Freelancefolder

Seven Days of Freelancing Tips

Posted July 9, 2010 in Getting Started, Productivity

How quickly can you improve your freelancing business?

As freelancers, we tend to think that improving our business is a huge effort that will eat up tons of time that we could be using to work on paid projects for clients. As a result, a lot of things that we should do to help ourselves and improve our freelancing business never get done.

It’s true that if you set out to do every single thing (or even most things) that you could possibly do to improve your business at once it could take quite a long time. But, I’m a big believer in breaking things down into small, manageable chunks.

So, how quickly can you improve your freelancing business?

Can you spend a few minutes to an hour on improvements every day for a week? In this post, I’ll list seven simple tips to help you improve your freelancing business. These tasks will be manageable because you can do one task each day.

[Click Here to Read More...]

A Guide to Creating Your Own Projects

Posted July 1, 2010 in Getting Started, How-To

Client work is great, but it’s not always the kind of work you really enjoy. While you can pick and choose your clients and projects, client projects are never really as exciting as creating your own.

There are several benefits to doing your own projects:

• Make some extra money
• Create something awesome for your portfolio that a client hasn’t butchered
• Learn some new techniques or skills
• Stay interested in and motivated in what you do everyday

The best benefit of all of these is the potential to make money. While additional income is not guaranteed, side projects can bring in much needed residual income during slow periods.

So how do you get started with making your own projects?

[Click Here to Read More...]

How Should Freelance Writers Determine What Price to Charge?

Posted June 29, 2010 in Getting Started, How-To

One of the hardest things that any freelancer has to do is determine what to charge for his or her services.

If you’re a freelance writer (or if you hire freelance writers), then you may have a difficult time determining what the market price for writing is. Of course, your lowballing client would have you believe that nearly all writers work for practically nothing all–but, don’t you believe them.

A time-honored method of determining rates is to look at the averages of what other writers charge. When setting your freelance writing rates it’s also important to consider the amount that you need to earn for your business to stay afloat. In this post, I’ll link to some surveys that provide average writing rates and salaries. I’ll also look at some expenses that most freelancers have.

[Click Here to Read More...]

The Common Sense Post on Building a Freelance Business

Posted June 6, 2010 in Business, Getting Started

New freelancers who have never owned a business before often get overwhelmed after a short while. That’s because there’s much more to running a web design business than designing or to running a writing business than writing.

In short, there’s a business aspect to freelancing that most of us aren’t used to. Even the best designers and programmers often don’t understand some basic business principles when they start. That’s understandable, because running a business is usually not the primary focus of a freelancer. Most of us became freelancers because we love what we do, whether it be writing, programming, or designing.

However, if a freelance business is to succeed eventually the freelancer must learn some basic principles. To an experienced businessperson, these principles may seem like common sense. For that reason, these principles are often overlooked in articles and blog posts.

Here at Freelance Folder we’re not going to overlook these so-called common sense principles. We don’t want anyone to fail at their freelance business. That’s why we’ve created this common sense post on building your freelance business for new freelancers or for those who need a refresher.

[Click Here to Read More...]