Freelancefolder

Freelance Marketing Inspiration from Famous Quotes

Posted January 21, 2011 in Inspiration

My computer’s monitor shuffles between motivating quotes every 15 minutes. A while ago, I found this to be quite powerful for inspiring me and getting me started on my work. However, having same old, same old quotes display on my monitor stops working after a couple of weeks, or months.

Every now and then I look around the web for new quotes to add to my personal kick in the “back” desktop wallpaper. Recently, during such a searching session I came upon two interesting, yet opposing quotes.

Both of the quotes that inspired me are from renowned men:

• Edwin Land, scientist and inventor
• Milan Kundera, Czech writer

In this post, I’ll examine the validity of these quotes and discuss how they relate to freelance marketing.

[Editor's Note: the opinions expressed here are those of the author and not the entire Freelance Folder community.]

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6 Reasons Why Freelancers Need to Exercise Self-Discipline

Posted January 13, 2011 in Inspiration

There’s no doubt that freelancers need many skills that non-freelancers don’t think about. It’s not enough to simply be a good writer, a good designer, a good web developer (or whatever your specialty is). The need to have these other skills is one of the things that makes freelancing so difficult.

Many blog posts have been written about a freelancer’s need to market one’s self, the need to manage one’s financial affairs, and the need to manage your time well. But, a crucial freelancing skill, self-discipline is rarely mentioned.

In this post, I’ll explain why self-discipline is important to freelancers and provide some examples of instances when self-discipline should be used.

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4 Lessons 2010 Has Taught This Freelancer

Posted January 2, 2011 in Freelance Stories, Inspiration

I’ve made about half as much money this year as I did in 2009. I certainly hope you’ve done better, but I know that plenty of us have done worse.

It’s been the Year of the Whipsaw for me. January and February were deathly silent. March through May I was busier than I’ve been in 15 years in business for myself. Things trailed off through the summer and have picked back up this autumn.

It’s also been the Year of the Assassinated Project. I can think of at least four meaty writing projects that made a splendid entrance onto my freelancing stage, then got John-Wilkes-Booth’ed before I knew it.

I haven’t taken it any more personally than in other years of assassinated projects, but it’s been more frustrating this year. That said, I feel that I’ve salvaged four lessons about freelancing from 2010:

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How to Make Sure Your New Year’s Resolutions Succeed

Posted December 27, 2010 in Inspiration, Productivity

It’s that time again. The New Year is upon us and as we look back at all we set out to accomplish in the past 365 days we also look forward and begin creating resolutions and goals for the year ahead.

Unfortunately, very often our resolutions list looks very similar to last year’s. In fact, although I don’t know the exact statistics, it is likely the percentage of New Year’s resolutions that are actually achieved each year is unbearably low.

Yet, each January we try and try again to get our lives back on course in whatever direction we want to head. After enough failed resolutions, it could be enough to keep us from creating any new lists at all! However, in this post I want to challenge and encourage you to not only make your resolutions for 2011, but also discover ways to achieve your goals this year and for years to come.

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How to Set and Reach Your Goals in 2011

Posted December 21, 2010 in Accountability, Inspiration

The New Year is the perfect time to take a step back and examine your business and plan some new goals.

While you should be working on your business throughout the year, nothing is more important than sitting down and taking a good hard look at where you are and where you want to be.

A year ago to the exact date (of when I wrote this article!) I wrote an article about setting goals for your business in 2010. In it, I described both how to set a goal and how to work towards reaching it. I’d now like to talk about what happens after that first year–were the goals met and what to do about them now.

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Six Awesome Gifts Especially for Your Favorite Freelance Developer

Posted December 9, 2010 in Inspiration, Lifestyle

It’s that wonderful time of year again–the holidays, Christmas and a time for giving. When shopping for your favorite developer (that’s me, right?), it might be tough trying to figure out what to get them. After all, it might seem like we developers have everything from iPads to Androids to big screen LCDs.

So let’s take a look at this season’s most desirable gifts–or, at least, the gifts I wouldn’t mind getting!

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The Importance of Thinking Outside the Box

Posted December 2, 2010 in Inspiration, Lifestyle

Rules. Standards. Doing things the way they’ve ‘always been done.’ There are good reasons to rely on and follow these things, but we often forget that they all originated somewhere. There is an inherent danger for a freelancer who only ever strives to maintain the status quo and stick to proven methods, and this choice can not only impact the freelancer’s future but also has the potential to affect countless others.

In this post, we will look at how stepping outside of the norm and doing things differently could be the best possible approach for modern day freelancers.

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How Experimenting Can Help You Become a Better Freelancer

Posted November 17, 2010 in Inspiration

In order to survive as a freelancer, you must always continue to improve yourself. If you fail to do that you can quickly and easily become one of those old IT guys we’re constantly making fun of–you know those that code in VB and believe tables are the latest and great thing from HTML.

I’ve talked about learning before by reading books and following blogs, but there’s an even better way to learn–by experimenting. As a front-end developer, my heart will always be with HTML and CSS, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try other things.

By forcing yourself to experiment with different kinds of design or development, you test yourself. You may end up learning something new to offer your clients, finding an area you like working in better, or even figuring out that your current position in the best one to be in.

Personally, I’ve been experimenting with languages. During the summer, I learned Objective C for the iPhone, and now I’m taking a break to learn jQuery. While I enjoyed Objective C some, I’m finding that learning advanced jQuery is a lot more exciting and fun–and it’s something I’ve already started using for my clients and in making custom plugins.

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Insider Secrets: Freelancing Shortcuts That Really Work

Posted November 15, 2010 in Getting Started, Inspiration

Let’s be honest: freelancing isn’t easy. It’s not that it’s actually hard to be a freelancer or do the work… it’s the getting started, getting set up, getting clients, and getting a solid business foundation for sustainable growth that complicates everything.

There’s a lot more to freelancing than just… well, freelancing.

So I’ve put together an insider guide to my favorite freelancing shortcuts that really work. Whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been freelancing for a while, I guarantee each of them will change your business––for the better.

Oh, and make life a helluvalot less complicated.

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