Freelancefolder

How To Fix The Mistakes You Made In 2007

Posted December 3, 2007 in Productivity 10 Rockin' Comments »

Nobody’s perfect, and we’ve all made our share of business-building mistakes in 2007. But your results come from your daily habits, and if you don’t want to make the same mistakes in 2008, you need to have a plan to change the right habits, right from the start. Here’s how kick it all off.

Step #1: Get Clear On What You Should Have Done Differently

Take five minutes (ten max) to sit down with pen and paper and reflect how you ran your business in 2007. What were the key things that held back your business? Was it a personal issue like procrastination or lack of focus? Or was it a more strategic failing such as not spending the time to improve a neglected segment of your business or marketing? Just ask yourself, “what issues sting the most,”and your gut will tell you what you need to know. [Click here to read more →]

How To Meet Deadlines And Boost Performance

Posted November 21, 2007 in Productivity 7 Rockin' Comments »

Although some people think that deadlines kill creativity and hamper productivity, they can really help you streamline your energies and focus on the work at hand, especially when you work as a freelancer and have multiple projects to handle.

If you don’t set deadlines for your individual projects you will soon lose track of time and will never be able to deliver the projects on time to your clients, creating a bad professional reputation in the process.

If you want to be taken seriously by your past, present, and future clients, you have to take your deadlines seriously and respect them; when you respect your deadlines it means you respect your client’s time and also your own time.

But following deadlines can sometimes prove to be a really difficult task and this happens more often when you work on your own and there is nobody to supervise you or nag you in case you delay your work. [Click here to read more →]

3 Painful Ways You Lose Money Every Month

Posted November 12, 2007 in Productivity 19 Rockin' Comments »

When you’re running your own business, you’re bound to be paying monthly fees for services that are supposed to be making you money.

But like so many gym memberships, the money’s just flowing out of your coffers without a whole lot of payoff. Read on and see if these three money mistakes are draining you dry (and find out how to stop the bleeding).

Mistake #1: Not using something you’re already paying for.

Just like those unused gym memberships, you may have services you’re paying a monthly fee on - but not even using. Or you may have forked out hundreds (thousands?) for a product that was supposed to turn your business around … but it’s still sitting on your shelf. And you most certainly have those books on your coffee table that were intended to teach you something profitable. You keep telling yourself you’ll “get around to using it,” but every month you’ve delayed, it’s just money down the drain. [Click here to read more →]

3 “Aren’t-I-Smart” Lies That Kill Your Profits

Posted November 5, 2007 in Productivity 36 Rockin' Comments »

When it comes to lying, there’s nobody more willing to believe us than… well, us. When we’re not doing the best things to move our business forward, we tell ourselves it’s okay, we’re doing great, it’s not that bad… but at the end of the day all that rationalization isn’t building revenue and bagging new customers.

Here’s how to recognize where we’re sweet-talking our way past out problems… and how to fix them for good. [Click here to read more →]

Improve Your Professional Productivity - Get Rid Of Distractions

Posted October 30, 2007 in Productivity 9 Rockin' Comments »

Do you often feel that you are doing everything under the sun but the actual work? You know, the activity that gets you money? Distractions can be a big problem when you work on your own: although you have deadlines and commitments there is nobody breathing down your neck to see what you are actually doing.

You never realize when you stop your work and start playing an online game, chatting with someone you know, reading “interesting” stuff on various blogs and leaving prodigal comments, conversing over the phone, discussing politics with your spouse, or doing any of those hundred things that help you spend your time but don’t give you any real return.

I know a client who until a couple of years ago was running his online business from his basement (now he has an office); most of the time when his wife thought that he was promoting his work or processing client-queries he was playing online games. And he knew he shouldn’t be doing that because he repeatedly used to confess to me whenever we interacted while doing work. [Click here to read more →]

The Balance Between Handling Business Queries vs. Doing The Actual Work

Posted October 17, 2007 in Productivity 6 Rockin' Comments »

Replying to business queries is an inveterate part of your freelance life. In most cases you don’t have a secretary to handle your business related correspondences.

Whether it’s pitching for a new project or replying to prospective clients who are interested in hiring you, you constantly need to send emails. This becomes a repetitive and time-consuming exercise if you work on smaller projects, and almost every day you handle new projects.

For instance, I am a website content writer; sometimes a project constitutes of just one page and sometimes it contains many pages of well-researched content. Working on smaller projects means in a single day I get many queries through my website and I have to reply to all of them and sometimes multiple times because the clients have many questions even if they want just one page written. [Click here to read more →]