We’re well into April now and for those of you who might not remember that far back, this month marks FreelanceSwitch’s 1 year anniversary. Yep that’s right, it’s our birthday! Seems like only yesterday that Cyan and I thought to write a blog on freelancing, but to be sure it’s been a good 12 months. A little later this week Skellie’s got an awesome celebratory competition for you, but today I thought I’d wrap up a few of the highlights of the year that was:

1. April 2007, FreelanceSwitch launches and is very warmly received. A month later and the blog has well over 3000 readers. At the time being blogging newbies we were shocked and excited by the awesome growth. The original design was my very first WordPress theme that I’d built from scratch. You can see a screenshot of that old beast here.
2. May 2007, The rather strange, and now defunct, BikiniZero (tech news read by women in bikini’s) mentions FreelanceSwitch much to everyone in the office’s delight.
3. June 2007, Back in the early days one of our writers was Leo Babauta of the now phenomonally popular ZenHabits. In June he wrote up one of his trademark super popular posts, about how you can make laziness work for you.
4. July 2007, We launch the second of our resources – the subsite Not By The Hour – that documents lots of ways for freelancers to make passive income to supplement their regular work. Part of our commitment to helping freelancers in whatever way we can.
5. August 2007, The Freelanceswitch Forums are launched and readers take to the new Vanilla powered discussion boards like ducks to water. Months later there are almost 2000 threads about just about everything you could imagine.
6. September 2007, Ivan Brezak Brkan (who has been promising me for more than a year now that he’s going to launch a blog) writes our most popular article ever – 35 Absolutely Essential Mac Apps – still receives tons of traffic months later
7. October 2007, the FSw team (Cyan, me & Leo) take a lead role in organising the hugely successful nonprofit initiative Blog Action Day
8. November 2007, FreelanceRadio our official podcast hits it’s sixth episode. Thanks to the hugely talented John Brougher and his team of indomitable freelancers, the podcast goes on to win Best Blog Podcast of 2007.
9. December 2007, Uber artist NC Winters publishes a special Christmas edition of his long running FSw strip Freelance Freedom … He’s almost hit his 50th strip now.
10. January 2008, How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer hits the (virtual) shelves after months of writing and sells like hotcakes. In related news, we’re now close to releasing the second edition, and have found a publisher to take it to bookstores!
11. February 2008, FreelanceSwitch gets an awesome new editor when Skellie joins the team and she’s been doing a fantastic job if I may say!
12. March 2008, Social Media jedi master Muhammad Saleem starts his epic 10 post series on social media essentials - the longest we’ve ever run.

Some Stats!

And of course there have been lots of other highlights – we launched a job board, a rates calculator, a client analyser, there was the time we posted about a design competition and the time I thought we should sell templates via the site. We’ve had 50 spectacularly talented freelancers give their writing time and skills and from their contributions we’ve compiled some amazing statistics, just look at these:

• We’ve had 3 million visits over the last year. 3 MILLION, that is a lot of visits Not to mention the 6.5 million pageviews!
• We’ve had 500 posts to which 13,000 comments have been added (and a good 80,000 spam comments, thank you akismet, without your spam catching ways we’d be lost)

And of those visitors:

• 65% have been using Firefox, 12% Safari, 10% IE7 and only 8% IE6 – which is good because I’ve left numerous IE6 bugs in the code!
• 70% have been on Windows, 27% mac, 3% Linux, .1% iPhone Heck there were even 150 people who visited from their Nintendo Wii’s!
• And of course the visitors came from all over the world, in varying numbers. From the 1.7 million US visits to the 250,000 Brits to the 15,000 Croats down to the littler countries – 1,000 Maltese visitors, 500 Paraguayan visitors, and 1 guy (or gal) in Turkmenistan

Long Live Freelancing!

So from all of us here at FreelanceSwitch, we hope you enjoyed the blog this last year. I’m sure the next year is going to be even better! Thanks to all the readers who’ve commented, participated, linked and bookmarked the site.

I hope that the site has helped freelancers everywhere get that little bit better at what they do. Heck even if it’s just our one Turkmenistani freelancer who gets something out of the site, then it was worth it!

Long live freelancing!!!

A quick announcement today, we’re switching our advertising over to a new system via the recently launched BuySellAds.com. Previously I’d been running a little ad network between four of our sites – FlashDen, PSDTUTS, FaveUp and of course FreelanceSwitch – but now thanks to this new service, it’s all fully automated.

BuySellAds is still in Beta but is a very promising service and I know Todd who’s running the site and he’s a great guy. So if you’ve ever wanted to purchase an advert here, you can now do so via our Ad Sales page on BuySell. The price of an advert is $750p/month or in other words about $1 CPM.

Also of course you can buy ads on PSDTUTS for $1500, and on FaveUp for $300.

For those of you who’ve been visiting the site for a while you’ll remember we used to run ads in this format (6-8 at a time) and switched a while back to the nice, clean Miiingle system. While I had high hopes for selling fewer, more premium adverts, it never quite took off. So we’re back full circle In any case, at least more people will be able to afford these ads!

Rates Calculator

Use our simple calculator to help put together an hourly rate for your freelance work to break-even and to achieve the level of profit you’re after. You may also wish to read through these Nine Factors to Consider When Determining Your Hourly Rate

Client Analyser

Enter clients and details about them to have the client analyser use the 80/20 or Pareto principle to let you compare and contrast their benefits and drawbacks.

The Global Freelancer Survey

We surveyed 3700 freelancers and compiled the data into a stunning report that uncovers buckets of interesting data. From how much freelancers earn, to how happy they are, the global freelancer survey has enough numbers and analysis to be well worth the small fee for its download.

Guide to Passive Income

Getting paid by the hour is pretty neat, but it’s even better when you have income that comes in when you’re taking time off too! Freelancers are uniquely positioned to be able to spend time creating sources of passive income while still getting their main money earning work done. Visit our Not-By-The-Hour subsite to learn about passive income and find useful sites for doing so.

Search through the FreelanceSwitch archives below, or pay a visit to our Explore FreelanceSwitch page to see some categorized editor’s picks.

Getting Started as a Freelancer

Whether you’re in the process of setting up your freelancing business or are still weighing up your options, these articles will help you take the first steps in freelancing.

A Comprehensive Guide to Starting Your Freelance Career
This is the article that started it all. Before we even thought about launching FreelanceSwitch, Collis wrote an article about what he’d learned during his freelancing career. This article will give you the basics of branding your freelancing business, finding work, quoting and estimating, getting paid, and client liaison. If you’re right at the start of your freelancing journey then start with this article!

On the Side or All the Way?
A big decision for would-be freelancers is whether to pack their job in or begin by freelancing on the side. This article offers the pros and cons so you can make a more informed choice.

Freelancing 101 – The Basics
In this article, Mathias, German developer extraordinaire discusses what he sees as the most important issues for a new freelancer. In this article he covers issues with finances, working environment, holidays, your portfolio and the fear you’ll doubtless feel when you first go out on your own.

Naming Your Freelancing Business – To Personalize or Not? (With a Poll)

One of the fun things all new freelancers get to do is to come up with a name for their business. In this article, you can find out whether personalizing your business name (eg. John Smith Design Agency) is right for you.

Pricing Yourself

Pricing your services correctly is so important to any freelancer – it can be the difference between staying in business and going bust. Below are a few handy resources to help you charge what you’re worth.

The FreelanceSwitch Rates Calculator
This very handy tool will help you figure out how much you should be charging per hour.

Nine Factors to Consider When Determining Your Price
Figuring out how much you should charge isn’t just about the numbers. In this article you will learn the other issues you must consider when determining your price.

Hourly vs. Fixed Pricing
Should you charge by the hour or by the job? Mathias sheds some light on the issue in this article.

The Price Is Right
A practical guide to making both you and your client happy with your rates.

Figuring Out How Much To Charge
Here you can get a short insight into how Collis quotes a web design job.

Finding Jobs

Finding work when times are quiet is a challenge for any freelancer. Happily, here at FSw we have just what you need!

The Monster List of Freelancing Job Sites
At last count this list had over 80 job boards for you to check out to nab a brand new job.

101 Ideas to Get More Freelance Work and Generate New Client Leads
Here are 101 great ideas to help you get some new client leads! The great thing about this list is that you can pick out the options which suit you and go for it. Many of them are free, and lots of them will take less than an hour or two to do.

How to Get More Referrals
Most often the best new clients will come from referrals. In this article Cyan discusses what you can do to encourage more referral leads.

How NOT to Apply for a Freelance Position
If you’re not having any luck responding to job ads, then you may need to work on how you’re doing it. This article gives some tough-love guidance to those of us searching for work online but perhaps not having much success. This article also has some practical tips for designers looking for new work.

The Dos And Don’ts Of Selling To Clients
Tim Wall gives some great tips on what to do (and not do) to tell your services to potential clients. Check this out if you know you need to refine your pitch.

10 Essential Steps to Making the Perfect Pitch
This article is geared primarily to writers, but these tips are applicable to all freelancers. This article will go further to help you sell yourself and your work.

Dealing with Clients

Successful client liaison is the difference between more work and no work. One happy client can lead to dozens of new jobs and a prospering business. However, some clients aren’t that easy to work with. Below are some articles to guide you through what can be a minefield of client relations.

12 Breeds of Client and How to Work with Them
This is one of our most popular articles ever. It is not only very funny, but also has some good tips for dealing with common types of clients.

Pitching and the Decision-Making Styles of Clients
This is a short article, but has some interesting insights into how clients think, based on recent scientific research.

The Ultimate Design Brief
This great article by Shaun is a step-by-step guide to creating a thorough design brief.

An Ounce of Professionalism
Being professional goes a long way to impressing client. In this article Steve discusses the importance of professionalism to freelancers when dealing with clients.

Day-Day Productivity

We all want to be more productive. Getting home an hour earlier or making more money per week are dependent on us being productive – and without a boss keeping an eye on us we need some tricks to keep us away from the tv and at our desk!

10 Ways to Eliminate Distractions
Distractions are rampant for any freelancer, and they are the enemy of flow and efficiency. Happily our productivity guru, Leo, has lots of ways to keep you on the straight and narrow.

How to Work in Bursts to Get More Done
We all have projects we just wish would go away. This article will help you accomplish them quickly and easily, so you can move on to something a little bit more fun.

10 Ways to Make Laziness Work for You
Sounds too good to be true? Well, these tips actually make sense, so if you’re a lazy one (aren’t we all?) then read this article!

20 Time and Energy Drains You Can Eliminate
Do you while away your working hours by accomplishing practically nothing? Well then this article is for you.

A Guide to Simple Project Management
Even the simplest of jobs require project management. This article will help you stay on top of your projects and keep your clients happy.

14 Essential Tips for Meeting a Deadline
If you’ve been chucking a lot of all-nighters recently then this is the article for you. With a few simple habits you can keep your deadlines under control and meet them effortlessly. (Clients everywhere breath a sigh of relief!)

The Lighter Side

Okay, so you’re bored and you don’t want to work any more. You want to be entertained! If that’s you, then here are some articles to take your mind off your worries…

Top Ten Signs You May Be Charging Too Little
This is another of our most popular articles of all time. If you’ve been told you could charge more, check out this article and see where you stack up.

Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Quit Your Job Today and Become a Freelancer
A good one if you need some convincing to take the plunge into freelancing, or just want to remember why freelancing is so awesome.

15 Web Addresses for Wasting Time … View At Your Own Risk!
Here are some of our favourite places to slack off when we just can’t face another client revision.

More Surefire Ways To Get Yourself Fired By The Readers Of FSw
We ran a little competition and discovered FSw readers were a pretty funny group of people. If you want to get yourself fired in the most outrageous and offensive way possible, then check these suggestions out.

Notice: Due to overwhelming numbers of articles, we are not currently looking for contributions on the site for a while, as we go through the backlog of great stuff! Thanks so much for your interest, we appreciate your time!

On this page you can download free FreelanceSwitch wallpapers to remind you of us while you’re away. Use them to spice up your desktop – unless of course you’re still working full-time, in which case they may get you into trouble!

If you’re a creative type and want to create a FreelanceSwitch wallpaper, then Upload your wallpaper here. If we like it we’ll add it to the collection with a link to your website.

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Banners

We also have banners available in case you’d like to link up to the site and help promote the ‘Switch!

General Support

If you have questions regarding the job board, the book, or require any other technical support, contact our Eden Support Center.

Get Your Product Reviewed

A review on FreelanceSwitch puts your product or service before our audience of many thousands of Freelancers. Your review will stay permanently in our archives meaning you get a permalink on a high-traffic, high-SEO site.

You can purchase an impartial review through Sponsored Reviews. We only take on reviews which we think the FreelanceSwitch audience will benefit from.

Would you like to be interviewed?

FreelanceSwitch is always on the lookout for talented freelancers who are interested in being interviewed. If you have a fantastic bio and are interested in sharing your experiences, Request an interview.

Suggest an article or link for inclusion in a Linkswitch

If you have written a great article or have launched a new site that you think our readers will enjoy we’d love to hear about it! Make your suggestion here.

Questions about Freelancing

If you have a question about freelancing please post it on the forums. Because of the number of emails we receive we cannot reply to everyone individually, but on the forums you can get the feedback and advice of many seasoned freelancers.

212 Pages of Expert
Freelancing Advice

Covering everything from getting started to expanding your business, How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer is the official FreelanceSwitch book. Written by Collis & Cyan Ta’eed – the founders of the site – it’s packed with new information, advice and insights not covered on the blog.

Purchase a PDF copy of the book online and pay via PayPal.

Purchase a paperback copy of the book, via Lulu.com

Sample Pages and Contents

You can view the first 15 pages of the book including the contents and some sample pages at the Lulu Book Preview.

Need Help?

If you experience any problems, send a support ticket to our eden help desk at Eden.Helpserve.com.

Copyright (c)2007, All Rights Reserved, Registered with Library of Congress, USA.

Become an Affiliate

Got an audience who you think will be interested in freelancing like a rockstar? Help us sell the eBook and receive 30% of each sale (US$8.70). You can sign up to be an affiliate at e-Junkie and we’ve got a range of banners available to help advertise the book. (Shown Below)

As an affiliate you will be sent an email for each sale originating from your website. Each month’s earnings will be paid via PayPal within 15 days of month end.

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Yesterday here on FreelanceSwitch we put up a post about Jonathan Field’s Book Cover Competition. Lots of comments ensued and since then Jonathan has cancelled the contest. This morning when I woke up to read about the design contest, I thought I’d chime in with my own opinion, as a designer. While Jonathan’s competition is no longer running, the issue is an interesting one to discuss.

But first allow me to clarify one thing. FreelanceSwitch has always been a multi-author and multi-opinion blog. We’re proud to publish many different voices on many different topics. We welcome discussion and have even posted follow up posts presenting opposing cases in the past. We don’t censor any of our writers and we see everyone’s opinion as worthwhile. And that’s why I’m about to give you mine

Personally I think that most often Design Contests are bad news. And in this post I’m going to tell you why…

Continue Reading

As most of you know a couple of weeks ago we released the survey results and judging by the feedback, they were worth seeing, here are a couple of user comments:

Amazing, beautiful report… And some of the analysis in the end confirms my thoughts on marketing and money. The whole thing is a wealth of knowledge that will help to guide my business and personal decisions for some time to come, I’m sure! Thanks so much! – no.e

Awesome. Now I can see what it feels like being a freelancer in terms of figures and graphs. Phyo Wai

The results were sent out for free to all participants (even the ones who didn’t get right to the end of the survey!) and they’ve been available since for a ‘donation’ of at least $3. I’m writing today to let you know that in about a week I’m moving the survey off to the new Rockstar website we’ve been developing, and when that happens, we’ll be changing the price to something high (I’d guess around $25). The reason being that most of our community should have grabbed it by then, and anyone else who comes along can pay a premium

So anyhow before moving it, I wanted to make sure anyone here on FreelanceSwitch who wants it, has had a chance to grab it for $3!

Get the full 55 page report

You can grab the report using the ejunkie button below, it’ll ask for a donation, you can edit the number down to the minimum $3, or feel free to give us more

This report is no longer available here. You can now find it at our new Rockable Press store here

Why the charge? Close to 300 manhours of work went into hosting, compiling, analysing and reporting the survey. While it has been distributed freely to anyone who chose to participate, we are charging for the results to help pay for the rather large expense of putting it together. We thank you for your understanding.

It’s my great pleasure to announce today that FreelanceSwitch has a new editor in chief! She actually took over a couple of weeks ago but wanted to get into the flow of things before formally announcing on the site. Of course most of you already know her from her fabulous articles, I’m speaking of none other than Skellie!

Skellie not only has a great nose for blogging, but coincidentally is also Australian (though she’s from Melbourne which we all know to be not as fabulous as Sydney, but nice all the same). She also writes and edits at Problogger, NorthxEast, DailyBlogTips and her own blogs Anywired and Skelliewag, making her just about the most experienced blogger around

So I’m sure you’ll join me in welcoming Skellie aboard and wishing her well with the site! I think FSw will really flourish with her content direction. I myself am working busily on our Rockstar brand and books with some imminent releases and also on FSw’s sister blog PSDTUTS. Nonetheless I’ll still be posting the odd article here happily and announcing things and working on upgrading and improving the site!