Freelancing and More! » Experiences
Saturday Blogging
It’s Saturday and if you are like most freelancers, you are probably working versus spending time with your family. There are some things that you have to be careful of – don’t burn yourself out. If you don’t take time to spend with friends and family, your freelancing could wind up being a source of additional stress. Taking time off is hard to do when you have customers who are clamoring for … Read entire article »
Filed under: Experiences
Maximizing Freelancing Earnings
If you are a freelancing professional, there are several ways you can maximize your earnings. This is especially true if you are a freelance writer. Because there are so many tools available, freelance writers are many unique position to not only promote themselves, but to promote work that is rightfully theirs. For instance, many freelance writers maintain their own personal blogs. For these freelance writers, the ability to monetize their blogs with programs such as … Read entire article »
Filed under: Experiences
Negotiating additional work with clients
What is it about some clients that makes them think a freelance writer should work for peanuts, and take on responsibilities way beyond the scope of the assignment? Sad to say, but in most cases, it’s us. The freelance writers, who fail to stipulate the terms of our agreement properly before beginning work. We’re also often all too eager to please, and stretch the boundaries of what we will and won’t do just to keep the client happy. Your clients, understandably, want to keep their costs down. You, on the other hand need to maintain a livable working wage. Striking the balance between providing good quality content and meeting clients’ expectations, and not being taken for a ride can be a challenge, to say the least. Clients will almost always come up with … Read entire article »
Filed under: Experiences, Gail Seymour, Helpful Hints
Freelancing – Conflicts Happen
One of the advantages of freelancing is that you are no longer dealing with office politics. Or, are you? In fact, in the freelancing world, you may be dealing with more conflicts than you might have imagined. If you are active on message boards, forums, even social networks, the possibility of conflict exists. More than likely feelings erupt, things are said that are inappropriate and tempers flare. Chances are that you have faced some sort of … Read entire article »
Filed under: Experiences
Why oDesk
I have heard a lot of comments about various work at home opportunities through blogs that I’ve read, Yahoo Answers, and any other numbers of locations (including Helium) and many of them either (a) are negative about oDesk (more about this later) or don’t refer to them at all as a source of potential work. First I’d like to address some of the negative things I have heard/read about oDesk. 1. My work is monitored – I … Read entire article »
Filed under: Experiences
Portfolio Chatter
A while back we discussed building up and displaying your portfolio. Many of you may have noticed that my ‘portfolio’ pages have disappeared from this site. There’s a reason for that. One of my clients complained because I linked his items here on my blog and I included work on the site. Make sure before you add a persons work to your portfolio they don’t have issues or restrictions that you need to adhere to as it could create issues for you. I’ve removed my portfolio completely and am using only generic links on my oDesk portfolio since this happened. Another item: I also had an instance where an article that I wrote for a client was posted on a very active blog and I was assigned the ‘by line’ as the … Read entire article »
Filed under: Experiences
Freelance Rates
There always seems to be a lot of discussion about rates that a freelance writer can or should charge. For most of us, starting out meant our rates were lower than we might like but once we gain momentum we often increase our rates incrementally based on (a) experience; (b) our portfolio and (c) the market. How much is too little It’s pretty difficult to set a ‘low end’ for your freelance writing based on the experience of others. I am of the opinion that each freelance writer offers a different set of skills and in addition they offer different levels of experience. As a ‘first timer’ I took some incredibly low paying jobs – in fact I remember one job where I wrote 100 articles on a topic I literally knew nothing … Read entire article »
Filed under: Experiences
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