As the owner of Triple Dog Dare Media, a Web consulting firm based in Austin, Texas, Tom Myer has built hundreds of Web applications for dozens of companies. He’s also taken his career farther both as a writer and a speaker and has a lot of advice to offer about the publishing process, staying in business and life in the Web development arena.

His latest book, From Geek to Peak, focuses on the first year of starting a business, so I wanted to find out what Myer has to say about making it through those first twelve months—and the wide world of book publishing.

Tell us about From Geek to Peak.

From Geek to Peak is a very simple book: I take the reader through their first year in business, telling them what pitfalls they should avoid. Most if not all the pitfalls are problems I’ve had; obstacles I’ve faced. Most people starting out with their own freelance business (particularly analytical technical folk) tend to over think things. They think that the rules of an Apple or IBM (or wherever they’ve worked) apply to them too, and that isn’t the case at all.

How did you come up with the idea?

I came up with the idea for the book after about 30 or 40 folks took me out to lunch/pick-my-brain-sessions on how/why/what kind of business they should start. They were all apprehensive, about to be laid off, or just plain sick and tired of the cubicle life. And there I was, in my seventh or eighth year of being in business, so they wanted to know my thoughts. It was all kind of surreal, actually. I kept telling different folks the same things over and over, so I decided to put it down in a book.

How long did it take you to write it?

This was my fifth book, and writing comes pretty natural to me. It took me about a month to write it. It was a fast production process because all of this stuff was locked up in my head, and besides, I’d refined it all after many, many, many lunches. I loaded up an outline in my favorite writing tool (Scrivener on the Mac) and just poured out my brain.

I’ve been a working writer since my senior in high school, with bylines and paychecks and the whole deal. I knew that I wanted to write a book someday, but it wasn’t until 2003 or so that I got a chance to write a book called No Nonsense XML Web Development with PHP. The project began as an article for SitePoint.com, and it got enough good reviews that it turned into a book. I was then (and am still now) represented by Studio B, a technical author agency. That book went on to eventually sell 10,000 units, which makes it a stunning success (most books only sell about 500 copies) and so I had a platform of sorts to launch a book writing career.

Did you self-publish or go through the traditional method of getting an author or agent? Why or why not?
I think having an agent is crucial to the book author—they can farm your ideas, get you better royalty deals, and bigger advances. That being said, not all of my books are through an agent—I went direct with Nimble Books on From Geek to Peak, because it was a bit of an experiment (no advance, but a much bigger cut of the royalties). I also plan on doing my own books through some of these on-demand publishers you see, like CreateSpace.com (again, I’m always open to experimentation).

However, if you’re a beginning writer, go find an agent! If you’re doing fiction, you will need a good completed manuscript. If you’re doing nonfiction or technical like me, pull together a good pitch.

As for how I completed the books, I’m a very workmanlike in my writing. I’m not an artiste. I don’t wait around for inspiration to hit me. The proposal to the publisher always has a fairly detailed outline. When the advance money shows up, I start writing from the outline. Every day I crank out 1,000 or more words. The most I’ve done is 5,000 words in one day. I always write new stuff early in the morning (between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. usually) after which I’m pretty much spent. In the afternoons, I deal with manuscript reviews and phone calls and such.

A community I started for writers is WritingMafia.com. There’s lots of great discussions over there about the writing life.

What have you done to market the book? How has the response been?

My main effort is based around the companion blog for the book at http://www.myerman.com. I blog about consulting, the freelancing life, dealing with clients, fees, and all that. I see it as an extension of the initial ideas in the book. I also speak and do workshops based on the book—the whole idea is to help freelancers and consultants get off to a good start. Occasionally, I will do a teleseminar or be a guest on someone else’s podcast. I also try to guest blog on other sites, particularly where my target audience will find me.

You’re also a notable speaker. How did you create your speaking platform and what strategies did you use to get gigs?

It all started as a natural extension of the consulting process. If you do any consulting, you know that what the client wants to see at the end of the process is a big fat report. The bigger the check, the more appendixes you better have! Most of the time, a report’s hard to digest, so a good presentation to go with it is usually well received.

After a while, you end up having lots of data and insight from lots of different clients, and so you get enough material for a talk of your own, then maybe two or three talks. Some folks might find out about it, and invite you to come talk to a luncheon or something. After that, it’s all about word of mouth. I did a talk for Freelance Austin one time on how freelancers can automate their web marketing (I had just written a book on web-based lead generation). One of the folks in the audience invited me to come out and speak to the companies in a technology accelerator program, and now I come back every quarter or so to give them a spiel on next-generation marketing.

You mentioned you’ve got some marketing advice: Give beginning freelancers three simple steps to follow to market themselves.

1. The first thing you have to do is figure out who you are. What are your values, dreams, and desires? WRITE THEM DOWN! Understand what kinds of clients and jobs and environments you want to work in. Figure out if you’re the low-level pixel pusher or a strategic analyst.

2. Figure out who your most likely customer is. Focus on that type of customer and what they need. What are their hot buttons? What do they worry about? Having just one thing to focus on will help you nail your objectives. Don’t do what I did, which was to wander around trying to be all things to all people.

3. Show up where the customer is. Network where they network. Write articles on blogs they read. Follow them on Twitter, get them to follow you back. Build a network on LinkedIn and leverage it to get introductions. You don’t have to spend a ton of money on advertising to do this (and in fact, you shouldn’t!).

What about veteran freelancers—they have different challenges…any advice for them?

1. Whip out your calendar right now. Look about six months down the line and block out two weeks of vacation. Don’t whine or gripe; just do it. See, you just made a commitment to yourself to go have some fun (even if all you’re doing is working in the garden). Tomorrow, send out an email blast to your clients that you aren’t going to be available for those two weeks. Make sure that no deadlines happen anywhere close to that period. I never did this the first eight years. Had only one long weekend as a vacation. BURN OUT. Avoid it.

2. Look at your existing client list. I bet you that 20 percent of them are the suckiest clients on earth. They chiseled your rate down, they call at all hours, they give you lousy feedback (when they deign to give it at all), and they’re always in OMG Disaster mode. Send an email to each of those clients and tell them that effective immediately, you are raising their rates. Bring them up even with the rest of your clients, or add a 20 percent PITA (pain-in-the-ass) charge. The ones that leave? Good riddance. Most of them will stay, and they won’t complain about the rate increase. And you raise revenue and profit immediately.

3. If you haven’t created a product, start thinking about it. Most of us subsist on project work—you work, you get paid. If you don’t work, you don’t get paid. You need to add some products to the mix, whether your own or someone else’s that you resell or get affiliate income from. A product can be a book, an ebook, an audio series, a piece of software (iPhone FTW!), a plug-in for an existing piece of software, or a video series.

If you don’t have enough material for your own product, team up with another freelancer. I did that with Thom Singer (we’re both published authors). We put together a three-hour audio series and a website called YouGottaWriteABook.com—its focus is to get wannabe and gonnabe authors through the process of getting their first book published.

And now for some practical business advice of your own: What do you like the least about freelancing and how do you respond to this challenge?

I always tell people that the money never comes in fast enough, and it’s never quite enough once you start pulling out taxes and health insurance and all that. You have to bill frequently. You have to raise your rates. We bill every Monday; and my wife, who helps me a lot in the business, is an aggressive record keeper and a total tenacious bulldog when it comes to chasing down clients who are late on their payments.

In this environment, clients are paying slower and slower, so tighten up the net terms. If you tell them 30 days net, they’ll pay in 45. Tell them 15 days net, you’ll get your check in 30 days. Offer them a 2 percent discount if they pay within 5 days, you’ll almost always get your check really really fast.

Here’s something else that’s hard to take after many years, but you have to learn to deal with it: As a freelancer/consultant, you’re in the advice business. A lot of times, clients will only take part of your advice, or ignore you altogether. They still pay you, but then they go their own way.

You tell them they have to do A,B, and C to get to D, then from there they can do E, and F. Well, they go ahead and do A and then D, then circle back to do C and then jump to P, which was some speculative point 10 years from now in the original plan. At which point the whole thing goes off a cliff. Then they blame you for some reason.

It happens all the time. Get used to it. It’s good to have a hobby to take your mind off things. I am pretty physical–I ride my bike a lot, do yoga, work out with a heavy bag, etc. Without it, I’d probably just go nuts.

Kristen Fischer is a copywriter hailing from the Jersey Shore. Find out more about her at www.kristenfischer.com.