Re: billable hours

[jennysubs -at- mac -dot- com]

As Laura pointed out, "free-lance" covers a lot of ground.

I do my best to have one steady client and work for them for on an on-going basis.  That gets the overhead down to 10 minutes to prepare an invoice once a month. I spend a couple hours on business receipts at tax time. This all works really well when I can get long-term gigs. The non-billable hours are very few, and I can run my business with a check register and the back of an envelope. 

Of course, to keep it all legal, I have to have more than one client. I am fortunate to know enough contract tech writers that they can throw me small overflow jobs over the course of the year. Once I have these folks in my system, though, it's not any more trouble to generate an invoice. 

I have noticed that the smaller the job, the more significant the overhead. I once spent 6 weeks working to get a contract signed for a three-day job. (Yes, it did involve a public institution.)  It was a fun project, and I'm glad I did it for resume purposes, but it sure wasn't much of a money maker. 

I think sometimes that people feel like they need to set up elaborate systems because they have a business....then they spend way more time than necessary working with the tools. I bought QuickBooks once, then realized it was silly for what I do. 

Jenny



On Apr 5, 2010, at 2:01 PM, john -at- garisons -dot- com wrote:

> I read somewhere years ago:
> 
> You spend half your time looking for work, half your time doing the work,
> and half your time collecting for work you have done.
> 
> 

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