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How Can You Move to Niching and Value Pricing?

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?
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Links of the week:
Test Suites and Their Test Cases: The Hierarchy Explained
Challenges in mobile testing and how to solve them
What is A/B Deployment (aka A/B Testing)
What is Data Lineage? An Explanation and Example
 

Does Having More Leads Mean You Can Raise Your Rates?

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.
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Links of the week:
UI test automation: What it is and how to get started
Testim, a fast and flexible authoring of AI-powered end-to-end tests—built for scale
Enterprise Intelligence – Migrating & Managing the Cloud
Database Virtualization Tools
 

Is It Worth It to Bring in Subcontractors?

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?
 
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Link of the week:
Get Started With Salesforce QA and Testing: A Tutorial

Will ChatGPT Replace Freelance Programming?

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?
 
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Links of the week:
How to Do Test Data Management in Agile: 8 Best Practices
Android testing: An easy introduction with examples

Freelancer or Self Employed: What Should You Call Yourself?

If you go into business for yourself, what should you call yourself? Freelancer? Self-employed? Something else?
 
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Link of the week:
Enov8: The IT & Test Environments Management Company

What Bookkeeping Software Should I Use to Freelance?

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.
 
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Link of the month:
TEM Metrics - Test Environment Management (DOT) Com
 

How Freelancers Can Avoid Self Employment Tax

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.
 
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Links of the Month:
An in-depth look at spike testing with examples
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Automate web and mobile testing with AI
Metrics vs. Logs: When to Use Each in Your Telemetry Stack
DORA Metrics Dashboard: How to Build One, With Examples
 

Which Meetings with Clients Should I Bill For?

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?
 
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Links of the Month:
What are the different types of release management?
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When Do You Look Too Much Like an Employee?

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?
 
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Links of the month:
End-to-end testing for enterprise business processes
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Is California a Bad Place to Start a Business or Practice?

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 Should Know
Key Components of a CI/CD Pipeline