In 2009, I was also fortunate to be nominated for the same award and although I did not win, I did have a great time at the ceremony. In 2010 and 2011, I was lucky enough to be involved in projects that won – notably forcing my way onto the stage with Cahoona in 2010 and mediaburst in 2011.

It’s all very exciting and it gives me the opportunity to buy a new suit and, wait for it, new shoes too.

So far the plan is to share a table with the other nominees – so I guess we’d better get practicing our gracious-in-defeat faces hadn’t we?

It’s high time, those plugins are released to the public and here’s a start with these two:

1. IMG Custom Post Types
2. IMG Dead Simple Contact Form

To be honest, while I am interested in the fact that other developers may find these useful I am more interested in the fact that having these plugins available via the official WordPress plugin repository means that if I find a bug and have to fix it then updating the plugin across all my sites is now case of clicking a button and not a copy, paste and FTP job. So it will save me a lot of time.

Submitting the plugins are been a learning curve – e.g. finding out how to format the readme.txt files so the right information is displayed was interesting and I’m sure I’ll get a few support queries and bug reports if these plugins start to gain any level of popularity.

There were two more reasons for checking leads:

1. I seemed to be getting an unusual amount of leads last month and I wanted to qualify if that was true or not
2. I wanted to track where leads were coming from and what types of leads were most likely to turn into actual paying jobs

1 The number of leads

At some point last month, Google rejigged something and all of a sudden this website seemed to be ranking very highly for search terms like ‘Freelance WordPress Developer Manchester’, ‘Freelance Web Designer Manchester’ and some more too.

It felt like I was getting a lot more leads than usual, but as I’d never tracked leads before I wasn’t entirely sure if that was true. After speaking to my lodger, who is an Architect, about this he told me that one of the architectural practices he’d worked for had tracked their leads in particular to find out:

• where they came from
• the likelihood of them turning into jobs
• the likely value of the potential job

Each year the practice would look back over these leads to see if business was picking up, declining or the staying the same. Obviously that data would have to be correlated against profit/turnover.

2 The useful of leads

I also wanted to track which types of leads where useful and which weren’t. I suspected that a lot of the new leads coming from Google – which were consuming quite a large portion of my time – were pretty unlikely to turn into paying jobs. Rather they were people looking to get a quick price quote that they would never respond to.

Findings summary

In October 2011 I had 25 leads. 6 of which have turned into definite jobs (2 more are 90% certain to start next month).

Of those 6 definite jobs, all of them came from either referrals or existing clients requiring new work. None of the cold calls/emails that came through turned into jobs – not even close.

In November 2011, I had 23 leads which have so far developed into zero paying jobs – but with 3 or 4 on the horizon which may turn into proper gigs (guess where they came from: yes, you’re right – existing clients). Note: The zero figure in November is misleading because jobs can often take over a month from initial contact to a price/spec being agreed.

I’m not 100% sure what this tells me at the moment, probably that October/November were gigantic months in terms of leads and that I spend far too much time being nice and responding to enquiries from people who will never progress to becoming a paying client. I will continue to track leads and continue to report back on my findings on this blog – hopefully with some very interesting stats and graphs too.

However, when I became the boss, it became really hard to justify the expense of a new machine to myself. But after recently moving into a new office and saying to myself for the past 6 months that my current machine wasn’t quick enough, I actually bit the bullet and bought myself a new 27 inch iMac – not quite the top spec model but pretty close.

My desktop - complete with new iMac

The difference

Now, I can open a gigantic Photoshop file and not have my machine crawl. I can also boot up Windows 7 in VMWare Fusion to test in Internet Explorer and still be able to run other programs. Denying myself the best tools to do the best job was a mistake – okay it was a mistake and had I been the employee I’d have been very annoyed at my boss for making me work a out-of-date machine for so long.

The business case for a desktop machine

One of the reasons I held off getting the new machine was because I wasn’t sure if getting a desktop based machine was the right move. After all, my work used to be primarily on site hence the need for a laptop but gradually over the last 12 months I have done less and less onsite work and when I thought about it, it seemed silly to be using a less powerful machine (i.e. the macbook) for my day to day work just in case I got an onsite job one day in the future.

No-one ever really talks to you about cashflow before you go freelance and whenever I’ve worked onsite at agencies, the attitude from some inhouse developers is that freelancers are coining it in and whilst it is true that you can make more more by freelancing the fact that your cashflow is so up and down means that if can rarely feel that way.

In fact, I’ve met lots of people on the cusp of going freelance who haven’t saved up at all and haven’t realised that they’re first freelance payment may be month’s away.

My revenue and expenses for the past 3 tax years

Cashflow for 2011-2012 (so far)

Cashflow for 2010-2011

Cashflow for 2009-2010

See those big green spikes. They’re the good times. They represent the fruition of month’s of hard work; times when I went for celebratory meals at (slightly) expensive restaurants with people I loved. However, those green troughs represent some of the worst moment’s of my life; times when I was working really hard but knowing I would not receive a penny for months to come; times when I was buying smartprice beans in ASDA and wondering if I’d be able to pay the mortgage that month.

Payment terms

Most companies have payment terms of 30 days. That means, that 30 days after you complete the job you get paid. If the job takes one month then this means you get paid a full two months after starting the job. Some businesses have payment terms of 45 days, 60 days or more and honestly, if you can avoid working for these guys then do.

However, if you can negotiate them down to 30 days or lower than that’s great and, yes, it can be done because I have done it with some of Manchester’s most notorious agencies.

In reality 30 day terms means, that after 30 days their accounts dept will tell you:

• they never received the invoice or they lost it so you need to resend it
• you just missed the payment run but there’s another one in 30 days
• the guy who pays the invoices is on holiday this week and will be back in next week

It’s important to remind accounts people at least a week before your invoice is due so those excuses don’t get trotted out on the day the invoice is due.

Improving cashflow

One of the ways that I’ve attempted to try and sort out my cashflow is to start taking upfront payments of (usually) 50% for larger scale jobs – that is to say jobs that will take a month or longer. In fact, when working with direct clients I try to do this for all jobs regardless of size/duration.

Also, I try to request payment terms of 15 days maximum. A lot of the time, I have no say over this as clients often dictate the payment terms and don’t allow me to shorten them but, sometimes, as mentioned previously, they do so it’s always worth trying.

If I work with digital agencies for day-rate priced projects spanning months then I often ask to invoice at the end of every month. When I first started out I’d wait until the end of a 3 month project then invoice – which was stupid.

The other way to manage cashflow is to maintain a sizeable cash reserve in my business bank account. Personally, I try to keep 3 month’s minimal pay in there at all times so I can survive for 3 months if the worst (or let’s face it the usual) happens. Of course, doing this means I’m constantly squirrelling away money as opposed to spending it on anything. My bank manger probably loves me.

Good clients

There are some direct clients and digital agencies who are fantastic payers. These people pay on time without have to be strong-armed or sweet-talked into doing so. In return, they get first refusal on my time, they get preferential treatment and they get respect. It’s important to find yourself clients like this – they do exist.

Paying yourself

Another mistake I made when starting freelancing was to pay myself as and when I got paid by clients. Now however, I try to treat myself as an employee and pay myself the same amount at the same time each month. This is really difficult to do but very important to maintain a level of stability and realism in my life.

Summary

3 years in and I still struggle with cashflow from time to time. It does get easier but I think it always will be an issue as a small business owner.

Are your a freelancer or business owner? Do you have any tips for managing your cashflow that you’d like to share in the comments?

The new office is at 23 New Mount Street

The reason for the move was that the old office based in Ardwick, Manchester (near the Apollo) was just a little bit too far away from the Manchester city centre and personally I felt I was missing out on the buzz of the city by not being that close to it. With this new office I am only a 5 minute walk from the centre and 5 minutes from the Northern Quarter where a lot of digital agencies (my clients) are based. The old office was 10 minute walk to Piccadily train station but that walk heavily featured the unsavoury sights of Manchester’s red light district and was not very pleasant at all.

It’s almost exactly a year since I decided to get office space and I’m very happy with the results and while this new office is a little smaller than the previous one and missing some of its luxuries (like a kitchen and a water cooler) – the location more than makes up for it.

Team Mediaburst receiving the Best Public Sector project award at the 2011 Big Chips

Fortunately, because I was involved in an aspect of the project (designing the web UI), Mediaburst invited me along and I managed to get myself up on stage for the 2nd year running.

This is the third year I’ve attended the Big Chip Awards and, as I mentioned above, this was my 2nd time on stage. It’s a great feeling to go to an awards ceremony and be part of a team that wins so I’m very grateful to Mediaburst for inviting me along and, more importantly, for choosing me to work on such a great project in the first place.

Further reading

My case study on Florence

Full list of winners for 2011 Big Chip Awards

Okay, I’m a little biased here as mediaburst are one of my clients – and I designed the web interface for Florence too – but I really think it’s a great product and I’m glad the industry is giving it the recognition it deserves.

Florence allows patients and clinicians to stay in contact through the patient’s mobile phone. If you’re interested, you can read more about telehealth app Florence here.

View all 2011′s Big Chip nominations.

Some people may think the new typography is a little cheesy and overused (especially so in the amateur market) but I feel it really adds a new layer of vibrancy to this site’s design.

What do you think?

This section is a long time coming for me, and it is my attempt to stop myself writing and rewriting the same email to prospective clients explaining how my process works, how much things cost why they need to give me more details in order for me to cost and plan their project. My aim is for my direct clients – since moving into office space, I have found myself gaining more and more direct client work and less digital agency work recently – to find the process of working with me to be as smooth and painless as possible especially if they’re new to web development and/or have had very little experience in working with web developers before me.

Going forwards

This section will hopefully be constantly evolving and right now I’m not 100% sure if the tone of voice I’ve used is wholly suitable, I guess I’ll wait to see some feedback from clients (both current and prospective) as to whether I’ve got this correct or not.