August 08, 2017
Weekly Newsletter for Freelancers
Are you a Feast or Famine Freelancer?
When I was a financial planner one of the key questions that was always asked of a client was: where is your emergency money fund? It did not matter whether you were a retiree, young single or a family with dependent children. The question is of critical importance at every stage of life.
However, nowadays with the very high level of debt that many families have, there is quite often no emergency fund other than a credit card and more debt. As a freelancer, it is important that you address this question early in your career because you are not getting a regular wage or salary paid into your account.
Beyond the emergency fund issue, there is the need to look at the continuity of your work flow so that you do have a regular flow of quality gigs. It is from this source that you can build a regular income and, in due course, an emergency fund for unexpected illnesses that require your financial help, whether for yourself or a family member.
We have researched this issue to help you with developing a strategy to start down the path of solving the feast or famine problem. Justine Clay has written an article for the Freelancers Union Blog called 6 Ways to Beat the Feast or Famine Cycle for Good. I like the title! Justine also provides a link to her free book: How to Find High-Quality Clients and Get Paid What You’re Worth. You can read Justine’s article by clicking here.
Motivate Yourself!
“A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat,
determination and hard work.” — Colin Powell
How to Become a Self-Employed Freelance Specialist or Solopreneur Even if You Have No Idea How to Get Started?
For over 5 years I’ve used this website to help folks like you learn how to develop their skills, products or services and to identify where in the marketplace to get paid for them. I show you how to navigate the pitfalls that stop most people from realizing their dream of becoming self-employed freelance professionals or solopreneurs.
I understand what’s been stopping you. I have felt the doubts and worries and then discovered how to conquer them.
- You’re wondering if you have the time to change your work life,
- You’re afraid others won’t pay you what you’re worth,
- You’re battling the inner voice that says, “Maybe I’m not good enough…”
I’m here to say,
“Yes! You’re good enough.”
This publication will help you because freelancers have contributed articles, skills and their knowledge to it from various countries from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, United States and Denmark to mention just a few. If you want to know what is inside the cover of this book you can check it out by clicking here.
Productivity Tip Of The Week
Enhance Your Skills to Improve Your Productivity!
What plans have you made to improve your skills so that you can earn more money? It is a tough question that all freelancers need to keep in mind because the gig market in constantly changing. I am not just talking about passive income like monetizing your blog with Adsense or advertising Amazon products and services as an Amazon Associate.
What I am talking about is the techniques that will immediately diversify your freelance career. Tristan Kneschke has written about six of these techniques in his article with the Freelancers Union Blog. You can read Tristan’s article from here.
Maita Piedra from the Freelancer.com Community Blog has looked at what learning websites you can use to supercharge your freelancing skills. You can read Maita’s article here.
This quote is very relevant to self-development:
“In order to answer the question “Where am I going?” engage
in self-development, self-education and development of will
and firmness” Sunday Adelaja
Work-Life Balance Tip Of The Week
Have You Mastered The Work Life Balance Role of Being a Work at Home Mom or Dad?
It does not matter whether you are a work at home Mom or Dad or even if both parents work at home, getting the work-life balance right matters. Being parents and helping your children develop and grow is, for most of us, a once in a lifetime experience for a relatively short period of one’s life.
However, there are clear tips on how to go about organizing your life
so that family life and work interact easily and conflict is avoided. Clashes will happen and compromise will be necessary.
“Balance is not something you find, it’s something you create” –
Jana Kingsford (UNJUGGLED: Lessons from a Decade of
Blending Business, Babies, Balance and Big Dreams)
If you would like to read more of Jana Kingsford book you can read the review by clicking here.
Financial Tip Of The Week
Do You Think Artificial Intelligence Can Help Cut Your Costs?
To freelancers, time is money. Reduce your time on production and you cut your costs. Three years ago, as a freelancer, if someone had said to you that you would be using artificial intelligence to help reduce your costs of running your business, you would have laughed at them. Now, that has come to pass. It’s true! Mike Allton of the Solo Build It! blog has written an article entitled
How AI Is Being Used to Make Solopreneurs More Successful.
One of the main issues of running a website, blog or any online marketing content is being able to manage the search engine optimization for your content. For the vast majority of freelancers working online, this is not news as they are totally familiar with keywords and Google algorithms. This takes up a lot of time, creative thought and therefore money to run your content correctly so that it produces traffic, leads, and sales.
I suppose that many freelancers who work online would think that creativity and the generation of keywords and the monitoring of them would be impossible work to be taken over or supplemented by artificial intelligence. Mike explains that this is not the case and freelance solopreneurs can benefit a lot.
This quote is very relevant to this article:
“Artificial intelligence would be the ultimate version of Google:
the ultimate search engine that would understand everything
on the web. It would understand exactly what you wanted, and
it would give you the right thing. We’re nowhere near doing
that now. However, we can get incrementally closer to that,
and that is basically what we work on.” Larry Page.
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
