If you've built an audience on a platform other than your own website, how do you go about turning that following into a marketing funnel for something you're offering? Join us to learn more. View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Links of the week: This post from BlinkOps explains Identity and Access Management (IAM) automation. A Testim blog po…

It will sometimes come up that a prospect or client asks you to implement something that's either too vague to work or a flat-out bad idea. What should you do in this situation? Join us to learn more. View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Links of the week: This round-up of application portfolio management tools from our friends at Enov8. Regres…

If you're a programmer (or, generally, a labor-based freelancer), is it a good idea to sell strategic advice as a kind of "up-sell" to your normal offering? Join us to learn more. View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Links of the week: An Introductory Guide to Application Portfolio Management A beginner's guide to volume testing…

I do a lot of theory in this series, but here's something practical. How would I recommend someone price an hour-long training session to teach social media tactics to a salesforce? Join us to learn more. View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Links of the week: Sprint Scheduling: A Guide to Your Agile Calendar Not only do our friends at Tricenti…

Sometimes, a client may ask you to sign a non-compete agreement as a prerequisite for engaging with them. Should you do it? How should you handle this situation in general? Join us to learn more. View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Links of the week: How regression testing is performed An Introductory Guide to Application Portfolio Management …

The default with freelancing is to charge by the hour and do generalist work. You might have, however, heard of value pricing and heard the idea that you should establish a niche. How should you go about doing that? View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Links of the week: Test Suites and Their Test Cases: The Hierarchy Explained Challenges in mo…

As you grow your business successfully, you'll have more demand for your work and, thus, more leads. Does that naturally mean you can raise your rates? The answer is more complex than you might think. View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Links of the week: UI test automation: What it is and how to get started Testim, a fast and flexible authori…

If you establish a practice and start to earn a good bit of business, sooner or later you'll have to contend with the decision of whether or not to bring on subcontractors to help you. Should you do it? View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Link of the week: Get Started With Salesforce QA and Testing: A Tutorial…

I resisted talking about ChatGPT as long as humanly possible, but I did wind up getting a question in the backlog about it. So, will ChatGPT replace freelance programming? View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Links of the week: How to Do Test Data Management in Agile: 8 Best Practices Android testing: An easy introduction with examples…

If you go into business for yourself, what should you call yourself? Freelancer? Self-employed? Something else? View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Link of the week: Enov8: The IT & Test Environments Management CompanyBy Erik Dietrich

If you're thinking of hanging out your shingle or have just done so, you might wonder whether to use bookkeeping software and, if so, what to use. I have a surprisingly specific and opinionated answer for this one. View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Link of the month: TEM Metrics - Test Environment Management (DOT) Com…

When you go off on your own, at least in the US, you might be in for a rude tax awakening. In this video, I talk about what self-employment tax is, and what you can do about it. View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Links of the Month: An in-depth look at spike testing with examples Follow our podcast at Iheart! Automate web and mobile testing w…

You're a freelancer and doing regular work with your clients. If you bill by the hour or, more generally, for time and materials, which meetings should you bill the clients for? View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Links of the Month: What are the different types of release management? Follow our podcast at Buzzsprout Follow our podcast at List…

Freelancers, especially newbie freelancers, can find themselves caught in situations where their only, large, 40-hour-per week client starts to treat them more like an employee than a freelancer. What should you do? View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Links of the month: End-to-end testing for enterprise business processes Check out our new St…

I've been asked this more than once, but eventually got around to doing a video about it. Rumor has it that California is "business-unfriendly," and, if you live there, you should start a business in another state. What's my take on that? View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Links of the week: Salesforce Test Automation: What Every Engineer Sho…

It's a situation that a lot of techies can relate to. Someone comes along and offers you a stake in their business, instead of money, if you build their vision for them. What should a freelancer do in this situation? View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Links of the week: Oracle testing 8 CI/CD Best Practices for Your DevOps Journey…

We've all heard the phrase "hake it 'til you make it." A reader asked me if this is a good mantra to live by. View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Links of the week: Data: What Is DevSecOps? Key Components of a CI/CD PipelineBy Erik Dietrich

At the time of recording, there's a good bit of uncertainty about the economy. Against that backdrop, as a freelancer, should you approach your work differently? View this podcast as a video on YouTube.By Erik Dietrich

Wire Transfer? Check? Cash? If you're just starting out as a freelancer, what's the best way to get paid? View this podcast as a video on YouTube.By Erik Dietrich

One of the questions that came up in my reader/viewer backlog was specific to me and my background. What is/was my worst experience with a client? View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Link of the week: Using Pytest Fixtures: A Step-by-Step Guide With ExamplesBy Erik Dietrich

There are all kinds of people billing themselves as (non-athletic) "coaches" out there. As someone looking to go freelance, is becoming a coach a good line of work to get into, specifically in the B2B/professional world? View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Link of the week: Learn Regression testing…

It's common (at least in the US) for employees to furnish "references," which are essentially friends or colleagues who vouch for them as character witnesses. As a freelancer, should you also do this? View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Link of the week: Test Environments: Why You Need Them and How to Set It Up…

When you're an employee, you probably only really think about taxes once per year. But what about as a freelancer? Well... it's a little more complicated than that. View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Link of the week: Get Started With Salesforce QA and Testing: A TutorialBy Erik Dietrich

In this video I field a question about how much per day or per week a freelancer should work. That's not really an easy question to answer because, in a sense, it's not the right question. View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Link of the week: Testim Salesforce TestingBy Erik Dietrich

If you're a salaried employee, freelancing or starting a business can seem like a major risk. But just how risky is it, actually? View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Link of the week: Test Automation from TricentisBy Erik Dietrich

Once you start taking sales and discovery calls, sooner or later you might have the impulse to start charging people for your time during this process. Should you do that? View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Link of the week: Serverless Computing for DummiesBy Erik Dietrich

A lot of the questions I field about freelancing and business come from people that are programmers. But what about data science? Can that be as viable a trade for freelancing as programming is? View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Link of the week: The basics of secret managementBy Erik Dietrich

Many freelancers, especially new ones, will want to earn long-term clients. How do you go about doing that, and is it actually valuable to do? View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Link of the week: Cypress vs. Selenium: What’s the Better Testing Framework?By Erik Dietrich

One of the most important (and stress-inducing) times in the career of a freelancer/business-owner is when you increase your rates or prices. Is it normal to feel guilty when doing so? View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Link of the week: Tricentis SAP TestingBy Erik Dietrich

If you're going off on your own as a freelancer, do you need to have a bookkeeper? If so, when should you hire one? View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Link of the week: Data: What Is DevSecOps?By Erik Dietrich

This is an interesting one. How would should you respond to someone telling you "freelancing isn't a real job?" View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Link of the week: What is a staging environment?By Erik Dietrich

This one is kind of a specific question. What happens when you're a freelancer and ask a client to sign a contract, but they supply their own instead for you to sign? View this podcast as a video on YouTube Links of the week: Get Started With Salesforce QA and Testing: A Tutorial 8 CI/CD Best Practices for Your DevOps Journey What Is A Social Media…

Once you go off on your own and freelance, likely for the first time in your career, you won't have a boss. What's that like? View this podcast as a video on YouTube Links of the week: Proxyrack.com Key Components of a CI/CD PipelineBy Erik Dietrich

One thing that freelancers commonly deal with, and that a lot of people ask me about is how to become a "true consultant" or an advisor, rather than just a laborer where the client gives you a checklist of things to go. View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Links of the week: Test Environments: Why You Need Them and How to Set It Up Key Componen…

Part of any freelancer's practice is going to be doing sales conversations, and any good sales conversation for custom work will involve a discovery process. What should that look like? What questions should you ask the prospect? View this podcast as a video on YouTube. Links of the Week: Learn Regression testing Get started with Kafka and Docker i…

You've done some development work for a client, and as far as you're concerned, the work is over. But they come back later, demanding that you do additional work to fix a bug. How do you handle that? Join us to learn more. If you like this podcast and are interested in more business and freelance advice, you're welcome to join our free community. Y…

You've just hung out your shingle and are about to start freelancing. Congratulations! Now how do you get that first client? Join us to learn more. Link of the week: Proxyrack Residential ProxiesBy Erik Dietrich

As a freelancer, you'll find that your income tends to be a lot more variable and less dependent than salaried work. How do you deal with that situation, both in terms of financial planning and making things more predictable? Join us to learn more. View as a video on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm5K4YiTf8o Link of the week: Serverless …

When you have your own practice or business, lead generation is obviously critical. But how should you go about it and, specifically, is LinkedIn a good channel for lead generation? Join us to learn more. View this podcast as a video on Youtube. Links of the Week: The basics of secret management Learn: AI in Software Testing…

Insurance is pretty straightforward for those in the salaried world. But when you go off on your own, how does it work? What kinds of insurance do you need to think about, and how do you obtain them? Link of the week: Your Complete Guide to Test Automation FrameworksBy Erik Dietrich

This is something near and dear to the heart of any freelancer. The time has come and you've decided you need to raise your rates. How do you tell your clients about it, and how do you manage this process of rate raising in general? Link of the week: How To Test ProxiesBy Erik Dietrich

Anyone who has hung out their shingle to freelance has likely encountered the so-called "feast or famine" cycle. What is this, why is it suboptimal, how do you get out of it, and how long does it take to get out? Link of the week: The Pros and Cons of Test Data Synthetics (or Data Fabrication)By Erik Dietrich

Sick time is pretty straightforward for employees. But how does this work when you go off on your own as a freelancer? How do freelancers handle it when they get sick? Link Picks Check out Tricentis Tosca: Intelligent test automation Ever wondered why distributed apps need dependency management?By Erik Dietrich

You're thinking of starting a business or a freelance practice. Should you name the business and website after yourself, or should you create a separate brand for it? Links of the week: What Makes a Good Enterprise Release Manager? Understanding Playwright Selectors: A Guide Microservice tools: The top 10 for monitoring and testing Apex Triggers in…

If you're working on significant projects in parallel for multiple clients, you might find yourself mentally "thrashing," or struggling with the context switching between the different projects. How do you handle that? Links of the week: Get started with GitHub Actions Test Environments: Why You Need Them and How to Set It Up Playwright and GitHub …

People toss around the terms "freelancer" and "consultant" a lot -- often interchangeably. But what does each really mean, and what's the difference? Link picks: Learn to create a Kubernetes cluster in AWS What does bimodal mean in the context of release managment? Need to create multiple Facebook accounts? Proxyrack has a guide for that. A tutoria…

Is it a problem for you, as a freelancer, to have just one or two large clients? The short, easy answer is "yes," but I've got a much more detailed explanation in this episode. Links of the week: Get started with Kafka and Docker in 20 minutes Data Compliance: A Detailed Guide for IT Leaders Web Scraping in JavaScript: A Guide…

You may have heard the term "retainer" as a modifier to describe a kind of consultant. What is a retainer, exactly, and how does it work? Join us to learn more. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * I couldn't actually find where Jonathan Stark talked about the stages of problem solving. Happy to …

You'll hear a lot of conventional wisdom that anyone with a business should do content marketing. Is that right, and, if so, what do you need and how should you get started doing it? Picks: Learn what a production environment is Check out this blog post on how to define enterprise IT environments Proxyrack offers global rotating datacenter proxies …

As a freelancer, should you enlist paid advertising to help you get work? The answer, in most cases, is no, but tune in to hear why and what the exceptions might be. Join us to learn more. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * The E-Myth Revisited: Amazon Link Picks: A guide to getting start…