Philadelphia Freelance Web Designer: MHunt Design

I created a list of the best web design, development, and management books out there. No particular order of importance was assigned to these. I own all of these except Jason Beard’s Principles of Beautiful Web Design. His book is more for developer’s looking for help on aesthetics of websites. Anyone working freelance, I highly recommend Freelance Switch’s How to be a Rockstar Freelancer. As for CSS, nothing compares to CSS Mastery. Site Point’s Ultimate CSS Reference is a handy book to have for any web development team.

1. CSS Mastery (February 2006)
2. The Principles Of Project Management (March 2008)
3. Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning (September 2006)
4. The Principles of Beautiful Web Design (March 2007)
5. The Ultimate CSS Reference (February 2008)
6. How to be a Rockstar Freelancer (February 2008)
7. DOM Scripting (September 2005)
8. Web Design and Marketing Solutions for Business Websites (August 2007)
9. Web Standards Creativity (March 2007)
10. Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design (November 2006)

Finding work and how to get going.
For anyone who is a little lost out there when starting their freelance career. I wanted to give some more resources and explain a bit more on freelancing. The Monster List of Freelancing Job Sites is an excellent blog post made by Freelance Switch. Often times, just the existence of a profile/portfolio combination on these job sites will get you noticed. People will start to look for you.

I gathered a good list web applications that are great at helping anyone, who’s starting a business or just works for himself/herself. Check them out:

• Harvest: Time Tracking/ Time sheets
• FeedBurner: RSS feedburner
• Mint: Website Stats
• Base Camp: Project Management
• Fresh Books: Invoicing
• Less Accounting: Accounting/Invoicing
• Blinksale: Invoicing

There is a few more out there, but these are some of the applications I found, right now I am only using Harvest, works well and has a widget.

I know theres some out there, at least some of my friends that are looking for freelance work or just want some extra money. I’ve been doing some research lately, found some great articles on Freelance Switch. Its an amazing site filled with loads of information. I recommend it to anyone doing freelance work. I’ve read a few articles, stuff like improving productivity and overall great advice. I love the 12 breeds of clients article. It’s great information and helps you become prepared for dealing with clients.

Other than that what I can say from my experience is to get you name out there, get a good looking website, something simple to show your work. And don’t stop learning and researching. I’ve used ifreelance and found that to be a great way to start getting freelance work. For time tracking I use Harvest its works well for me. Also elance seems like a great way to find clients as well. The pay is a bit higher in most cases than on ifreelance.

Update 01-01-08:

I found a free ebook courtesy of Ignite Living: A Humans Guide to Freelance Living check it out.