July 2008 Archives

I few months ago I left my full-time job to start a small web development business of my own... so far so good.  Things are going well and I'm learning a lot about business aspects that were foreign to me just a short time ago.

Along the way I've met a lot of folks interested in becoming more serious about their freelancing gigs and/or starting small companies of their own.  This post is intended to be a quick resource list for people like that.  I quickly learned that I couldn't do everything on my own but thankfully there are lots of websites out there that will help you get the ball rolling quickly.

Freelance Switch
Blog, forum, podcasts, job board, etc.  A veritable one-stop-shop for all sorts of information related to getting serious about freelancing.  Add it to your Netvibes account today.

MyCorporation.com
When it's time to file the paperwork to register your business as an LLC, get an EIN number, apply for a trademark, etc., these guys can help you sort through all the legal jargon much cheaper than hiring an actual lawyer.

Freshbooks
Once the work comes in you'll need a way to log your hours, track your expenses, and most importantly, invoice your clients. Freshbooks provides an amazing web based service that allows you to do all that and more for a very affordable price.  I would be lost without them.

Mozy
If your computer crashes and you lose a client's files they will NOT be happy.  Make sure you have a backup plan in place.  Mozy is a robust, secure solution that also happens to be cheap and simple to setup.

DropBox
Still in BETA at the time of this post but DropBox looks to be one of the most easy-to-use ways to synchronize files between computers.

Google Docs
An incredibly simple way to share and collaborate on documents with your partners, employees, or clients. It also happens to be free.  Watch a great video on Google Docs.

FreeConference.com
Love them or hate them, conference calls are unavoidable in this business.  FreeConference.com lets you setup professional conference call lines for free.  No need to buy an expensive phone system.

Microsoft Partner Program
If you're an ASP.NET shop, consider becoming a Microsoft partner.  You'll get access to news, training materials, and discounted software like the Microsoft Action Pack.

Zazzle
Easily print your new company's logo on a t-shirt, mousepad, coffe cup, etc.

FileTaxes.com
Already so big that you're hiring freelancers of your own?  FileTaxes.com can take care of sending the 1099 forms you'll need for tax purposes.

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Those are some good resources to get you started.  As I become more involved in all things business related I may post a follow-up with anything new I've learned.  If you feel I've missed an obvious resource, place it in the comments below.

 If you're doing web development these days there's a good chance you've used the Prototype and Script.aculo.us JavaScript libraries.  They're both excellent and free libraries which make time-consuming JavaScript tasks much much simpler.

The only problem with them is that they're not exactly small.  If you just want to add some simple scrolling or fading effects to a page, you're looking at adding 160KB of JavaScript files... ouch.

Enter Protoaculous, a version of the scripts combined and compressed to minimize load times.  The compressed version now adds only 39KB to your site.  If all you need is the Script.aculo.us effects library you could use a version which weighs in at only 27KB.

I used it on a site I recently built and everything seems to work great.  I highly recommend using this tactic to minimize the load times on your sites.

Download the Protopack zip file here

Side note:  A recent post of the WebDriven Blog alerted me to another option to solving this problem in Google's new AJAX library API.  With this, you can let Google host the prototype (or jQuery, mooTools, and dojo) libraries for you.  In theory since these scripts will be pulled from Google's ultra-fast servers, it should help speed up your load times as well.  I've yet to try this approach but would be interested in hearing from anyone who does.