I’ll bet that you yourself track one or two major stats on a somewhat regular basis. Most website owners track visitor traffic, Adsense clicks, RSS subscribers and the like. Brick and mortar business owners track income, customers, items sold and shipped, etc. This is fine and these are definitely good things to track as they are the broad picture of your site, business, etc.

Unfortunately, most of us stop there at the broad picture while it’s still way too broad to do us much good.

The problem with only tracking visitors or income or RSS subscribers is this:

Money and customers are not the products you create. They’re incidental to the products you create.

People subscribe to your site because you write good content. People give you money because you give them a website in exchange. It’s fine to track your income and subscriber-base, but as stated in the first post of this series you must also track your personal production.
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Welcome to the second and penultimate post in our series on statistics. I know it’s not the most glamorous of subjects and you’re certainly not going to get any hot dates talking about it. But as we said in part one, stats are the backbone of everything you do.

We’re going to keep it pretty basic here to cover something so dreadfully obvious it tends to languish below our radar: reading stat graphs.

Stat Charts and trends

Stat charts come in a few different forms: pie charts, bar graphs, etc. I think the best by far for our purposes is the ordinary line graph, ala Google Analytics.

We all know this type of graph. It’s the best style because it shows the high points, low points and the all-important trends. There are really only three basic trends we need to know:
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If you’re anything like me, you probably feel a little funny about how often you check your stats. I check them throughout the day, with a regularity I’m almost ashamed to admit. There’s even a particular stat program I use which plots out a sexy graph, above which are written the words: “Statistics updated every 24 hours.” That doesn’t keep me from checking it about three times a day.

Regardless of the social implications, we stat-freaks are on the right track. For whether you acknowledge it or not statistics are the very backbone of your business, your production, your income and pretty much everything else that matters. I use them (not just look at them) every single day, whether it’s at my blog or examining my design business.

What are statistics?

If you look up “statistic” in pretty much any dictionary, you’ll notice that even people who write dictionaries have bad days. A survey of dictionaries I have to hand uncovered the following definitions for the word “statistic”:
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When I began freelancing I made two decisions right off the bat:

1. Unless I was in danger of starving, I would never again work in a sterile cubicle. I’d pick a cubicle over death…but not by much,
2. I’d keep my space happy and all my favorite things close by me in the office.

This probably sounds like freelance advice from the Antichrist to many of you, but hear me out.

One of my hobbies is playing guitar. Actually, for me playing guitar is a sinister all-consuming obsession. Some days I wish I were addicted to crack instead; I’d be in much better shape.

Productivity specialists and professional organizers are often of the same opinion, namely that you should move your guitars and other distractions into a different room from where you work. Supposedly you’ll be more productive that way. Heck, while you’re at it why not move everything except your office out of your office, which is supposed to be empty and used for working only, right? Continue Reading

I know there’s not a single FSw reader who’s going to call up their friends after this and say, “Dude, I just read a fantastic post on paperwork!” It’s also December, twelve months too late for this tax/paperwork tip to actually do you any good.

But luckily there’s another year where this one came from, and hopefully this will make things easier next time around.

Throughout the year I do my bills, invoicing and other paperwork every week. Sometimes I forget and sometimes I have a lousy week where there’s no paperwork to do. But about 90% of the time I do my paperwork every single Friday.

When you keep your paperwork fresh and current like this it takes about two minutes a week. All your current receipts and invoices are right there on the top of the pile, fresh in your purse or wallet, or near the top of your email inbox. Enter their numbers into a spreadsheet, file them behind last week’s papers and you’re done. Continue Reading

How much time do you spend worrying about your competition? How often do you do things because you think your competitors are doing them and you need to keep up? Do the words “they stole my client” ever creep into your mind?

As a solo freelancer, bigger competitors in particular can seem rough and scary. Recently however a couple somethings happened to me that changed my viewpoint. I worry a lot less now about what my writer/designer neighbors are doing and pay a little more attention to monetizing the situation. Here’s what I’ve realised about those bigger competitors:

• The hiring process takes time and money
• There may be new-employee benefits and insurance to worry about
• They need physical space and raw equipment resources
• If they hit a slump they’ll have another person to fire (yes, HR personnel worry a great deal about this)

Regardless of how big or small your competition is though, here are five good reasons not to break into a cold sweat think about them.

1. Your Competition Isn’t As Good As You Are

Think about it.

Someone somewhere is the worst graphic designer in the universe.

Somewhere else is the worst writer ever.

Somewhere there’s an accountant who’s probably worse at math than me.

We all the know the old parable where two buddies are out hiking and they come across a bear. One of the guys takes off his backpack and gets ready to run. His buddy says, “It’s no use. You can’t outrun a bear.” The other guy responds, “I don’t have to outrun the bear. I only have to outrun you.”

Fortunately it’s the same for freelancers. We don’t have to be the best in the world. We just can’t suck worse than everyone else. If you simply show your potential customers that you’re not that guy, you’re bound to get work.
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