There are far more unpaid speaking gigs in the world than there are paid opportunities. Even major events like TED don’t pay their speakers. Yet taking an unpaid speaking gig isn’t necessarily a bad idea. The reason that there are hordes of people clamoring for TED talk slots, as well as less prestigious unpaid speaking opportunities, is that there are other ways to make money once you’ve managed to get on a stage in front of an audience.

The obvious option is to pitch those audiences on your services: just by talking about how awesome you are and how you’ve helped your other clients, you can often convince people to hire you on the spot. But there are other effective options to monetize your speaking, as well. Continue Reading

Nathan Barry is a web designer who quit his job at a software company in October 2011 in order to work for himself.

In 2012, his first year of being self-employed, Nathan managed to make $145,471 USD, which is more than double of what he used to make in his last job. Interesting thing here is that over $85,000 out of that was income from his two e-books, “App Design Handbook” and “Designing Web Applications”. Want to know how it all started and how you can have similar success?

Let’s take a look at the launch of Nathan’s first e-book, “App Design Handbook”, with which he made over $12,000 in the first 24 hours, and uncover what he did right. Continue Reading

Facebook, the world’s favorite social networking platform, is the ideal place to connect with potential clients. Having a Facebook page for your freelance business gives you the opportunity to engage with prospects, developing a relationship so that when they need help, you’re the freelancer they turn to first.

However, many new freelancers face the problem of how to grow their Facebook fan base. Just like getting your first client is the biggest and often the most difficult step in a freelancer’s career, getting your first Facebook fans is the biggest and often the most difficult step in growing your Facebook Page.

Having a few hundred fans gets the ball rolling, and helps you grow in two ways. First, you have the social proof of a dedicated fan base. Second, those fans help you spread the word about your business to their friends.

What can you do to get your first few hundred Facebook fans?

There are ways you can grow your Facebook page organically for free. However, if you’ve got a few dollars to spare, going for an ad campaign can give your Page the boost it needs quickly. I’ve known freelancers who’ve picked up 100′s of fans overnight from a simple, low-cost ad campaign.

Done right, ads can help you grow and reach your business goals. Get it wrong, and you could end up pouring your hard earned dollars into a white elephant.

How can you write a Facebook ad that works? Continue Reading

Once a week, we feature a fantastic freelance-themed comic from the talented N.C. Winters. Why not also take a look at our comic archive? Continue Reading

It’s easy enough to land a speaking gig: every organization in your city wants a speaker to come in every once in a while. But that’s not the same as driving home a paid speaking gig.

To actually receive payment, beyond travel expenses or an event ticket, requires a different approach. You need to be more targeted, at the very least, in order to get paid for your talks. Continue Reading

Regardless of the size of your business, there are growing expectations that you will be data proficient. While big data gets hyped at an enterprise level, the reality for freelancers and micro businesses owners is that you will need to get your hands dirty playing with data at some stage of your client work.

Whether it be from transferring keywords into a spreadsheet, scheduling tweets, syncing data between business apps, managing contact lists, or importing data into an infographic, you will need to know how to clean data from a spreadsheet and organize it into a format that any online app or software can read.

The good news is that being able to manage data and move it between apps is a marketable skill in itself and with a few tricks up your sleeve, you can also save a lot of time: time that you could be spending on more profitable work.

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Once a week, we feature a fantastic freelance-themed comic from the talented N.C. Winters. Why not also take a look at our comic archive? Continue Reading

Looking for a new client? The FreelanceSwitch job board is a great resource of freelance gigs and opportunities. These opportunities are in various fields, from development to writing to design, and come from a wide range of potential clients. The job board is hand-moderated by dedicated staff and volunteers from the freelance community.

Each week, we’ll feature a selection of the best job opportunities posted for the week. This week, we’re featuring jobs in Mobile Phone App Development, Web Design, Web Development and more!

To apply for any of these jobs, simply pick up a FreelanceSwitch membership for an affordable $7 a month. See something you like? Join now!

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MailChimp offers a high quality email service, and you don’t pay a cent until you hit more than 2,000 subscribers. MailChimp calls it “Forever Free”.

If you’re planning to sell products online, other email newsletter providers, such as Aweber, offer more options for segmenting your lists and targeting particular subscribers.

MailChimp, however, is charming, quirky, and perfect for freelancers looking to stay in touch with clients and prospects once or twice a month. In fact, it powers our FreelanceSwitch newsletter and is a quality service we highly recommend. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to get started with MailChimp for $0.00. Continue Reading

While many speakers earn money for each speaking engagement they land, the real money is often in using your speaking engagements to sell the products and services you offer. That’s because you have attendees who already know on some level that you’re an expert — otherwise they wouldn’t be coming to hear you.

You don’t have to be overtly ‘salesy’ either — if you’re offering a product or a service that is a logical extension of your topic as a speaker, a brief mention can be enough to land you a sale.

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In a previous post on FreelanceSwitch, ‘How to Unlock a New Source of Design Income‘, we explained how Microlancer allows freelancers to spend more time doing what they love and less time on admin, marketing and pitching for gigs.

In a more recent post, ‘Giving Yourself the Best Chance of Success on Microlancer‘, you learned how to create a high quality service listing.

If your service listings made it through the review process, it shouldn’t be too long before jobs start coming through. But there are a few things you can do to kick-start your success on Microlancer. Continue Reading

For most self-published writers, Amazon is the first port of call when it comes to selling their books. There’s a good reason for this: Amazon is where the readers are.

Another reason is Amazon’s KDP Select program, which gives self-published writers an opportunity to punch above their weight when it comes to marketing their books.

In this tutorial, I’ll give you the lowdown on how KDP Select works, and tips and tricks on how to use it to give your book the best chance possible of finding readers and sales. Continue Reading