If you ever considered freelancing as an alternative to earn money, you might want to check out this book. It touches a lot of, if not all, parts you should think about before you start freelancing. It contains a rich set of resources for getting additional information and serves perfectly as a checklist you want check from time to time during your first year as a freelancer.
Even if you’re currently not thinking about freelancing the book gives you some good ideas about what everything is important in (web / it) business. It’s more then just programming and that’s maybe hard to understand for some coders: there’s marketing, sales, accounting, creating and maintaining partnerships, business development, taking care of legal issues and dealing with difficult customers. You scratch the surface of all that in Burke’s book. And for the beginning the surface might be just enough. I guess once you run your own business you’ll soon find out in which areas you need to get more information. Again, you can check out the additional resources mentioned throughout the guide.
An often heard argument pro freelancing is to gain more freedom compared to a solid job as an employee of a company. However to truly gain this freedom you need to strictly organize your time which means also separating private time from working time. In this book you’ll find examples and techniques to do so.
All in all a book worthwhile reading, no matter whether you really want to freelance or not.
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