Time for a roundup of useful links from across this beast we call the world wide web:

• Copyblogger has Five Common Headline Mistakes And How To Avoid Them for the writers out there.
• Our favourite Brit Tim takes us through Tendering – Who, What, When and How?
• Diana Ransom from The Wall Street Journal suggests that Freelancers Must Also Be Office Managers.
• Lifehack has 50 Ways To Increase Your Productivity.
• Although I doubt any of our readers are at risk of dying from computer game exhaustion, Free Geekery has 25 Health Tips For Computer Nerds that are valuable to anyone who spends too much time at their computer.
• And finally, the fabulous Darius looks at 11 Great Colour Legends for all you designers out there. Fascinating reading…

If you have a useful link or article that you think FreelanceSwitch readers would be interested in, Send It In!

Here at FreelanceSwitch, we love to talk about clients and on occasion some of their failings and characteristics, but let’s face it, most freelancers aren’t that perfect themselves. So today we’ve put together 13 Breeds of Freelancer, see if you recognize a bit of yourself in there…

Freelancer Breed #1

The Artiste Freelancer

Is This You?
You are a master of what you do, or at least you think so. Criticism from a client is often met with disbelief or anger and if a client asks for a small change you lament that the whole project is ‘ruined’.
Fulfilling your clients needs isn’t as nearly as important as making it ‘really cool’ and when you talk about your clients, somehow phrases like ‘stifling my creativity’, ‘pleb’, and ‘uneducated buffoon’ keep popping up.

The Highs:
If you’re fiery enough many clients will become too scared to critique you leading to very few revisions. Even if they do ask you for revisions you can always make up reasons why you don’t need to listen anyway. Your portfolio looks exactly the way you want it to.

The Lows:
Your adverse reactions to various client requests mean that often your clients don’t actually get the work they wanted. Plus thanks to your high maintenance you are beginning to develop a reputation – unfortunately it’s probably not the one you were after. If you push them far enough, your clients may refuse to pay you. And because you are unwilling to accept that you may be wrong on things you miss out on opportunities to improve your work.

All of this pales however compared to those horrible situations when after you have finally succumbed to your client’s wishes, the project actually turns out better than it would have if you were left to your own devices!

Picking Up Your Game:
Being an Artiste doesn’t usually mix well with the business of freelancing since most clients want the project to fulfil their needs not yours. When you put a lot of yourself into your work, it’s hard to separate criticism for the work and criticism of you. Unfortunately this is the day-to-day reality of freelancing and you need to grow a thick skin to protect your fragile ego. Try not to expect a first draft or concept to be greeted with congratulations and you won’t feel quite so devastated when you need to revise.

What often works is to think of client requests and revisions as constraints in an elaborate game that you are trying to conquer. Look at them in a positive light and do your best work within those constraints and your clients will be happier, your work will often wind up better and you’ll be a more successful freelancer.

Freelancer Breed #2

The Payin’-The- Bills Freelancer

Is This You?
Although there was a time when you loved what you do, recently it feels like nothing more than a way to support yourself. You don’t really feel any interest in improving your skills and ‘passionate’ or ‘committed’ aren’t adjectives your clients would use to describe you.

The Highs:
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By Robert Janelle

Image from iStockPhoto

Many freelancers have unique workspaces, either by design or by necessity. But as I sit at my coffee table writing this piece and experimenting with different word processors along the way, I realized something: I’m doing this my way!

There are the obvious benefits of self-employment, like no half-hour time limit on lunch breaks, assuming you start work before lunch, or a computer timing every second your spend in the bathroom. But lately, it’s the smaller things that have left me feeling more free.

I’m not forced to use a computer set up the way someone in management told the IT department to do it, everything is set the way I like it and no web sites are blocked by a company. Thinking back of working in cubicles, I remember some fierce restrictions. One place I worked in forbid the use of web-based e-mail (What?!? I can’t use Gmail here?!?)

Ditching The Man means no one dictates whether I use a Mac or a PC, the software I use to do my job and I don’t have to worry about getting issued a cell phone with all the features locked-down.

I can completely re-arrange my work area without having to submit a formal request and then waiting a week to see if it’s approved or not.

But then a question dawned on me: just because I can, does that mean I should?

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If you’re like most writers, you procrastinate. You have a hard time getting started writing, unless you’re seized by a burst of inspiration. Instead, you might do some “research” online, fiddle with your to-do list, or work on a number of other tasks instead of doing the writing you need to do.

If you’re having trouble getting your writing done, try creating a morning writing ritual. You can get a lot more done each day, as an early boost of productivity will spur further productivity throughout the day.

Why create a morning routine? A few reasons:

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For the full set of lead generation ideas see: 101 Ideas to Get More Freelance Work and Generate New Client Leads

Image from iStockPhoto

Getting a new lead referred to you by a previous client or friend is probably the single best source of work for most freelancers. Not only do referrals usually happen organically but they tend to start off with a high degree of trust and positive expectation.

In this article we’re going to talk about how to make yourself referable and how to actively encourage those referral leads. Continue Reading

Believe it or not, this is what we actually look like … well sorta

Those of you with a keen eye will have noticed that this afternoon we’ve been carrying out a few minor upgrades to the site. We’ve just added a slicker sidebar, a contact page and most importantly an updated team page with bios for all the contributors on the site.

These are just the first of a series of updates being carried out on the site as we finish off what has actually been more of a ‘beta’ release thus far than a completed site. If you have any suggestions for improvements or features to the site, do let us know as I’m always interested to hear feedback!

Time for a roundup of useful links from across this beast we call the world wide web:

• Bittbox has 25 reasons you might be a hardcore graphic/web designer. Sad but true.
• Jason Drohn is stepping out of the woods. If you’re guilty of putting work before everything else (I know I am), then you’ll identify with Jason’s article and hopefully get a reminder that there’s more to life.
• Need to network? Read Edith’s 7 tips for making it easy.
• John at The Small Business Network discusses dealing with dry spells.
• For all you aspiring illustrators, Illustration Castle provides a sample illustration contract and terms.
• Can’t find a publisher for you book? No problem. Lulu is the best idea ever.
• Finally, one more for the graphic designers. I found American Psycho completely traumatic, but there is one scene I will treasure forever. If you haven’t seen the business card scene you will heartily enjoy it. And it’s G rated so you can watch it anywhere

If you have a useful link or article that you think FreelanceSwitch readers would be interested in, Send It In!

Freelancing on the side while working a regular 9-5 job is both a handy way to get your freelancing business started as well as a useful trick for earning extra cash without the stress of giving up your day job. For myself, doing the odd job here and there was how I started even thinking about freelancing. As it became obvious that there was enough work to keep me afloat I gave my old employer a ‘thank you very much and see ya later’ and off I went to full time freelancing freedom. Here are some of the pros and cons of moonlighting on the side that I found during my time:

What’s Great About Freelancing on the Side

• You Get to Test the Waters
  Giving up the security of your day job can be a bit frightening. When you work for someone else it’s their responsibility to bring in the clients, get you the jobs and pay you when not much is afoot. As a full time freelancer you’ll be inheriting all that and more. But the great thing about freelancing on the side is that you get to test the waters before you completely give up the security of your job. A little like wearing floaties on your first trip in the pool. If it doesn’t pan out and you turn out to be an awful swimmer well those little balloons of air will make sure you don’t get into too much trouble, and if you’re the next Ian Thorpe then you can quickly slip out of them and splash away.
• Image from iStockPhoto

  You Get to Take Holidays
  I don’t know if all freelancers are like me, but I have a hard time taking holidays. There hardly ever seems to be a good time to do it, someone’s project is always due and if you don’t have any jobs on then you’re probably freaking out about your impending poverty. This is not the case for part-time freelancers, for they can always free up some time by turning away jobs with the luxury of knowing that they still have an employer who will actually pay them to relax… Did I mention that I miss paid holidays?

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Craig Ambrose, New Zealander and programmer extraordinaire has recorded a series of podcasts that are useful listening for any freelancing software developer. While Craig’s podcasts focus on Ruby on Rails, his advice and tips are actually appropriate for any programming freelancer. Podcasts available are:

Getting Started – Leaving your job and the steps to take to get started.

Working from home – A productive work area, good practices to create a disciplined approach to work, and communication with clients.

Your local developer community – The importance of networking in the real world.

Quoting a project 1 – Finding and signing clients.

Quoting a project 2 – Estimating development work.

Contracts and agreements – Formal and informal agreements with clients.

You can also subscribe to his podcasts!

Today I’d like to welcome our new advertisers. We are very pleased to have Rackspace, Light and JobsandGigs with us this month. Our advertisers give us the support to keep on doing what we do, and hopefully do it even better!

We’ve loved Rackspace’s dedicated hosting for a long time – ever since one of their team liaised with FlashDen’s programmer at 11pm CDT… for an hour… from his house! When they say they offer fanatical support they really mean it. Rackspace deals in whats known as managed hosting services, so they aren’t a budget host, but they are a bargain for what you get.

If you have a website that cannot go down or you are running a client hosting business on the side as so many web freelancers do, and you want professionals available any time you need them, fast tier 1 bandwidth that is burstable (in case you get a huge surge of traffic one day), a service that is as reliable as they come and a webhost that will scale effortlessly, then Rackspace are the web hosts for you.

Light is a content management system that designers can onsell to their clients on a subscription. Light is a product of a really cool company called ElementFusion who are also responsible for some other neat apps that we’ve mentioned on FSw before including Breeze, Icebrrg and Water. But back to Light, this product is truly handy when it comes to giving your clients a site that they can actually manage (so you don’t have to field all those trivial yet always seemingly urgent text updates), plus since its a subscription based product you can create a continuous revenue stream for yourself, so you earn even when you’re holidaying in Barbados!

JobsandGigs is the design and development job network. They are a new face on the block, but are already getting some very high end jobs on the site (think Digg, The New York Times and CNET Networks). If you’re looking for some talent, Luke at Jobs and Gigs has offered a special deal for FSw readers – use the promotional code FREELANCESWITCH when submitting an ad and he’ll give your ad a free renewal worth $75 for freelance ads and $199 for job ads. If you’re in the market for new work, Jobs and Gigs is definitely one to watch. And also in a mark of Australian solidarity, he lives in sunny Sydney too!

Please support our advertisers so they’ll continue to support us!

By Leo Babauta

Image from iStockPhoto

Over the last fortnight or so, I’ve had some thrilling success on social bookmarking sites such as Digg and delicious, in articles that I’ve written for a few different blogs (including last week’s 7 Ways to Crank Out Articles). Now, these posts weren’t written specifically to get Dugg, but I have learned a thing or two about writing a popular post, and why it matters to freelance blog writers.

Let’s take a little look today at why a freelance blog writer should care about writing popular posts:

It makes you valuable. If you are writing freelance for a blog, you want to give them your very best content, and give their readers great value with your writing. But if you also write a post that does hugely well on Digg (for example), you’ve just given your employer something that’s not easily achievable. Sure, the big sites can make the front page of Digg nearly any day of the week, but trust me, they still care about it. And to medium and smaller blogs, those types of successful posts are pure gold.

Looks good on your resume. Well, you probably won’t literally list your popular posts on your resume, but if you contact any potential employers to do some freelance writing, you can mention that you’ve had 12 popular posts on Digg in two months. They’ll hire you in a flash.

It’s a bit of a thrill. To know that thousands of people like your article is like a validation that you’re a good writer. But if you are looking for validation, don’t read the comments on Digg. They’re pretty vicious.

Now, you should know that it’s not easy to get on the front-page of Digg, and it can take a bit of luck. Often you might write an article that you think will do well, but it doesn’t go anywhere. Other times you don’t expect an article to do anything, and it just takes off. It helps if another popular blog links to the article to get the ball rolling.

But given all of that, there are some things you can do to write an article with powerful potential to become popular:

Continue Reading

Color or Colour as we like to spell it over here in Australia, is critical for designers of every medium. While finding a nice harmonious colour palette is something most of us do by eye, it is easy to fall back on the same few tried and tested palettes over and over. Personally I am very guilty of using beige in just about every site I design, case in point: FreelanceSwitch!

So today we are reviewing a product called Color Schemer Studio which aims to help you find the perfect colour palette for your next project. And for two lucky readers we’re giving away full licenses for the software, read on to find out how to get one! Continue Reading