Freelancefolder

3 Ways To Keep Blogging From Killing Your Business

Posted December 16, 2007 in Productivity 24 Rockin' Comments »

Blogs are great – don’t get me wrong – but it’s just too easy to get sucked into reading too many of them and pretending you don’t notice your productivity plummet. Here are 3 simple tips for guaranteeing that getting your blog fix doesn’t result in an overdose that kills your ability to rake in the dough.

Tip #1 – Separate Business and Pleasure

You know you’re going to read some blogs simply because they are fun to read, and not because they will have a direct bearing on your business. Nothing wrong with that … unless you’re letting that entertainment time eat away at the hours you should be billable. No matter your blog reading style – RSS, email, whatever – you should keep the blogs that help you make money separate from the ones that don’t. And then be sure to put off reading the ones that don’t until you do the things that do make you money. [Click Here to Read More...]

2007-12-15 Saturday Links Folder

Posted December 15, 2007 in Uncategorized 3 Rockin' Comments »

Hi everyone, I hope you had a great week! Week-end is here, even though it’s not long there’s still more than enough time to read some blog posts and learn a thing or two.

First of all, the cool folks at FreelanceSwitch just released their first book titled ‘How To Be A Freelance Rockstar‘. I haven’t read it yet but I sure will really soon. It has to be awesome, we’re used to that from Collis, Cyan and the FSw folks! :)

Also, my buddy Armen released a premium WordPress theme. Usually people do that to make money, but Armen (you rock!) decided to give it all to charity. Check it out: The Bedrock Grid WordPress Theme For Charity

Ok, now on to the list:

• How to Make Awesome Business Cards at Home
• 25 Online Filing Systems for Web Workers
• Nothing I Write Will Ever Be Perfect
• Getting Customers: 5 Critical Conversion Points
• 5 Good Ways to Waste Time
• Time for a business performance review

[Click Here to Read More...]

Question From A Reader – Amount Of Available Work

Posted December 13, 2007 in Lifestyle 10 Rockin' Comments »

A reader of FreelanceFolder who shall remain unnamed (let’s call him Bob for the purpose of this post) sent me an e-mail a couple of days ago, seeking advice. Bob is a writer with a newspaper background.

Here’s what he wrote:

I am a corporate communications professional seriously considering the freelance world, and the only thing holding me back is concern about the amount of available work.

I asked myself these questions many many times before I decided to take the plunge in the freelance world, and I am sure many of you reading this post did too at some point.

I can answer Bob’s question right away: there is always more work available than you could possibly take. The thing is you have to find it, which is not always easy. [Click Here to Read More...]

How Do You Put Ideas Into Action?

Posted December 12, 2007 in Uncategorized 10 Rockin' Comments »

We all have ideas, some are crazy, some worth our time (and money). If it wasn’t for someone’s idea, I certainly wouldn’t be writing this post because there would be no computer, internet or WordPress.

But how exactly do ideas become reality? We all know for a fact that to make ideas happen it takes a lot more than just the idea itself. I myself have couple ideas that I am going to implement in near future and I will be following a guideline to make them a reality. Thought I would share it with you and see how you feel about these steps on making your ideas come to life. [Click Here to Read More...]

3 Questions That Can Instantly Boost Your Bottom Line

Posted December 10, 2007 in Business 4 Rockin' Comments »

Whether your business is small or large, the last thing you want to do is discover you’ve been spinning your wheels when you don’t have to. If you want to grow faster (or just have a saner time running your existing business), then you owe it to yourself to hold a regular strategy session at least once a week.

It’s Not As Hard As You Think

A good strategy session doesn’t have to take long – it could literally be a lunchtime appointment you set with yourself once a week to just stop, breathe, and think about how you want to tweak your way of working for the next seven days. Here are three food-for-thought questions you could ask yourself during your weekly strategy session: [Click Here to Read More...]

2007-12-09 – Sunday Links Folder

Posted December 9, 2007 in Uncategorized 3 Rockin' Comments »

Hello everyone, hope you had a great week! It’s again time to give yourself a rest, it’s the week-end after all. Take some time to read these posts, I really enjoyed reading them and I’m sure you’ll find them interesting.

You might learn a thing or two :)

Here we go:

• Freelancing for Dummies
• 10 Tax-saving Tips for Writers
• 99 Reasons why we should put an end to bullet lists
• The Landing Page Design Toolbox: 100 Tools, Tips and Resources
• Note to Developers, you need help. (part 1) (part 2)
• 40+ Resources for Photo Sharing
• Usability is a Conversation
• Creating Sexy Stylesheets

[Click Here to Read More...]

How High Is Your Loyalty Factor?

Posted December 8, 2007 in Marketing 3 Rockin' Comments »

How often do we stop to think, “How we can get more readers or surfers to purchase our products and services from our website?”

If you only just tweaked a couple of things in what you do, it is more than likely there will be an increase in the loyalty of your clients.

There are several ways to increase customer loyalty. Below are a few suggestions that may not be new to you. Taking some action will give you inspiration to take a close look at what you are doing now to improve your business for tomorrow.

Take a moment to think about how your loyalty behavior is based on your current favorite companies where you buy goods and services. What makes you loyal to them? What did they do to gain your loyalty? The secret in gaining loyal customers is not a secret at all, you simply do the same as those companies that have gained your loyalty. [Click Here to Read More...]

Time Management For Creative People

Posted December 7, 2007 in Productivity 6 Rockin' Comments »

About a week ago Mark McGuinness of Wishful Thinking released a free ebook on time-management for creative people appropriately subtitled ‘Manage the Mundane – Create the Extraordinary‘.

The content of this e-book is also available on BoDo (Business Of Design Online) as it was first published there (8 posts). But you can now download the free ebook, it’s nice to have as it’s filled with incredibly useful tips and resources. [Click Here to Read More...]

Writers: How Not To Suck At Marketing

Posted December 5, 2007 in Marketing, Writing 24 Rockin' Comments »

When I’m not giving marketing advice and using dirty words on my own website IttyBiz, I’m over at First Wives World being an editor and blog manager. I hire writers. A lot of them. While I’m sure many of our applicants are good writers, I’ll never know because I don’t get back to them. Learn from these writers. They screw up so you don’t have to.

1. Treat it like a real business.

I recently received an otherwise wonderful job application from a woman whose email address was prissymissy456[at]aol.com.

I am not joking. The only thing I changed was the number. Would you hire an accountant with an email address like that? A lawyer? Would we elect this woman to Congress?

Get a real email address. Answer your phone with your name. Do not let your kid record your voice mail greeting with “You’ve reached Sherri, Larry, Barry, and Kerry! You know what to do!” Get business cards, the kind you didn’t print off on your own ink jet. [Click Here to Read More...]