Business Deductions For Freelancers
These are the freelance business deductions you can take for the 2025 tax year if you’re established as a sole proprietor or single member LLC,
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ARTICLES.
Tips and Insights on Mission, Mindset, Mechanics, and Marketing for Freelance Creatives
A Key to Productivity: Do the Right Things
Productivity is a popular and expansive topic, and it’s also big business. From apps and books on the subject to courses and mastermind groups, tools
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7 Things You Must Do To Start Your Creative Freelance Business
With the excitement and anticipation of embarking on a freelance career, we can easily get caught up in the ideas of freedom, of getting paid
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Designing a Successful Year
Each December I take a couple weeks off to celebrate the holidays and go through a visioning and goal-setting process in preparation for the new
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What’s the Difference Between Pro Bono and Spec Work?
Is there a difference between pro bono and spec work? If so, what’s the difference? First, let’s compare them. With both, you work for free,
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Why You Need To Love Your Tools
A colleague recently switched from the PC to the Mac, from Windows and Android to OS X and iOS. There’s always a learning curve when
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How To Handle Special Requests From Clients
I was asked about how to deal with unusual requests. Once someone finds out you are a designer, writer, photographer… any type of creative, you
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Profit Motive and the Freelancer: You May Be Running A Business If…
A photographer is still in school full time but is already establishing connections for professional work. She is purchasing cameras, lenses and equipment she will use
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Who Hires Creative Freelancers?
[themeone_drop_cap letter=”T” color=”accent-color3″ /]he current mantra for creative freelancers, and for any independent business owner, is to create or define a niche and aggressively market
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Green Scheduling: 6 Tips for Sustaining Your Creative Time
Design your time. Time is wasted when we do the wrong thing at the wrong time. It’s easier to keep your time boundaries and your well-being intact if you plan ahead.
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10 Proven Networking Strategies for Introverts (and Everyone Else)
Building a business requires connection with people: prospective clients, colleagues, mentors, customers, and sometimes even family members. When we connect, we share information, ideas and
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A Freelancer’s Guide To Retainer Agreements
When you work project-to-project, you can experience inconsistencies in your schedule and revenue flow. One way to mitigate those gaps is with retainer agreements. These
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The Value of the Design Brief
Recently, I met with a start-up business. As we discussed the scope of work and began putting the design brief together, it became clear that
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Discovery Isn’t Strategy
A mistake freelance creatives can easily make is to diagnose and strategize with a prospective client before they become an actual client. This often happens
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How To Work With Purchase Orders
You’ve landed a highly-desired big name client and they’ve sent you a purchase order. What is a purchase order, and how do you work with
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Should Freelancers List With Online Business Directories?
Q: As a freelancer, is it worth having business listings like Yelp and YP? A: It depends upon what directories you choose and why you choose
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5 Limiting Lies Freelancers Should Stop Believing
Successful soloism is about 80% mindset and 20% mechanics. I’ve learned from experience that you can get the mechanics right, but still not be thinking right. Much of what holds us back as creatives and independent business owners is our mindset.
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Listening Is A Design Skill
Listening is related to empathy. Empathy is valuing another’s experience, and keeps the designer from creating something that is self-expressive.
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7 Reasons Why Freelancers Should Not Discount
With value pricing for design and illustration projects, I am able to custom-tailor my services and fees to fit each client and project. But even
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I’m Not That Kind of Girl: Manage Perceptions To Do The Work You Love
Let’s begin with the premise that design, illustration and photography are service professions, and that being a professional means you’re in business. You’re making a
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Contracts Protect the Freelancer and the Client
As I write this article I’m in the middle of a contract negotiation involving copyright and licensing of one of my character designs. I worked with
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Does Formal Design Education Matter?
Aesthetic sense and talent are raw materials. They amount to nothing without discipline. Education forces you to add skill, discipline and expertise to your talent. And in order to meet project deadlines, you learn to steward your time.
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What Kind Of Freelancer Are You?
Did you know that there is more than one way to be a freelancer? Independent creatives — freelancers — can choose a variety of working scenarios
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12 Questions You Need to Ask Every Client BEFORE You Accept Their Project
Have you ever gotten involved on a project and then realized that neither the project nor the client is ideal? The project that was going to
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