2011

When was the last time you had a good burger? I have one just about every week, see there are two places up here that serve a good burger, Barefoot Peddler in Green Vale and Taby’s in Oyster Bay. For me a burger has to sit well with ketchup (I love ketchup on a burger), cheese, and most importantly the bun. Taby’s and Barefoot Peddler are equal in different ways, but Barefoot Peddler has something that Taby’s doesn’t, alcohol. Alcohol makes a burger taste that much better, especially if you have a good appetizer before hand, like mozzarella sticks or buffalo wings. If you are ever in the area, you should definitely stop by, since they are delicious.

Where did this rant on good burgers come from? Well to be quite honest, from Regis. Watching How I Met Your Mother tonight on Lifetime, it was the episode where Marshal goes in search of the perfect burger and I’ve been craving one ever since. Now that I talked about buffalo wings I could go for those too, with a nice draft. Craving a burger, wings, and beer late at night is normal right?

Six doesn’t seem like a big number, but it is the number of clients I worked on today. Imagine that, usually one person has an 8 hour a day job, working for one person, I had six people I was doing stuff for, which if I had only worked an 8 hour day it would be a little over an hour a piece. I finished two up today and I hope to finish another up this weekend, but I have 2 more looking to start as soon as possible. This crazy number of clients seem to be working though as I have been making a decent amount of money lately and some of my financial goals may be met much sooner rather than later.

Of course I can’t spend all my time working on other’s people stuff. I did get some stuff done behind the scenes on this site, I also put up a brand new lyrics section. I am all set to start on the next section, which I may start this weekend. Once this next section is up I will be going back and cleaning up things and giving more social options and other things, which include submitting your own recipes, jokes, etc.

Well it’s almost 3AM and I have been up since 11, so I am going to get to sleep, I have a busy day ahead of me tomorrow. I have a meeting in the afternoon and at least 8 hours of work to do. Hopefully I will be able to relax some and kill people in Black Ops.

I was planning on making a post about my resolutions for 2011, but Pamela gave me the idea of doing monthly resolutions since they are more likely to be achieved. I think monthly goals are a much better idea since you have less time to do them in and will hence forth know in 30 days if you have completed your goal or not, that way you don’t need to wait 365 days to know whether or not you succeeded or failed in that regard. Unfortunately I don’t really have any goals that could be achieved before January is up, besides cleaning out the closet, and even that may have to wait until I can get the finances together for boxes and a free weekend where we aren’t doing anything. My other main goal for January is to take every weekend off from doing work. So far I have been able to get enough done during the week to do that for this first weekend, I also was able to do it last weekend with being away. I don’t consider working on my own projects and task list working, but if a project does come my way I can’t say that I won’t be working on it on the weekends if it is good money and I don’t have time during the week.

Here are my longterm goals for 2011:

• Take my debt from $5708.36 down to $4500.00
• Get our combined debt down to $10,000
• Pay off our bed before the interest kicks in
• Pay off at least one credit card
• Get $500 of usable funds onto one credit card
• Move into our own place
• Lose 30 pounds
• Declutter our room
• Get my car fixed or be able to get a new(er) one
• Take more pictures
• Take more videos
• Watch more movies
• Play more video games (I know this may seem weird, but sometimes you need to do more of what you love and be able to relax more)

Since I mentioned my personal projects earlier in the post, here are some things that I want to achieve with this site:

• Gain a better rapport with other bloggers, I have been commenting on some blogs in the last few days and I hope that it will lead to a somewhat mutually beneficial thing, even if that just means we comment back and forth.
• Get some other writers for reviews and articles
• Pull in some more social aspects to the site that would make people want to be members and participate in the forums and such.
• Compile my own version of PHP

I think most of these are possible, though it takes determination to achieve. I do have somewhat of a plan to get these done, it just depends on whether or not I can stick to it and get it done.

Later this year will mark five years that I have been a freelance programmer. Over the course of the last few years I have seen many people try and fail to do freelance. No matter what you are freelancing in, whether it be writing, programming, designing, etc, these do’s and don’ts are pretty much universal and have to do with working with clients.

Take too long to respond. Whether it is a new client or a returning customer, don’t take too long to respond to them. Some say that you should get back to them within 12 hours, personally I try and get back to them within 3 to 4 hours max. Taking too long to get back to clients could cost you a lot of work.

Be as available as possible. Giving clients as many options in which to get in touch with you as possible will work in your benefit. Skype, AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Skype, Google IM are the main chat programs and most of the time you will be able to use them all in one program and not worry about using too many resources on the computer. Giving a client a phone number in which they could get in touch with you will also allow them to feel as though you are more open to those who are just available online. If you don’t feel comfortable giving out your phone number then try using Google Voice since it is free and can be disabled when you don’t want to be disturbed.

Make excuses. A client may be sympathetic that your grandfather is sick, but more than likely you are involved in a verbal or written contract with them and therefor the work needs to get done. If you absolutely need to break the contract then discuss it with them prior to it. Remember to act professional at all times, they are not your friend or therapist.

Make deadlines and stick with them. If you tell them it will take two days to do something then do it within those two days. If you can get it done before hand then your customer will be happy. I can’t tell you how many times a client gave me a bonus for completing a project ahead of schedule.

Start on a project that you have no idea what you should be doing. There is no reason to waste your time and theirs because you don’t have a clear goal in mind.

Ask questions. A lot of times your questions could be ones that the client never thought about and bringing up things that aren’t on their mind could show that you have an attention to detail.

Email previous clients everyday asking if they have anymore work. Annoying people is never a good practice and emailing them everyday will show that you have nothing better to do and that you are desperate for money. It could lead to them offering you less money than they would someone else because they know you need it more.

Sign clients up for a mailing list. Periodic emails wishing clients a happy holidays or shooting out an email every six months reminding them that you are available for work and what your rate is will help keep you in their mind.

Good luck.

Above all else, no matter what you are supplying to the client, you should be professional, kind, respectful, and courteous. Remember a client could always refer you to their friends and colleagues, plus they could have more work for you in the future, but won’t want to work with you if you aren’t professional, just like you wouldn’t want to work with them if they weren’t acting professional toward you.

I hope everyone had a good New Year’s. We had a good time on our mini vacation. From our hotel room we could see fireworks, after midnight there was 3 places that were setting them off, it definitely made the night more special. That plus long island iced teas, Big Bang Theory marathon, and it equaled a really great vacation.

I was back working on Monday, a lot of stuff came in while we were away so I was playing catch up most of the day. There’s a lot of work that I will be doing the rest of the week as well, but if it will result in paying off a big lump of the debt we’re in, then that’s good. We want to move out this year so paying it down is going to be step 1 in moving. I think in the next few months paying off our bed and paying back the credit cards is going to be the top priority.

2011 is starting off right and I hope it continues to go this way. I hope everyone is having as good of a year as I am so far.