As this bizarre, difficult year comes to a close, I’m thinking about what it’s taught me. Last week I did my annual review, and was actually pleasantly surprised by just how much I managed to get done. So here are my biggest take aways…

I’m a firm believer in picking one or two channels you like, getting good at them and driving them hard. Instagram isn’t one of those channels for me, but I think it’s fun and I have my own brand building use for it.

I’ve picked up some knowledge about it along the way. Many of my clients aren’t that versed in how it works, so I thought I’d do a brain dump of everything I know and post it on this here blog.

Photographers suddenly have a lot of free time on their handy, and let’s face it: you probably need one.

I'm not going to give anybody a hard time for continuing to 'show up' no matter what's going on. Or for feeling frantic. The truth is, though, a lot of these mails turned me off. I also have a kid and due to daycare and school closures my hours for paid work have been cut back radically. Emails encouraging me to do more, sell or show up for this or that free webinar just added psychological stress and overwhelm to the situation.

Web designers like to kvetch about how shortly after launching a site, a client will come back and ask ‘Why aren’t I number one on Google?’

Unfortunately there is a limit to what I, or any other web designer can do to improve your Google rankings. SEO, and getting your website to rank well on Google is a separate exercise from designing and building a website.

I read a lot. Lately I've been reading a lot of books about start-ups and how to market small businesses. Many of them say the same few things in a lot of different ways.

One book that does not do this is Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37 signals. I have been a fan of theirs for awhile now. A lot of what they talked about in their first book, Getting Real, had to do with what I do for my day job.

After several frustrating experiences trying to find help on Upwork, I created a job posting that gets right down to brass tacks. And it worked.