Should a freelancer aim to have passive income and active income?

Weekly Newsletter for Freelancers: Here is the latest newsletter of this week starting on 12th of December 2017.

Many freelancers of varying skill sets have the ability to earn passive income as well as getting paid for their skills. There can be a wide variation in freelancing income and passive income mixes.

Darren Rowse who is a blogger, makes money from his blog by having a range of sources of passive income that supplement his active skills of being a writer. You can read Darren’s blog and visit his website here to reveal some passive income ideas that match with your skills.

There is a broad spectrum of freelancing skills being offered over the internet. Amazon Web Services freelancers are in demand and you can read about what they do and why they are in demand here.

When they have sufficient experience and clients they can develop training courses to teach others e.g. by offering courses on Udemy which you can see an example here.

I know that the above freelancers have been extremely successful, but for the rest of us, their strategy can also apply. Here are two articles that argue the case for us aiming to have both active and passive income goals. The passive income goal for most of us should be secondary:

Kevin Ocasio from Listiller.com has written Is Making The Jump From Freelancing To Passive Income Earning Possible? Which you can read here.
Jessica Thiefels from Due.com has written How to become a more valuable freelancer while making passive income which you can read here.

How did Darren Rowse blog his way to success? You can read the preview of ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income 3rd Edition by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett below.

This is a Preview of ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income 3rd Edition by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett:

An update of one of the bestselling blogging books, written by two of the world’s most successful bloggers. There’s a reason why the first two editions of this book have sold thousands of copies worldwide. Written by two of the world’s most successful bloggers, it’s one of the clearest books out there on how to earn an income from your blog. This new edition gets you up to date on the very latest changes that affect the blogging-for-business landscape. Featuring new material on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn; plus new ways and tools to grow your audience and expand your business beyond your blog, this professional blogger’s bible is better than ever.

Helps novices choose a blog topic, analyze the market, set up a blog, promote it, and earn revenue,
Gives aspiring bloggers proven techniques and the tools they need to succeed in building a business from their blogs,
Reveals 20 key ingredients for a successful blog post,
Offers solid, step-by-step instruction on how bloggers actually make money, why niches matter, how to use essential blogging tools and take advantage of social media and content aggregators, how to optimize your advertising, and much more,
Includes techniques for attracting and growing an audience and how to mine new business opportunities beyond your blog.

Written by two fulltime professional bloggers, this exciting, updated edition of ProBlogger tells you exactly how to launch and maintain a blog that makes money.

You can obtain a copy of the book from Amazon by clicking on the icon or the link below it.

If the icon link fails then click here.

Amazon Disclosure: The links used are affiliate links. By buying through the links I may receive a commission for the sale. This has no effect on the price for you.

Motivational Tip Of The Week

Motivate Yourself!

“Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a
healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual
activity.” – John F. Kennedy

Should A Freelancer Be Motivated To Become Fit?

Do you take a morning walk before settling to your daily work routine? It is easy to say why to bother about a fitness routine. However, there is a financial reason that you should bother.

It is called productivity! Harvard Business Review conducted a study of the impact of fitness on productivity and they found that these areas were impacted by increasing your fitness:

Sharper memory
Improved concentration
Prolonged mental stamina
Faster learning
Lower stress
Enhanced creativity

The list seems as though it had freelancers in mind because they tick all the boxes that freelancers must have. Ron Friedman wrote Regular exercise is part of your job for the Harvard Business Review which you can read here.

The Freelancer.com community which has over 26 million users knows a lot about freelancers. F.L. Julls has written Fitness and Freelancing: Staying Healthy When you’re a Freelancer for their community blog and you can read her article here.

This quote is right on the money for freelancers and fitness:

“Your health is an investment, not an expense!” – Source:
Topsecretcoaching.com

Productivity and Budget Tip of the Week

Do You Know What An Idea Budget Is?

Freelancers who can operate on one idea at a time are rare! It can be attributed to the fact that freelancers, to be successful, must be self-starters and not wait to be told what to do and when to do it.

This means that a freelancer always has to be on the lookout for ideas and opportunities to make money and for getting new gigs. It is a part of being a successful freelancer.

However, it can be against good management practice of focusing on one thing at a time. This quote by Steve Jobs is right on the money:

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are.”

Freelancers who can switch off their brain and stop seeing opportunities can consider themselves very lucky. I am not one of those fortunate few and have a system to manage ideas and opportunities as they arrive.

James Chartrand has written Battle Productivity Brain Drain With an Idea Budget for Copyblogger.com and you can read it here. I have a similar plan for managing ideas so that I don’t get swamped.

Work-Life Balance Tip of the Week

Should You Start A Co-Working Space If You Are A Freelancer?

If your parents can’t help you look after the kids because they want to go on an extended overseas trip and you are frantically busy with gigs, what do you do? If you read last week’s newsletter, you would know that we featured Would co-working with kids work for you?

However, before you start thinking that this could be a solution for you it is important to do some research. We have had a look at the articles that are available for you. The first article is by Peter Gasca who has written 7 Tips for Creating Your Own Co-working Space for Entrepreneur.com which you can read here.

Karly Nimmo has written How to Avoid Disaster When Starting a Co-working Space. Karly has written this article to share her experiences from starting The Office Collective (OC) in Byron Bay, Australia. Karly still believes in the concept of co-working spaces and has shared her experiences so that others who try it will not make the same mistakes that she did. Karly’s article appears in DeskMag.com and you can read it here.

If you read these articles and find that you are still keen on the idea and would like to see what others have done, we have found this list of The Top 10 Co-working Space Directories which you can visit and explore here.

Financial Tips of the Week

Do You Know How To Value And Keep Your Existing Clients?

Knowing how to value and improve your work as a freelancer is important because it is linked to keeping your existing clients. It is well known that getting a new client costs you more than retaining an existing client.

The reason is simple: looking for new clients takes time which equates to increased costs because you are not being paid while working on business development. If you get the pricing for your work correct and give added value, it is a far more effective strategy. This approach involves two things:

pricing your work correctly, and
adding value to your work.

Fred Schebesta has written How to Price Your Freelance Skills like a Pro for the Upwork.com blog. Fred explains why the easiest way to increase profit is to charge more. You can read Fred’s article here.

It is about how to increase the value of your freelancing services that you offer to your clients as well as the prices for your services. It is a matter of managing the perception by the clients as to the value of your services.

Brian Honigman has written 10 Ways to Make Customers Fall in Love with Your Business. Brian has made the valid point that “The #1 reason for customer attrition is dissatisfaction with customer service.” Brian’s article appears in the Kissmetrics.com blog and you can read it here.

Amazon Associates Website Case Study

The history of the Case Study can be read at links to the previous newsletter issues:

Newsletter of 30/10/2017 entitled The Importance of Freelancers Subcontracting And Building Teams.
Newsletter of 07/11/2017 entitled Freelancers Home Office Security Requires Business Security.
Newsletter of 21/11/2017 entitled Having Trouble Staying Focused When Working from Home?

The research work regarding the customer service, links and articles are continuing and the current results can be seen here:

Freelancers And Cyber Security

We have gained approval from Robert Siciliano to bring you extracts from his books related to cyber security for freelancers. Robert Siciliano is an identity theft expert and consultant.

He also gives self defense and personal safety seminars. Robert provides safety and identity theft fraud prevention tips and advice on multimedia channels in the United States. We have his approval to bring you weekly extracts from his books: