Oct
25
Money for Home Business – The Best of the Web
Let’s talk about money, shall we? I mean, we’ve been doing that all week, but let’s get dirty about it. Money is not hard to understand. Earn more, spend less, you’re golden. It’s not exactly rocket science. The problem most people have, though, is that they spend all their time trying to do one of those things, while summarily ignoring the other. Half the world busts their ass to make more money and then promptly spends it all on crap. The other half drives halfway across town to save a nickel on a can of peas, but charges fifteen bucks an hour for their SEO services.
That’s really dumb.
I’ve compiled a little Best of the Web on money, broken down into Making and Saving. Some of this stuff is directly related to freelancing and home business ownership. The rest should be required reading before you’re allowed to own a baseball card, let alone a credit card.
How To Make More Money
The lovely Cyan (who linked to me yesterday, by the way, and sent me a boatload of traffic – thanks, Cyan!) offers the super-in-depth Freelance Switch Rate Calculator. It incorporates a whole bunch of things that’ll make you smack yourself in the forehead wondering why you didn’t think of it before.
They also have a great article, Nine Factors To Consider When Determining Your Price, for those who don’t like filling out forms or actually doing the calculations. If you’re just starting out and don’t have all of the information to put in the calculator yet, this is a great article to read.
Since you’re here, you probably think blogs are cool. You either already have a blog of your own, you’re planning to start one, or you’re related to me or my husband. Along the lines of the whole diversify your income thing we’ve been talking about, Maki from DoshDosh has a great post about making money blogging. Problogger has a lot of good stuff about this, too, but you’ve probably already read it.
How To Spend Less Money
The ever-awesome Trent takes on Money Magazine’s 25 Rules To Grow Rich By, Simple Dollar style. Each of the 25 tips is linked up to a more in-depth post, so you can take what you want and leave the rest.
Also from Trent, check out his 31 Days To Fix Your Finances. This one is long. LONG. It’s also one of the most valuable resources available on the Internet. If you don’t feel like clicking around, you can send Trent two bucks and he’ll send you the whole 60-page insanity in PDF.
The very nice people at Free Money Finance gave this crazy round-up of financial goodness, My Best Piece of Financial Advice? Spend Less Than You Earn. Don’t be put off by the title – each letter in each word links to a post with yummy money advice. In other news, FMF also gives all their income to charity. Why? Cause they’re cool like that.
My contribution?
Double your rates. I don’t know who you are and I don’t know what you’re selling, but I’ll tell you right now, your rates are too low. They always are. Every time I talk to entrepreneurs and freelancers, when I’m doing seminars or coaching or just hanging out at the coffee shop, I am shocked and appalled by how cheap they’re selling themselves. Want hard data? Go here and check out the numbers.
UPDATE: The handsome and knightly Dave Navarro of Freelance Folder and Your 30 Hour Day fame gave me a heads-up about his awesome article, Selling Yourself On The Value Of Your Time. He calls it tasty. It is tasty, and that’s not a compliment I go handing around, all willy-nilly. Read it, learn from it, then spend a few minutes hanging your head in shame about all the time you’ve been wasting.
* One thing I’ll mention – watch out for the comment streams on The Simple Dollar. Some of the readers are totally psychotic. The Frugaler-Than-Thou crowd is a bitch.
Liked the round-up? Why not subscribe to the IttyBiz feed? There’s still more than 2 weeks left of home business and freelance advice to come.
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Overwhelmed? Freaking out? Borderline hysterical? Click here to get your own small business marketing plan. It’s not scary, I promise.
Thanks for the mentions. You may want to make that last link “live.” :-)
“The Frugaler-Than-Thou crowd is a bitch.”
that’s the finest sentence I’ve read all week. great post.
@ FMF – My pleasure, and thanks for pointing that out.
@ Reid – I’m glad you liked it. I’ve had to give up on some of those forums etc because there’s only so much “What do you MEAN you don’t make your own laundry detergent from soap slivers?” one person can take. Thanks for coming!
Doubling your rates is HUGE. You need to always make sure you’re doing all you can to increase your $DPH (Dollars Per Hour). Might I suggest this tasty read? :-)
http://freelancefolder.com/selling-yourself-on-the-value-of-your-time/
If you go about it the right way, it’s a hell of a lot easier to *make* more than to save more.
Frugaler-Than-Thou, indeed. Reminds me of the old Simpson’s episode where Homer gets fired and Lisa makes a new bar of soap out of all the slivers of old soap.
Hi Dave… absolutely!! It’s often a simple matter of going to your “Rates” page, deleting $35 and replacing it with $70. Easy peasy. (Did I just say “easy peasy”? I need an assistant.)
Anyway, thanks for the heads-up – I’ve updated the post with your article. You’re right. It is tasty.
You rock. Thanks so much for the link love (and your rockin’ posts).
PS everybody (if you ain’t subscribing to this feed via email, at least, you’re missing even more tasty goodness).
And a shout out to Jon for introducing me to this blog (and Christine O’Kelley’s).
Hi Naomi. This is an awesome post! I’ve always been freelancing my web design in my province and those compilations helped a lot.
I would like to apologize for not being able to reply to your message. I’ve been having problems with time management and consistency. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get back to track. :)
Loving your work. Keep them coming Naomi.
Hi McBilly – thanks for stopping by! I’m glad you like the post. And hey, no problems… you go manage your time, I’ll be here when you’re done. :)
Jeez, you impress me every day. I worship Naomi. :)
Hey Susan. I don’t accept cash, but if you have a spare Kate Spade purse lying around, I’ll take it. Mine kinda got chopped off the list of buyables in the recent frugality craze. :)
There once was a time when I was thinking of making and selling my own furniture. I remember Naomi asking me how much I would sell it for, and like most first time entrepreneurs I figured out my costs and added what I thought was a fair mark up. I came up with a selling point of $500. Naomi told me this was too cheap, and to raise my prices. I did a lot of research on-line and locally, and you know what? I found that my next cheapest competitior was selling the exact same product for $2500. You need to sell at what the market will bear, because if you don’t your competitors will!
@ Jamie. Validated! In print! On the internet for perpetuity!
People, listen to this man as he is very wise. If you listen to his experiences in being nagged at, you might not have to be nagged at yourself. RAISE YOUR PRICES!!!