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If you’re about to send your first proposal

The proposal is where most of the money is won or lost, and it happens before any work starts. What you need is a number you can defend, a scope that has edges, and a contract that says what happens when the edges move.

Start with Client Work — rates, proposals, contracts, scope and how to end a client relationship without burning it. Then Money for the pricing mechanics underneath the number.

If you’re undercharging and know it

Almost everyone reading this is, and the fix is rarely a bigger number typed with more confidence. It’s usually a different pricing model, a scope with a boundary, and a payment schedule that doesn’t leave you funding the client’s cash flow.

Money covers pricing, invoicing, and what to actually do when a client doesn’t pay — including the point at which chasing stops being worth your time.

If you’re building a product

The hard part is rarely the code. It’s validating that anyone wants it before you spend three months finding out, and getting it in front of people once it exists.

Build covers validation, no-code tooling, dev workflow and launches — including which parts of a launch actually move numbers and which are theatre.

If your audience is the business

Newsletters, channels and courses run on different mechanics from client work: the money arrives later, from more people, and depends on things you don’t fully control.

Creator covers paid newsletters, what brand deals pay, and monetisation that doesn’t require an enormous list.

If you’re negotiating a role

Salary negotiation is a short conversation with a very high hourly rate attached, and most people prepare for it less than they’d prepare for a client call.

Career covers negotiation, portfolios, remote interviewing and what actually gets read.

How to read anything here

• The opening paragraph is the answer. If you only have a minute, that’s the minute.
• Check the caveat boxes. They mark where advice stops applying — usually the most useful part of the page for deciding whether it’s for you.
• Check the date on any figure. Prices and tax rules move; every number carries when it was checked.
• Every piece ends with what to do this week. That section exists so you leave with an action rather than a feeling.

How the numbers are sourced and corrected is set out in the editorial policy.

If a client owes you money

This is the situation readers arrive in most often, and the one where the internet’s advice is worst — usually some version of “send a firm email”, which you have already sent.

What matters is what you set up before it happened: payment terms with a defined period, a deposit taken up front, and a late-payment clause you can point at. After the fact, the sequence that works is escalation with dates attached rather than increasingly annoyed reminders. Money covers both halves — and the point at which the sensible move is to stop chasing and write it off, because your time is worth more than the invoice.

If you’re deciding whether to go freelance at all

The honest version: the work is rarely the hard part, and the admin is bigger than people expect. Chasing invoices, scoping, and the unbilled hours between projects are the actual job alongside the craft.

Read Money for what runway you need before it’s sensible, and Client Work for what the first three months look like operationally. Both are more useful before you jump than after.