How Moonlighting Mastermind Groups Can Help Freelancers

Weekly Newsletter for The Freelancers: Here is the latest newsletter of the week starting on 2nd of April 2018.

Do you know what a millennial is (they are also known as Generation Y)? You can read more details about Generation Y here, but put simply it means people born between the early 1980s and the early 2000’s.

It is this generation that is struggling financially with high levels of debt and housing affordability for home buyers in Australia, but this situation in repeated in many countries.

If you are interested in why this has occurred you can read about it ~~here~~ and here.

However, what this newsletter is about is finding solutions. Freelancing could provide financial solutions for Generation Y (Millennials).

Mastermind groups have often been used in the past to overcome problems as members of the Mastermind Group learn from one another and brainstorm solutions.

We will look at the issue of Freelancers’ Mastermind Groups over the upcoming issues of this newsletter.

Motivate Yourself!

“I believe whatever smart, ambitious people are working on will be
the trend of the future. I do think that it’s worth thinking critically
about what the future will be.” – Sam Altman

Why You Should Motivate Yourself To Monitor Freelancing Trends

Critical to the success of being a freelancer is being motivated to keep up to date with trends in freelancing in the marketplace. This is because freelancing trends are clearly showing that freelancers are not only at the cutting edge of the future of work, but also social change.

These are global changes and are unstoppable because technology is empowering people to be self-employed. This is of particular benefit to women who have previously been disadvantaged by being out of the workforce while having a family.

This is shown in a recent article entitled Twice as many self-employed mothers than in 2008 that appeared in Freelanceuk.com and can be read here.

Why this above mentioned article is of particular importance is this quote that appears in it:

Speaking ahead of ~~today’s Spring Statement 2018~~, IPSE added:

“[The government] should make a particular effort to ensure self-employed mothers have all the assistance and support they need, such as by ~~making them – like employees – eligible for Statutory Maternity Pay~~.”

This proposed change is an important social change for families and you should raise this issue with your local Federal member of parliament no matter which country you live in.

Productivity Tip of the Week

Did You Know That The Impostor Syndrome Can Cost You Money?

If you are like me you will need to read about the impostor syndrome to get an understanding of it because it is important to freelancers. Wikipedia entry on the subject is here.

In summary, the main danger for freelancers is that they will undercharge for their services even after they have built up a solid background of providing quality services to satisfied clients.

This article by Cat DiStasio entitled What freelancers need to know about impostor syndrome appears in Themedium.com and you can read it here.

Once you have identified the enemy it is nice to know that you are not alone and others have triumphed over the impostor syndrome. Here is what 25 famous women have said about it here. This quote by Helen Mirren sums up the issue perfectly:

“It would be wrong to think that you’re always right and correct and perfect and brilliant. Self-doubt is the thing that drives you to try to improve yourself.” — ~~Esquire~~, August 2011

If you require further inspiration from others who have overcome the impostor syndrome try this Amazon Kindle eBook:

Work-Life Balance Tip of the Week

How Do Freelancers Protect Their Rights At Work?

It may seem a strange question to ask a freelancer because most know that there are very few if any rights.

This can have a direct impact on your work life balance because if you have a bad debt for work that you have completed and the employer has accepted it goes straight to your bottom line.

In short, you have to work longer to make up for the money that you have lost and this impacts on your work-life balance. Globally, freelancer protection is an issue.

Yuki Noguchi has written Unequal Rights: Contract Workers Have Few Workplace Protections. Her article appears in npr.org which you can read here.

This is an enormous social change that is driven by technology that is sweeping the world and changing the future of work, family life, superannuation, retirement, and pension schemes.

It is important that you are involved and that your voice is heard. ~~Here are 10 reasons that freelancers union membership matters.~~

Have you asked your local member of parliament what they think of this article: ~~Call to extend shared parental leave to freelancers?~~ If there is a State or Federal Election coming up in the next twelve months ask the question.

Financial Tip of the Week

How To Get Paid More For Your Freelancing Services By Negotiating Better

Have you been on a holiday to a country where street vendors bargain with you to get you to pay a higher price and you haggle to get a lower price?

Why I ask this is because when I was working in a bank in Fiji many years ago it was quite a remarkable sight to see the tourists from the cruise ships flooding the duty-free stores for bargains. They all knew the importance of negotiation.

They knew that in some circumstances they could decrease the cost of a camera or a luxury item by as much as 30%. Negotiations are important to us too as freelancers.

I have known Fiverr freelancers who do this regularly by the skillful use of price to change the priority of delivery in the queue or for extras e.g. photos for an article being written.

Yet, many freelancers are hesitant to do this. The impostor syndrome is one of the reasons, but another reason is not knowing how to do it.

Katie Perry has written The freelancer’s guide to setting and negotiating rates which appear in the Invisionapp.com Blog and you can read here.

I will re-post this article frequently because it is so important.

Amazon Associates Website Case Study

Amazon continues to have major global companies moving to its platforms throughout the world. The latest is GoDaddy.com which you can read about here. If you are an Amazon Web Services freelancer you will be delighted with this news.

We are in the process of building a trial page for subscribers who do not want to build their own website, but it has a long way to go yet.

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

The work on the Amazon Associates website has progressed with new articles being added which can be seen here:

The articles have been search engine optimized and have started to be promoted on the Facebook and Twitter. Instagram, Pinterest and Google Plus accounts have been opened.

The research work is 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: