As a Freelancer, Do You Know How To Handle Your Unknown Unknowns

Weekly Newsletter for The Freelancers: Here is the latest newsletter of the
week starting on 23rd. December 2019. The next issue will be in February
2020. With best wishes for Christmas and the New Year.

When you start out as a freelancer you are embarking on a journey where there are unknown unknowns! This is a phrase that was made famous by Donald Rumsfeld when he was the United States Secretary of Defence. Where it is very applicable to freelancers is that sometimes you are starting a new career that you have researched.

Knowing how to handle these issues is important and one of the most effective ways is to have a plan to moonlight as a freelancer in the niche that you have chosen before you start full time.

Abdullahi Muhammed has written the evergreen article Why To Choose A Niche As A Freelancer And How To Do It Right for the Forbes magazine and you can read here.

After having selected your niche and started moonlighting as a freelancer, the next step is to locate a Mastermind Group that includes workers in your niche. They will have encountered your unknown unknowns and will be able to introduce you to them and suggest ways of dealing with them.

Karyn Greenstreet has written 6 ways to find a Mastermind Group which appears in www.thesucessalliance.com and you can read here.

Motivate Yourself!

“Without health insurance, getting sick or injured could mean
going bankrupt, going without needed care, or even dying
needlessly.”

– Jan Schakowsky

When You Start Freelancing, Should You Be Motivated To Have Your Own Health Insurance?

Critical to your success as a freelancer is having a plan. If you do have a plan and have identified your niche and moonlighted as a freelancer in that niche to build your skills and client base, what is next?

Even if you do have a plan and you think you are right to start, you should be motivated to make a risk assessment before handing in your resignation.

Taylor Orr has written Balancing the risks and rewards of freelancing for Hired.com blog and you can read Taylor’s article here. One of the most important issues that you must consider is the fact that in many countries you will be losing the health insurance cover of your employer’s scheme when you resign.

You will need to assess the health insurance coverage that you need. It is not the only risk management issue that you will have to consider, but it is one that is complex and it is likely you will need some help in working out the cover that you need.

The Freelancers Union has produced the 2018/2019 Health Insurance Guide which you can access the PDF file here. Although this may not be for your country, the ideas it covers will help you decide what you are looking for as a freelancer. For those readers living in Australia the Australian Securities and Investment Commission Money Smart website has information on Health Insurance here.

If you want to read more on the subject in building your plan you can look inside Insurance for Dummies at Amazon by clicking here.

Once you have done your personal research to know what you are looking for, it is time to seek professional advice from a Health Insurance Consultant. This could be one of the most important steps you take in your moving to a freelancing plan.

Productivity Tip Of The Week

Do You Know That Perfectionism Can Be An Enemy Of Freelancing Productivity?

Did you ever have a personality test when you were working in a corporate role? If you did, it is important to revisit it to understand how you work and why. The reason is that it has a lot to do with your productivity and how much money you will earn as a freelancer.

Why your self-understanding is important is summed up in this quote:

The only person who can pull me down is myself, and I’m not going to let myself pull me down
anymore.

– C. JoyBell C

If you were a perfectionist and a slow careful worker as an employee, it is okay because it wasn’t directly linked to your pay as it is in freelancing.

Ryan Robinson is aware of the impact perfectionism has on the earnings of freelancers and has written: Why perfectionism is a freelancer’s worst enemy which appears here on Milo.com.

If you have not had a personality test done to understand what type of worker you are and the traps you need to watch for, we strongly recommend you do so. The reason is simple; it can help you earn more money by being self-aware.

One of the key questions that you should ask yourself as a good indication of whether you need to do the test is: Would you be willing to outsource parts of a valuable contract that had some low paid tasks in it or would you do it yourself and eat into your family time?

These tests are easily found on-line and are quite often free. Here is the link to the free online personality test from www.123test.com by clicking here.

If you want to read more about these tests to understand how and why you work in a way you can get more information by clicking on the icon below or look inside at the index:

Work-Life Balance Tip Of The Week

Freelancers Can Help Their Work Life Balance By Working From Anywhere!

Work life balance is a critical issue for millennial families whose debt levels require both parents to work to balance the family budget.

It is now a global issue not only for families and employers but also for economies and government policies because they are they are lagging behind social changes brought about by technology changes and the future of work.

Bek Frith explains why in her article for the HRmagazine.co.uk entitled Millennial parents struggling with work/family balance which you can read here. Bek chose a great photo to illustrate her point!

Many jobs in the digital age are performed by writers and other related occupations that can be done anywhere. Susan Shain has written 7 expert tips from freelance writers who want to work from anywhere. Susan’s article appears in Thewritelife.com blog and can be read here.

Financial Tip of the Week

Have You Ever Said To Yourself, “I Wish I Hadn’t Done That”?

There are not many people in life who can say to themselves when they look back, that they have lived a life of no regrets. For millennials, this is going to be such a time because it is a period of social change where the future of work is changing, and the certainties of life are falling away.

Many of this generation are now entering the stage of life of having a family and establishing a home. Their house should be one of their main lifetime assets along with their savings for retirement.

For some millennials, they will never own a house and will be lifetime renters because of the changes in society. These are facts that research has shown.

Bestwork.inc article The 10 Most Serious Problems Faced By Millennials presents the issues. If you can see yourself, friends or family in this article share this newsletter because it is about changing the future and preventing regrets. You can read the article by clicking here.

Daniela Pierre-Bravo has written The best financial tips for millennials which appears in NBCnews.com and you can read it here Daniela shares our commitment to providing general information for readers that will prevent regrets later in life.

Skills Development and Inspiration

Image Credit Pixabay.com

We are constantly searching for news articles and videos on skills development and inspiration for freelancers as well as developing our own products.

Each week we have decided to bring you the links to what we consider are the top three articles or videos. This week we thought we would bring you some more TEDx talks on important issues for freelancers:

How to make work-life balance work | Nigel Marsh

The Art of Stress-Free Productivity: David Allen at TEDxClaremontColleges

Conquering depression: how I became my own hero | Hunter Kent | TEDxYouth@CEHS

There are now 5,000 skills in 90 categories that the digital economy can offer. Upwork has ranked the top 100 in demand professional skills in their recent press release which you can read here. What is interesting about Upwork’s list is that there are new digital skills and they are evolving very quickly.

Innovation and technology are very important to countries. In Australia this is particularly important because these skills are applicable to country areas impacted by drought. The value of the digital economy to Australia is shown here.

We have been developing an Amazon eBook series on freelancing for those starting out freelancing. Here are some early eBooks listed below. Click on an icon to have a look inside at the index for each one:

Amazon News

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

We have changed our strategy to include guest posts and this is one from our cybersecurity website. The guest contributor is Alex J.Coyne again with USB operating systems and how they work (click on the link).

We will let you know when another is posted. The goal is to increase traffic and diversify product promotion. There have been approximately 20 Amazon product sales (across all our websites) in the past month due to the keyword research and skills of Mamun, my virtual assistant.

Freelancers And Cyber Security

We have decided to expand our search for appropriate articles for freelancers about cybersecurity and online scams. This is the latest one from Australian Competition and Consumers Commission’s warning about Online shopping scams (click on the link).

Robert Siciliano is an identity theft expert and consultant. He also runs a cyber security and fraud prevention website which you can see here.