Business

to totally redo

General

• Everything I wish someone had told me (about freelancing)
• First month freelancing.
• Ask HN: How do you sell yourself as a new freelancer to clients?
• Rethink your Startup Website: Make a Net, not a Funnel
• http://mrooney.github.com/blog/2012/07/01/freelancing-a-6-month-retrospective/#content
• http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4471030
• http://www.sequoiacap.com/ideas

Legal

• Gov.uk: Choose a legal structure for a new business

• https://online.hmrc.gov.uk/registration/newbusiness

Sole Trader

• http://www.smarta.com/advice/starting-up/starting-your-own-business/what-is-a-sole-trader

Limited Company

• Companies House
  • Company Registration

• How to: register a company in the UK

You must set up the company with Companies House and let HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) know when the company starts business activities.

Every financial year, the company must:

put together statutory accounts send Companies House an annual return send HMRC a Company Tax Return The company must register for VAT if you expect its takings to be more than £77,000 a year.

If you’re a director of a limited company, you must:

fill in a Self Assessment tax return every year pay tax and National Insurance through the PAYE system if the company pays you a salary

Information

• Docracy - Open Legal Documents
• http://www.businessinsider.com/document-center - american

• A summary of the Data Protection Act 1998
• ICO: Need to notify under the Data Protection Act?

Contract

• http://www.docracy.com/doc/showalltagged?tag=freelance

• Just pay me.

Software licensing

• TL;DRLegal (Beta) -

Lookup any software license shortly summarized in plain English.

• http://tos-dr.info/

Money

Tax

• Class 2 National Insurance contributions

• http://www.besttaxback.com/calculator/taxcalc.aspx
• http://www.easyaccountancy.co.uk/about/freelancer_sole_trader_take_home_calculator.html

Sole traders’ tax responsibilities:

• send a Self Assessment tax return every year
• pay Income Tax on the profits your business makes
• pay National Insurance
• register for VAT if you expect your business’ takings to be more than £77,000 a year.

Limited Company: Any profit it makes is owned by the company, after it pays Corporation Tax. The company can then share its profits.

Tools

• http://www.easyaccountancy.co.uk/about/freelancer_sole_trader_take_home_calculator.html

• http://www.besttaxback.com/calculator/taxcalc.aspx

Banks

Tridos

• http://triodos.co.uk

"We do not provide counter banking services from our Edinburgh office (or indeed any of our UK offices) but are pleased to meet with business customers who have a pre-arranged appointment."

Co-operative

• http://co-operativebank.co.uk

Online service, no real-life access?

• http://www.smile.co.uk/
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smile_(bank)

Has branches under the name Britannia. One on George Street.

• http://www.britannia.co.uk/

Invoice

Open source

• http://www.siwapp.org/

• http://www.jbilling.com/community

Services

• http://www.bookkeepy.co.uk/

• https://www.invoicejournal.com/

Pricing

In lump sums for set period of hours done.

• http://doubleyourfreelancingrate.com/
  • https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consulting_1

Trading

• Trading Standards - Fair Trading advice for businesses

Payment gateways

• http://elliotjaystocks.com/blog/good-riddance-paypal/ - don't use paypal
• http://www.binkd.com/general/why-we-no-longer-accept-paypal/

• https://gocardless.com/ - 1% per transaction up to a maximum of £2.00
• http://simplifiedecommerce.com/

• Authorize.Net - Payment Gateway

• Google Checkout

• https://www.gittip.com/

Funding potentials

• Funding Scotland - Signposting funding opportunities for Charities, Community Groups and Businesses around Scotland.

• Independent Students' Bursary (ISB)

Freelance job markets

• oDesk is the world’s largest and fastest-growing online workplace, ranked #1 by annual contractor earnings.

• Freelancer.com is the world's largest outsourcing marketplace,

empowering entrepreneurs & small businesses worldwide.

• • http://www.freelancer.com/u/milkmiruku.html
  • http://www.freelancer.com/jobs/Drupal/
  • http://www.freelancer.com/jobs/Wordpress/

• stackoverflow: Careers 2.0

• XING
  • Search results for: edinburgh

• Mechanical Turk
• http://crowdflower.com/channel/contributor/

• https://www.elance.com/
• http://www.vworker.com/

• http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/17/ramit-sethi-and-patrick-mckenzie-on-getting-your-first-consulting-client/

• http://www.fossjobs.net/

• https://creativemarket.com

• https://www.btcworkers.com/

Marketing

• Being a Developer Makes You Valuable. Learning How to Market Makes You Dangerous

• http://samuelmullen.com/2012/08/the-introverts-networking-survival-guide/

• http://venturebeat.com/2012/10/06/youve-got-a-problem/

Gumtree

• http://www.gumtree.com/telecoms-computer-services/edinburgh
• http://www.gumtree.com/tuition-lessons/edinburgh
• http://www.gumtree.com/computing-it-jobs/edinburgh
• http://www.gumtree.com/marketing-jobs/edinburgh
• http://www.gumtree.com/media-design-creative-jobs/edinburgh
• http://www.gumtree.com/volunteer-charity-work-jobs/edinburgh

• http://www.gumtree.com/work-wanted/edinburgh
• http://www.gumtree.com/gumtree-fun/edinburgh

Hiring

• Hiring your first employee (a UK guide)
• How I hire writers
• http://ryancarson.com/post/26412233938/hiring-your-first-employee
• http://www.ewherry.com/2012/06/the-recruiter-honeypot/

• Velocity 2010 - Adam Jacob on DevOps

• http://sivers.org/delegate/

• https://github.com/darcyclarke/Front-end-Developer-Interview-Questions

Ideas and other

• http://www.startups.co.uk/

• Ask HN: Is a starting an enterprise software startup worth the hassle?
• Don't Follow Your Passion: A Smarter Way to Find a Product to Sell
• Making Sense of Minimum Viable Products
• Finding Your Voice With the Media: How to Pitch a Journalist

• Redditors who are rich (net worth $1 million+) - how did you get rich?
• Ask HN: My wife needs something to do from home to make money...

• http://ask.slashdot.org/story/12/01/08/1733220/ask-slashdot-documenting-scattered-sites-and-systems

• http://www.learningjar.com/publishedSkill?learningPathId=4f960132e4b02d171fd681e1
• http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/gamification-the-art-of-attracting-and-k/240003409
• http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2012/07/traction-mistakes.html
• http://blog.press42.com/index.php/2012/11/05/storytelling-video-pitch/

• https://brandyourself.com/

• http://cluetrain.com/

• What’s the effect on requirements engineering when switching from Scrum to KanbanScrum & technical debt

• http://kkovacs.eu/free-project-management-template-mil-std-498

• http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators
• http://gettingreal.37signals.com/
• http://appbot.co/blog/lessons-learned-launching-a-minimum-viable-product
• http://refer.ly/blog/most-revealing-interview-question/

• http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4639271

• http://www.inigo.net/ - edinburgh web design

• http://handbook.zaarly.com/

• http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html
  • http://benwerd.com/blog/2012/11/20/recipes-for-startup-failure/

• http://dandreamsofcoding.wordpress.com/2012/11/19/why-wont-anyone-talk-to-me-what-recruiters-look-for-in-a-resume/
• http://mattsencenbaugh.com/on-being-a-junior-developer/

• http://joel.is/post/36051780992/the-maker-manager-transition-phase

• http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.ca/2012/10/you-fuckers-are-adorable.html

• http://steveblank.com/2012/11/27/open-source-entrepreneurship/
• http://gazit.me/2012/12/05/designing-presentations.html

• http://unbounce.com/landing-pages/checklist/

• https://hackpad.com/EgXuEtSibE7#Web-And-Mobile-Revenue-Models-(final)
• http://www.pfinn.net/markets-not-ideas-for-bootstrappers-founders.html

Social

• http://ircstartups.pbworks.com/ - #startups, non-official hn channel (see also ##hackernews)
• http://dribbble.com/

• http://themeforest.net/
• http://activeden.net/

• http://danmaz74.me/2012/11/08/are-shameless-plugs-worth-it-some-data/

Other

• https://leanpub.com/freelancedeveloperbook

• http://voicebunny.com/

• https://www.intrade.com/v4/home/

• http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/08/14/teachable-moments-in-pr-crisis-management/