Entrepreneurs and freelancers are typically avid readers. We’re always making plans to improve processes in our business. Last year flew by and many of us echoed the same sentiment: “Where has the time gone?” However, it’s not too late to get on track this year. We’re still in the first quarter of the year and you can meet your goals. Many of our goals center around garnering new business or clients and ensuring our finances are in order.

Regarding garnering new business; we’ve been on a couple of major freelance websites and always continue to market our services on these sites. However, recently, we joined a site that we’d not taken advantage of previously. It’s call People Per Hour. Some benefits of this website are that it’s easy to sign up and get started. Also, there is not as much competition for jobs, so you have a better chance of garnering clients. One of the cons of the site is the high percentage that they take from your earnings. We can’t full endorse or knock the site as of yet. However, if you’re looking for a new place to garner clients, you might want to give this site a try.

Getting and keeping your finances on track is another way that you can get your new business in order for the new year. Decide what accounting software is the easiest for you to use and commit to setting aside time daily or weekly to ensuring things are in order. We took a second look at Freshbooks as this software has greatly improved it’s features (we previously used Quickbooks). We especially like the reports and the intuitive “expenses” feature. As mentioned, it’s still the 1st quarter of the year; so don’t beat yourself up. If you’ve not had time to hit some of your business goals, take a look at these or similar programs to hit your goals this year. What’s one area in which you’d like to improve this year?

This is Shilonda Downing, signing out for Virtual Work Team!