A couple of weeks ago I decided to sign up for FreshBooks, the online book keeping software. I was originally using Less Accounting, but was not of fan of it for several reasons. FreshBooks on the other hand, is clean, organized, user friendly, and convenient. It has invoicing and expense tracking, time tracking, report generation, and it creates a username and password for your clients when you invoice them so they can log-in, pay the invoice though whatever online gateways you set up, and it automatically marks the invoice as paid. It makes my life 100 times easier. I’ll be doing a full write up on my other blog, but I did want to recommend it here. I’m not a huge fan of paying a monthly subscription for software, but the $14/month I pay to FreshBooks is well worth it.

(link to post)Visit FreshBooks

It’s been a while since my last post, but I can explain. Last week, I went to ACM South East, an academic conference for people in the field of computing. That got me thinking about the great opportunity freelancers have by attending conferences in their field. While ACM SE was a general purpose conference, there are tons of different conferences more oriented to each field of computing, and beyond that each professional field. Conferences overall can help your freelancing career by providing specific opportunities for you not really available anywhere else.

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Over at Theme Forest’s blog Into the Woods, you’ll find my tutorial on using Eclipse with the PDT Plugin to make for a nice PHP IDE. I did a side project using it last semester and loved it! It has all the great stuff Eclipse offers Java developers for PHP.

Head on over the Theme Forest and check it out!

(link to post)Visit My Eclipse Tutorial at Theme Forest

People who know me know I’m a HUGE fan of Google and everything they do. When I read The Google Story last year, it really made me think of how they did things and how they don’t let running a business get in the way of innovation. The allow the workers to dedicate 20% of the work week to their own side projects. And some great things, like Google News, have come out of 20% time. I’ve also talked about the importance of side projects before. Recently I’ve had trouble focusing on my side projects enough to get significant work done. So I’ve decided I’m going to try Google’s 20% time idea.

Tags: 20% time, productivity, side projects, work | Posted in Advice | 1 Comment »

Much like Highrise,Backpack is a tool to help you organize. I’ve been using it over the last week heavily and it has really helped me organize. Email/text reminders created in plain text, as well as lists, notes, pages, and a calendar if you get the paid account. You can share pages with people to gather all the notes and thoughts in one place. I think this is an extremely useful web application and I strongly recommend it. 37signals puts a lot of thought into the design and usability of the apps, and it really shows.

(link to post)Visit Backpack by 37signals

If you’ve gone to college, there is a good chance that you were constantly busy- between projects, tests, going to class, and having a social life it’s hard to find time. That’s not including the extracurriculars you do. So how can a college student possibly be a freelancer? Well, it’s all about finding the right balance.

Tags: clients, college, student, tips, work | Posted in Advice | Comments Off