Corrections: What the Manual Got Wrong This Spring

Three pages got corrected this spring. The revision logs on each page are the receipt; this is the explanation. No apologies in here — the deal was never that the manual would be perfect, it was that it would be corrected, out loud, with dates.

One: review incentives (page 3.3, fixed 28 April). The original text described offering customers a small thank-you for leaving a review as “a gray area — tread carefully.” That was too soft, and soft in a way that could get someone suspended. Google prohibits incentivized reviews outright: no discounts, no gift cards, no raffle entries, not for positive reviews, not for any reviews. Other platforms genuinely do differ — some allow incentives if disclosed, some have their own bright lines — and the page now names which platform holds which rule instead of waving at a gray area that, on the platform that matters most, isn’t gray at all. If you set up a review-for-coffee deal on the old page’s advice, unwind it for anything touching Google.

Two: the pricing example (page 2.1, clarified 30 April). The worked example walked through getting from “what I need to make” to an hourly rate, and the arithmetic divided by hours worked. A reader wrote in, politely, having followed the example to a rate that felt suspiciously comfortable — and pointed out that he doesn’t bill forty hours a week. He bills maybe twenty-four. The rest is driving, quoting, invoicing, and chasing parts. He was right, the example was wrong, and wrong in the dangerous direction: divide by hours worked instead of realistic billable hours and you get a floor that’s 40 percent too low, which you’ll then defend confidently because a manual told you to. The example now uses billable hours and says so in bold. My thanks to the reader; this is exactly what the write-in invitation is for.

Three: state filing fees (page 1.1, replaced 20 May). The page on registering your business carried exact filing fees for several states. They were correct when I wrote them. A few of them then changed, which I learned the usual way — a letter from someone who showed up to file with the wrong number. Exact fees in a manual are a freshness promise I can’t keep across fifty states’ legislative calendars, so the page now gives ranges and points to each state’s own fee page, which is the only place that number is ever reliably true. Less satisfying to read, true for longer. That trade goes the same direction every time in a manual.

Why corrections get their own dispatch instead of quietly slipping into the revision logs: because the logs are easy not to read, and because I think the correcting is the product. Every page here will eventually be wrong about something — platforms change rules, states change fees, examples turn out to have a hole a reader falls into. A site that never corrects anything is either perfect or not looking, and I know which one I’d bet on. So the fixes go on the record where you’ll actually see them, with enough explanation that you know whether you’re affected.

If you acted on any of the three old versions — an incentive program, a rate built on the old arithmetic, a filing fee you wrote down — the pages as they stand now are the ones to trust. And if you find the next error, the invitation from dispatch #1 stands: write in. The reader from item two got a page fixed for everyone who reads it after him. That’s the whole system working.

— Layla