One of the first questions you must ask yourself if you are doing freelance work or running a small business is “will I use a contract?” Conventional wisdom indicates that you should always use a contract when entering into business with somebody else. Despite this advice, many freelancers or small business owners either do not use a contract at all or use one that doesn’t spell out the agreement adequately. Our company has learned the hard way that writing effective contracts is a must. In this article, we’ll look at some of the main reasons why using a contract is a good idea. (more…)

I'm a mediocre programmer, at best.

When I'm programming, I need 8 different tabs open with every reference site I can get for a particular language.  I google function names constantly, most of my debugging time is spent with dumb syntax errors, and I'm never going to be able to use Regular Expressions off the top of my head.

So what can mediocre programmers like myself do? Develop. I'm going to go over a few tips for good application development, and how to use development methods that can improve your programming, even if you lack superstar skills.

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We all just spent a few dedicated days listening to talks and having long hard discussions about building web apps in Miami at

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Ok everyone, we here at the wojo group are getting pretty excited for next week. On Saturday, we're packing up our cars and driving straight through the night. We're not stopping until we hit Miami. Why, you may ask? FOWA 2009!

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The app store is one of the greatest selling points of the iPhone. There are literally hundreds of apps already available (including hundreds of free ones!), with more being added every day. Apple's device is already a great productivity tool, but there are also some additional applications that can really help you and your business succeed.

So without further ado, here are the top ten (free!) apps not to miss for your business needs.

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Pricing your projects right is one of the most challenging tasks for freelancers and small business owners. This challenge may be especially difficult for those professionals who are working in the design industry, where it can be very hard to predict how much time and effort will be needed for a project. Ultimately, pricing is a challenge because the client and the professional have opposite interests.

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I just wanted to pass on two little tricks that Brett discovered when using Basecamp for project management.

1. Keeping Track of Mileage

The first technique involves using the program to keep track of driving mileage. This is really useful because you can take a big deduction from your taxes at the year end for the miles you have driven for the company (44.5 cents per mile). Just set up a separate project (we call ours 'Mileage'), click on the Time tab, and record the miles driven in the 'hours' input. This works great because you can assign who did the driving and include a brief description of the purpose. Then, you can easily create reports for any specified range of time, and you can track the mileage of the company as a whole or of individual members.

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When we started The Wojo Group, all three of us lived in the same town. We were able to meet almost every day to work on whatever project we needed to, and we even set up a makeshift office in the garage. However, as life progressed, we were eventually separated. Brett moved to Ann Arbor to attend Michigan, and Steve went off to Chicago to study at Columbia University. This change created a host of challenges for our company. Project collaboration was a bit trickier, and we were having trouble maintaining proper communication.

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