Have You Looked At Freelancers' Automation Tools?

Weekly Newsletter for The Freelancers: Here is the latest newsletter of the week starting on 26th August 2019.

Time is money as a freelancer and freelancers’ automation tools matters! It is no good complaining to the boss that you have not enough time to complete the things on your To Do List.

The buck (no pun intended) stops with you and you must look at ways and means of working smarter so that you can focus on tasks that make you money.

I am currently working with my virtual assistant to streamline our social media marketing so that we have more time to concentrate on tasks that are more focused on making money. It can be a trap being busy doing things that are not productive.

It really is a matter of stepping back and looking at your tasks critically. Sujan Patel has written an article in the www.freshbooks.com Blog about automation called Give yourself the gift of time : 9 tasks that every small business should automate.

We are working on Number 8 now. I am sure that you will find Sujan’s article very helpful and will move you towards your goal of making more money. You can read Sujan’s article here.

Motivate Yourself!

Do You Know When to Give Up On A Marketing Idea?

“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can
be done without hope and confidence.”

– Helen Keller

It is not easy to know when to give up on a marketing idea, especially if you do not measure the result.

We have run a Facebook promoted post campaign to promote Hootsuite as a career for freelancers. The Facebook post was pinned to the top of the Facebook page and this was the landing page here.

We had promoted this page with a Facebook Ad. for $50 and monitored the result. It did not work so we dropped it. This measuring the return on investment will determine when the marketing idea should be adjusted or abandoned. This is an important technique.

Bianca Board has written an article about when to give a marketing idea up. Her article appears in the www.Millo.co blog and can be read here.

Productivity Tip Of The Week

If You Are A Freelance Writer Have You Wondered How To Increase Your Income?

Image Credit pixabay.com

A fair and reasonable return for time spent is what every freelance writer wants! I am currently watching a Udemy video on freelance writing by Philippa Davies and one of the issues she raises is how to calculate your target income goal. This is an important issue for every freelancer because it is what pays the bills.

The trick is to increase the value of your services that you offer. If you have ever used Fiverr you will know that the writers are very skilful at increasing their return for a gig by offering extensions on the basic gig contract. These often relate to time to complete the project or search engine optimization.

The writer Yollie Davies has looked at the possibilities for freelance writers increasing their income in the www.freelancerfaqs.com blog. I think her idea of content upgrade is a good approach. You can read Yollie’s article here.

Work-Life Balance Tip Of The Week

It Is Hard To Keep Working While You’re Suffering From Grief

Suffering from grief can be tough. You can’t turn it off with a switch. It is like PTSD. It is there night and day and you cannot stop thinking about it.

There are many forms of grief, from the death of a loved one to another family member or friend. It impacts on how you perform and can result in a loss of income or clients.

When I was a certified financial planner, I had a client who was a young widow with two young children. She was being bullied, in my opinion, by a financial services provider and with the help of a technical services manager with my employer I decided to help her by appealing to an industry ombudsman. We lost the appeal and I subsequently lost the client and my job. Even that situation is a form of grieving because of the injustice of the case. It impacts on your ability to do your job and get on with life.

David Osborn who is a contributor to www.entrepreneur.com examines the issue of the impact of grief when you must keep working. You can read David’s article here.

Financial Tip of the Week

What You Need To Know About Going Back To Work After Retirement

Imagine that you had worked for fifty years, had just retired, and were looking forward to a long enjoyable retirement. You had all your finances sorted out and were going to downsize your house and contribute USD300,000 to your retirement savings.

That was when you had put a lot of your money into improving your home and block. It was a safe investment!

Besides the value of your house had increased more than 40% in the last five years! Then bang! There was a housing market crash over six months and the value of your house dropped by USD400,000. What can you do?

For many people they decide to delay their retirement and go back to work. This raises a lot of financial issues for people caught in this situation.

Luckily, there are writers that look at the pros and cons. Melissa Phipps writes for www.thebalance.com blog and has written an article called Going Back To Work After Retirement. You can read it here.

Skills Development and Inspiration News

Image Credit Pixabay.com

We are constantly searching for news articles and videos on skills development and inspiration for freelancers.

Each week we have decided to bring you the links to what we consider are the top three articles or videos. Here they are for this week:

Many freelancers are parents or even grandparents and one of the skills that is necessary in the digital age is to be aware of young people being cyberbullied.

Here is 15 indicators that your child is being cyberbullied from our related website which you can read here. If you believe a child is being cyberbullied and they will not talk about it inevitably raises the question whether to monitor the victim’s social media. It is not an easy decision.

Here are 10 reasons to monitor a cyberbullied victim’s social media here. Note the affiliate disclosure on the page.
I am currently a member of a Blogger Education Network because being a freelancer there is a never ending need to be learning. I wanted to learn about promoted posts and this was a good place here.

It is a closed group and you must apply to be a member. One of the questions that arose relating to have the knowledge and skills necessary to comply with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

I was able to give a link to my other website’s infographic on the subject here and give an example of a complying newsletter landing page here. It is all about continuing skills development.
For all users of the internet, whether professionally or casually, there is awareness of the growing trend towards videos in content marketing, whether You Tube or otherwise.

If you are working with businesses in the marketing sphere you will inevitably want to know more about content marketing for business and videos. It is a necessary skill that you must develop.

Here is our article 20 reasons why businesses need to use video in content marketing which you can read here.

There are now 5,000 skills in 90 categories that the digital economy can offer, according to Upwork’s 1st. Quarter 2019 Skills Index which you can read here.

Here is our article entitled Training choices matter for career changers and freelancers which you can read here.

Amazon News

The weekly AWS news video link to acloud.guru is here. They are the leading trainers globally for Amazon Web Services freelancers.

Amazon Associates Website Case Study

As discussed in previous newsletters we are focussing on the niche website in the future because it is producing better results i.e. sales.

Here is a recent Hot Pressure Washer Reviews. There have been 67 Amazon product sales (across all our websites) in the past month due to the keyword research and skills of Mamun, my virtual assistant.