A couple of days ago I posted the first half of my interview with Michelle Goodman, author of The Anti 9-to-5 Guide and My So-Called Freelance Life. She was kind enough to field any question I aimed at her as I tried to do a subtle Vulcan mind meld. Hey, when you’re faced with a freelancer who appears to be having it all—books, columns, one-offs—you try to understand how she got there. At least, I certainly do.

Michelle is living the dream (you know, the one that includes exorbitantly-priced health insurance). Short of plucking our her brain for closer examination (and I think she might object to that), grilling her seemed the most logical course of action.

Today Michelle shares about navigating life on the web and balancing work and life.

Mir Kamin: You talk a fair amount in the book about the importance of having a web presence and the role blogging can/should play in self-promotion. I’ve been a big fan of your blog for a long time, and think it’s a great example of the right way to do it. But I’ve often wondered why you don’t have a blogroll or list of favorite links on there—what’s the role of linking to others when establishing your web presence, if any?

Michelle Goodman: I’m glad you like my blog. Thanks! And great question. I wrestled with the “to blogroll or not to blogroll” thing for a long time, I think partly because when I started my blog in late 2006, I was completely new to blogging and was still trying to decide how I felt about having a blogroll and who I’d want to put on it. The main reason I don’t have one is pretty trivial though. My sidebar simply didn’t have enough buckets in the template for all the lists I wanted there, so I nixed the blogroll idea. I realize I can hire a coder to customize my template for me, and I’m actually planning to do that this fall (something I should have done ages ago). But I’m still not sure if I’ll have a blogroll or a resources page; I may wind up doing both.

As for using a blogroll to establish a web presence, I don’t think it’s a requirement. You can get the same effect by linking to blogs you like right in your posts, but I’m no SEO/Technorati expert, so I imagine some of your readers will weigh in here. I will say that (a) I hate seeing a blog roll that’s 100 links long—seems like overkill, and (b) I was inspired early on by the fact that two big blogs I periodically peruse—Penelope Trunk and Offbeat Bride—do not use blogrolls.

Mir: You also talk about picking the right name for your website or blog. Your site is named for your first book, and now you have a second one — would you have named your site differently if you’d had a crystal ball? (And in the same vein, I noticed there’s a michellegoodman.com belonging to someone else. Was that part of the naming decision, when you started?)

Michelle: It wasn’t that calculated. I’m not sure I thought ahead to “what happens if I write the sequel to this book?” when I registered Anti9to5Guide.com. It just seemed like the most fitting name at the time, and certainly catchy, which is why I’m not sure I’d change a thing if I could hit rewind. My thinking was that a site called “The Anti 9-to-5 Guide” would be far easier to remember than one called “Michelle Goodman.” But yes, MichelleGoodman.com has been taken for years by some visual artist; instead, I own MichelleGoodman.net.

I will say that I agonized this summer over how to change my blog’s look and whether I should change the name/URL to reflect that there’s now a second book. I even had readers weigh in. As I said earlier, I’m going to give the site a mini-facelift very soon, including changing the header, but the name/URL will stay the same since people already know the blog as “The Anti 9-to-5 Guide.” I will use MichelleGoodman.net in the future, eventually, when I roll out the next phase of my world domination plan.

Mir: In the epilogue of My So-Called Freelance Life, you say that “being human is the new black” (when referring to freelancers not needing to pretend they don’t have families or other personal matters in their client dealings). How does a freelancer navigate a personal crisis that may interrupt professional expectations (say, a family illness that bumps a deadline) in a way that doesn’t cause clients to lose faith in you? Where is the line between “being human” and “meeting expectations,” particularly when you’re a solopreneur?

Michelle: You navigate it by being a reliable freelancer that clients love and trust in the first place, so that when you do have a crisis like a death in the family or a bout of pneumonia, your clients are happy to give you that “get out of jail free” card and finagle the deadline as best they can. Someone who’s always asking for extensions and making excuses won’t have as much leverage here. A client only has so much patience.

Unfortunately, unlike our 9-to-5 friends, freelancers don’t have the luxury of handing off our work to a colleague and still getting paid for it. So sometimes, we wind up cranking out copy or nailing down designs while sick or grieving because the client can only hold the deadline for so long. Unless we want to forfeit the pay (or split it with a subcontractor), we do the work. Even if that means writing while we have a fever or while we’re on a plane, en route to a funeral. In this way, freelancers are like postal carriers. We have to deliver no matter what.

Mir: You’re a huge proponent of life-balance as a matter of not just sanity, but better professional production. You’re a young, single woman with an immediate family consisting of one dog. Do people criticize any of your advice based upon your not having a spouse and/or kids and therefore the experience with those added demands? Do you think you’re qualified to speak to those sorts of issues without having gone through them, yourself?

Michelle: No, no one has criticized, maybe because I’m 41 and have been working for myself for 16 years. But thank you for calling me young. That makes my day! I’m also not without responsibility. I have a mortgage on a house I bought and own by myself. I have a committed relationship with a guy I’ve been with for more than four years (we don’t live together or share expenses, but we’re talking about it). Negotiating my work schedule with him does come into play a lot, since I’m the one who’s often working longer hours, between my book stuff and my regular freelance workload, and he has a 9-to-5 job with four weeks of vacation time and incredibly predictable work hours. I also have a mom who lives a couple hours away and has some health concerns I’m increasingly becoming involved with. So I am not as footloose and fancy-free as I was when I was a young pup of 27 and could afford to just work 25 hours a week and make $25K a year.

For those reasons, I definitely think I’m qualified to speak for those with bigger financial and family responsibilities. But just to make sure I’m not talking out of my ass, I interviewed a number of freelancing moms and other caregivers for both my books. I kind of take issue (respectfully) with those who would say it’s easier for a single person to freelance than someone who’s married or shacked up and has a second income in their household as a cushion. I pay my own health insurance (which costs a fortune, even on my cheapskate plan). And if I have a particularly un-lucrative month because I decided to spend valuable working hours promoting one of my books, I have to work twice as hard (and often twice as long) the next month to make up for it financially. There’s no cavalry to call to chip in on my bills.

It’s of course much harder to juggle freelance deadlines with a baby on your boob or kids under your roof. But I do think that many things are easier on two incomes (my mortgage costs me at least twice what all my married friends pay per person). And while I went out of my way while working on my books to only interview freelancers who are the main, the sole, or an equal breadwinner in their household (many of them married with kids), I also know a lot of married freelancers, some with kids, some without, who just earn grocery money from their freelance work, if that. Some of them have even said to me, “I could never do what you do. Without my husband’s income, I couldn’t afford to live.” That’s all well and good, but I’m here to tell you that just like their single counterparts, plenty of freelance live-in girlfriends, wives, moms, and other caregivers make a handsome living working for themselves.

Michelle, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me! You’re an inspiration and I hope that My So-Called Freelance Life flies off the shelves. Readers, you can find more of Michelle’s common-sense business wisdom online at The Anti 9-to-5 Guide and the Nine to Thrive Blog.