This week’s East Bay Express newspaper, covering the eastern cities along San Francisco Bay, interviewed me for their feature, “The Recession-Era Entrepreneur.” The article, written by editor Kathleen Richards, explores the trend of Bay Area residents becoming entrepreneurs by necessity. According to Richards:
Due to the economy, slim job prospects, and skyrocketing education costs, more and more young people are finding their fairy-tale careers beyond reach, or simply not on the horizon. As a result, many are supplementing their incomes — or banking entirely on the do-it-yourself route — by starting their own … Read more »
Do you have any advice for how to calculate prices for creative products or services?
There are two main approaches to pricing your work: a bottom-up approach and a top-down approach.
The Bottom-Up Approach
The bottom up approach creates a pricing formula based on the time, skill, and materials you put into a piece. It is usually the best approach for freelancers or other creative service providers. It looks like this:
Price = Freelance rate x Hours + Materials
Step 1: Calculate your freelance rate
Visit Freelance Switch to calculate what you need to charge in order to live comfortably based on your business … Read more »
I’ve written a few posts before about my own experience with accepting credit cards, but I’ve finally put all of info together in one place. Enjoy!
When I first decided to start taking credit cards, it took me weeks to sort out the fees, the terminology and the parties involved, and even longer to feel secure that I was buying what I needed at a reasonable price. To save you some of that hassle I’ve laid out the process below.
Step 1: Estimate whether your business can afford to accept credit cards.
For a small business, accepting Visa and Mastercard for in-person … Read more »
I’ve written before about how awesome the San Francisco SBDC’s accounting workshop series is, but it’s really no help to those of you who live outside the Bay Area. Well today I discovered that the Santa Rosa SBDC is running a ton of classes online, so now you can take them from anywhere! Unlike the workshop series, which was just four full days of instruction, the online offerings appear to be full six-week courses, but the pacing is considerably more manageable than the intensive workshops. They put the full syllabi online beforehand, so you can … Read more »
As I transition (hopefully) from managing toy lines to doing more freelance design, I thought it would be good to calculate what my base hourly rate should be. Once I’ve finished prepping all of my financials for tax time I should have a much more accurate idea of this, but in the meantime I was able to get a decent estimate from the FreelanceSwitch hourly rate calculator.
It only takes three minutes or so fill out, but it’s good to have a calculator handy, because most of the numbers they ask for are annual. … Read more »
**Note: though this is a very respectfully worded request (note how she doesn’t ask specifically for my sources), it is considered good etiquette to ask advice like this from someone with a related but non-competing business, like someone who’s in fashion, or who makes baby products. That said, when I had this exact question starting out, I asked the plush toy makers down the block from me. They were more than gracious and generous in their help, so I’m paying it forward to all of you. For more on the subject of crafty business etiquette, please see … Read more »