not knowing where to start or perhaps finding the avenue that’s right for you?
I’d like to know.
Leave a comment or drop me an email personally to ken [at] profreelanceblogger.com.
Popularity: 15% [?]
So the head-cold is starting to subside, largely due to the workload of today (it helps to keep busy). With the brain ticking and in event-planning mode I should introduce you to the next PodCamp to take place in Kilkenny just one month from now.
I’ve mentioned before that I like to get involved in community-type events and having had a helping hand in organising the first Irish PodCamp last year and CreativeCamp earlier this year, I opted to help out with the organising of the next event, due to take place in Kilkenny, Ireland, on September 27th at the fantastic 4* Hotel Kilkenny.
While the first PodCamp, last year, had a firm focus on podcasting and new media, this year has evolved into a much wider social media scene with a lot of focus on social media technologies and their use in promoting your services, business, connecting with people, sharing your ideas, growing your community.
This is a free unconference - we have very nice sponsors who are helping us (hopefully) cover the cost of the day, which runs to several thousand Euro. But in keeping with the unconference ethos, nature, or whatever you may call it, I’m delighted we get to offer the event for free.
With the cost barrier removed, you’re presented with an affordable opportunity to connect with new people, share experiences and demo your services - all it will cost you is time.
With a month to go, we’ve got speakers lined up with topics as varied as video conversation, turning your hobby into your business, using social networks to build new audiences and much more.
Not only that, but with over 70 attendees registered already, we’ve got people coming in from the UK, the US and all around Ireland. If you’re interested in joining us on the day (and believe me, I’d love to meet you on the day, talk podcasting or music or freelancing in general!) then drop over to the PodCamp website to register.
If you’re working for yourself and looking to connect with other artists, storytellers, web designers, web developers, software engineers and other industry specialists then do consider attending! What have you got to lose?
Popularity: 12% [?]
…does your body have time to be sick.
It’s Tuesday night. I’m just settling into the bed. I’ve come off a really long week wrapping up office projects, freelance projects and a sold-out four-night run of a new theatre production. You could say I’ve been busy.
But it’s only when you slow down (last night and tonight) that your body has time to catch up and throw a horrible head cold at you.
I’ve been blessed health-wise since I turned my diet around at the beginning of the year. Admittedly, things have stopped moving in that area thanks to two back-to-back theatre productions but the knock-on effects of sharpening up food-wise are still being felt. I don’t usually get colds, don’t usually get sick, don’t usually get chest infections, migraines, everything is under control.
I don’t get sick because I don’t have the time to get sick - there’s always something to be doing.
However, allowing myself Monday night off and finding Tuesday the first week night I’ve had off in a few weeks, I’m lying in bed cooped up with a nasty headcold and the laptop.
My cure for the headcold? Starting a new project… something I’ll be doing on Thursday after picking up another nice job earlier in the week.
In the downtime inbetween, it means that I get to spend tomorrow planning from the bed, cleaning out my inbox of the 100+ unread emails from during the week and making headway on the project start for the end of the week. No point in sleeping it out now is there?
Do you find the same? It’s only when you slow down that you get sick?
Popularity: 15% [?]
“Are you sure you’re happy with €XX.XX?” asked a client of mine this morning. To which I replied “yes, it’s fine, sure the computer did most of the work”… which is pretty true.
The job was a tech repair call… something I do on free time and it’s usually to someone I’ve carried out some freelance web work for. As most web designers will have experienced, if you can do something on the internet it’s automatically assumed that you can also fix it when it’s broken.
Cutting a long story short, the callout was to deal with a virus and spyware-riddled PC, a cleanup job which took a grand total of 5 hours including an XP Pro repair install, guessing admin passwords and restoring internet, network and printer connectivity, as well as some guidance on antivirus solutions and general security issues.
In hindsight, I should have doubled the fee at a minimum as the bulk of the work (3.5 hours) was carried out on the Friday, with 1.5 hours spilling into my Monday.
Not realising the overall extent of the issues at hand or the time it would take and ultimate steps needed (an XP repair along with a chkdsk and fixboot scan were rather time consuming) I decided to quote for the service, as opposed to the time spent on the job.
I had felt this a fair move for the client as quoting for time would have been the more expensive option, but given the time lapses in running an XP repair, hard disk scanning etc. I was able to make up time on other projects (have laptop and mobile broadband, will travel), so felt that while the job might have taken 5 hours to carry out in total, I was able to make up 2-3 hours working remotely at the client’s premises.
That said, if I wasn’t connected to the web or had decided to travel without my laptop, the resulting invoice may have looked quite different.
Finding the balance between quoting for your time spent on a job or quoting for a service can be a tricky one. It certainly gets easier the more you do it. Some jobs I’ll quote for time, moreso with new clients. With existing and repeat clients I find I’ll quote for a service, increasing the possibility for me of repeat business (which I find, sometimes you’ll turn the service around in minutes, sometimes in hours).
But at the end of the day, I’ll still look at a project and ask myself “time, or service”. When the client asks you if “you’re happy” taking a certain amount, possibly in the back of their mind thinking “I’m getting away lightly here”, you have to be certain in your own mind that you made the correct choice.
I know I did today and I also know there’ll be a repeat phone call for more work in the future because of it.
So how about it… are you happy with your own pricing or do you find a difficulty in debating whether to quote for time spent on a job or for an overall service on a whole?
Popularity: 16% [?]
There’s a lot to be said for the advent of mobile applications and mobile software. Since I picked up a Nokia N95 earlier this year, I haven’t looked back. As a mobile phone it is solid, performs well under pressure, offers great audio quality and helps me to no end in my work with photos, video streaming, access to the web via WiFi etc.
If I have to change my mobile, or should I look to add an iPod Touch / iPhone to my collection, two applications I simply have to have are
While the S60-based N95 boasts a massive selection of applications for download, these two applications alone allow me to keep up with so much and offer a terrific and efficient alternative to checking Google-hosted mail as opposed to logging in via the native phone browser.
I can access my inbox, spam folders, star conversations, grab attachments etc. as you would normally through your Gmail account. The easy thing about Mail by Google for your domain is that you simply need to enter your email address and password to log in, no having to visit your Google Apps homepage or your dedicated Google apps subdomain (if that’s how you’ve organised your addressing). A plus for me as I have Google mail set up for several different domains, including ProFreelanceBlogger.com.
If you have a Series 60 based mobile phone or your phone can run java based applications, then point your mobile browser to m.google.com and follow the links for Gmail (download) or see the included links above.
Popularity: 11% [?]
While I’ve been thinking of adding a ‘week in review’ of post I’ve been accumulating or marking with interest via Google Reader on a weekly basis, one post I’ll highlight for you today is this one from ProBlogger.
Intellectual Property Law Tips For Bloggers is a guest post by Mark Patterson of the Tough Money Love blog.
It looks at protecting your brand, protecting and licensing your content, the use of third party graphics and third party trademarks with the intention of boosting revenue from your blog.
Hope you enjoy your Saturday! (Or have enjoyed it!)
Popularity: 15% [?]
I’ve just finished my first freelance web job that did not involve in any way a single phone call. Considering I own four mobile handsets, three of them currently active and regularly buzzing - that’s not a bad feat. Emails, regular updates via GoogleTalk and no face to face contact with the ultimate end user have resulted in the job being completed.
It has certainly been an interesting one.
It is the first job in three years I’ve decided to take out of the county, opting to do so as there was a local contact for the project - again dealing via email, IM or the rare SMS.
But yet through all that and with no face time on the project, we’ve been able to see things through to the end. One of the joys of freelancing online. Because there are so many ways to communicate online and given I’ve been able to increase my accessibility through mobile broadband, it is becoming that bit easier to start accepting pure web-only freelance work - for me anyway.
Usually it’s phone calls, meetings, phone calls and plenty of face time. But when you’re taking work from overseas, or out of county as I’ve done in the past, the same tends to apply at least phone call-wise.
I don’t know what the end user looks like, what they sound like but I’m comfortable in the knowledge that we’ve taken the job to 100% and seen it launch well.
I certainly wouldn’t work every job that way - working as a freelancer the opportunity for personal contact on a job is often welcomed but I’m happy with how this one has worked out.
Does anyone working strictly online miss the personal contact? Do you need - at some point - to speak to or see the end user of your project?
Popularity: 11% [?]
Earlier in the year, I blogged a bit about Going Solo, as a wonderful opportunity for creative freelancers to get together in the fantastic surrounds of Lausanne in Switzerland.
Now, it seems the conference is about to hit the UK with Leeds and September 12th of this year being the location and time set for the event.
Organised by Stephanie Booth once again, Going Solo is
a one-day educational conference for freelancers and small business owners of the internet industry and beyond. It will cover topics such as setting rates, negotiating contracts, finding clients, balancing work and life, being productive without getting all stressed out.
Registration for the conference in Leeds is open at present and with the early-bird deadline for registrations having passed, the cost of the conference to you is £220. This is still a good price considering if you wait until the 10 days before the event, you’re entering into late-bird territory with the cost of the conference rising to the £300 mark. If you’re really leaving it late, you’ll be able to register on the day at a cost of £350. So at a saving of £130, it really does pay to register early!
Balancing work and life, tax, negotiation, marketing, networking, business realties and more are all set for discussion across the course of the day.
Check out the full lowdown at Going-Solo.net.
Popularity: 23% [?]
