Freelancefolder

10 Ways to Green Your Home Office

Posted December 3, 2009 in How-To, Lifestyle 39 Rockin' Comments »

If you’re a freelancer who works at home full time or most of the time, give yourself a pat on the back. You’re doing the planet a great service. By working at home you’re reducing the use of fuels and limiting the amount of pollution generated by modern means of transportation.

However, there is still a lot more you can do to help protect the environment. In this post, we’ll show you ten ways to make your home office more environmentally friendly and an even better place to work.

Let’s start by reviewing the three Rs of eco-friendliness.

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10 Ways To Increase Traffic By Changing Your Code

Posted December 1, 2009 in How-To, Programming 53 Rockin' Comments »

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a very complicated science. While no one knows exactly how Google ranks websites, we do have a lot of proven techniques.

Good SEO depends on several factors in your website, but when you usually think of SEO, you probably think of dealing with content and inward links. But did you know that there are several ways to improve your traffic and SEO by changing your code? Increasing traffic and rankings in code depends on three factors:

• Semantics – It’s been debated, but it seems Google gives higher rankings to validated sites, plus there’s less chance for major errors that can cause browser rendering or download issues that could turn visitors off.
• Download times – Users don’t leave your site because it’s taking 20 minutes to download-plus it’s easier for search engines to spider.
• Keywords – Just like regular SEO, it’s important to get those pertinent keywords into your code for good rankings.

Let’s take a look at how you can use all three of these to easily improve your site’s code, traffic and even your SEO rankings.

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Five Freelance Branding Tips You Can Use Right Now

Posted November 25, 2009 in How-To, Marketing 30 Rockin' Comments »

Can you control what others think of your freelancing business? Do you know how to motivate potential buyers? Have you built customer loyalty?

While these tasks may seem daunting or even impossible, by properly branding your freelance business you can accomplish all of the objectives listed above and more. Good branding effectively communicates what your business is about, motivates buyers, and builds customer loyalty.

In this post, we will introduce you to the concept of branding. We will also identify five quick methods that you can apply right away to improve your brand. Finally, we’ll share some thoughts about branding that you might not have realized before.

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25 Blogs To Help You Stay Current With Social Media

Posted November 24, 2009 in How-To, Tools/Resources 107 Rockin' Comments »

Most of us agree that social media is valuable — but keeping up with the latest trends can be difficult given the speed at which social media is growing and changing.

The big sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are easy to folllow, but there are many others that often get ignored such as Docstoc, Scribd, Slideshare. With all the different platforms, it’s hard to be able to keep up with everything that is new.

In this post we’ve listed 25 of the best social media blogs out there. Read through some of these blogs and you’ll quickly find yourself getting an edge in the social media world.

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How to Become a Freelance Web Developer: A Six Month Plan

Posted November 17, 2009 in Getting Started, How-To 54 Rockin' Comments »

Nearly every day somebody asks me about how I got started as a freelance developer. Many people recognize that they would like to branch off into freelancing, but most don’t know where to begin. It’s this fear and uncertainty that keeps them from taking the plunge.

Challenges like how to find clients, what to do about money, and how to set up your own site can be overwhelming at first — but the end result of having a successful freelance business is easily worthwhile. In order to help make your life easier, I’ve set up a simple month-by-month plan that you can follow to eventually achieve your dream of becoming a freelance developer.

This calendar starts six months ahead of time, but you can modify it however you need to fit your situation. Your first step towards freelancing is to choose the specific date you’ll start freelancing.

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The Facebook Fan Page Recipe — 0 to 1000 Fans In 35 Days

Posted November 16, 2009 in How-To, Social Media 41 Rockin' Comments »

If you are a regular Freelance Folder reader, then you already know we recently created a Facebook fan page for Freelance Folder. Our fan page has been live since October 6th, 2009 — and on November 10th, about 35 days later, we reached the one thousand fan milestone. In this post we’ll show you how we did it (and how you can do it too).

Before I share some of the things we did to grow the fan page at such a rapid pace, the FreelanceFolder team would like to thank all of our readers for your support. The biggest reason for our success on Facebook is your interest and participation, and we definitely couldn’t have done it without you — Thanks!

Okay, let’s start with a quick guide to creating fan pages for anyone who doesn’t already know how, and then we’ll move on to some of the more growth-oriented stuff.

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How Freelance Businesses Can Measure Social Media Results

Posted November 13, 2009 in How-To, Social Media 21 Rockin' Comments »

There’s no question about whether or not freelancers are using social media. Log onto just about any social media platform and you’ll find at least a few freelancers.

A very real question that many freelancers ask is whether all this social media involvement really pays off for the average freelancer. While some freelancers are strong advocates of social media usage, other freelancers view it as just another waste of time.

Until now, there hasn’t really been a good way for freelancers to measure social media results. Measurement techniques that work for larger companies aren’t really practical for freelancers. In this post, we’ll give you some practical ways that you can use to discover how much your freelance business benefits from your social media participation.

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The Freelancer’s Guide to Getting Started on LinkedIn

Posted November 10, 2009 in How-To, Social Media 41 Rockin' Comments »

LinkedIn is a good tool for freelancers because it provides instant access to employers, clients, and colleagues. Maintaining these contacts is important because referrals are one of the top ways to get new freelancing projects.

By now, many freelancers understand the opportunities that social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook can provide. Most have already set up an account with one, or both, of these popular social media tools. What they may have overlooked is the value of having a LinkedIn account.

While some freelancers are already actively using LinkedIn, many others may be unfamiliar with this social media tool. Today, we’ll be looking at the basics of getting started with LinkedIn.

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3 Fail-Proof Rules for Creating a Viral Post

Posted November 4, 2009 in How-To, Marketing 23 Rockin' Comments »

If you want to be successful on the web, you need an audience. This is true whether you are a designer, writer, developer or a freelancer in any other field. Without an audience, success is hard to come by.

Most freelancers maintain a blog that they use for promotional purposes. A writer writes articles consistently to showcase his/her writing skills, a designer showcases his designs, and so on and so forth.

In this article, we will explore three practical ways that you can create content and titles that are bound to take off. If you can make your blog more popular, more freelance work is right around the corner. Let’s begin.

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