Posts Tagged ‘tips’

On Wednesday last week, I produced 32 hours worth of coding output.  But unlike my reckless younger self, I did not have to put in an ‘all nighter’ or work two days flat without a break (I was known to do both when I was 18).  No, on this particular Wednesday, I got out of bed at 7am, started work, finished at a little before 4:40pm, and yet had produced 32 hours worth of code.

I had done this through Evernote.   I have talked about Evernote before, but thought I would share how I use this marvel of technology.

Ripping Apart Projects with Evernote

Whenever I complete a project for a customer, I add 3 or 4 hours of project time into my plans.  When the project is delivered, just before I file it away to my document storage system, I then rip it apart.  I run through all of the code I have produced, looking for the ‘clever stuff’ – code that does a particular function, or overcomes a problem, or is just generally useful.

All these bits of code then get copied to Evernote in one of a dozen different areas.  I have areas for VB.NET, C#.net, SQL scripts, SQL tricks, DOS commands, VBA, VBS, and a host of others.  Sometimes I copy 3 or 4 lines of code, sometimes its entire routines, sometimes whole files.   Each gets a good title of what it is it does.

How I worked 32 hours

So on this particular Wednesday, I thought as an experiment I would list what I was going to do, and how long it would take me to code from scratch.  Then I coded it in my usual way – coding some of it by hand, but finding large blocks already coded in Evernote, and i just copy, paste and tweak.   I like to think of myself as a bit of a Frankenstein of a coder.

The result is that in a little over 7 hours or work time, I had coded what I estimated would have taken me 32-34 hours by hand.   And of course there is the bonus – the copied code has already been used, therefore tested, therefore less bugs when reused, therefore less testing needed.

So I worked 7 hours, the code should have taken 32 hours; what do you think the customer got billed, 7 or 32 hours?  Who do you think got the difference in to their bank account?

Why Evernote?

All the tools I use (such as Visual Studio) have their own snippet catalogue systems, and I could use those.  So why do I use Evernote?  Simple – portability.   I can see my notes on my PC, on my phone, on my tablet, and at a customer site.  It’s all searchable, all findable, quick, easy and free.

Bless you Evernote for making me more productive, and allowing me to bill more than I could possibly work.

Just call me Professor Frankenstein.

During December of last year, I noticed something odd.   Whilst I received 6 or 7 enquiries a month for new work, throughout the whole of December not a single web based enquiry came in.   I put this down to the time of the year, with the Christmas madness.   After all, checking my Adwords stats showed that people were still clicking through to my web site – so I guess people were just book-marking to come back in the new year, or my services were just not what they needed.  Right?    WRONG!!

What had happened was that my web hosting company were having problems, and as a result they had decided to change the IP address of my SMTP (email) server on their side which meant that when somebody completed an enquiry form – the email went…. nowhere.   The SMTP script did not connect with the SMTP server, and the problem was written to an error log.   The prospect got a nice web page saying that we would be in contact, but of course nobody contacted them because the enquiry was never received.   I have web monitoring on all of my sites, but this is not something that the monitoring would have picked up.

Now I could have put in all kinds of fancy checking, and auditing, and error logging, and error pickup and notifications – but you know what?  It’s just easier, quicker and more robust to perform a step through.

So now, every Monday morning I do a run through.  Starting with one of my search terms in Google, I click through one of my ads (which checks that Adwords is running and the adverts look OK), check that my web page appears when I click the advert, I then click through to the contact me form, and fill it out, to check that the email arrives.

Ok, it costs me £2 a week for the wasted ad-word click, and 2 minutes of my time every Monday.   But if one of those December click-throughs might have been a sale, that very small amount and that 2 minutes could be an awfully large amount of wasted money.

So how often do you check all of your flow throughs?

Time is a precious thing to me.   The biggest lumps of my time are taken up either with my family (any interaction with computers is frowned upon) or working (using computers, in which case I want to spend that time generating customer revenue rather than general surfing).   Which leaves a difficult problem of when and how to keep up with industry news, research or reading interesting articles which I can use to boost my business.

Luckily, there are the odd 2 or 3 minutes scattered throughout the day of wasted time.  Time spent queuing (for a train, at a supermarket, at a post office, etc), time spent cooking (all you have to do is stir now and again), and erm…. Sitting down.   All of these are the perfect times to quickly catch up with the industry news, blogs etc.

In the past, I have already talked about how I use Calibre with an eBook reader to create a book of RSS feeds for reading blogs I subscribe to.   But now, I have found a perfect way to catch up on all the odd articles referenced in twitter feeds, blogs, or emailed through.   This system is a web service called ReadItLater.

ReadItLater, as the name suggests, is a cloud hosted service where you can forward URLs, and then it will build a catalogue for you.  It’s rather like creating a favourite link in internet explorer or Firefox, but with the advantage that you can read the items off line when you have 2 minutes.  Because of the off-line viewing, you can read the saved item even when you don’t have a mobile signal or internet connection.

If you have never used ReadItLater, let me guide you through the perfect set-up for off-line catch-up. 

ReadItLater
The first part is to create a FREE ReadItLater account on the cloud.   Give it a user id and a password (with email verification), and you are all good to go.   Whilst the ReadItLater web site offers the ability to jump to your links through their own web portal, the real power is through the bolt-ons available. 

Internet Explorer/FireFox plugins
Adding a plug to your favourite web browser allows you to mark web pages, items and text for reading later as you browse.   Plugins for all major browsers are available for downloading for FREE – for Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, and iPad/phone.  Once downloaded, if you see a page, URL or link that is of interest, right-click the page or link and you now have an option to ReadItLater.   The URL link is now sent to your cloud account.  A new ReadItLater chevron button is also added in the toolbar to add the entire current page you are currently viewing.

Submitter
Of course, for maximum flexibility you should add a submitter to your mobile device.   Different versions are available for the iPhone, iPad, Android etc.   The two best (that I can recommend and that are FREE) are DroidSave for Android or EchoFon for the iOS.   With these installed, a new Share option appears from other installed mobile applications (facebook, twitter, your browser, emails, etc).  So if a tweet talks about a news item or a blog post you may be interested in, just click to share, share to DroidSave or EchoFon, and you can ReadItLater.  These apps just sent the URLS (shortened or otherwise) to your ReadItLater account. 

Off-Line Mobile Client  
Now whilst you can open up your saved links using the browser based ReadItLater web application, I find it is much better to install an off-line reading Client on your mobile device.   This application polls your defined ReadItLater account on a regular basis, and then pulls the saved links, together with a copy of the text and images so that you can read the item off-line (with no internet connection).   Once you have read the item, you can then archive it for later reference, or delete it.  Perfect.      The iPhone/iPAD ReadITLater app works well, and for Android, I can recommend the AndReader Andorid ReadItLater app, which works well on both mobile phones and Tablets (I have the Galaxy Tab).

Using this combination I no longer have to bookmark interesting items, add a ToDo to read them, or get distracted into reading them now.  Instead, I can mark the items that interest me, and Read Them Later when time allows.   Perfect.

You remember that girl you dated at school (if you’re a women reading this, it was the guy you dated) – the one you were not so nice to, the one who’s heart you broke.  Well, thanks to the internet she can now find you, track you down, see where you work, what you do, and what your thoughts are on last nights TV.   The Internet, and especially in social media, has made all of our lives transparent.

But you know what else?  That potential customer you have been talking to can also see it all.

I met a freelancer the other day that had a twitter account, and on his feed he was busy tearing holes into all the processes, procedures and systems his last customer used.  Now what do you think would happen if after attending a contracting job ‘interview’ or putting a proposal in front of a new prospect, that person googled him?  Do you think he would get the work?  This is why you need to double-think everything you put into the cloud.

One of my former lecturers once told me that reputations and trust take a lifetime to build, and a moment to destroy.   I would suggest in this internet and social connected world, it’s even faster than that.

When it comes to invoicing, there is a golden rule of business which says “Invoice as soon as possible”.  This clearly gets the bill in front of the customer as soon as possible, which in turn helps cash flow as we get the money into our bank accounts as soon as possible.   But, sometimes later payments or earlier payments are more prudent.

The three possibilities for invoicing are as follows:

Up Front Invoicing
This option is preferable for both large scale projects, and when we are dealing with a new client.   At the start of any project, agreeing as part of the terms of business, an initial up-front payment (say a 50% deposit) means we have money in the bank before work is started.  This reduces the risk that we get half way through the project and the customer cancels, goes bust or just does not pay.   It also has advantages for very big projects which may take several months in that we don’t have months of no cash coming in, which can lead to all kinds of famine/cash flow problems.   Clearly, sometimes asking for money up front can be difficult, but this option does reduce a lot of the payment risks for you.

At End of Work Invoicing
To be honest, this is my general method of invoicing – raising a full and complete invoice once the project has been completed, and including all the quoted work, expenses and other costs.  I normally select this method of invoicing because I am not so good at asking for the money upfront (a case of do as say, not as I do ), plus I balance this off by the fact I have a reasonable amount of cash in my company account, plus the customers I have been lucky to land have been bigger name companies.

Delayed Invoicing
The third and most surprising option available is to delay the invoicing of the customer.  Even once the project is complete and handed over, there may be some situations where you don’t produce an invoice for a few days or even a few weeks.  This option is really only advisable for really trusted customers, but it can have a cash flow benefit close to period or year ends.   When an invoice is for a large amount, delaying the creation of the invoice for a few weeks can push the payment into the next VAT quarter or next year end, which then delays when the VAT has to be repaid, or when the corporation tax appears on the profits.    I am currently sitting of 3 or 4 large invoices which I will be sending out at the end of January, once I have completed my year end accounts – thus delaying the payment of a few hundred pounds of corporation tax by 12 months or so.

Over the last 2 or 3 years, there has been a massive change in what we (as information consumers and users) want.  It used to be the mantra that information was king, it was the power of business, it was the currency of control.  When in doubt, more information was good, more options, more control.  But now… now keeping it simple rocks.  The minimum is best.  Chunky is choice.

Take web sites – web sites used to be complex – lots of information, lots of options, lots of buttons, lots of things to read and to click.   But we as consumers have changed – we don’t like all the text, we don’t want all those options, all the confusing buttons with icons – we just don’t have the time.  Now, we want it chunky, we want large colourful buttons with the words of what they do (Login, Logout, Checkout, Register), not buttons with pictures of disks, or doors, or tills.  Web sites with small text and lots of options (like Amazon) are vanishing – replaced with groovy Ruby-on-Rails web apps with 4 or 5 words on the page and lots of pictures.

Skipping Ahead

Gartner research recently published a paper saying that the typical information consumer now reads less that 30% of words available to them in printed form, and less than 25% of words on a web site.  No doubt people will be skim reading this entry.  Which is why it’s important to have section headings in your text (like the one above) to pull skimmers back in.

Make it work for your business

So what does this mean for freelancers and small business owners?  Well, if you are in web or product design, the rule of thumb is now to make it all big, colourful, chunky with big buttons.  For those of us that work with text (proposals, quotes, specifications and the like), it’s important that to have everything read and understood, we need to boil the words down, reduce them, and just get to the point.