I’ve always told myself that I should probably do a better job of advertising my services to the local business community. As a programmer I’m not exactly the sharpest marketing tool in the drawer so I need help when it comes to things like advertising. A big part of advertising when you’re trying to operate locally is with direct mailings and printed materials. Companies like PS Print Printing offer printing solutions for individual and business use that you might find helpful.

PSP provides a low cost alternative for printing custom postcards, business cards and even greeting cards. You supply them with a photo, or a prepared advertisement image, and PS Print will print your item for you. They have a simple ordering process that makes it easy for anyone interested in printing their own cards for Christmas, birthday parties or weddings to get the job done.

For my purposes, business card and brochure printing is available for cheap prices. I’m also thinking about getting some postcard printing done for some direct mail work to area businesses to promote my services in programming and web site design. Outside of work I find a lot of the services offered by PS Print to be useful when the holiday come around and my family is looking for a change of pace from the typical store bought greeting cards.

Even in the middle of the worst economic crisis in half a century, I find myself entering into the Fall “busy season” for the fifth consecutive year. As of Wednesday of this week, my calendar is booked into January of next year. That’s not too bad considering recent economic events in the US.

The majority of my freelance business centers around the sports industry with a particular focus on baseball, although 2009 will see expansion into other North American sports. As summer draws to a close and teams wrap up their seasons I begin to see a dramatic increase in work requests and project proposals. In the fall, teams shift their focus from the happenings on the field to the happenings off of it.

The Downside of the Busy Season

Of course, the inevitable downside of the busy season is the opposing slow season. When we near the end of spring next year, my sports work will more than likely dry up unless I establish connections with new clients. This is something I’ve had to deal with every year since 2004.

Because of this downswing I’ve developed to growth strategies during these times for my freelance business/ With such a reliance on a cyclical industry and work schedule it is incredibly important for freelancers caught in that kind of loop to find “offseason” clientele or use that time to develop income generating side projects to help you supplement your income.

Finding new clients in a pinched economy isn’t always easy so building sources of passive income might be easier for you. There’s a great quote I heard last night on CNBC in reference to IBM’s business model. A talking head said that IBM “eats while we all sleep.”

A Slowdown Solution

That’s exactly what you want to be doing in your freelance career during down swings in activity. I’ve been an advocate of side projects here on this blog since I began writing it and now, during these potentially difficult times, they are even more important than ever.

There’s something satisfying about building a product, or web site, that generates hands off revenue for you 24 hours a day. If you can begin to generate your own revenue, without relying on constantly churning new clients and getting paid by current ones, you’ll be able to buckle down and make it through the ongoing uncertainty.

Today more and more companies start to understand the importance of PM software which is targeted to solve numerous tasks and thus gives an opportunity to increase profit potential and decrease costs

One of the most positive points of project collaboration software is that it gives a possibility to improve the overall work on numerous projects. For example, many managers of your group fulfill different functions and work on different parts of the project. It would be a hard task to estimate the work of everyone and also see the work in progress. Only imagine what will happen if just one of them does not work properly or makes mistakes. It can spoil the work of all members of the group.

But if you have special online project collaboration software you can see the work of every manager online and of course correct their work online. Another advantage of this particular kind of custom software development is that it works with the help of Internet thus it gives a possibility to connect all your offices which can be situated all over the world. As you see there are numerous advantages of installing PM software.

This has been a crazy week of server maintenance, PC crashes (buy Macs people, please) and client technical support problems. I spent a huge amount of time already this week logging in to various remote systems to fix a handful of disasters and problems. And none of it would have been possible without VNC.

VNC, or Virtual Network Computing, is a method of accessing a remote system. It’s basically a simple way to do desktop sharing. I use it to help troubleshoot client problems by logging directly onto their computer, taking control of that machine’s keyboard and mouse and walking through the problem live with my client. It’s an invaluable tool that every freelancer needs to become intimately familiar with.

This whole setup is very easy to install. I use RealVNC on each client machine and then, since I’m a Mac user, I connect to them using a program called Chicken of the VNC. Chicken of the VNC also has one of the best application icons of all time, as you can see on the right.

Anyway, if you have clients and find yourself in need to some hand holding with them you should definitely look into using VNC.

Ever since my interview with Chris Bibey I’ve been anxious to learn and get involved more with freelance writers. Fortunately, a few projects have come up over the last few months that have required a lot of content to be written. This was an excellent opportunity to try my hand at hiring freelancer writers.

Programmers and designers who work freelance have a sometimes deserved reputation as being a bit flighty and unreliable. Well, I’m here to tell you that freelance writers have earned the same reputation with me after this experience. I’m not going to mention any names but I’ve hired about half a dozen different writers so far and have only had success with three of them. The others either took the money and ran, never to be heard from again, or they were so slow in getting the finished product to me that they caused delays with my projects. For the most part, I was pretty unimpressed with the quality of work I was finding regardless of the price.

To be fair and balanced I decided to see what life was like on the other side of the transaction. I found someone looking for articles to be written about WordPress. I offered my services for $0.015/word and they agreed. My first article was accepted and I was paid promptly. They were happy enough with my work that they asked for a second article to be written. After the second article was written they said they weren’t happy with the topic (it presented a conflict of interest with the site they would be posting it on) so I agreed to write a third article instead. The third article was written and delivered. I never received a reply on the work and was never paid. It was like they totally vanished off the face of the planet.

So I guess the freelance writing game is tough from both sides. Both buyers and sellers alike can be disappointing and let you down. My suggestion, at least from the buyer standpoint, is to stick to someone like glue once you find a writer that is reliable; no matter what their price is. The money you spend on the writing might be higher than most but the time you’ll save will make it worth it.