Freelancefolder

6 Great Ways to Use Email Marketing to Find More Work

Posted March 31, 2011 in How-To, Marketing

The revolution of telecommuting has created an entire new breed of worker: the techno-freelancer. If you’re a computer-enabled pro that falls under this umbrella (and who doesn’t nowadays) you’re no doubt familiar with the challenge of finding new opportunities, making decent money, and standing out in an ocean of your freelancer peers.

But even though social media and blogging are reliable and cheap promotional tools that seem tailor-made for the freelance business, email marketing has been unfairly been pegged as an old and ineffective medium for padding your portfolio.

If you’re not sure how an email newsletter fits into your marketing scheme, invite both frequent and infrequent clients to your mailing list, create a template, and put the types of content listed in this post into your monthly updates. You will see for yourself how email marketing can help you find freelancing work.

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Do You Have the One Crucial Skillset All Freelancers Need?

Posted March 30, 2011 in Getting Clients

We’ve talked a lot about the importance of building your freelancing skillset here on Freelance Folder. It makes sense that to be successful as a freelancer you should be good at what you do.

If you’re a freelance designer, you should be very good at design. If you’re a freelance programmer you should be very good at programming. If you’re a freelance writer, you’d better be good at writing. If you’re a freelance photographer, you should be good at taking pictures. And so on.

However, there’s one skill that’s crucial to freelancers, but rarely talked about. Can you guess what that skill is?

In this post, I’ll identify that crucial skill and explain why it’s so important.

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Should You Provide a Guarantee for Your Freelancing Work?

Posted March 29, 2011 in Managing Clients

As a marketing consultant, I advise my clients to always provide a money-back guarantee. It’s a proven way to increase sales without a lot of cost or risk.

Would I give the same advice to my fellow freelancers?

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Freelance Finances – What to Do with All that Money

Posted March 28, 2011 in Accounting/Bookkeeping

Being a successful freelancer means you have the ability to earn a lot more money than you ever could with a full-time job.

Therefore, it’s very important that you have a good financial head on your shoulders. Otherwise, you could end up broke, in debt, or even lose your business.

It’s quite easy to forget about sticking to a budget or about saving when you’re making lots of money, but are you prepared for an emergency? Are you really prepared?

What if you’re out of work for six months because of being ill? What if your work dries up?

Here’s my five-step plan for being smart with your money, making the most of it–and finally–enjoying it!

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How to Manage Your Phone Problem & Still Get Work Done

Posted March 27, 2011 in Managing Clients, Tools/Resources

About a year ago I decided to take my Web design skills and go freelance. I liked the company I worked for, but I (somewhat naively) believed that working on my own would mean I could live life a little more independently. Of course, anyone who has started their own business knows that’s never how it works out. In fact, if you want to be successful with your own company, it will pretty much be a 24/7 job.

That’s not to say it isn’t rewarding, of course. There’s something fundamentally exciting about every project I finish and every new client I sign on.

After a year, though, it was time to look into some other options to make my business run a little smoother and free up some time for life outside of a development environment.

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How to Make the Most of Google Alerts

Posted March 25, 2011 in How-To, Productivity

As a freelancer, your business revolves around the online world. From working with online companies to keeping up with the latest trends, you would likely be lost without the assistance of online searches. However, while you may depend on internet searches to remain a successful freelancer, you may not be using searches in the best or most efficient manner.

Specifically if you haven’t yet harnessed the power of Google Alerts, you’re missing out on many benefits such as better results and reduced search time. The following are five ways Google Alerts can benefit your freelance business and why you should begin using them today.

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Freelance Lessons Learned–Make Your Own Music

Posted March 24, 2011 in Freelance Stories, Inspiration

Before I became a full-time freelancer, I’d imagine my future career and split it into two phases:

• Pre-freelance (when I lacked clarity and direction)
• Post-freelance (which would be full of purpose and perfection)

The reality was much different. Instead of leaving one life behind, I found that lessons from my previous career helped me in my new one. The most helpful lessons came from a surprising source–my job as a belly dancing teacher.

Before I was a writer (okay, I’ve always been a writer, but before I realized I could make a living off of it) I taught belly dance classes three days a week at my college. It wasn’t something I’d planned. I’d started out as a student and my teacher decided to mentor me to take over her role. For months I shadowed her classes, then worked up to teaching the warm up. The day I finally got my own class, I showed up with lesson plans, ready to take the class by storm…only to learn that I’d forgotten all my music.

In this post, I’ll explain how I handled this problem and explain what it has to do with freelancing.

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Book Review: The Wealthy Freelancer

Posted March 23, 2011 in Tools/Resources

The Wealthy Freelancer: 12 Secrets to a Great Income and an Enviable Lifestyle is one of the most important books published in 2010 specifically for freelancers.

Written by the three founders of the blog by the same name, The Wealthy Freelancer promises to show freelancers “how to get the clients, income, and lifestyle you deserve.”

The authors are all veteran freelancers with successful businesses as copywriters, marketing consultants, speakers, coaches and authors. Ed Gandia, a frequent guest writer here at Freelance Folder, specializes in transitioning from a full-time job to freelancing.

Pete Savage helps freelancers achieve their potential. Steve Slaunwhite runs the ForCopywritersOnly.com blog and leads seminars and training sessions for writers and copywriters.

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What to Do When You Have too Much Work

Posted March 22, 2011 in Lifestyle, Managing Clients

We all strive to be there–we want to have so much work we never really have to advertise or cold call or do much marketing ever again. We want enough clients so that we can pick and choose the best ones with the best projects. But what happens when you actually make it there?

Personally, I have a tendency to overschedule myself–which is normally a good thing because clients usually take longer than they think they will to get the project to me. However, every so often it seems everyone does decide to start their projects on time and I end up working 15 hour days with little sleep.

No one likes working overtime, least of all a freelancer, so what do we do when we have too much work? How do we get our schedules on track?

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