Did you make a resolution to learn a new skill in the new year? Then Tuts+ Premium is here to help you do it!

To celebrate the new year, we’re offering a sale on our subscription for the very first time. Sign up before January 31st and save 25% off the already discounted year membership price! You can now enjoy an entire year of Tuts+ Premium content for only $135. That’s a cumulative savings of $93 off the monthly price. Continue Reading

Ready to grow your business? Tuts+ Premium has two brand new premium guides to help you! Veteran FreelanceSwitch contributors Amber Turner and Patrik Larsson have shared their experience navigating two very tricky areas of freelancing: rebranding your established business and increasing your client base with freebie giveaways. Continue Reading

The last installment in Tut+ Premium’s freelancing course, Freelance Bootcamp, is all about advancing your career. If you’re a Premium member and following along, this is your space to share your ideas with fellow FreelanceSwitch readers!  The section starts with Marketing for Freelancers. In the last section of the series, James Clear examines the essential strategies for growing your business, including:

• Focusing your marketing
• The down and dirty on your legal needs
• How to raise your rates
• And finally, the importance of referrals and mentors.

If you’re a Premium member who’s completed the Freelance Bootcamp course with us, what’s your feedback? Did you find the course worth recommending to fellow freelancers?  Continue Reading

For those of you who are following along with Freelance Bootcamp over on Tuts+ Premium, you’ll be into the second chapter of content: Running Your Business. The first couple videos in this chapter, “How to Get Your First Client” and “How to Find Your Ideal Client” deal all with the all important clients of your new freelance business. James Clear of Passive Panda advises some tips on getting your first clients, including:

• Why your first client is likely to come from your existing network
• How to approach friends and family for referrals
• The secret to what potential clients do and don’t care about
• Think like your client with empathy mapping
• Once you’ve identified them, how to effectively target your ideal client

If you’re following along with Freelance Bootcamp, feel free to discuss your ideas here! How did you find your first client? Have you found your ideal? Do you have questions for James so far? Continue Reading

Are you a passionate freelancer, or looking to make the leap into freelancing full time? We’re excited to announce that FreelanceSwitch has partnered with Tuts+ Premium to offer in-depth video courses and eBooks for freelancers as part of a monthly membership.

What you’ll get:

• Freelance Bootcamp video course from James Clear of PassivePanda.com. This course will teach you everything you need to know to start and run a thriving freelance business. We’ll add a new freelancing-relevant course every month covering topics like marketing, business, SEO, finding clients and earning more money as a freelancer – all taught by industry experts.
• More than $500 USD worth of eBooks, including How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer, Freelance Confidential, Successful Freelancing for Web Designers, LinkedIn and Lovin’ It, From Photoshop to HTML, Professional Web Design (Vol. 1 & 2), iPhone App Entrepreneur, How to Write Great Copy for the Web, Twitter Up Your Business, Rockstar WordPress Designer, How to Build a Successful Blog Business, Successful Facebook Marketing… and more!
• Periodic bonuses, like downloadable resources and special in-depth content.

Join Tuts+ Premium ($19/mo) now to access all this immediately, or read on to learn more about the partnership between FreelanceSwitch and Tuts+ Premium. Continue Reading

Rockable Press is very proud to announce the launch of our newest book, LinkedIn and Lovin’ It!

Why a LinkedIn book? LinkedIn veteran and FreelanceSwitch writer Susan Johnston was encouraged to write a guide on LinkedIn after noticing something: “Although LinkedIn is a fantastic platform for freelancers and other creative professionals, I noticed that much of the information on LinkedIn is geared towards job-seekers. So, I decided to create my own guide specifically tailored to people who consult, freelance, or own a business.” In LinkedIn and Lovin’ It, Susan Johnston teaches you how to build a rock solid LinkedIn network that can be a constant source for recommendations and referrals. Advice includes:

• Setting up every aspect of your profile to bank on maximum response.
• Build your network to reach your next top client, employer, or partner.
• Build your profile to get your work in the spotlight.
• Do research on the competition & companies, find jobs, gather data.

Interested? Head over to the Rockable Press page to download a free 14 page sample! LinkedIn and Lovin’ It is available in three DRM-free ebook formats (epub, mobi, and pdf) for only $17. Join Rockable Press’s LinkedIn Group to get an additional voucher for $3 off!

We’ve had a few posts recently discussing the usefulness of networking sites like LinkedIn for freelancers: 5 Reasons to Use LinkedIn, Are You Getting Clients on LinkedIn? And over on Rockable Press’s own LinkedIn Group, we’ve had a fantastic discussion full of tips for freelancers looking to network. Read on for some of the tips from our readers!

Since I’m a FreelanceSwitch writer, I have to keep coming up with ideas for articles. Since LinkedIn is one of those places where you have to write in order to communicate, it’s a great generator of raw material. Say someone asks a question, I answer it, and I happen to think that my answer is pretty clever. (It’s one of those writer things. We all think that what we say is pretty clever.)

So, I take said clever answer, do the copy and paste thing, and there it is, the germ of another FreelanceSwitch article. Call it the LinkedIn Forced Writing Plan. (Martha Retallick)

Continue Reading

photo credit: smi23le on Flickr

We’ve talked before on FreelanceSwitch about ways to find new clients. In last year’s Freelancer’s Survey, a growing portion of freelancers indicated they’re finding more clients using social media. There’s a lot of choices to choose from: Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc. LinkedIn has always struck me as unusual that it specializes only in business and professional social connections. Combined with last year’s survey numbers, that got me curious: how many useful connections have you made on LinkedIn? Is LinkedIn a good resource for freelancers?

A few interesting statistics to get our discussion started!

• LinkedIn boasts 120 million members world wide. 950,00 members use the word “freelance” in their job title.
• Over 8.3 million LinkedIn members list themselves as “owner” of their current business.
• 482,000 list themselves as self-employed.
• 57,782 members list themselves as a contractor.

Do you find LinkedIn a good social media tool for freelancers? If so, do you have any good tips or success stories? Continue Reading

Last week’s open thread talked about the usefulness of formal education for freelancers. We got some interesting responses and had a great discussion! This week, I thought we’d look at another surprise statistic from the Global Freelancer’s Survey. We asked freelancers how many years they’d worked as a full-time employee before beginning their freelance career.

excerpt from "Freelance Confidential," Rockable Press

Of 3,285 responses, 543 had never worked for an employer before freelancing. That’s a large number of “native” freelancers!

We focus so much on readers who are “making the switch” to freelancing from the corporate environment–escaping the cubicle, becoming your own boss, etc. We are, after all, FreelanceSwitch. I had expected “I didn’t work as an employee before” to be a minor response. I thought the results were interesting so I dug a little deeper into it for the chapter in Freelance Confidential.

I compared the way survey responses differed between those who were former employees and those who began freelancing from the start of their career. Freelancers who started their career freelancing shared some interesting characteristics: Continue Reading

We’re very proud to announce the release of Freelance Confidential, Rockable Press’s newest book on freelancing. This book aims to provide the hard numbers on the biggest issues of freelancing and advice on how experienced freelancers can improve their business. More than just another single person’s view on freelancing, Freelance Confidential contains contributions from the Editor of FreelanceSwitch, Amanda Hackwith (that’s me!), a panel of expert entrepreneurs and freelancers, and YOU, the FreelanceSwitch community!

Last winter, we asked readers of FreelanceSwitch to contribute to a global survey on freelancing–over 3,200 of you responded! Get those statistics and you’ll learn the real numbers on the biggest questions which revealed some surprising new trends for the freelance industry. Did you know…?

• Fewer freelancers live in large urban cities than did three years ago. What are the benefits?
• New referrals from advertising and cold calling has dropped significantly. What’s the best new source?
• Freelancers with former experience as an employee report the highest level of satisfaction and happiness. Why is that?

Continue Reading

photo credit: sansreproache/flickr

Rockable Press recently shared some statistics from their up-coming freelancing book, Freelance Confidential, with their mailing list. The book includes results from the survey conducted here at FreelanceSwitch a few months ago that polled 3,200 freelancers on every aspect of their work. There were a lot of nifty facts about freelancing in there, but nothing generated more heated discussion more than this simple line:

44% of freelancers are self-taught and never received any university or technical college training in their field.

Some responses were shocked that the number was that high and saw it as a bad thing for the industry. Others thought it should be higher and that education adds little value for freelancers. I thought the responses were so strong that it would be great to open it up to a discussion for the FreelanceSwitch community. So tell us what you think!

• Does a freelancer need a college education or technical training to be successful?
• Is there a difference between self-taught freelancers and freelancers with formal training?
• What value does formal training or education add for freelancers?

What do you think? 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 flash design, Mac OS X development, print 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! 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 blog writing, Mac OS X development, app conversion, 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! Continue Reading