Monthly Archives: December 2008

Freelancing and Holidays

It’s definitely a lifestyle decision to be a freelancer. You’re trying as much as possible to have your future in your own hands, but the reality of it is unfortunately that your future (and your today) is firmly in the hands of your clients.  Unless of course you speak up. First things first Let’s not overlook the fact that many of the people who are hiring us don’t live (a) in our time zone and/or (b) in the same country as we live in.  They also may have different beliefs in terms of what holiday’s they find important as well meaning...

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Making yourself Marketable

It’s one thing to decide that you want to venture into freelancing, and it’s another thing entirely to make yourself marketable. One of the first things that you’ll quickly come to the realization of is that no matter how good you think you are at your given talent, there are another 50 (or more) people out there that believe themselves to be better than you are – and they can offer their service less expensively than you can. If you’re leaving the brick and mortar job market for a virtual job the f irst thing you need to do is make...

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What’s Your Niche?

You might think that because you’re a freelancer that it’s ok to offer a variety of  skills and technically speaking you’d be correct. However, there are some things that you need to be aware of: If I’m looking for a programmer (i.e. C Programming or other types) and your profile highlights what a great article writer you are, I’m not likely to even interview you. If your skills are complimentary skills: I.E. a writer who’s really good at proofreading for example, I want to know that in your cover letter.  The same thing would go for SEO marketing – if...

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Virtual Reality 2

We talked in our last post about giving yourself a break – but there’s a downside too. Too often when folks work at home they think they have far more time than they really do! What can happen? The biggest problem for many people is working at home can lead to a lot of wasted time. If you’ve made the decision to work at home you have to be totally committed to working a set number of hours every day – and once you do that you need to stick to it. Whether it’s 3 hours every morning...

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Virtual Reality 1 – Get real

No, this post isn’t going to be what you think it’s about! It’s more to do with managing your new ‘status’ as a freelancer, working alone, at home and often in your PJ’s. One of the biggest mistakes that many freelancers make is thinking they’re automatically going to do the ‘right thing’ and work 8 hour days and earn every possible dime that they can. It’s not going to happen without some discipline. That discipline might be a lot more complicated than you think it is … follow me…. Give yourself a break! Now it’s a pretty basic thing here – when...

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Don’t Waste My Time!

As a freelancer, our time is precious. As a buyer, we ask that you have the same respect for our time that you expect us to have for ours. I want to share a story about a job that I posted for this week. Let me start this off by saying this: I’ve been signed up with oDesk for more than a year and I’ve had very few instances when I’ve really complained about buyers because for the most part they are extremely helpful, cooperative and they are good to deal with. But this story is a ‘red flag’...

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