Hit Subscribe Freelancer Q&A

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 Frameworks

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 Proxies

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)

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?

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 Salesforce: A Beginner’s Guide Learn Data integrity Android emulator vs. real device testing: Key differences Android testing: An easy introduction with examples

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 Actions: Getting Started How to Call Batch Apex in Salesforce, the Quick and Easy Way Learn Regression testing

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 tutorial to help you get started with Salesforce QA and Testing Check out our friend Tricentis for all your test automation needs

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 update with a link if someone knows where that is. In the meantime, here's a link to his site: https://jonathanstark.com/ Picks: Learn about data pipelines Exploratory Testing 101 An excellent post about test data management Web scraping in JS

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 This is a great guide for learning the world of performance testing

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 started with the Terraform Kubernetes provider Sand Castles and DevOps at Scale Improve your online gaming experience with Proxyrack proxies Considering stress testing? Check out Neoload

Sometimes it just isn't working out, and it's not you -- it's them. When you decide you have to part ways with a client, how do you go about doing that? Picks: Need a proxy? Check out this list of free HTTPs & Socks proxies If you use Snowflake, this might check out this data integrity product from Tricentis A guide to serverless computing for dummies A useful guide to react environment variables

What pieces of software do you need in order to start out as a freelancer? CRM? Accounting Software? Etc? I take you through the ones that I would recommend in this video. Link Picks; Test environments: Everything you need to know Top 10 Cloud Optimization Tricks What Is SessionBox? End-to-end mobile testing

In this edition of the freelancer Q&A series, I take on the subject of whether or not you should start a business bank account in order to freelance. I think you ought to, and I'll tell you why, and what else I think you should do for finance when getting started. Link picks: Deploy your Django app with Docker HIPAA vs GDPR vs PCI Proxies for Twitter - A Complete Guide API testing for everyone and every app

This time around in our community speaker series, we talked to Thorben Janssen about building a Hibernate/JPA training business with info products and consulting. Hear about made the transition over time from employed as a software engineer to building and selling online courses and consulting around his area of expertise. To find out more about Thorben: You can check out his site: https://thorben-janssen.com/ Or go to https://persistencehub.com/ to join his community Link Picks: What the heck is event-driven architecture? What Is Proxy Switchy Omega? How Data Breaches Happen? Tosca – Cross Browser Testing

If you're a freelancer, you may be tempted to apply to job openings looking for employees so that you can convince them to hire you instead. Is that a good idea? And, more generally, why do companies hire freelancers versus employees? Weekly Links: What is a staging environment? Data: What Is DevSecOps? Learn Load Testing Proxyrack Residential Proxies

A lot of people will tell you that, as a freelancer, you should create and maintain a portfolio that you can show to prospects. But is that really good advice? Link Picks Local development with PostgreSQL containers Enterprise Release Management – The Bridge between Corporate Strategy & DevOps Test Automation from Tricentis Google Analytics 4 Has Me So Frustrated, We Built Our Own Analytics Service Puppeteer and waitForSelector: A Guide Playwright and GitHub Actions: Getting Started

As a freelancer, it might not be clear what kind of title to give yourself in "official" venues, like LinkedIn or on business cards. What should you put there to best represent yourself? Link Picks: A developer’s guide to GitOps IT Environments: What Are They and Which Do You Need? Bring quality 360 to Salesforce Customer 360 with Salesforce test automation High Performance Images: 2023 Guide ParseHub: What It Is and How It Works Web Scraping in JavaScript: A Guide

This time around in our community speaker series, we talked to Reuven Lerner about starting a Python training business. Hear about how he got into tech, into training, into business for himself, and, eventually into a specific, stable, and profitable niche. To find out more about Reuven: Check out his site: https://lerner.co.il/ You might like his mailing list about training: https://lerner.co.il/e-mail-courses/t... And, finally, he's on Twitter: https://twitter.com/reuvenmlerner Join us to learn more. If you like this video and are interested in more business and freelance advice, you're welcome to join our free community. You can sign up and check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/redirect?even... These videos are courtesy of Hit Subscribe, a content agency whose authors are all techies: https://www.hitsubscribe.com/ Weekly Link Picks The CI/CD pipeline: A developer’s guide Mastering the Art of Cutover Planning: A Step-by-Step Guide Jira Test Automation Episode 15: Simple Cookie Based Authentication in ASP.NET Core Getting Started With Octoparse Understanding Playwright Selectors: A Guide

Someone in our community asked whether it was worth it for freelancers to gain recognition by giving conference workshops or online workshops. I generalized this to the subject of "should you give talks as a freelancer to generate new business?" Here's my take. Join us to learn more. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you like this video and are interested in more business and freelance advice, you're welcome to join our free community. You can sign up and check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/redirect?even... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Link Picks Sproutward Cast Study What is Privacy by Design Learn DevOps testing

There are a lot of factors to consider when leaving a salaried job to go off on your own. One of the perhaps lesser considered ones is what, exactly, does this mean for your career. Is starting to freelance a lateral career move, or is it a career advancing move? Join us to learn more. These videos are courtesy of Hit Subscribe, a content agency whose authors are all techies: https://www.hitsubscribe.com/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This week's picks: Release Management Explained in Depth Our Super Friendly AI Sloth that Analyzes Your Observability Data A guide to using Jira for test case management What is the data pipeline and why is it important? 10 cybersecurity predictions for 2024 Big Tables from Glide AdsPower browser: What Is It and What Do You Need It For?

n this installment of our community speaker series, we talked to Marg Reffell about her experience starting a web development agency and then evolving it over the course of time. Included in this is how she arrived at a decision to scale in the first place, and how she eventually decided to scale back a bit to make sure it continued to be the business that she wanted to run. To find out more about Marg: Follow her on Twitter (preferred): https://twitter.com/margreffell * Check out her website: https://margreffell.com/ Join us to learn more. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This week's picks: Top 5 Container Metrics How to buy a wildcard SSL certificate like grumpy old men What is BDD (Behavior-Driven Development)? The importance of software portability

In sales lingo, "win rate" is the percentage of prospects you talk to that eventually become customers? How can freelancers improve the rate at which they close business so that their time doing sales is more efficient? Join us to learn more. -------------------------------------------------------------------- This Week's Picks: What makes a good Test Data Manager? The Agile Release Train Explained Automated testing tools Create and manage an AWS ECS cluster with Terraform VectorDBBench - A Vector Database Benchmark Tool

When you're first starting out and building your website, how should you position yourself? Specifically, should you talk about yourself as "I" or should you talk about yourself as "we," the way an agency or larger business might? I definitely have an opinion on this one. -------------------------------------------------------------------- This Week's Picks: Sand Castles and DevOps at Scale Measuring Web Performance in 2023: The Definitive Guide Web Stress Testing All of Your Web & Mobile Applications Manage networking with Docker Compose

In this installment of our community guest speaker series, we talked to Swizec Teller about balancing serious side hustles with full time employment. He has balanced a career working for startups in Silicon Valley with building info products and businesses on the side. To find out more about Swiz: Check out his latest project, defining the senior mindset for software engineers, to help get you ahead in your career: https://seniormindset.com/ He also blogs and has a site at: https://swizec.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- This Week's Picks: Check out this useful developer’s guide to containers Check out this great post on enterprise configuration management This Tricentis page on test management software This handy guide on lcp metric This great guide on bpr meaning, steps, and examples This interesting page on codeless mobile testing

Not all clients are created equal. Many are great, but some you'd rather avoid. How do you tell the difference ahead of time, in order to avoid the headache of having nightmare clients? _____________________________________________________________________________ This Week's Picks: This easy to digest post on event-driven architecture Check out Enov8's Top 10 Cloud Optimization Tricks This handy guide on quic HTTP/3 This great post on software testing application This handy guide on Slack auto reply

If you're used to salaried employment, especially in the US, you're used to having a lot of stuff taken care of for you when it comes to benefits. Medical, dental, vision insurance covered and mostly paid for, retirement savings, and more. But what do you do when you go freelance and this goes away? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This Week's Picks This handy guide will get you up and running with Django using Kubernetes. This useful guide to healthcare data compliance This episode of the Request Metrics podcast on tweaking systemd services with Ansible is super useful for setting up systemd service environments This guide to QA testing tools This great post on SOC 2 Trust Services Principles Check out this page by Tricentis on End-to-end mobile testing

I get a lot of questions about freelancing, but this is both one of the most interesting that I get and the least-asked. When should you quit freelancing? People set out with nothing but plans for success, so the "when do I do something else" is infrequently considered until things are ugly. I'll walk through how to assess what you should do when things are ugly, but also encourage you to have a quitting scenario from the outset. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------Show notes: The blog post about freelancers and profit: https://daedtech.com/freelancers-arent-yet-business-owners/ The series about freelancers and business: https://daedtech.com/category/business-of-freelancing/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- This Week's Picks: Jira Ticketing System: An Introductory Guide API testing for everyone and every app Episode 11: Connecting to Redis in .NET Core 3.1 Preprod Done Right: The Definitive Guide Creating microservices in Nest.js

Invoicing Basics for New Freelancers ------------------------------------------------------ This Week's Picks Deploy a Django app with Kubernetes in 20 minutes Data Compliance: A Detailed Guide for IT Leaders Episode 15: Simple Cookie Based Authentication in ASP.NET Core Tricentis Tosca: Mobile application testing A Guide to Integrating Slack and Zendesk

In this installment of our community guest speaker series, we talked to Cory Koehler about how he went from being an employee to running a collective of application development freelancers. A lot of folks in our community are interested in exploring models like this, so tune in to hear about Cory's journey. You can find out more about Cory: * Reaching out to him through LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-koehler/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- This week's picks: Master Terraform: A cheat sheet for infrastructure automation What is Release Management (an ERM & SAFe Perspective) Using the Beacon API Tosca – Cross Browser Testing 21 Slack Tips and Best Practices You Haven't Seen Before

Subcontracting? Bringing on a VA or a bookkeeper? As a freelancer, when does the time come to start hiring people to do other things? Join us to learn more. This weeks picks: This Appium tutorial that explains how Appium helps with cross-platform mobile testing, and how to get started with it Guide to columnar databases How to create a Kubernetes cluster in AWS: A walkthrough IT Environments: What Are They and Which Do You Need? Enterprise Salesforce Testing at Lightning Speed User Experience Monitoring from Request Metrics How to create a job requisition approval process

If you're a new or aspiring freelancer, this is probably one of your worst nightmares. What do you do when a client won't pay? What options do you have and what recourse? Picks ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This offering from Tricentis that provides ServiceNow test automation And this offering from Tricentis, that provides Salesforce test automation

In this video, I field a specific question about how to structure pricing for an offering around legacy code remediation. But because that's very specific, I lead up to it, spending most of the video talking about the different pricing models and options available to you as a freelancer. Picks ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This comprehensive guide to building Slack workflows. This Make Me a Programmer post, exploring the difference in nomenclature between software engineer and developer.

As a freelancer, winding up with bad clients can be the bane of your existence or even drive you back to the salaried world. So what can you do to avoid having bad clients? I walk you through my tactics to help toward this goal. Picks ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This new offering from RequestMetrics, around user experience monitoring. The VERA offering, from Tricentis, that assists with compliance concerns in quality assurance. I'll throw a homer pick for our business, Hit Subscribe.

How do you go about building an audience to help with your marketing efforts for your business or freelance practice? I'll go through all sorts of things that you can do in general, but the most powerful thing you can do is find a niche and be specific about what you offer. Picks ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This post, from Architect, summarizing CI/CD best practices. This detailed guide to data compliance, aimed at IT leadership.

How do you go about closing the deal as a freelancer? Do you agree to interviews? Do you have some kind of sales that you do? And, in either case, how does negotiation work during the process? In this video I walk you through how all of that good stuff works. Picks ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This post, teaching you to use Google forms to implement a ticketing system. This tool, TubeRipper is cool, and it's what I'm using to repurpose livestreams into podcast audio.

Have you historically been a salaried employee, but are curious about dipping your toes in the water of freelancing? In this video I take on a "compare and contrast" of freelancing and salaried employment, and how to figure out which makes the most sense for you. Picks ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RequestMetrics has this cool tool that's an HTTP cache checker. Tricentis and their stress testing offering.

It's near universal to wonder whether and how to incorporate when you start a freelance practice. In this installment of the freelancer Q&A Facebook Lives, I walk through the options that you have, and weigh in on what I'd recommend, base on my experience (starting 4 different business entities of 3 different varieties over the years). This video walks you though how things work in the US, but some of this might apply in other countries. Caveat emptor, outside of the US, though. Picks ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This post from Architect, about production environments. This post, from Enov8, about deployment planning.

Another episode from our Q&A series, where I take on Q&A about business and freelancing from authors in our author pool. If you're going to moonlight or go into business for yourself freelancing, should you use Upwork or sites like it? I think there are certain specific situations make this a good fit for you, but generally and on a long timeline, I'd avoid sites like this. Picks ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jonathan Stark, The One and Only A guide to dealing with CSS image effects The fact that Tricentis does test automation for Salesforce This post about building Slack workflows, which is great for minimizing the time I have to spend in Slack

If you're going to freelance, do you need to make a website, and what should that website look like? I actually don't think it's a super high priority for a new freelancer, and you honestly don't need one to get started. But you will need one, eventually, so I talk about when and how to make one. Show Notes ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jonathan Stark Laser Focused Positioning Statement The DaedTech About page (I think that copy is about 4 years old) Picks ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This post, from Architect, about the portability of software resonates with me. Shameless plug for my recent post about tool-user keyword research. Here's a post from friend of the show, Carlos, about release management in detail.

Moonlighting is a specific flavor of working that involves working in addition to a normal, full time job. In this episode, I take on a question about how to get started with moonlighting as a freelancer, and what to consider. Join us to learn more. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Picks: I just learned that risk-based testing was a thing, so here's a piece on risk-based testing. I'll throw some love to our community site, aimed at answering questions that mid-career transitioners might have about programming. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- These episodes are courtesy of Hit Subscribe, a digital marketing partner in the tech space.

If you're a relatively new freelancer, how do you go about marketing yourself? The answer is simple, but not easy. Marketing is about being memorable, and being a generalist isn't memorable, so one of the most powerful things you can do is identify a niche. But, if you haven't done that or don't know how, I have some tips you can use while still in generalist-land. Join us to learn more. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Picks: As someone who (reluctantly) spends a good bit of time in Slack, I like what Wrangle has to offer, which is automation around Slack ticketing and workflows. In producing this podcast, I've been getting a lot of mileage out of this free tool, that you can use to extract the audio from YouTube videos. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- These videos are courtesy of Hit Subscribe, a digital marketing partner in the tech space.

If you're just getting started as a freelancer, you might wonder what you need a lawyer's help with. Do you need a contract? Help setting up an LLC? In this video I offer a take based on my experience setting up multiple businesses of what you do and don't need a lawyer for. Join us to learn more. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Picks For the content work we do, web performance is an important subject, so check out this guide on synthetic testing and real user monitoring. Speaking of content, shameless plug for my DaedTech series about, well, SEO, called "SEO for non-scumbags." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- These episodes are courtesy of Hit Subscribe, a digital marketing partner in the tech space.

Are you thinking about hanging out your shingle and don't know how taxes work? Maybe you've never thought about how taxes work (you should, though). In this video, I walk you through how taxes work for freelancers in the US. Join us to learn more. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Picks this episode: A while back, one of our authors, Carlos, wrote an article about Git statistics, which I, as a connoisseur of static analysis, can appreciate. Speaking of which, if you're a .NET engineer and like you some static analysis, check out NDepend. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- These episodes are courtesy of Hit Subscribe, a digital marketing partner in the tech space.

Are you just starting out as a freelancer or moonlighter, and wondering how to go about finding clients? In this video I lay out a series of fairly specific tactics freelancers can use for finding clients. Join us to learn more. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Picks this episode: This is a little older, but here's an article from a Hit Subscribe author about the test data manager role. If you ever need a good way to automatically filter out background noise when recording audio, give krisp.ai a look. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- These episodes are courtesy of Hit Subscribe, a digital marketing partner in the tech space.

How do you set your rate as a freelancer? I offer two things in this video: A detailed explanation of the philosophical with the idea of "having a rate" A super actionable piece of easy advice for setting it, if you insist on doing this. Join us to learn more. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Picks this episode: I'm always one for a little orchestration, so check out this guide to orchestrating microservices. I've been enjoying using ClickUp for quick and easy documentation of my personal SOPs. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- These episodes are courtesy of Hit Subscribe, a marketing partner in the tech space.

In this edition, I tackled the subject of dos and don'ts for starting a new business. Join me for a list of things that I think you ought to do, and a list of things I don't think you should bother with -- some of those might surprise you. Join us to learn more. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Picks this episode: One of HS's longest established authors, Peter Morlion, created this guide on iOS unit testing. In a self-referential, meta-concern, I'm really enjoying Podbean, which I'm using to generate this podcast. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- These episodes are courtesy of Hit Subscribe, a marketing partner in the tech space.

I tackle the question that everyone asks sooner or later: should I create some kind of business or just do business as myself? These episodes are courtesy of Hit Subscribe, a content shop.