You left the company because you were fed up with the hours, right? You wanted more freedom, more time at home and you didn’t want anyone telling you what to do anymore…so you started freelancing.

And now you spend more hours in front of your computer, constantly think about work and whilst you see the kids or your other half more frequently, you don’t really see them or spend ‘quality time’ with them – you’re too busy keeping clients happy.

Ok, ok – not everyone is in this situation with their freelancing business but I bet some of you are; and the other scenario is that you’re the kind of freelancer who now loves what you do so much, it doesn’t feel like work. You get so absorbed in what you’re doing that time passes in a blur and before you know it, it’s gone midnight; the problem here is that you find it difficult to let go and focus on anything else because it’s your passion.

Investing time in yourself and your wellbeing is a vital strategy for successful freelancers – you are your business. If something happens to you that’s it, there’s usually no back up.

Take a look at yourself right now….
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Time for some linking goodness from around the web and we have an odd assortment of goodies today:

1. How to Put Your Business on Autopilot Whilst You Travel the World as a Web Worker – Lea Woodward’s been putting out some great articles over at Location Independent. Cyan and I are about to become location independent as we’re moving to Hong Kong to work from there for a few months, which I’m very excited about. Lea’s also recently launched a charitable project called the “Leave it Better” initiative which is pretty cool!
2. Anywired – Skellie’s new blog Anywired is off to a stellar start with over a thousand subscribers in just five days!. Along with Lea’s LocationIndependent blog, Anywired gives you the lowdown on taking your work overseas.
3. FunctionFox’s Resource Pile – FunctionFox is a time tracking and project management app who have shrewdly compiled an awesome set of resources and articles which looks super useful.
4. Remarkablogger – Michael Martine has recently put out a free ebook called How to Start a Business Blog which is a good read and at that price, very worth grabbing

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One of my online friends recently approached me with a question she says she knew I would have the answer to.

She asked me if anyone’s ever gotten competitive with me.

Oh sister, you have no idea! I told her that I have faced this throughout my life. In fact, the competition can be fiercer than cameras rolling on a reality TV show!

I suppose as a Type A personality, I’m a bit of an achiever. I usually attain a goal when I put my mind to it. It’s just how I am. And throughout my life, even though I have had support from people who can appreciate my success, there have been others who…well, they just can’t. The majority of these people have tried to push me to share my trade secrets. Some people criticize and insist their work is better. Others are eying the client list I’ve worked so hard to create, wondering if they can work for the same companies.

Here’s the thing about competing—it happens rather silently. People won’t always say, “I can do better” to your face. They may try to inquire about your clients or try to one-up you. But let me be honest here: work competitiveness is a very real thing. Even when you’re a freelancer sitting at home working alone—and even when you don’t want to get caught up in the drama. Continue Reading

It’s been a little while since I posted site updates and I’ve received quite a few questions about the survey in particular. So here’s some quick news on what’s happening over here:

The Survey … 300 hours and counting
So it turns out that compiling data from over three thousand people is actually quite a difficult job. In retrospect this seems fairly obvious, but somehow this thought didn’t really cross our minds when we decided to run the freelancer survey last year. By my quick calculation we’ve spent about 300 man hours on the project now.

The good news is we’re on the home stretch, the data has been compiled, evaluated, graphed and I began formatting it into a PDF this morning. I’d give an ETA … but let’s face it, that hasn’t been working out very well for the survey thus far!

So again, I’m sorry it’s taken so long, all I can say is we’re putting in a lot of work

1000 Copies of The Book Sold
We recently sold our 1,000th copy of the How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer book which is really amazing. We’ve commissioned two people – a freelancer and an editor – to work on a second edition of the book which will be made available as a PDF to anyone who has already purchased the ebook or paperback. The feedback has been really good, but we’re all about improving things to the max around here!
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This post is a guest post from Allan Branch, a one time freelancer who created LessAccounting for freelancers who need to keep track of money or send invoices.

What if someone could sue your company and then, since your company has no money, take your house or win a judgment that takes you fifteen years to pay? The Corporate Veil provides protection against this happening to you.

What is it?

The Corporate Veil is the legal shield that protects an individual from being personally liable for the actions of his/her company. This only applies to owners, partners, board members, not employees or share holders. In this country a person, or a company may sue any other person or company for anything, at any time. But there is only one reason to sue, and that is to be awarded money. So if a person or company doesn’t have any money, then there isn’t really anything to sue for. Continue Reading

The eighth episode of Freelance Radio, the official FreelanceSwitch podcast, is now available! This episode, we reach into the mailbag and answer listener questions for the duration.

Subscriptions to the podcast are available via iTunes and an archive of all podcasts will appear in the podcast section. We hope you enjoy it!

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Dear Aunty Entity

I’m just starting a project for a new client. We are having our first meeting in a few days time to make introductions and formally kick start the work.

Do you have any tips for making a good impression, conducting a successful; meeting or questions to ask? Are there any follow-up ideas you could pass on? I’m going with the art director and lead developer.

Thanks
Monitor Lizard

Dear Monitor

Meeting a new client is like having an interview. Even if the relationship is established with other members of the team, they do not know you or have experience of working with you. The project manager is usually one of the key points of contact so it’s important to start off on the right note. Appreciation of your de-constructivist wardrobe, piercing preferences, your quirky sense of humour and dating status can develop at a more leisurely pace once you are on your way to developing the relationship. Continue Reading

Following on from Skellie’s excellent Web Worker series, in this post I’m going to outline some of the most common challenges faced when you work from anywhere and how you can overcome them.

Since my husband and I left the UK last year for destinations unknown, we’ve been running our business from exotic locations such as Panama, Buenos Aires, Grenada, Dubai and we’re currently in South Africa for the next 3 months. Is it all it’s cracked up to be? Most definitely but it doesn’t come without its drawbacks.

Here are some of the challenges you’re likely to face if you plan to work from anywhere – and how to overcome them…
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It’s been about a year since I began blogging, and during that time I’ve started paying a lot more attention to writing. Not so much that I have gotten any good at it, mind, just enough to realise what an art it is.

Write To Done

Fortunately there are some good places on the web to help improve your writing skills. In particular, Leo of ZenHabits has launched overnight a new site called WriteToDone aimed at sharpening your technique.

He’s had a few great posts already: Continue Reading

As a freelancer, you’re constantly judged by the work you’ve done and who you’ve worked for.

Imagine if you could add a bunch of high profile names to your list of clients — or add a redesign of a Technorati Top 100 blog to your profile. Too good to be true, right?

I don’t think so.

If you can think of ‘payment’ beyond dollars and cents, all of the above is entirely possible. You can be paid in promotion, or in added reputation to your freelancing business — things that are easy and free for a big-time client to give, but incredibly valuable things to receive. In this post, I’ll be providing 12 things you can do to add value to your freelancing business and build your profile as a freelancer.

High-profile freelancers can charge their dream rates and receive a steady stream of work offers, so these things are all worth doing.
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We’re all in business and when running a business, there’s two ways to keep the bank account stocked: increase the money coming in or decrease the money going out.

In this post, I am going to focus on the latter method, looking for ways to shave off some of those business expenses.
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