Riddle me this, freelancers – is a killer month when you earn $10,000 working on jobs or when you’re actually paid that $10,000?

If you’ve been working as a freelancer for any real amount of time, you know all too well that completing a job has very little to do with the timeframe in which you will get paid.

Some clients (who we love) pay immediately – for those who pay electronically, this is often literally true. Other clients (and we love you too – mostly) can take weeks, months or (gulp) even longer to get the money to you.

Because of this fact, it’s really hard to figure out things like what our weekly and monthly earnings are. You might complete that $10,000 job mentioned earlier, but the money that comes in that month is from a few dozen jobs the month before totaling around $4,000.

Knowing that this is probably going to be a fairly common occurrence, how do you plan for your budget, savings, and retirement accounts? What can you do to make sure that you always have money lying around that’s easily accessible? Continue Reading

That old warning against putting all your eggs in one basket is still good advise. As freelancers, it’s important to spread your interests out: you’ll prevent burnout, and you’ll be less affected by peaks and lulls.

Teaching is a perfect compliment to any freelance lifestyle. It’s a good way to offset the typical solitary days of the self employed, and it will help keep your public speaking skills honed. Another benefit: it gets your name out there. If you teach a course in line with your specialty, you’ll establish yourself as an expert in your field.

When a student in your accounting class runs into trouble with their books, you may be the person they look up. But any connections can be beneficial, so if you’d rather teach a class about your side hobby of beekeeping, it’s still valuable exposure. Continue Reading

As a freelancer, it’s practically guaranteed that you have great creative skills. In your chosen field, you can come up with inspired solutions to big problems and absolutely wow your clients. But actually landing those clients may be another story — few freelancers come from a sales background, which can make actually landing projects harder than it needs to be.

There are plenty of consultants and trainers who are willing to teach a person how to be a great salesman. If you’re not in a position to take those courses, though, there are some steps you can take to improve your ability to make a sale. Continue Reading

You may have started off your freelancing career like I did by picking up one large client and a couple of small ones right off the bat. This worked for awhile until my husband lost his job and I suddenly needed to bring in enough to make up for his income. Fortunately, he joined me in my freelancing endeavors, and added his marketing expertise to my business.

Like many of our fellow freelancers, though, we didn’t have any extra money to put toward marketing expenses. We had to find a way to get the word out about our content writing business, for free and as quickly as possible. Social media and blogging (these two go hand in hand, as I’ll point out below) became the fastest, easiest, and cheapest way for us to gain new freelance writing gigs.

While my husband had some experience in social media, our use of blogging as a marketing medium involved quite a bit of trial and error. Even so, we suddenly found ourselves acquiring new clients, so many, in fact, that we had to become selective and only partner with those clients willing to pay what we needed to get our bills paid. We became highly desired experts in our freelancing field almost overnight it seemed without spending hardly a penny.

If you find yourself needing to market your freelancing business but are not sure where to start or how to do so without wasting your limited cash, blogging is the best way to accomplish this goal.

If you find yourself needing to market your freelancing business but are not sure where to start or how to do so without wasting your limited cash, blogging is the best way to accomplish this goal. However, you do not need to stumble around in the dark, so to speak, as my husband and I did when learning how to market your blog.

The following overview and tips should provide you with most, if not all, of the knowledge you need to get started with blogging. Most of the tips are from my own experience. A few are resources I wish I had known but only just discovered in my own research for this guide, which means that they are now definitely part of my own blogging process.

For easier understanding and readability, I have divided up this guide into 3 main types of blogging. You can do all three types or only start off with one, which is what my husband and I did due to lack of time. Before discussing the types of blogging and specific tips for each, I will discuss blogging techniques that apply to all and finally end with advice on using social media tips to reinforce your blogging efforts. Let’s dive in! Continue Reading

There are many freelancer stories that start with the wonderful day you stomped out of your full-time job and became self-employed. Or maybe the boss beat you to the punch and said “You’re fired!”

Whatever works.

Then there’s Ross Hudgens. You won’t talk to him for very long before you realize that Ross is a Man with a Plan.

In a recent post on his blog, Ross announced that he’d be leaving the best job he’d ever had to become an entrepreneur. And this job had it all – fat paycheck, interesting work, even a comfortable desk chair!

It was a wonderful environment for Ross to use his digital marketing expertise. Visit the Ross Hudgens Digital Marketing blog and you’ll see that he really knows his stuff. Plenty of long, chewy posts on achieving high search engine rankings by adding the right keywords to your site, improving your site’s link popularity, and developing quality content.

In short, Ross is the kind of guy a company would really want to keep on the payroll.So, why was he leaving his great job? Especially in this crummy economy? Continue Reading

Whether you’re a seasoned freelancer or just starting out, choosing the right price point for your client’s projects can be tricky and stressful. Today I’m going to walk you through the iOS app MyPrice, which is designed to factor in all of the variables to determine the most appropriate valuation for your time and effort.

Step 1: Set Up Your Profile

Putting the right price on your time and your work is one of the most crucial decisions you can make as a freelancer, and for good reason. The ideal rate will convey to your client your personal value for what you do. It will assert your expertise in your field, and your intention to make a living from your craft. However, there are a lot of factors that need to be taken into account when determining that magic number. And doing so can be an arduous process.

MyPrice considers all of those factors by asking you to respond to a series of questions before suggesting an optimal price point for your work. When you first launch the app, you’ll have to fill out your Profile. This is personal information that won’t necessarily change from project to project, and will establish an ideal rate for any hourly work you might perform, outside of a contracted project.

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How do you feel about editors?

Many writers I know fear or even hate them.

To new writers, editors can seem like mysterious beings who dwell in a far-off land…and you can’t figure out how you might get them to notice you.

Or simply an annoying obstacle standing between you and the writing career you want.

But here’s the magic: With the right approach, you can connect with a brand-new editor who doesn’t know you — even one at a great-paying, high-profile publication — and start getting gigs.

You don’t need connections.

You don’t need a lot of published articles under your belt.

What you do need is to know how to build great relationships with editors.

I’ve broken in cold at quite a few publications, and gotten to know a lot of editors.

These days, I also sit on the other side of the desk, as editor for guest posts on my own writers’ blog.

Here’s my guide to not just breaking in but becoming the “go-to” writer for your editors: Continue Reading

Your brand is crucial: it’s everything that makes a prospective client happy to work with you, or even reminds the client that you exist. But a brand isn’t something that you come up with overnight. You build a brand, brick by brick. You need the right foundation and the right supplies. 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

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 PHP/MySQL Development, Copywriting, Web Design 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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To make it as a freelancer, you need to be able to sell your work. That’s why making a great pitch to a prospective client is one of the key skills you can develop to be more successful.

However, many freelancers screw up the pitch in a number of common ways, from talking too much about yourself and what you want, from not knowing what the client wants, to rambling on, to not saying who you are and why you’re perfect.

Don’t make these mistakes. Follow the steps below to make the perfect pitch.

1. Know the client. If you know the client well, you’re in a great position to make a great pitch. If not, you need to take the time to do a little research. Get to know their product, company, or publication. Google them, find out more via LinkedIn, contact others in your network who know the client. The more you know, the better your pitch.

2. Know their goals. Specifically, you want to know what the client hopes to achieve. Sure, they hope to sell a product or service. But how? What message are they trying to sell to the public? Who are they reaching out to? This is key. Talk to others, read their website, learn their message from promotions and marketing and advertising.
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I am a freelance blogger and an online copywriter. Most people look at me in amazement when I tell them that.

Do you mean you can actually make money doing this thing? I am asked this question – a lot.

Isn’t blogging for people who want to share things online? Isn’t it really hard to make money from your blog? How do you find clients? Do they pay well? The questions keep on coming. There is genuine puzzlement on their faces, I can see that. So I thought it would be good to answer all these questions for you who wonder the same thing.

Yes, it is possible to make decent wages by offering your freelance blogging services. Very much so. Let’s look at how. Continue Reading