Freelancefolder

Online Business Marketing Is Much Like Marketing Offline

Posted July 31, 2007 in Marketing 11 Rockin' Comments »

There was a time when if you went into business for yourself you bought some business cards, put out a sign, and walked door-to-door to meet your neighbors, invite them over for a cup of coffee and ask them to send their friends over to see you. You were in business.

Today, it’s not so easy.

While the principles haven’t changed much, the tools used to act on them have. New businesses still must attract customers some how and the methods for attracting new customers are pretty much the same today as they’ve always been.

• Location, location, location
• Advertise, advertise, advertise
• Network, network, network
• Give great customer service and they’ll be back

Well, location is still important. Advertising is still a great way to get new business, but it’s expensive. Networking is essential. And, of course, we all know about customer service. [Click Here to Read More...]

Blogging Opportunity For Bling Princess

Posted July 31, 2007 in Business 4 Rockin' Comments »

Here’s a freelance work opportunity for work-at-home bloggers:

SEO Service Provider offers blogging services for commercial clients and is seeking a blogger for a long-term assignment. Pay is $100/month. Present the proper qualifications and start immediately.

The ideal candidate should

• Be female, 18-30 years old, or able to relate to this target market
• Love bling bling
• Enjoy keeping up with the latest celebrity gossip
• Be creative

You’ll be writing a character blog for a jewelry company. See the blog here. Pays monthly by PayPal. More work possible in the future if you prove right for this opportunity. [Click Here to Read More...]

Find Work, Avoid Scams, and Get Paid (on time is even better)

Posted July 31, 2007 in Business, How-To, Tools/Resources 7 Rockin' Comments »

Paisley from Why Paisley sent me an e-mail yesterday, and asked me a couple of questions regarding freelancing and working from home, and I thought it would be a good idea to answer on here, as I think it’ll be interesting and useful to you freelancers. :)

Being a freelancer and working from home is cool, and you can definitely make a (more than decent) living freelancing. Of course, you want to do business with ethical and trustworthy people. Unfortunately, sometimes you end up working for a scammer. It happens, and it’s really ok, you can learn a lot from those experiences.

Paisley, and certainly many of you reading this, who are maybe just getting started, have the same apprehensions and concerns regarding the work-at-home industry, and you wanna make sure you don’t get screwed: [Click Here to Read More...]

Get Ready for Your Next Interview

Posted July 29, 2007 in Business, Lifestyle 5 Rockin' Comments »

Sometimes getting a job can be harder than doing the actual job itself. How many times have you said, “I’d be perfect for that position” only to miss the opportunity? There are a lot of keys to getting the job you want – networking, a strong resume and cover letter, etc. The final step and the one you have the most control over is the interview. Interviewing is a skill unto itself and being good at it can be the difference between getting the money you deserve and spending your time looking for the next opportunity.

I recently had an interview for a position I was very interested in. I hadn’t interviewed in a few years and although I consider myself a strong interviewer, I was woefully out of practice. The interview was a phone interview. With a phone interview you can’t get by on charm or appearance; furthermore, you can’t read the interviewers body language and tailor your responses accordingly.

In a phone interview your answers are all that matters… period. I didn’t get the job and at the end of the day I had no one to blame but myself. The following are some tips to make sure you don’t make the same mistakes I did. [Click Here to Read More...]

Where We Go, Distractions Follow

Posted July 29, 2007 in Productivity 9 Rockin' Comments »

The other day here at Freelance Folder, Jon posted some of his ideas about working from home in The Perils Of Working At Night – Should You Rent A Space? Jon’s vote is to rent a space; for him, the results of the distractions at home make renting appealing.

Sure, there certainly are drawbacks to working at home. For one thing, we sometimes need to work the night away to meet a deadline. But every night needn’t be a work night and there’s much to be said for trying to work things out when working from home.

Some people are more than happy to be working, they simply don’t like to go to work. Why am I saying “they”? “We” simply don’t choose to go to an office every day. For some of us, that’s why we work from home. [Click Here to Read More...]

Selling Yourself On The Value Of Your Time

Posted July 28, 2007 in Productivity 19 Rockin' Comments »

There’s one inherent advantage to being a full time, salaried employee that the self-employed rarely talk about: Even when you’re unproductive, you’re still earning money.

If you’re a full time employee, you probably just laughed to yourself. If you’re a freelancer or a self-employed entrepreneur, that knot in your stomach is the realization that you’re the one paying the price for less-than-productive days. When “actual results” directly drive your paycheck, you’re the one to lose when you’re unproductive, distracted, or working at less than the peak performance that keeps your rates high (and growing, right?).

And yet we all waste time. And we all pay for it. Until now. Here’s a freakishly simple way to sell yourself on the value of your time so you can focus on the things that are going to boost your bottom line: [Click Here to Read More...]

The Perils Of Working At Night – Should You Rent A Space?

Posted July 27, 2007 in Productivity 11 Rockin' Comments »

You’re a freelancer and you work from home, or have your own business, you work odd hours, probably long hours, and if you’re just getting started, you can expect it will be like this at least for the next couple of months.

It takes time to build a profitable business, have everything up and running, find contracts, gigs, and actually make ends meet. Chances are you’ll have to work at night, after the kids are asleep (if you have kids, of course). ;)

But if you can afford to rent a space and work during the day, provided you don’t have a day job, I’d suggest you go ahead and do it. Let’s see.

It’s 1am And You’re Still Working

You make yourself another coffee, hoping it’ll help you stay awake, because there are some last minute details you need to check. Now it’s 3am, and you’re still working on that project. You told your client, everything would be ready by tomorrow (which sounds more like “today” now). Someone has to do it, and that someone happens to be you. You go to bed at 4am. [Click Here to Read More...]

A Recipe For Quitting The Day Job And Working At Home

Posted July 25, 2007 in Business, How-To 8 Rockin' Comments »

Work at home doesn’t mean what it used to. Back in the olden days (yep, even older than me) there was this thing called the cottage industry. I won’t bore you with definitions, but suffice it to say that it has nothing to do with cottage cheese – unless, of course, you be making the cottage cheese in your back yard.

The Cottage Industry

You see, the cottage industry has a long and rich history. It’s all about working at home. In the olden days (the really olden days), that meant shearing the sheep and making your coat of wool. The textile industry is one industry where people did a lot of work at home. In fact, even during the mass movement toward industrialization, there were large factories that outsourced work to people in their homes. Those home workers comprised a large part of the overall workforce and came to be called the cottage industry. [Click Here to Read More...]

Keep Your Batteries Charged – How To Minimize And Manage Stress

Posted July 24, 2007 in Productivity 7 Rockin' Comments »

It doesn’t matter what you do for a living, chances are there are times where you find your work stressful. Even worse, if you are like most Americans, the line between your work and “home” has been invariably blurred due to changing demographics and improvements in communications technology.

The NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) report cites the following statistics relating to work and stress:

• 40% of workers reported their job was very or extremely stressful.
• 25% view their jobs as the number one stressor in their lives.
• 75% believe that workers have more on-the-job stress than a generation ago.

A Gallup Poll conducted in 2000 entitled “Attitudes in the American Workplace” found that 80% of the workers surveyed felt stress on the job with nearly half of those saying they needed help in learning how to manage stress. [Click Here to Read More...]