With more and more workers turning to freelancing, you may wonder whether you should freelance. Are you ready? What is the best path to take to become a freelancer?

Over at Freelance Folder, Laura Spencer has a post about different paths people take to becoming freelancers.

Laura identifies five different routes people take to freelancing and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each. I’ll list them here but you might want to visit the site for more details.

Which one are you?

1. Right After College
2. After Working for Someone Else
3. As a Part-timer
4. Job Loss
5. A Need for Flexibility

Source: Freelance Folder

Chris Dickman over at Creative Bits has a nice post. I’ll just copy and paste it because I’m feeling lazy today:

It’s a question as old as work itself. Jessica Hische’s chart should help you figure out the answer when you find yourself staring off into space the next time the temptation arises. You can even order a letterpress version to ensure that you don’t fall asleep and say yes during a moment of weakness. Unless of course it’s your mom on the phone.

Source: Creative Bits

I got an email from Cody Schwem asking for help with his ecommerce site. I’ve never met Cody so I can’t vouch for him. I did a quick check and his site is currently running a PHP ecommerce package but I’m not sure what it is exactly. It feels like OSCommerce or a fork of it to me.

My business is called NewLine Audio and the url is newlineaudio.com for the website. It sells home and car audio equipment. I need a website that will act as an online store so it will need to have a shopping cart that can interact with my merchant account. I also need it to have a unique intro or something that makes it stick out from all of the other generic e-Commerce websites. The idea I currently have is a short intro while the page is loading. It needs to have a simple interface but at the same time, needs to look high-tech for the theme of the site. This will tie in nicely for the feel of advanced consumer electronics. Lastly, I need some way that I can update the site myself. The company is just starting up so inventory will change quite frequently as new wholesalers and distributors are found.

If this interests you, contact Cody Schwem at schwemc@gmail.com

Dennis wanted me to share this with you guys. I’m not familiar with Vieth Consulting so I can’t comment on what they’re like to work for. I’ll attach a PDF but here’s an executive summary:

Description: Candidate will be required to develop and maintain an existing web-based application. Candidate will be expected to work in a professional work environment and at times communicate with clients regarding technical matters.
Primary Responsibilities: Build PHP and mySQL web based applications Technical communication with clients. Provide limited email & phone support to clients concerning non-technical aspects of the product

Here’s a link to the PDF.

Special thank you to Dennis for sharing this with us.

Sorry for such a short notice – I just got the email myself.

Bob Fish Co-Founder of Biggby Coffee
Creating MI Business

Date: Wednesday, November 17
Time: 5 PM – 6 PM
Location: Gannon – Room 115
Attendees: Everyone Welcome

Bob Fish will share innovative marketing strategies that he has implemented for his multi-million dollar company, Biggby Coffee.

Social Media strategies
SPOT BOB campaign
Michigan Entrepreneurship

Bob Fish, who often goes by “Biggby Bob” now, started the first cafe in 1995, at 270 W. Grand River Ave. His company had sales of $38.5 million in 2008.

Now here’s a good way to start the semester. We’re looking for a lab aide to help out in the Art Program. Stop by the window at GB113 for details.

Also: please announce to students that we are looking for another student aide. The times we most need to cover are: Monday and Wednesday afternoons, and all day Friday.

Camille

I don’t know anything about these but thought I’d pass ‘em along:

Vacancy: Web Developer – LAMP – Full Time in Okemos

Vacancy: Web Developer – ASP.NET/C# – Full Time in Okemos

Vacancy: Enterprise Architect – in Okemos

Our friend, Chris Coyier of CSS-Tricks, has another good post. This time he’s talking about different ways of estimating projects. Check it out.

Source: CSS-Tricks

FreelanceFolder.com is one of my favorite blogs and a recent post caught my eye: We rarely like to admit our mistakes, but if we fail to admit them and learn from them then they’re likely to be repeated. In this article I want to admit some of my mistakes to you, and share my experience so that you can avoid making them.

Wow. How can you pass up information like this? Visit his site to read the details of each mistake, how to make them and to see what his #1 mistake was.

Mistake #4 — Acting Like Someone I Wasn’t
Mistake #3 — Wasting Time on Unproductive Work
Mistake #2 — Leaving Jobs Until the Last Minute

Source: FreelanceFolder.com

One of my most favoritest web sites in the whole world is sitepoint.com. They have train loads of free and good (because not all free is good) articles, tutorials and tips that cover pretty much all aspects of this web design stuff. For the next few days (four days, ten hours, 7 minutes and 32 seconds as of my writing this), they are giving away a book titled The Principles Of Successful Freelancing. I just clicked on the free button but haven’t gotten the book yet. I’ve purchased (yes, I spent my personal money) on several of their other books that are outstanding so, I’m really looking forward to getting this one! Come on email! Faster! Faster!