These are our picks for the top ten best websites or web applications for 2011.

Our criteria was simple: Our life is just that much better for using them.

Our thanks to all the people who put in all the hard work to get these sites out there – you’ve done a great job, and we think everyone should know about it!

Strictly for developers, Heroku knows their customers and did an amazing job of building a website (and a service) that developers love to love. Through almost every interaction we’ve had with Heroku, we learned to like them even more. Extra bonus for the website just being damned nice to look at.

We do some video here, and ZenCoder became our "must have" tool this year for working with all the various video formats and standards.

MX Tooklbox is priceless for diagnosing email problems. MXToolbox makes dealing with annoying email tasks almost as sexy as Liv Tyler, but I digress.

We started using Harvest over the last year or so. The features for doing estimates is perfect for some of our clients, cutting down the time it takes to get a proposal out by about 90%. We also use it in combination with co-op.

"My internt thing doesn’t work!" – We’ve all gotten that phone call or email right? No details, no usable information, no nothing. Support Details comes to the rescue, being the quickest way to find out what your end user is using for a computer, OS, Web Browser and software versions.

Hands down the best designed website for an individual promoting his brand. Beyond the great design, Derek Sivers offers some insanely great life lessons – our favorites being Kurt Vonnegut Explains Drama, It’s either HELL YEAH or no! or anything in his most popular list.

pusher.com makes it amazingly easy to bring real-time interactions to your applications without having to rely on the resource sucking Ajax polling practices of old. Used in combination with task queuing systems like resque, you can create some user experiences to write home about.

Extremely easy to implement, indextank.com allowed you to search through boatloads of data from your own website and display the results before you could bat an eyelash! We loved this thing, but LinkedIn bought them and gutted the talent pool. Now we have one more reason to not use LinkedIn.

This year found us lurking into the “No-SQL” movement shadows. As we began experimenting with the possibilities of a world free from the purgatory of SQL dribble and the traditional normalized hell we all know so well…we found solace in mongohq.com. MongoHQ made using MongoDB in our applications a breeze. We didn’t need to find a hosting provider willing to install MongoDB, we can use MongoHQ from anywhere! They’ve been good to us, and extremely easy to get up and running as we push forward on our pilgrimage to a better world.

And finally, we have to include YaRacer. It is, hands down, the easiest, fastest and simplest way for anyone running a motor sports event to handle their racers, events, registrations and club members, if we do say so our selves, and we do. That’s because we built it ourselves over the last year, and we are damned proud of it.

I work with a lot of freelance web designers and developers and I love them all. But most of them have a problem with cash flow. One month they are seemingly swimming in money (and less likely to accept work from us), the next they are scared to death that they may have to get a “real” job to pay the bills.

I’m here to tell you, you do not have to live like that.

There are some simple and practical steps you can take to “spread the wealth” to yourself. When I was getting started, I had the exact same problem and it was the only part of being my own boss that sometimes kept me up at night. By sharing a bit of my experience, my hope is that it will help make your life a little easier.

Take a Deep Breath

Repat after me: There is plenty of work out there. Somedays it may not seem like it, but this industry needs all the good help it can get. We need you. Your clients need you. Don’t panic thinking you’ll wake up some day and there just won’t be any work out there. There is plenty of work out there.

NOTE: The last paragraph does not apply to anyone who sucks. Sorry.

Monitor Your Pipeline

Your pipeline is the jobs you are bidding on, have proposed, or expect to have a contract for soon. Nothing, I mean nothing, is more important to Cash Flow and your peace of mind than knowing that you have more work on the way.

Check that pipeline at least a few times a week, every time you get a lead and every time you send out or get an agreement back. The most common problem with pipeline monitoring is that you just get too damned busy and forget it. Don’t make that mistake. Use a white board, or a spread sheet, a piece of paper or any of the online SAAS tools to keep track of it, but do it. If you find you really don’t have the time, make the time.

If you’re just starting out, your pipeline will be thin: That means you need to spend more time on it. Whenever it’s thin, you will need to spend more time on it. That’s the bad news. The good news is that as you become more established an have a list of good clients, the more it will magically start filling itself up. I’ve started from ground zero twice, so I know this happens. If you’re doing good work – have faith.

Make Time for Sales

I don’t care how busy you are: If you are not marketing and selling yourself, you’re not only NOT moving forward, your moving backward! When you set your priorities each week and each day, make sure it includes as much time as you can devote to marketing (that includes blogging, sharing on the social sites, going to meet and greets and calling on clients).

You’ll have to make time for proposals and contracts as they come up. But do not put them off. Nothing says “I’m Not Dependable!” like not responding to a request for a proposal until prompted to do so three times.

If your just too busy to spend a few hours each week doing sales and marketing, then you are too busy period. Take a closer look at what your spending time on and make some changes.

Get Retainer Like Agreements When You Can

Sometimes it works best for your client and it can be great for you. Simply take the total project cost and spread it out into monthly payments.

Collections – Do it

It’s well known that the longer you let a bill go unpaid, the more likely it is that you will never get paid for it. Make sure the terms are upfront and accepted by you and your client, and if they are late, follow the procedure, but keep up on it.

Understand Change Orders and Use Them

If you agreed to X amount of time to perform X task, stick to it. Every once and awhile some will try and talk you into doing a lot of extra work that was never discussed. In my experience I’ve found that most customers have no intention of trying to get something for free from you. They just get excited when they see the possibilities and want more – that’s a good thing!

It’s your job to let them know when it’s out of scope – and get them a proposal ASAP and perhaps, win yourself some more work. Issue a simple change order via email or your estimation tool of choice. Let them know how much the additional work will be and how fast you can realistically get ‘er done.

You’ll find most clients are just fine with this – in fact, they appreciate the professionalism.

Spread Your Money Out

If you have anything you charge for annually (say hosting, license fees for some of your code, retainers etc) when that money comes in, stick it in the bank, and only use 1/12 of it every month. Yeah I know it can be really tempting to use that cash for something you really need now, but develop this discipline and you will find it does not take long until you have a nice, dependable, monthly income coming in.

Budget Alerts

I’m not an accounting guy, but I learned long ago to setup the accounting so that at a moments notice you know how much your monthly burn rate is. Once you know that, you know how much scratch you need in the bank account each and every month. Setup and alert at your bank, and once the amount in that account goes below what you need, you get an email alert letting you know. It doesn’t solve the problem if you have no cash coming in, but it puts the issue on the front burner so perhaps you can do something about it – like check your pipeline and check your receivables.

These things are a start… but the work. What works for you? Got some other suggestions?