Nowadays, there are plenty of freelancers around the web offering all kinds of services you can imagine. As a freelancer yourself, the question rises, which category of freelancing do I fall into?

Oh, but wait…

What kind of freelancers are there? From working with numerous freelancers, I find there are two categories it all boils down to.

1. Specialized Freelancers – Individuals in this category are highly specialized in one field of web development. This is usually in graphic design, a coding language, domaining, search engine optimization, or internet marketing.

2. Know-it-All Freelancers – These folks know just about everything you need and can create a website from start-to-finish all by themselves (or so they say).

The question I recently came across, is am I a generalist or specialist? This, I believe is a very important focal point in every freelancers ‘career’ and it is important to know which path you wish to take.

Let’s examine the advantages and disadvantages of each category.

Freelance Generalists

Advantages

• These guys can usually solve all of your web development problems quickly. They hold a large databank of knowledge of the entire development process and visualize the entire process from a birds-eye view.
• The end product may turn out better since the individual knows what they want the results to be and take only the necessary steps to achieve that goal. In essence, these people are very results-driven.

Disadvantages

• Do not know everything like they think. While they do know a little about a lot, the majority does not know everything at the level a specialized freelancer would.
• Development process takes a long time. Doing an entire website development project, for example, may be fairly time-consuming and even stressful at times. Breaking up the work between several specialized developers would be a much better approach.
• The end product may not turn out as excellent as a client would expect. This is due to the fact that an individual who works with all aspects of the development process tends to lose that creativity flow and some things become overlooked along the way.

Freelance Specialists

Advantages

• Highly specialized in one (or several) key areas. The folks I’m talking about are graphic designers, hardcore coders, internet marketers, and SEO guru’s. These guys and gals know their thing inside-out and their work is not disappointing.
• Their creative juice does not stop! They work hard and fast and know what they’re doing. I particularly enjoy working with designers who have absolutely no end to their creativity.

Disadvantages

• Do not always see ‘the big picture’. A naturally talented designer loves to design. It’s their thing. But sometimes you can over-do your job and add too many unnecessary elements to your design, that it becomes a hassle to code and does not serve any particular purpose to the user.
• Are limited to only what they can do. If you’ve got talent, sooner or later you’ll come across a client who will want more than what you can do. Knowing design is great, but knowing how to slice up a design and turn it into some structured XHTML is even better.

Final Thoughts

• There is no right way of being a ‘freelancer’. The only right way to success is being unique and consistent.
• To be most efficient and productive in the development process is to have one or two freelance generalists who see the big pictures, and a group of specialists who can develop flawless work. This structure will lead to a very successful and results-driven development firm.
• Personally, I found it inevitable to  be specialized in design only. I could never find a good enough PHP coder and while I have not had any formal training in coding, little by little I began to understand systems, databases, marketing, and so forth. I cannot say I am specialized in any of those areas because I am not, but the knowledge I gained from learning the core aspects of the entire development process has enabled me to know how to work with specialists in those areas and direct them effectively and explain the job in a language they understand.

I would really appreciate some input on this. This is something I have seen through my personal career and would like to know if others have gone through the same phase in their life.

Popularity: 36% [?]

Freelancing may be a hobby for some, but it may also be a full time job for others. In either case, if you want to be successful in freelancing whether it be design, backend development, print design, etc, it is very important to follow these tips in order to not ‘burn out’ as a freelancer:

1. Treat it as a business – Whether you think freelancing is a hobby or an actual business for you, it doesn’t matter. In either case, treat your freelancing work as a real  business. By this I mean when working with clients, provide them documentation, terms of contract, a price chart (I’ll discuss more on why these are helpful in a later post), and be supportive and understanding with your clients.
2. Keep up with the trends – It’s no use designing concepts that were popular in 2006. And your logo design probably won’t win if you drew it in MS Paint. The idea I’m trying to get across is keep up with the latest trends and ideas or even develop your own unique ideas.
   How I do it?
   • Visit popular CSS galleries (ie Website-Gallery.com, and FaveUp)
   • Tutorial sites (such as PSDTuts.com, Tutorialized.com)
   • ColourLover
   • Check out Competitor Sites
   • Browse through other design work

   NOTE: Don’t copy others work. This is not only unethical, but illegal. Oh and might I add it doesn’t really qualify as a tip on being a successful freelancer.

3. Manage your budget – Photoshop CS4 is just around the corner and many designers are getting their cash or (most likely) credit cards ready to spend big. My advice: Buying CS4 isn’t going to get you more clients, nor is CS3 going to cost you clients. Sure CS4 is loaded with goodies you can’t wait to try out, but is it really worth spending several grand for a piece of software? Read more on my five dumb budgeting mistakes.
4. Never stop learning – This is more of a branch-off from point #2, but in my career as a freelance designer as well as a corporate designer is to never stop learning. Tutorial sites are especially great for this and my three favorite ones are PSDTuts.com, NETTuts.com, and VECTORTuts.com. What makes these sites stick out of the crowd? These sites cut out the beginner lessons that many other tutorial sites focus on, and instead focus on technique rather than the actual design. Sure I might create the same design that these sites present without even reading the tutorial, but its the technique that we’re looking for that will help us out.
5. Keep your idea box full – It is not always that you start a new project that an idea immediately gets you into action. More often than not, you’ll sit there analyzing several ideas and thinking what would best fit the situation at hand. And the majority of the time, these ideas seem incomplete or inappropriate to use at that point.
   So what do I do to prevent this from happening? Similarly to how I use a journal to keep all of my blogging ideas, I also have a special bookmark folder with all kinds of links to various sites, images, or anything else that might have stuck to me at some point in time. You might even use a sketchpad to keep your ideas as well, but that is only used when there’s an idea in the real world otherwise click and bookmark beats the sketchpad time-wise.
6. Ethics – One thing I cannot stand is dishonest, blatant, and unethical clients and from a clients point of view, I hate dishonest, blatant, and unethical freelancers that I come across. If you want to be successful in the freelance world of competition, make yourself known for your integrity, honesty, worksmanship, and professionalism.
7. Attitude – Attitude goes hand in hand with ethics. If your ethics aren’t in place, then your attitude probably isn’t either. The kind of attitude I’m talking about is helpful and supportive of clients. Take each new project on with the kind of attitude that this may be the project that will take you to high places. By this I mean put in some actual thought and effort into the project to make it a success.
8. Advertising – Aside from all the attitude and education lessons above, in order to be a successful freelancer, you also need to get yourself known. Advertising may be free in some places, it may not be free in others. Places you can advertise on are web development forums and social networks. You may even advertise on Craigslist if you’re up to it. Winning on 99designs or getting your design or work submitted to a publication agency is also a form of advertising.
9. Portfolio or Website – A portfolio is very crucial to get any part of todays freelancing marketshare. Your portfolio may be anything from DeviantArt, 99Designs to Flickr, as long as it showcases your work. I recommend having a personal website on top of that because a website will get you established in your market, it will have your portfolio, and it will also have your resume of what you do which is especially great for clients because if you’re a designer and also a great coder, this solves quite a few problems on the clients part and may give you even more business.
10. Stay on Schedule – It may be tempting to lay off a project a day or two, but this is exactly what separates a successful freelance boss from an unsuccessful one. Staying on top of things will help you be organized, be prepared for the unexpected, ensure thoroughness of your work, and will open up time for other things you love doing!

I think that’s enough for now. I originally planned to write on 4 tips. Then I jumped to 7, but the ideas just kept coming and I kept writing, so at 10 tips I think its enough.

Popularity: 16% [?]

I can bet about 80% of my readers check their email every time the new message icon pops up, read their RSS feeds or visit YouTube because they “don’t feel” like starting a project, and chat with people that have absolutely no connection to the project their working on. If you’re one of these people, read on…

Now I’ll make a confession to everyone. I used to do this every single day and it was tough because I would sit till midnight “working” on a design that should have been finished by the time my work day was over. I saw my productivity levels drop to very low rates and my designs were not as thought out as I would have liked. I knew I had to end this habit and I did by eliminating things that distract me from work:

• Email: I run Windows Live Mail and about every 2-10 minutes a new email comes in which I just had to read. I got around this by changing my email settings and getting WLM to check for new messages every 30 minutes (instead of every 1 minute).
• Feeds: RSS feeds may take up hours of your day and at times they did take up that much when I had an unspecified large number of subscriptions. Especially if you’re reading something like Engadget that brings in100+ new posts a day, then this is definitely a time waster. I have removed feeds that don’t really improve my knowledge and productivity and now I only have 34 essential feeds that I watch (although at times even this is too many). So remove feeds that:
  1. You don’t really need: Sure, Engadget was interesting, but is it that important?
  2. Too big: Reading a feed that has 100+ new posts a day is not only distractive, but unhealthy. It’s better off to sign up somewhere that brings in about 5-10 new posts each day because the fewer information you read, the more you can analyze it, think about it, and apply it.
     Note: Don’t unsubscribe from this site though
  3. Outdated : We’re after unique and new information, not the same boring stuff!
• Chat: More often than not, I get friends that have a “quick and urgent question” that they need solved. Their quick question often becomes a time waster that leads to other things resulting in less production time. I now like to set my status to “Busy” or “Working” depending on which IM clients I have running.
• Twitter: All the cool people use it right? I guess this is one time where its best to not be part of the cool crowd. The Twitter Tweets are fun, but they are very distracting, so the best bet is to just shut them off.
• Multiple Project At Once: Several years ago, this has been a major deal for me when I tried to work at different projects at once. This brought me to a point where almost every time I would sit and try to decide which one to do first. Since then, I have organized myself on working on projects on a first-come-first-serve basis and tell clients how much time to expect before they see any first hand results.
• StumbleUpon: StumbleUpon is great. Especially for wasting time. Honestly, I still find it hard at times to stop clicking the Stumble! button, but disabling it for a while has been helpful.
• Other Distractions: TV, Kids, (Wife), Various internet browsing activities, can all be part of your distractions. The above 5 things were my personal time-wasters which I now overcome with ease. Freelancers especially may have a hard time with these, but one thing I can say is this: Getting rid of these time-wasting activities will boost your productivity, career, and client base by at least 150%!
  

Popularity: 37% [?]

While reading my usual ComputerWorld issue, I came across a very interesting and useful article which applies to IT and poor budget management staff. In our scenario, however, I am gearing this article toward domainers, web developers, and anyone spending money. I have noticed in myself that I myself spend hundreds of dollars on things like scripts, domains, subscriptions, contracts, etc which either end up not used for a long time(domains), or if it’s an application, it gets lost in my hard drive. So all in all, these costs add up.

Here are some ways to change your thinking and cut those spendings which will do you little good anyways.

1. Always Saying Yes – Most often than not, for web developers, every new ebook, every new piece of software, or anything else is just like the latest fashionable pair of jeans for the girls at the mall. You just have to have it. This action will and does spin your budget out of control and before you know it, you’re up to the limit on your credit cards, you’re borrowing money from your savings account, and so on. To avoid this, simply stop buying new junk! You probably don’t need it anyways but if you do, wait for a bit before buying it. Truth be told, the price on whatever you’ve been eyeing will probably drop and make it more affordable. There are however some things that we all must get as soon as they get out on the market which we see potential in and an urge we can’t resist. If that’s the case, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
2. Planning to Stop Spending Once Projects Go Live – This is another big misconception about handling your budget. Every single one of us, to a degree, plans a return on some project, sale, or development in the future. This is where it gets dangerous. We set in our minds that we will have a certain monetary return on a certain project and we begin to believe in it. Spending goes up, and thinking goes down. Plans don’t often become a perfect reality, and projects can fail. So keeping spending to a limit until you reach that point where your project went live and gave you a good ROI.
3. Know Who to Hire – I myself, contrary to popular belief, do not know every programming language that exists, nor do I try to which leads me to some points where I must hire someone for a project. This was a difficult thing for some of my fewer projects, but now with more knowledge, I know who to work with and how to proceed with keeping costs oriented in these situations. When hiring someone to work, it is better to research your project. Consult with coworkers, friends, Facebook buddies, etc on what you might need. Perhaps if you’re building a backbone for a website, you might have heard that ASP is really great to use. However, things are not what they seem. Hiring a .NET developer may be the usual price as hiring a PHP developer, but if you’re hosting your sites on Linux servers, you’ll run into an additional $40+/mo costs if you were to create your site backbone in ASP.
4. Outsource - The term outsource usually gets people to thinking “cheaper”. In reality, it may not always be so. In my experience of working with one coder (ASP coder from the above example), I wanted to hire him to do some XUL coding for a Firefox plugin I had wanted to develop. This was something close to a nightmare. I’m not saying the guy isn’t bad, in fact he’s very nice and talented in his field. But sometimes we would have a hard time communicating with each other on what I wanted. This not only cost me time, but put my project on hold because we couldn’t agree on a price for developing what I needed. The key here is that outsourcing can hurt you or it can help you, so refer to #3 on this list and do your research first.
5. Plan Before You Act – This is the trouble with many people these days. I once read a quote once that went: “I think when I speak, but I do not think what I speak.” We can apply this to the internet world. We spend money while we’re thinking, but we’re not thinking about what we’re spending. Often times, I have clients who want the perfect design from me, but they have no idea what they want forcing myself and them to go through a guess-and-check routine of finding what they want. If you’re that person, get a piece of paper, write out what you want, and then contact your developer. It will save both you and them a lot of time, money, and frustration.

Popularity: 13% [?]