http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk News, Help and Advice for UK Freelancers, Contractors and the Self-Employed Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:00:00 +0000 # hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Copyright © Freelance Advisor 2011 feedback@freelanceadvisor.co.uk (Freelance Advisor) feedback@freelanceadvisor.co.uk (Freelance Advisor) 1440 http://podcast.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/artwork144.jpg http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk 144 144 News, Help and Advice for UK Freelancers, Contractors and the Self-Employed Freelance Advisor Freelance Advisor feedback@freelanceadvisor.co.uk no no http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/lifestyle-and-timeout/freelance-five-bite-sized-freelancer-interviews/ http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/lifestyle-and-timeout/freelance-five-bite-sized-freelancer-interviews/#comments Wed, 08 Jun 2011 09:46:13 +0000 Jon Norris http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/?p=14184 http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/lifestyle-and-timeout/freelance-five-bite-sized-freelancer-interviews/feed/ 0 http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/go-freelance-guide/writing-a-cv-youre-doing-it-wrong/ http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/go-freelance-guide/writing-a-cv-youre-doing-it-wrong/#comments Thu, 09 Dec 2010 11:00:19 +0000 TimothyTim http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/?p=10428 http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/go-freelance-guide/writing-a-cv-youre-doing-it-wrong/feed/ 0 http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/podcast/freelance-podcast-20-making-a-living-without-a-job-part-2/ http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/podcast/freelance-podcast-20-making-a-living-without-a-job-part-2/#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2009 11:20:36 +0000 Andy White http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/?p=4642 http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/podcast/freelance-podcast-20-making-a-living-without-a-job-part-2/feed/ 0 0:23:03 Joyfully Jobless! Part 2 of an interview with Barbara Winter, author of Making a Living Without a Job. Joyfully Jobless! Part 2 of an interview with Barbara Winter, author of Making a Living Without a Job. Podcast feedback@freelanceadvisor.co.uk no no http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/podcast/making-a-living-without-a-job/ http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/podcast/making-a-living-without-a-job/#comments Sat, 19 Dec 2009 08:49:56 +0000 Andy White http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/?p=4602 http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/podcast/making-a-living-without-a-job/feed/ 1 0:23:29 Joyfully Jobless! Part 1 of an interview with Barbara Winter, author of Making a Living Without a Job. Joyfully Jobless! Part 1 of an interview with Barbara Winter, author of Making a Living Without a Job. Podcast feedback@freelanceadvisor.co.uk no no http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/lifestyle-and-timeout/freelancer-interviews-rowan-richardson/ http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/lifestyle-and-timeout/freelancer-interviews-rowan-richardson/#comments Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:53:01 +0000 Leif Kendall http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/?p=4578 http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/lifestyle-and-timeout/freelancer-interviews-rowan-richardson/feed/ 2 http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/getting-a-job/freelance-filmmakers-how-to-be-an-appealing-media-freelancer/ http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/getting-a-job/freelance-filmmakers-how-to-be-an-appealing-media-freelancer/#comments Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:46:26 +0000 Tom Hickmore http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/?p=4016 http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/getting-a-job/freelance-filmmakers-how-to-be-an-appealing-media-freelancer/feed/ 2 http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/podcast/11-the-growth-in-the-freelancer-marketplace-fact-or-fiction-part-2/ http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/podcast/11-the-growth-in-the-freelancer-marketplace-fact-or-fiction-part-2/#comments Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:53:49 +0000 Andy White http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/2008/11/10/11-the-growth-in-the-freelancer-marketplace-fact-or-fiction-part-2/ http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/podcast/11-the-growth-in-the-freelancer-marketplace-fact-or-fiction-part-2/feed/ 4 0:00:01 In the wake of the results of the Kingston University survey on freelancers, we get reactions and opinions from John Kell of the Professional Contractors Group and Nathan Pope of Latitude Hosting and the Brighton Farm. Topics Covered: Grow[...] In the wake of the results of the Kingston University survey on freelancers, we get reactions and opinions from John Kell of the Professional Contractors Group and Nathan Pope of Latitude Hosting and the Brighton Farm. Topics Covered: Growth in the freelance market Freelancer figures, statistics and research Male and Female freelancing split in IT contracting and creative industries Response and reflection from John Kell (PCG), Nathan Pope (Brighton ) Darren Fell (Crunch) Related: Listen to Part-one Podcast feedback@freelanceadvisor.co.uk no no http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/lifestyle-and-timeout/5-five-things-you-always-wanted-to-ask-your-accountant-part-1/ http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/lifestyle-and-timeout/5-five-things-you-always-wanted-to-ask-your-accountant-part-1/#comments Wed, 02 Apr 2008 12:00:31 +0000 Andy White http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/2008/04/02/5-five-things-you-always-wanted-to-ask-your-accountant-part-1/ http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/lifestyle-and-timeout/5-five-things-you-always-wanted-to-ask-your-accountant-part-1/feed/ 4 0:19:08 Part one of an interview with Steve Crouch of SRC Chartered Accountants. Steve answers questions on such things as salaries, dividends, section 660, IR35 and VAT. Topics covered: Limited company verses sole trader; Taking a small salary [...] Part one of an interview with Steve Crouch of SRC Chartered Accountants. Steve answers questions on such things as salaries, dividends, section 660, IR35 and VAT. Topics covered: Limited company verses sole trader; Taking a small salary with big dividends; Section 660 – profit share between spouses; Consideration to IR35; When to register for VAT; The two VAT schemes. Podcast feedback@freelanceadvisor.co.uk no no http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/podcast/4-marketing-secrets-part-2-here-are-5-things-you-must-do/ http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/podcast/4-marketing-secrets-part-2-here-are-5-things-you-must-do/#comments Tue, 04 Mar 2008 09:00:57 +0000 Andy White http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/2008/03/04/4-marketing-secrets-part-2-here-are-5-things-you-must-do/ http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/podcast/4-marketing-secrets-part-2-here-are-5-things-you-must-do/feed/ 4 0:26:57 Andy talks to Paul Silver of The Farm who talks about 5 areas to concentrate on. Get these right, and your freelancing business will get off to a flying start. Andy talks to Paul Silver of The Farm who talks about 5 areas to concentrate on. Get these right, and your freelancing business will get off to a flying start. Podcast feedback@freelanceadvisor.co.uk no no http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/podcast/3-marketing-secrets-part-1-tips-from-the-coalface/ http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/podcast/3-marketing-secrets-part-1-tips-from-the-coalface/#comments Fri, 08 Feb 2008 11:17:48 +0000 Andy White http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/2008/02/08/3-marketing-secrets-part-1-tips-from-the-coalface/ http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/podcast/3-marketing-secrets-part-1-tips-from-the-coalface/feed/ 0 0:14:28 RA: , an experienced IT support contractor speaks to Andy about some of his self-promotion techniques as a contractor. This is part 1 of a 2 part special series on marketing yourself. 3: Marketing Secrets Part 1: Tips From the Coalface Andy Whit[...] RA: , an experienced IT support contractor speaks to Andy about some of his self-promotion techniques as a contractor. This is part 1 of a 2 part special series on marketing yourself. 3: Marketing Secrets Part 1: Tips From the Coalface Andy White: I’m talking to Raju Aziz who has been an IT Contractor for twelve years. Raju hello, how are you doing? Raju Aziz: : Hello, not too bad Andy, how are you doing? AW: Pretty good thanks. Now I want to talk today about marketing secrets because freelancers have to market themselves of course. As a freelancer you have to do all of these things that were perhaps done for you when you were working for someone else. What top tips can you give us on actually marketing your services? RA: I think what you need to do, you need to have a really good CV that needs to be precise and I think at the most it needs to be two at the absolute most three pages. It needs to be presentable. The best way to do it normally is to send it to a few agencies and do a follow up telephone call tothem. Ask them what they think of your CV, if it was good, whether they can use the CV or whether they’d be prepared to represent you looking for work. One of the other tips as well, if you do actually speak to agencies and make sure you do follow up calls basically most agencies will have a priority list and they’ll have four or five freelancers that they’re prepared to use at that current time and it’s important for you to get on that list and the best way to do that is to actually ring them or hassle them and say “is there anything that’s come in today?” Basically make yourself known well to them and get on their list. AW: What do you think about online CVs? I’ve spoken to a few people that have their CVs online, good or bad in your opinion? RA: Well I mean it allows obviously perspective employers to view your CV online in their own time which is a good thing but if you do forward anything like that then you should always there again follow up with a phone call. Make sure that if you do send your CV in to a particular job that you have a cover letter as well and that you tailor that cover letter more specifically to that role. It’s not a matter of lying or twisting the truth it’s basically you want that role and you need to be able to …….you know your skill set but you need to put it in a way that obviously they want to read it as well so it’s important for you to do all of these things. AW: Fantastic. Any other tips you can give us? RA: Well basically, don’t be afraid to speak to friends, old colleagues, and old work colleagues. I wouldn’t necessarily think it’s a good idea to do cold calling to employers because they probably get a lot of that from the agencies in any case so we are heavily reliant on agencies so it maybe advantageous to actually, once you’ve got a relationship with your agency or the person working at the agency is to go and meet them, take them for a beer. You know build up a relationship and don’t just do that once when your in a contract, do this all the time, keep continuing to do the search, keep continuing to make your contacts, keep speaking to the agencies because obviously staff in agencies they’ve got a very high turnover as well so one week you may know the person that’s dealing with your contract and then next week it might be somebody else. So make sure you stay in communication with your agency. AW: What’s your opinion of people that want to break away from agencies and try and find work directly without the intervention of an agency? Have you got much experience of that Raju? RA: Well I must admit, to be totally honest, it’s only been like one or two contracts that I’ve actually been able to do that with. There are a few pitfalls there. Basically, because you’re getting paid by the agency so you’ve got a definite wage coming in. Sometimes, if you work directly to an employer, obviously you have to do the invoicing, you have to chase up the invoicin[...] Podcast feedback@freelanceadvisor.co.uk no no http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/podcast/2-things-you-must-do-to-prepare-for-freelancing/ http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/podcast/2-things-you-must-do-to-prepare-for-freelancing/#comments Fri, 08 Feb 2008 11:17:05 +0000 Andy White http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/2008/02/08/2-things-you-must-do-to-prepare-for-freelancing/ http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/podcast/2-things-you-must-do-to-prepare-for-freelancing/feed/ 0 0:12:03 Andy talks to Raju Ajiz, an IT support contractor, about some of the first things you should consider before embarking on freelancing or contracting. Andy White: I’m talking with Raju Ajiz who has been an IT Contractor, specialising, in support f[...] Andy talks to Raju Ajiz, an IT support contractor, about some of the first things you should consider before embarking on freelancing or contracting. Andy White: I’m talking with Raju Ajiz who has been an IT Contractor, specialising, in support for 12yrs. Hello Raju. Raju Ajiz: How you doing Sir. AW: Now then Raju, what would you say are the top things that you need to do to prepare for freelancing? RA: Firstly most agencies that ask you for work insist on you being a limited company so you need to register yourself with Companies House. Most accountants will do that for you but if you do want to get your hands dirty then you can actually request the forms online from Companies House and fill that out and complete that yourself and I think that the cost to generate a limited company is around about £50 plus VAT. It is not an expensive way of doing things. Once you’ve done that, most agencies again, unfortunately we are ruled by our agencies because they are our prospective employers rather than the end employer so to speak, they insist on us being VAT registered and, there again, you should be able to do that online. HMRC are the people that deal with VAT. The only one thing that I would say with the VAT is please don’t mess the VAT people around. You must pay on time and be a good boy otherwise you do get hit hard with fines etc etc. AW: You sound like you’re talking from experience Raju. RA: Oh definitely. I mean, I think most contractors would have gone through the circle of ignoring people when they need paying and then, once you get hit with a few fines whether it be from the VAT man or the tax man, you soon tow the line so to speak. In my experience, I was a few days late and I think initially you get fined 3% on the value of the VAT and if you continue to do that it can go up to about 15%-25% and then it does give you a black mark so it’s good to be quite disciplined and I think if you start off quite disciplined it will benefit you as you go along. AW: OK well talking about money, how about bank accounts? RA:Yes obviously we need to gain the hard earned money that you’ve worked for and, these are specialised bank accounts. Once you’ve been made limited and you’ve got your VAT registration, you can hop along to most banks and most banks are pretty much and much. It’s just who you prefer and you will need some identification, your certificate of corporation etc. So basically off you go to your bank manager, he will do a credit check to see if you are worthy. I think you get credit checked for everything nowadays don’t you? AW: Yeh I think so. RA: Yep and then they should open up a limited company account for you. There again, one bit of advice on accounts, I would try and put transactions through, invoices etc, try and limit your cash withdrawals because obviously, you’ve got to be able to prove what those cash withdrawals are for so there again, I’ve fallen into the pitfall of withdrawing too much cash and have not been able to identify what it was for because us, as human beings, we normally don’t write records down etc so, there again, if you can be disciplined, if you can start off on the right note, so to speak, you would normally not have any problems at the end of the year. You can go through your bank accounts and look at all your transactions, hand it over to your accountant and he should be able to sort out your tax and VAT liability. AW: RA: So it’s very important to keep records isn’t it then? RA: Oh definitely definitely and I would definitely say that you should really have a weekly expense form or transaction form just so that you can remind yourself and it just makes life a lot easier. So if you spend about half an hour for the week, just completing this on your expense form you may be travelling so you may want to put down your mileage because you can claim that. I think currently at the moment it’s 42p or 40p per mile for diesel over 2 litre. Obviously, that particular criteria, you c[...] Podcast feedback@freelanceadvisor.co.uk no no http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/podcast/hello-world/ http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/podcast/hello-world/#comments Tue, 05 Feb 2008 13:46:52 +0000 Andy White http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/?p=1 http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/podcast/hello-world/feed/ 2 0:08:44 Andy White and Darren Fell set out the aims and upcoming topics in Freelance Advisor podcast series. TRANSCRIPT: AW: Welcome. I’m with Darren Fell and we’re going to be talking about plans for the Podcast but there’s a bit of a back story isn’t [...] Andy White and Darren Fell set out the aims and upcoming topics in Freelance Advisor podcast series. TRANSCRIPT: AW: Welcome. I’m with Darren Fell and we’re going to be talking about plans for the Podcast but there’s a bit of a back story isn’t there Darren DF: There certainly is Andy. This goes back a little way. This goes back to 2001 when I set up Pure the E-mail marketing company, Pure 360.com, and 7yrs of very very hard work, building that up and building up a big client base of about 750, 800 people and then getting to a point last summer and thinking what shall I do? Shall I carry on building up Pure or shall I go and do something entrepreneurial? Two partners approached me with an idea for an on-line accounting system specifically for freelancers and contractors and I thought “what the hell” I’m going to go and do it but I’m going to give up all the operational headaches of e-mail marketing and a big team and go and do this in a brand new world of freelancers and contractors so that is exactly what I chose to do. Now I’m starting up the business and it is called Crunch.co.uk and we’re going to launch probably the summer of 2008. I have become a freelancer myself to my own business and I’ve realised the pains involved in being a freelancer. Things I didn’t know about. Should I be a limited company? Should I be VAT registered? What insurance do I need? What happens if the Inland Revenue come after me for an IR35 claim? So me being me, I wanted to write about it. Get it down on paper and I thought I’ll share it with everybody. So I was looking around for a name for a site to help other freelancers and I’d spoken to a number of other freelancers here in Brighton, at Brighton Farm, Paul Silver and they all think it’s a fantastic idea so let’s put together a site so that other freelancers and contractors start up in this brand new world of freedom, advise them exactly what to do and provide ongoing advice. So how do we propose to do that? We propose to do that with Blogs. Every time I learn something new I’ll get writing, I’ll get other freelancers and contractors who have been doing it far longer than I have to write down all their tips and hints and we thought we’d involve you Mr White and start pod casting and there’s nothing better than interviewing all these freelancers and contractors that we keep bumping into clearly with a hell of a lot more experience than I have. How do they do it? The ideas are the next three podcasts to do three things you must do to prepare to be a freelancer or contractor. The five marketing secrets of contractors or freelancers and the most common pitfalls and how you overcome them. I think this is going to be a lot of fun. AW: Now the good thing about your situation Darren is that because of what you are doing, setting up Crunch you are surrounded by contractors and freelancers and of course most of the clients, well probably all of the clients, in theory, will be contractors and freelancers so we have a wonderful resource, do we not, of people that we can talk to and experience we can plug into. DF: We certainly do. Every fellow that actually speaks to me they always come out with a bit of wisdom that I didn’t know about so I said would you mind writing a little ditty or putting a blog together. In fact, would you mind being interviewed by yourself and get on the podcast so yeh it’s absolutely brilliant being surrounded by that. In fact, tonight I’m going down to the Brighton Farm to talk to a load more contractors and freelancers about all their pains and how they market themselves, how do they keep getting business, how do they invoice, what accountancy hell have they been through, have the Inland Revenue been after them, have they missed a VAT payment and been charged some horrendous HMRC percentage of the VAT owed? So yeh that’s what I’m aiming to do and I think that the more we surround ourselves with contractors and freelancers the more information we are going to have on[...] Podcast feedback@freelanceadvisor.co.uk no no