The great thing about being a freelancer is how much control you have over everything. There are no bosses to tell you what company policy is or how you should do things. That means YOU have not only the ability but the responsibility for your work life. Today for Blog Action Day we’re going to look at some simple ways that freelancers can make their work-life more environmentally friendly. Because remember it’s the small steps that produce the big, sustainable changes.

Listed below are a ton of ways that you can become a more environmentally friendly freelancer. And because we *REALLY* want FreelanceSwitch readers to really take this on and work towards being more environmentally friendly, we are pledging to donate $1 to charity for every reader who comments here as a pledge to take on any one of the suggestions below (or their own). Just write what you’re taking on in a comment and we’ll put $1 in your name towards the Blog Action Day charities up to a total of $500.

There are lots of really easy suggestions here that are completely free and don’t take much effort at all. So make today the day to change one habit for the better. Continue Reading

Today – October 15th – is the very first annual Blog Action Day. As the international dateline passes over the world, over fifteen thousand bloggers will be waking up to prepare and post about the environment on their blogs.

As you know Leo, Collis and I have been organizing this day for two months now and it’s turning into a huge success thanks to the participation and action of so many wonderful bloggers from around the world. The day has attracted the support of the United Nations Environmental Programme, the European Union Commissioner for the Environment, huge blogs like Google’s Official Blog, LifeHacker and so many more. It’s very exciting and the day is just beginning.

Today on FreelanceSwitch in honour of the day I’ll be posting a big article on an keeping you and your clients environmentally friendly, N.C. has a special Blog Action Day episode of Freelance Freedom, and if you are interested to hear the story behind the day, Collis has posted up a long post about it over at NorthxEast.

Today we will also be donating any money this site makes to environmental charities. For today I will put a Paypal link at the base of each Blog Action Day post. If you click on the link you will be led to Paypal where you can quickly and easily donate US$3. Any contribution will be passed on to an environmental charity. We have almost 11,000 unique visitors every day, so if each one of us donated just $3 we could raise $33,000 to help these charities do their amazing work! I’ll be donating today’s proceeds to Greenpeace and The National Wildlife Federation.

So a Happy Blog Action Day to you all, enjoy the posts and let’s go out there and make a difference!

Donate Here – Click to Donate with PayPal

It’s no secret that lots of us FreelanceSwitchers love Moo MiniCards. I think Moo may love us right back, because they gave us the first scoop on their new product. Later this week Moo is adding Postcards to their product range, and to celebrate they’re offering two sets to FreelanceSwitch readers!

With that in mind I thought I’d cover an old-school but effective tool for new leads – the postcard promotion. Continue Reading

Almost every freelancer needs some kind of written biography, a small piece that’s shorter than a resume but is more engaging to read. It provides potential clients with not only an idea of what you do, but who you are. The last part is probably what makes bio writing so difficult.

I’ve written dozens of profiles of people, places and businesses, but as soon as I sit down to write about myself, I’m faced with the dreaded “white screen syndrome.”

I’m not sure what it is; am I worried that I’ll seem egotistical if I play myself up too much? Will I seem boring if I try to remain too objective? And of course, the possibility of inserting a little too much of my personality.

While pondering this, I did come up with a few ideas to make the process easier.
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This week’s photo is by Jacob Pritchard.
Location: New York City, USA

In this weeks Linkswitch I’ll be covering some of the best finds I’ve come across for those of you that want to broaden your business savvy!

Do you have to make a presentation or pitch and need to know the basics? Paul Enderson from Reflections will help you cover all your bases.

If you’re looking for some passive income and have some wisdom to share then you might want to consider writing an eBook.

Designers and developers often seem to speak different languages to one another. This article gives some great tips on how to communicate effectively and hopefully make your project work.

There’s a great article on Go Media’s blog about Driving Web Traffic For Beginners. We all think that after working so hard on a site that the masses will just appear out of thin air, but the truth is that you’ve got to be a bit savvy. You could write a book about this, but this article will teach you the basics.

Shane’s done it again, with this fantastic article: A Freelancer’s Guide to Sales: Using Which-Craft.
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My husband is a pilot. His workspace is fairly defined. It has huge fiberglass wings and crazy sharp propellers that will chop you to little tiny bits if you don’t knock properly on the office door.

I wish I had propellers.

Instead I have a laptop, which, sadly, isn’t quite so lethal, and my non-pointy office also functions as a DVD player, a bullhorn for Star Wars-related whines, a sports wire, a news station, a photo album, a gift shop, and a jukebox. So when he sees me staring at the screen with my head in my hands, I could be trying to figure out why people continue to care about Paris Hilton… I could be contemplating the fact that my nephew’s new haircut makes him look like a forty-five year old in a Piglet sleeper… I could be one syllable away from a Pulitzer… he never knows.

What he does know, for his own health, is to assume the Pulitzer thing, even if it’s five in the morning and the theme from The A-Team is pouring tinnily from the speakers as I sob face-down on the keyboard, bitter freelancing tears raining down upon my caps lock key. But that wasn’t knowledge he simply absorbed from basking in my per-job presence: He had to be carefully taught. And so did I.
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Ask a room full of freelancers what they do and you’ll get a broad spectrum of answers. Not so apparent in those replies, though, is that every freelancer actually has two mission-critical titles.

The one on the business card is pretty obvious. Writer, designer, developer, stylist, yadda, yadda, yadda. But, what about that other title? The one that lurks in the wings, yet is the secret driving force behind your success or failure in your “business-card” field. The one that reads, “Undercover Chief Marketing Offer.”

As a rule, freelancers, me included, hate thinking about this second job-title for two reasons. One, there is this pervasive feeling that focusing on the business-side of what we do somehow degrades or de-emphasizes the “craft” of what we do. “After all,” comes the rally-cry, “we’re artists, creators, visionaries. Our work should speak for itself.” The fact that so many gifted freelancers live a wrung above hand-to-mouth, though, is testament to the blatant fallacy of this notion.
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Kirk DouPonce’s first entry into the workforce didn’t turn out so well. As a 16-year-old, he only lasted a few weeks selling hotdogs before being fired. But things have a way working themselves out; the hot dog world’s loss was the publishing world’s gain.

DouPonce’s work is very much on display in bookstores, libraries and probably a few doctor’s offices. Over 15 years he’s designed thousands of book covers for major clients like McGraw Hill, Random House and Howard/Simon and Schuster. Three years ago, he decided to go out on his own and be a freelance cover designer, opening DogEared Design.

In this interview, we talk about the coincidences that jump-start a career, pleasing clients and working for free in exchange for exposure.
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After returning from a few days away, I’m mentally recharged. But after a quick email check this morning—the first since I got home—I have to say, I feel all of the old pressures creeping back in.

There are deadlines to be met. Clients who admit they left things on their desks for days but want me to have it done ASAP. Just getting back into the whole pace of it all is a little overwhelming. And since I’m trying to reformat the way I work and the clients I accept, I’m really trying not to fall into old work habits.

Here are some tips for change that I hope will help you even if you’re not coming back from a much-needed vacation…even if you’re just looking to make adjustments in your work life!
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But we’re running behind! For those of you who’ve been wondering what’s happening, the survey is on it’s way. So far it’s taken about 60 hours to put together, with another 20 hours to go, so let’s just say it’s been a bit more labour intensive than we expected!

It will definitely be ready in the next month (hopefully two weeks), and as soon as it’s done we’ll be emailing it to everyone who took the survey and supplied their email address.

Just to keep you interested, here are some interesting tidbits we’ve learned so far:
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Ok, confession time — I like to write. I guess that can be a good thing, but often it can also be bad. Why? Because I tend to write too much when something short would have worked just as well.

At one time, I became known for the length of my emails. I was sort of proud of it at the time, thinking my rhetoric and wit were appreciated by all. But then I realized I was pretty much just wasting everyone’s time.

Being wordy can waste your valuable time and it can also frustrate your readers and clients by wasting their time as well. So, if you tend toward wordiness like I do, why not challenge yourself to streamline your communications, or your proposals, or whatever else you’re writing.

I know it’s hard. After all, I’ve got a lot of brilliant thoughts in my head right now that I’d like to add to this article. But, I think the point has been made.

‘Nuff said.