March 14, 2017
Weekly Newsletter for Freelancers
Freelancers Contract Matter and Can Be Critical in Obtaining Payment.
It does not matter what type of freelancer you are, from writer, graphic designer, coder, programmer or virtual reality creator – payment matters! If you do not use a platform and escrow account to guarantee payment you are taking a risk of incurring a bad debt which goes straight to your bottom line as a profit reduction on what you thought was going a valid bill to a debtor in payment for your skills. Let alone the angst and loss of trust of your fellow human beings!
In the press release by the Freelancers Union and AND CO when they jointly introduced the customizeable contract it was stated that 55 million Americans earn income through some form of freelance work. The freelancers contributed 1 trillion dollars to the U.S. economy.
Sara Horowitz, the CEO of the Freelancers Union launched the organization in 2001. You can read her article about the contract here.
It costs nothing to join the union. I am a member.
Motivate Yourself!
“Washington State has a strong tradition of a positive relationship
– positive working relationship between labor and management,
whether in the private sector or the public sector. It needs to continue to
be that way.” — Rob McKenna
At What Stage Are You at in Mindset Evolution in Client Relationship.
Freelancing can be likened to evolution in your relationship with clients. When you are starting out you are glad to get a gig and to be able to earn some money, possibly as a sideline to your main job where you are a 9 to 5 employee. In this situation you are likely to be taking orders and your customer will be trying to get you to reduce your price. However, as you get more experienced your client relationships change. This is an important evolution as a freelancer. Nela Dunato has written an excellent article on this subject in the Freelancers Union Blog.
As I have told here that I am a member of the Freelancers Union and I admire the work that they do because of the support they offer to freelancers. It is articles like Nela’s that are a great help to freelancers because you know that her voice of experience is shining through. You can read Nela’s article here.
At what stage do you think your freelancing career is at? Take note of her ideas of how to become partners with your clients. It will help increase your income!
Productivity Tip Of The Week
Do You Know the 20 Fastest-Growing Skills in the Online Job Market?
If someone was to say to you that they were working in Natural Language Processing (NLP) would you know what type of work they were doing? I didn’t until I read the article by Amy Sept that she has written for the Upwork Blog. Natural Language Processing is the ability of a computer to understand human speech. It is what powers Alexa and Google Assistant. The Upwork article reveals that NLP is the number one fastest growing freelancing skills.
I suppose that I should not have been surprised as you hear and read some much about artificial intelligence, robotics and computers taking over jobs. Wait! This is the opposite for freelancers that have the skills to ride the wave of sunrise industries. Hmm! I will not spoil the article for you as I found it fascinating. I found the number two skill was a surprise too. You can read Amy’s article here.
Work-Life Balance Tip Of The Week
What Would You Do if a Long Term Client Refused to Pay You for Work Completed?
Freelancers quite often face the problem of nonpayment of accounts during their careers. This can be very annoying to say the least. However, that is when knowing where you stand legally is a very important issue. Many freelancers used freelancing platforms like freelancer.com or upwork.com which use an escrow system and have arbitration administrator so that
hopefully the result will be fair and reasonable. This of course is backed up by the amount of the contract payment is held in escrow by the platform. The situation becomes tricky when you are by yourself and need to know where you stand legally.
Georgina Bullock has written an article in the FreelancerFAQs Blog to help you make sure that all conduct is fair and reasonable. It is an important article which you can read here.
Financial Tip Of The Week
Wes Moss Presents the Case for Bonds in a Retiree’s Portfolio!
If you have read this newsletter for a while and visited the website here you would know that I am a strong advocate for freelancers having a financial plan that incorporates a life work balance plan. This is because freelancers are in the unique position of being able change how long their retirement money will last by changing their freelancing work life balance.
Kerry Hannon of AARP calls this retiring part time. It is a very interesting article and you can read it here.
Notwithstanding the fact that freelancers are blessed by being their own boss, they should strive to understand the investment options for their savings. One of the options is bonds which can be tricky to understand. Wes Moss is a financial planning journalist and he has written a very interesting article on the subject of bonds that makes understanding the concepts easier. Wes’s article appears in The Balance Blog and you can read it 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:
