Fearless Money

A little sanity check during an incredibly turbulent time in the economy.
Don’t Quit
If you are already out there building your own business, keep at it. If you were all prepared to jump ship from your lousy office job, do it. The nasty little secret is that harder times clean up the pool for the people […]

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After a frustrating day of entering PayPal transactions, I’m fed up and outsourcing my accounting to someone who likes the work.

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A couple years ago, I lost several hundred dollars to experimentation Google Adwords, without making a dime. I suspect that this is completely normal. It is easy to lose much more, I imagine.
I was discouraged, leaving Adwords alone since then, despite the fact that I know a couple people personally who make multiple six-figure incomes […]

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Yesterday I had my kickoff call with a new client from Germany. Analyzing the sale, which is always a good idea, I was thinking about why he didn’t even blink an eye at my hourly rate. It truly is a bit higher than many can get away with charging for web development work, […]

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By the way, we did get that giant client. This is mostly a job for my design partner, but it was an amazing feeling to land such a big job.
It is a big surprise to me, discovering how much I enjoy the process of selling. I actually like reading books about sales and […]

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Wow, I just got back from pitching my biggest prospect ever. My web consultancy is growing by leaps and bounds.
This is a multi-billion dollar publicly traded company, which makes it not only the biggest job, but the biggest company we’ve ever had on our radar. This final pitch was a half hour in-person […]

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I was listening to a Kiyosaki CD today while taking a break from programming. I find his stuff mostly too simplistic, but I was liking it today for some reason, when I heard Kiyosaki make a really funny and interesting point.
He says that some few people can get rich by scrimping and saving. […]

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In my third year of successful (25% or greater profit) stock-picking, I thought it was time to add a sidebar widget to show my current investments.
On the right you’ll see where I am currently invested. Most of them are International ETFs and all but one have been making double digit gains for years. […]

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Months into my new life as a small-businessman, I still stumble on the old question "What do you do?"

But I am getting better. This weekend, at the Beltane party, I started to answer "I’m a programmer…", but then caught myself and said, "Actually these days I am a small business owner. I went […]

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Since I started taking clients for my business last fall, I’ve been careful to track my time. I don’t usually charge by the hour, preferring the simple honesty of flat-rate prices for tasks, but even then I still track my time religously.

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