That’s an easy answer, “Of course, I can!” — because of course, I can. But, you and I both know there’s far more going on behind the scenes than just “we need a rebrand and a new website.” One would be surprised to know that there also is a Salesforce consulting company involved.

There’s a pain point. Something happened that led them to call me. It could be a number of things. Sales hit a certain point (up or down)? They needed more visibility within the community? They needed online validation and social proof for their brick and mortar? Need I go on?

You know exactly what I’m talking about. You know because you’re right there with them. You think, “Maybe if I’m #1 on Google, I can attract more business.”

— And while that may be true, I think there’s a lot more that I have to offer your business than a shiny new website and a #1 spot Google ranking.

You see, at the end of the day, you’re not really buying a new website. Excuse

me? That’s right. I’ll say it again. You’re not buying a website. You’re buying a solution to a problem.

So, let’s address the real problem head on so I can deliver that solution. Be honest. What is your real problem, the pain point? What are your business goals for this project? What’s the bigger direction your company is moving in?

Hopefully you know: my goal is to make sure that you make more money on your site than I ever will.

My services are an investment, not a cost. What’s the difference, you ask? It’s more than semantics.

A cost is a one time transaction that is minimal. In the case of web design and development, get it done as fast and as cheaply as possible.

An investment, on the other hand, is a long term endeavor that offers future profitability. It evaluates processes holistically and delivers a complete strategy that fulfills your greater mission and purpose. Yes, the price tag may be greater, but in the long run the solution gives you far more room to grow and the ability to push forward and achieve greater success. Sounds like a no brainer to me.

The post Your Website Should be a Solution to a Problem appeared first on AMY HAYWOOD.

I thought I’d share my own.

On the Wall

Behind my computer, I have a bulletin board for inspiration and mood boards. It’s made out of Soft Tiles, you know, the mats you put on the floor for kids to play on. We just hung it up on the wall with nails. Perfect.

Rode Podcaster

On the far left, I have a Rode Podcaster
on a Swivel Mount in the corner of my desk. One of my goals for 2015 is to start a podcast with my friend Darrel Girardier. It’s coming.

Scanner

Also on the far left (you can see the edge of it), I have a Epson Perfection V100 Photo Scanner. It’s not the latest and greater scanner out there, but it’s more than perfect for what I use it for: scanning in textures, photos, and hand drawn illustrations — things that need to be scanned at a higher resolution.

For on the go, scanning, I’ve been really pleased with Evernote’s new app, Scannable.

For scanning receipts and documents quickly, I have a Fujitsu ScanSnap Scanner.

Tablets

I have an iPad Mini. I was an early adopted and started out with a 3G iPad 1. Eventually, it started having issues where apps would randomly crash. I upgraded to a wireless iPad mini for Christmas. I love the smaller size. I use it for reading (and testing websites), so the smaller size makes complete sense.

It’s sitting on a Twelve South HiRise.

I also have a Samsung Galaxy Tab 4
for testing websites. Even though I didn’t pay a ton of money for it, I know I don’t use enough to justify the purchase.

Monitors

I have two 21″ Acer Monitors
21” acer monitors that I bought at a really good price at a Black Friday sale. They’re mounted on Tyke Supply Dual LCD Monitor Stand, which is so much better than the stack of books I had them on before.

They’re connected to my laptop via a TripleHead2Go. (I wrote a post about the configuration.) I can keep the laptop open, and run in a T configuration, but lately, I’ve enjoyed keeping my laptop in clamshell mode. For whatever reason, I feel more productive instead of trying to manage more space.

Speakers

I just have a cheap pair of $35 speakers from Target. They seem to do the job just fine. Although, I’m not going to lie, I do have my eye on these (Harman/Kardon SoundSticks III Wireless Speaker System).

Wacom Tablet

I have a Intous 5 Touch Wacom Tablet. It’s fantastic when I do any heavy masking in Photoshop or Illustration work.

MacBook Pro

I have a 15” MacBook Pro (Retina), 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7, 16GB of Memory, with a 1TB Solid State drive. It’s been a great machine. It’s the 3rd Mac Laptop I’ve owned in the last 11 years. I ran its predecessor into the ground.

Even though I know I need the real estate and power for print projects…and I can’t imagine trying to run Chrome Inspector tools on a smaller screen, I still eye the Air. I can’t get over how small and light it is!

I have a wireless keyboard and trackpad. I try to get away with as few wires as possible. The track pad and I have a love hate relationship, so I’ll still pull out my Magic Mouse (It’s not the track pad’s fault, it’s all me. I’m just old school like that.)

Desk

My desk is an Ikea desk top (hollow) with Vika Fagerlid legs (apparently, they don’t sell them anymore).

Moleskine

Lastly, you’ll see my moleskine. I do all design work, there, first. – ideas, wire frames, illustrations, everything. — And I’m kind of a pen snob, too. Pilot G2 0.7.

In the Comments

What are some of your favorite pieces of your workspace?

The post Caught in the Wild – My Home Workspace appeared first on AMY HAYWOOD.

The “Problem”

I know that I have a variety of interests and (for now) I want to blog about all of them in the same place. However, I’m not so naive as to believe that everything I’m writing about, is something you’re interested in too. I want to make sure I don’t bother you with content that’s not useful and interesting to you.

So…you may have noticed, if you sign up for my email updates, you have the ability to pick which categories you’d like to receive updates for.

If you’re intersted in implementing a similar solution on your site, I thought I’d explain how I accomplished it on mine.

Publishing within WordPress

1. Each section (Photography, 101, Design, Programming, My Life, and Finder’s Keepers) is set up as a category within WordPress. When I’m posting, this makes it easy enough.

Creating a List within MailChimp

2. Within MailChimp I have a single list for AMYHAYWOOD.com updates. Inside the list, I’ve created Groups for each category. To do so, go to the Lists page and click on the Create List button.

3. Fill in the form appropriately. (Note: You will probably be asked at some point to confirm that you have access to the Default “from” email so make sure it’s an inbox you have access to.)

4. Next, under the Manage Subscribers dropdown, select Groups.

5. Click on the Create Groups button.

6. As you can tell from the form options, there are several ways you can implement groups on your signup forms. Obviously, I went with checkboxes. Then, just fill in the details. When you’re done, click on the Save button.

7. I didn’t have any addresses to import, so I clicked the Done for Now button.

Creating a Campaign within MailChimp

8. Then, within Campaigns, I have a Campaign set up for each category. On the Campaigns page, click on the “Create a Campaign” Button

9. Select an RSS-Driven Campaign from the menu

10. From WordPress, I’m using a separate RSS feed set up for each category. This functionality is actually built into WordPress by default. It’s just a matter of figuring out what your URL is.

    Once that’s been determined, enter the the feed URL into MailChimp. Choose when you want to send out updates and on what days. Then, click the next button in the bottom right.

11. Select the list you want to send to. Select Send to a new Segment. Then, select Group: Categories from the dropdown (NOTE: Instead of “Categories”, it may say whatever you labeled it as within the Campaign) and whatever category you want to send to. Click the next button in the bottom right.

12. On the next screen, name your campaign. There are several other settings you can modify, I tend to keep the defaults. Then, click the next button in the bottom right.

13. Select the Theme you want to use. I won’t go into email templating here, but there’s a good Basic RSS theme that accomplishes our purposes just fine. Click on the next button in the bottom right.

14. Make any tweaks to the design and content you want displayed. Then, click the next button.

15. On the last screen, make sure your settings are correct and there are no issues. If you’re good to go, click Start RSS button in the bottom right.

Getting the Embed Form

16. Within MailChimp, go back to the Lists page, next to your list, select Signup Forms from the Dropdown form.

17. I typically go with the Embedded Forms option.

18. Make any changes to the form being displayed, then, copy and paste the code onto your site.

Badda-Boom! Badda-Bing!

The post How to Segment your MailChimp List into Groups appeared first on AMY HAYWOOD.

Copying is OK

Before you get upset or start pulling out copyright law, let me explain. There’s a difference between copying and stealing.

In this case, copying is seeing what someone else is doing, thinking “I can do this better”, taking the good pieces, and making it your own.

You might still be scowling, but in the United States, we have anti-monopoly policies. Meaning, the government actually encourages this kind of behavior! A competitor is only going to make businesses better and stronger. It’s why you have SquareSpace and WordPress. Flickr and Picassa. Google and Bing. These are all successful businesses, but they’re all (essentially) doing the same thing.

First isn't best

First is the worst. Second is the best. Third is the one with the hairy chest?

Just because you’re not first, doesn’t mean you’re not the best. Take Facebook and MySpace. MySpace was first, launching their services in August 2003. Facebook followed, two months later. But, look who’s still going strong.

Just because you’re not first doesn’t mean you’re too late.

Quitting is Good

There’s a popular phrase: “winner’s never quit.” It’s a lie. Winners do quit. In fact, they quit all the time. They quit all the things they’re not good at and focus on the things they are. Maximize your strengths.

If you’re not good at something. Quit. Let the people that are good at it, do it. You do the things you are good at.

The most important thing you can do in business is ship (unfinished)

It is better to send out a product at 90% complete, then it is to wait until it’s at 100%. How do you figure? How much difference is that final 10% going to make? 90 is still an A. Besides, it gives you room for feedback, to make sure that final 10% is actually moving in the the right direction.

What other business rules have you learned?

The post Important Rules of Business (not what you think) appeared first on AMY HAYWOOD.

I didn’t show people early or often.

As a perfectionist, I’m very protective about my work. I don’t let people see what I’m working on until I’m ready. I want them to see the best version of what I have, best foot forward. –No need for them to give input on something that’s half baked.

The problem with that mentality, though, is I took the project down roads that I never should have gone down. I worked with blinders on. What I did made sense to me. I put my engineer hat on. I thought about the back end and the code and the logic and forgot about the people that would actually be using the system. When I finally did show people, they would (quickly) find problems.

“Why doesn’t it do this? What do I now?”

“Isn’t that obvious?”

“Well, no.”

I should have showed people early and often. I should have talked to the people that would be using the system and find out what they really needed instead of giving them what I thought they wanted.

Two of the best books out on interface design is Rocket Surgery Made Easy and Don’t Make Me Think, both by Steve Krug.

In Rocket Science Made Easy, he talks about corporations that will pay thousands of dollars to have experts analyze their sites. When, really, all you need is Joe Smoe end user. He’s your target audience anyway (not the expert). Simply watch Joe use your site. You’ll learn so much by simply paying attention to where he clicks. Where’s the first place he goes for information? Does he immediately know the purpose of your site? Does the navigation make sense? Joe’s not short on opinions, you just have to be willing to ask and be humble enough to hear what he has to say.

I never gave people a reason to need the system.

When we got ready to beta test, I was invited to a leadership meeting to introduce this new tool I had created. “Here it is! My web app will make your life so much easier. Look at this bell here and that whistle there. Isn’t this great? I’m doing you a favor.”

After that meeting, I kept hearing, “This is great. I’m sure it’s useful, but my pen and paper method worked just fine.”

Really?

I could dismiss it. They’re older. They just don’t understand technology. But, is that a fair assessment?

How does my web app make their life better? The administration understood. They knew it would dramatically cut down on data entry, emails, reminders, and processes. But, I failed to communicate that to Joe Smoe. There was disconnect between their need and my app.

So, how do I close that gap? You tell a story. A good story always has a problem. Then, it works toward a solution. My end user may not know what the problem is. I have to define that for them. Then, hopefully, my product, my web app is their solution. I need them to buy into the system, otherwise it will never get used. It will fail before it even has a chance.

I didn’t mimic a system they already knew.

After a month of testing, I had a beta user that believed in my product. He had a background in Internet Technology and was willing to sit down for coffee and walk through my app, discussing points for improvement.

One of the first things he did was pull out a folder with a print out. “This is the system we know. Flawed? Maybe, but we’re used to it.” Then, he pulled up my web application. The two looked nothing alike. — which is fine, except for one thing. It didn’t give my users a frame of reference. They needed something to go off.

Let’s look at Apple as an example of doing it right. Address Book in the OS Lion looked just like an address book I could pick up at Office Max.

Notepad on my iPad originally looked just a yellow legal pad.

Why? Because these are systems I’m familiar with. There’s something about translating the physical world to the digital that gives the user a sense of comfort. I know how it works in the physical world, therefore those metaphors must carry over.

These lessons are hard when you’ve put in time and energy. But, now I know.

What are some lessons you’ve learned the hard way in web development?

The post The Mistakes I Made in Building a Web App appeared first on AMY HAYWOOD.

As before, I have a spreadsheet (separate, though) that keeps track of all this information.

Opportunities

In the “Opportunities” tab, I keep track of all the proposals that I’ve submitted and how much they’re worth. This gives me an idea of prospective projects and potential revenue sources. Once a project has been approved or rejected, I’ll remove the line item. When this sheet starts to get short, I know it’s time to put out feelers for additional work in order to maintain a healthy cash flow.

Work in Process

In the “Work in Progress” tab, I account for all the projects that have been approved. This sheet helps me start to think about projections. If I don’t take on another project and just finished the work that I’ve already agreed to do, I would make X.

Aging Summary

This tab keeps track of all the invoices that I’ve sent out. Then, when an invoice comes in, I’ll remove the line item. It also serves as a good reminder for any invoices that I need to follow up on.

Cash Flow, Profit and Loss, and Balance Sheet

In my mind, these 3 sheets are the hardest to understand. — and if I’m honest, I don’t do a good job of keeping these up to date.

There’s a lot of repeat information between these 3 sheets. They present a lot of the same data, just in a different format.

Cash Flow

As the name suggests, this document shows how cash flows through your company. It shows the amount you currently have, the amount you’ve received, and the amount going out. Out of the 3, this is my favorite, because it helps you see how long your company can go without any additional income.

Profit and Loss

This statement shows your overall profit and loss from month to month. Dumb answer? Keep reading.

What’s the difference between the two?

The Cash Flow document is a prediction that you can use to forecast your business while the Profit and Loss document is based on actual.

It seems like the two should be the same, but they’re not. A company can be profitable and still go bankrupt from cash flow problems. How so? If a company has to pay for materials in January, but they don’t get payments from their customers until June, they have to do something to survive January to June.

The reverse it also true. A company can have great cash flow but not be profitable. Amazon raised a ton of money selling stock in the mid-1990s. So much so that they had close to $2 Billion in the bank! But, every year, they spent more money than they made. Their yearly profit was negative, but they were able to tap into their savings account to make up the difference.

If you take our new found knowledge and compare the two spreadsheets again, you’ll see that the Cash Flow document takes your opening cash into consideration, while the Profit and Loss document does not. It simply adds up each month’s “profit and loss.”

Balance Sheet

The balance sheet helps determine the total value for the business because it also includes a business’s liabilities, assets, and equities. Items are listed in the order of liquidity: cash, short term investments, accounts receivable, etc. (Reference)

To sum it up:

• Cash Flow shows a company’s cash activities.
• Profit and Loss shows how the assets are being used.
• Balance Sheet shows the book value for a company.

Budget

This sheet keeps track of my budget. I have all my vendors and known bills marked on the left and the amounts on the right. Granted, it doesn’t take tax into consideration, but it does tell me how much I need to make each month in order to cover my expenses.

Quick Tips and Tricks

Use Software

I’ve always used a spreadsheet to track everything. I understand my spreadsheets. Things seem simpler this way. But, as I confessed, I don’t always do a good job of maintaining my profit and loss, balance sheet, and cash flow documents. So, I’ve started moving all of my expenses into FreeAgent. So far, it’s been great because it runs all those reports for you. You don’t necessarily have to go with FreeAgent, there are plenty of options out there. Quickbooks, Fresh Books, and Less Accounting seem to be the other 3 front runners. I went with FreeAgent because it seems to be the easiest for me to understand (plus they target creative agencies).

Accept payments online

I’m a little late to the game on this one. I’ve drug my feet and asked clients to be old fashioned: send checks. Most online gateway companies take 2.9% of your bottom line and I’d prefer to keep it to myself if I can help it.

I was talking to a fellow business owner and he shrugged it off, “I chalk it up to the cost of doing business.”

As an experiment, I offered the option to the client to pay online. As soon as the email hit my inbox saying, “The payment is complete. The money will be in your bank account shortly.” I was hooked! I didn’t have to wait for the check. I didn’t have to go to the Post Office. I didn’t have run by the bank. Count me in!

Set up automatic reminders

Even though I have the “Aging Summary” document, checking it and sending reminders to clients required extra work on my part.

I’ve dubbed 2015, the year of systems. Why do that, even simple work, when I can automate the process?

With FreeAgent, I can simply set up reminders to send to the client every couple of weeks. It’s been great. I don’t have to worry about it, plus I’ve gotten paid faster.

Do you have any tips and tricks that you’ve found in accounting?

The post Accounting for Freelancers (Part 2) appeared first on AMY HAYWOOD.

“What we’re learning is that your mind is not for holding ideas, it’s for having ideas. People are still trying to use their psyche as their office and their reminder system, and it doesn’t work–it’s not designed for that. In an evolutionary way, your brain is brilliant at being able to look at things and recognize patterns and tie that into long-term memory, but it can’t remember worth a hoot.”

Interview with David Allen, A Life of Productivity.

Evernote is one of the tools in my toolbox that I could not live without. I use it every day to do just that: hold ideas.

Inspiration before Pinterest

I started using Evernote in 2008. It was essentially my personal Pinterest board of inspiration before Pinterest existed. I’ve tried other services over the years (ember, DevonThink, VooDoo Pad, and Yojimbo). But, at the end of the day, I can’t get past Evernote’s integration across multiple devices, image support, and easy import.

Support Across Multiple Devices

Evernote has a web app and dedicated apps beautifully designed for the Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Droid. This means that regardless of where I’m at or what I’m doing, I have access to my stuff. When you’re talking about a product being an extension of your brain, this is a must.

I love being able to sit in a brainstorming meeting about design and be able to quickly locate a piece for visual reference.

Importing

There are a few ways you can get content into Evernote:

• Email You can send an email to a unique address (provided by Evernote). Practically applied: I have a separate notebook for every client. When a client emails me with content for their project, I’ll forward their email to Evernote, labeled appropriately (#CLIENTNAME) and tagged with @content. This makes it very easy to keep everything together, especially when they send me content in multiple emails from different people.

• Web Clipper & Clearly Evernote has a browser extension that makes it simple to clip full web pages or parts of a page.

  Check the settings for this plugin, too. You can set it so that when you Google something, results from your Evernote account are listed to the right.

  

  If you end up doing this a lot, check out Evernote Clearly. You can highlight and annotate before clipping.

• Hazel script I have a folder on my desktop called “SENDTOEVERNOTE” Anything that I drop in that folder, automatically gets sent to Evernote and then deleted from the folder.

  Here’s a look at the Hazel script that running:

  

  As you can see, it’s running an AppleScript. Included below:

  Where you see “!! INBOX” — that’s the name of my Evernote notebook that it puts everything in. On a good day, I’ll go back through to sort and tag.

Coding Snippets

• Programming notebook: I’ll also keep a lot of coding snippets within Evernote. This makes it really easy if I encounter the same problem, but can’t remember the solution or how I set things up.

  All programming (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL) snippets go into a programming notebook. Same deal.

• WordPress notebook: I have so many WordPress snippets that I’ve given WordPress it’s own notebook. You can also limit your search within Evernote to a specific notebook. Actually, you can do quite a bit with Evernote’s search…

Searching

Check out the Evernote post over on Tuts+. I pulled this off their site. It’s a list of some of the keyword searches you can run:

• Notebooks: Enter notebook:[notebook name] to search for notes stored in a specific notebook. For example, notebook:apple will display all research related to my aforementioned article about Apple.
• Tags: Enter tag:[tag] to search for notes tagged with a specific keyword. For example, tag:history will display every note I have created that is tagged History. Entering -tag:[tag], however, will search for all notes nottagged with that specific tag.
• Dates and Time: If you would like to find every note created in the last day, enter created:day-1 in the search box. Alternatively, type created:day-30to view every note created in the last 30 days, or created:[YYYYMMDD] to view notes created on a day of your choice. For example, created:20140210will show every note created on 10th February 2014.
• Files and More: Finally, enter resource:image/* to view every note containing an image or resource:audio/* for audio.

Organization

A little hidden gem that not everyone knows about is stacking your notebooks (kind of like nesting). Simply drag one on top of the other.

Here’s a list of some of the main notebooks I use, to get you started:

• !! INBOX: This is my default notebook. Everything goes here, first, before it’s sorted.
• APARTMENT: Notes related to our apartment. For example, we have custom light bulbs for our track lighting system. I have a note about what kind of bulb it is, so when I’m out and about shopping, there it is.
• BLOG Stack: This contains a separate notebook for drafts and published posts. As the name suggests, drafts contain ideas and posts I’m working on. Once the post is published, it gets moved to the “PUBLISHED” notebook.
• BUSINESS Stack: This notebook contains business ideas, services, processes, etc.
• INSPIRATION: This notebook contains all the graphic design images I find online and use for visual research. I use tags for more granular categorization (print, identity, script, color, etc). Reason being: sometimes an image/note will fall into more than one category and you can easily apply more than one tag to an element, but you can only place that note within one notebook.
• FINANCE: I went thorough a brief stint where I scanned receipts and bills directly into Evernote. Recently, I’ve kept them out of Evernote and in a folder structure on my hard drive. Honestly, I’m not sure which method is better, but I like keeping receipts out of my Evernote results.
• HELLO: Evernote has a few applications that help extend its functionality, Evernote Hello being one of them. This particular app helps keep track of the people you meet, where you meet them, and their contact information.
• MENUS: This is a great place for keeping menus for local restaurants.
• PROGRAMMING Stack: I went into some detail about this above. This stack essentially contains code snippets that I use over and over again or snippets I’ve discovered when troubleshooting.
• PROJECTS (CURRENT) Stack: These are current projects that I’m actively working on.
• PROJECTS (FINISHED) Stack: These are essentially archives for projects that I’ve finished.
• PROJECTS (POSSIBILITIES) Stack: Projects that I’ve submitted estimates on, but haven’t been approved yet.
• RECIPES: As the name suggests, recipes. I just clip recipes I find online. However, Evernote also has an extension for recipes: Evernote Food. I haven’t looked into it, but it may be worth checking out.

• REFERENCE: This is essentially my miscellaneous stack:

  • GIFT IDEAS: When a see something online that would make a good gift, I’ll use the Web Clipper to make a note of it. This helps when birthdays and Christmas roll around.
  • MOLESKINE SCANS: Even though I use Evernote, nothing can beat the old fashioned pen and pencil. I have years worth of moleskines filled. If I have pages that I want to go back and reference frequently, I’ll scan them in and save them to this notebook. Through OCR technology, Evernote has the ability to read your handwriting, so these are easily searchable.
  • TEMPLATES: These are note templates that I can easily right click and “Copy to Notebook…” I have items like Client Needs Analysis Template, Client Profile Template, Meeting Notes Template, Phone Call Template, etc. They all provide a great starting point.
  • REFERENCE: These are items that I want to refer back to later. For example, a trigger list for running a GTD review, User manuals for products I own, cheat sheets, etc.
  • TO READ: These are articles or email newsletters that I want to read later, when I have more time. Similar to Instapaper or Pocket.
  • WISH LIST: This is similar to the gift ideas notebook, except this one is just for me and products I have my eye on.
• Skitch: I use Skitch to quickly annotate screenshots. Skitch will automatically upload those screenshots to Evernote where I can save them and share them.
• TRAVEL Stack: I’ll create a notebook for every trip I go on. I’ll forward airline, hotel, and rental car confirmations. This makes it really easy when I’m at the airport trying to find confirmation numbers. Plus, it keeps me from having to search through months worth of emails. I’ll also create a note that contains every address that I might need on a particular trip. Evernote will automatically turn addresses into links so when I pull up that note on my phone, tap on the address, Maps will automatically launch with that address pre-filled. Nice!

Additional Resources

Still looking for more? Check out these resources:

• Lifehacker – I’ve Been Using Evernote all Wrong. Here’s Why Its Actually Amazing
• The Verge – At Work: Backup up Your Brain
• Michael Hyatt – A Handy Index to All My Evernote Posts

Conclusion

Needless to say, Evernote is robust. —And just in case you were wondering exactly how robust it is, I have over 21,000 notes!These days, information is not the problem, but keeping track of it is. You need a system in place to help you keep track of everything, otherwise you’ll make yourself go crazy, trying to keep of it all.

Are there any tips and tricks you have for using Evernote? How do you have your notes organized?

The post How I Use Evernote to Get the Most Out of It appeared first on AMY HAYWOOD.

I’ve quickly learned, though, that accounting is essential to what I do and helps guarantee that my business stays healthy and afloat.

First things first. I keep all my business money in a separate banking account. In fact, I even keep it at a separate bank to make sure there’s absolutely no confusion. This makes it so much easier when I’m trying to keep track of business income and expenses.

I have two batches of spreadsheets. The first batch, guarantees I’m recording all the information that the IRS needs, come April. The second batch (for another day), helps me forecast business and predict how long I can keep keeping on.

Expenses

My expenses sheet tracks all the purchases that I make. I use a professional accountant to prepare my taxes. Each year, he asks me to breakdown my expenses by category. On the spreadsheet, I’ve created a drop down on my options. This is far from an exhaustive list, but this list covers all of expenses.

Mileage Log

On this sheet, I track my mileage. This can be everything from visits to a clients office to picking up office supplies, as long as it’s purely a business trip. It’s important that you fill out the purpose of the trip. It doesn’t have to be detailed, but it’s something the IRS will want to know, if you’re ever audited.

Utilities

On this sheet, I track all my utilities. If you had your own office space, you can easily fill in the blanks. If you have a home office, like I do, I still fill in what all my bills are, but, I also include additional information. For example, how many square feet my home office is, the percentage of minutes I use are business calls, etc.

IRS Payments

On the IRS Payments sheet, I keep track of all the estimated quarterly payments I make to the IRS.

Whenever I make a deposit into the bank, I automatically move at least 30% from my checking account into my savings account for these quarterly payments. This way, when that time rolls around, I know the money is there.

You can go to the IRS website and print off the 1040-ES vouchers. When you submit your payment to the IRS, you’ll include the appropriate voucher. There’s also information in the packet about where payments should be mailed to.

Income

On this sheet, I keep track of all the income that I make. This is an important reference when I get ready to write my IRS checks.

What are other things you keep track of? Do you use spreadsheets or QuickBooks to keep track of everything?

The post Accounting for Freelancers (Part 1) appeared first on AMY HAYWOOD.

Tools I’m Using

Screen Flow

This is probably the most expensive piece of the puzzle ($99). There are several different screencasting apps for you to choose from. I bought a license for Screenflow 2 years ago, so it was just one easy payment of $29.95 for the upgrade.

But, if you pay attention to a lot of the movers and shakers online, this is their weapon of choice.

This software offers quite a bit of features. When you’re ready to go, just select “Record” from the menu and you’re off to the races. When you’re done, it launches an editing panel, where you edit your video. It makes it nice that it’s an all in one piece of software and I’m not having to switch to Premiere or Final Cut. Usually, I’ll just trim off the beginning and the end and export.

Mouse Pose

This is a little program that I found on the App Store ($4.99). I got purchased it when I was speaking at Women’s Forum last fall. For $5 the ladies there were just impressed with this program as they were with my talk…not sure what that’s saying…about me or about this program!

But, it allows me to spotlight my cursor, show red circles when I click on something, and then if I type, it shows an overlay of what keys I’m hitting. — Which is great, because I’m a huge fan of short cut keys. Most of the time, I don’t even think twice about it. So, at the very least, with this it helps the user follow what I’m doing.

 

Snowball Microphone

I hate it when I go to websites, watch screencasts, and the speaker sounds like he’s coming through a tunnel. This might be a frivolous purchase to some, but IMHO for $68.99 dramatically increases the quality of production.

It was insanely easy to setup. I extended the legs on the stand and screwed on the snowball. Then, there’s a USB port on the back that plugs directly into my laptop. When I open up Screenflow, it automatically recognizes the microphone. I just make sure it’s selected in the dropdown. Done.

Vimeo Plus Account

I didn’t want to have to worry about compressing my videos, customizing a player, or storage. This was by far the easiest solution. It’s only $9.95, or I went ahead and paid $59.95 for the entire year.

Vimeo’s pretty slick. I knew I always preferred their video player to YouTube’s, but they’ve done an execellent job in refining their product. For example, I can connect my Dropbox account to Vimeo. When I export a video, I can simply drop it in Dropbox. Then, when I log into Vimeo, I can simply port it over. Of course, the upload button works too.

Once I’ve uploaded each of the videos to Vimeo, I go into the Settings section. Under privacy, I changed the following settings:

• Who can watch this video to “Hide this video from Vimeo.com” only my clients need to be able to see this information. Besides, I don’t want to make it any easier for Joe Hacker.
• Where can this video be embedded? to “Only on sites I choose.” Then, I’ll list my client’s URL and if the site is currently on a staging site, I’ll my staging server too.
• Who can comment on this video? No one. Honestly, I’m not sure if this setting necessarily makes a difference because we already determined that we’re hiding it from Vimeo.


At this point, I can grab the embed code. But, if you’re interested, there’s several other settings you can mess with, especially under the “Embed” tab. Like changing the color.

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WP Help PlugIn

This is the last piece of the puzzle and argueably the most important. I install this plugin on my cleint’s site. It then provides a link in the left hand navigation that they can visit when they’re logged in. Then, I just add posts, similar to writing a standard WordPress blog post and copy and paste the embed code provided by Vimeo. That’s it.

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It’s pretty simple, but in a small way, I’m quickly adding a big value to the sites that I build for my clients.

What other ways have you found that increase the value of your work? Do you make screencasts too? What’s been your experience? Do you use the same software?

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]]> http://www.amyhaywood.com/how-to-create-screencasts/feed/ 0 http://www.amyhaywood.com/your-audience-isnt-permanent/ http://www.amyhaywood.com/your-audience-isnt-permanent/#respond Tue, 08 Jan 2013 13:00:17 +0000 http://www.amyhaywood.com/?p=2618 One of the things I’ve learned lately is that your audience isn’t permanent. If anything, blogging will teach you this. You have to keep feeding “the beast.” You have to keep creating quality content for people to keep coming back. Music will teach you this. A band will produce an awesome first album. After a... View Article

The post Your Audience Isn’t Permanent appeared first on AMY HAYWOOD.

]]> One of the things I’ve learned lately is that your audience isn’t permanent.

If anything, blogging will teach you this. You have to keep feeding “the beast.” You have to keep creating quality content for people to keep coming back.

Music will teach you this. A band will produce an awesome first album. After a while, their second and third album sound just like the first. It all sounds the same. They can’t keep their audience.

I think that’s what makes bands like U2 so great. They’ve evolved throughout the years, not only maintaining their current audience, but bringing in new followers. They’ve had to reinvent their sound numerous times in order to produce something great.

The greatest artists and creators of content, understand that their audience isn’t permanent. They aren’t entitled to anything. No assumptions are made. The time they have with their audience is a gift. Therefore, they make the most of it.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing. It keeps the creators of content accountable. It pushes people to make something new and better than before.

How have you seen this play out? Is audience loyalty / disloyalty good or bad?

The post Your Audience Isn’t Permanent appeared first on AMY HAYWOOD.

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