In our last Linkswitch, we had a look at a NY Times article on the “self-employed depression.” While it’s true that recent events have made making a living harder for many people who put themselves in the self-employed or freelance category, many freelancers are finding that business is as good as ever. A few days after, we published a piece by Martha Retallick on surviving the economic downturn. It’s clear that the state of the economy is an important issue for freelancers, as tiresome a topic it can get with the media milking it for all it’s worth.

So here’s what we want to know: how many of our readers are doing well despite it all, and how many of you are facing difficulties? Is the depressing and rather biased NY Times piece accurate or just another story written to sell? Cast your vote in the poll and then feel free to vent your economy frustrations in the comments.

There have been some interesting discussions on the FreelanceSwitch forums over the last few days: one of them is Client won’t approve designs. Can’t move forward. ADVICE?. Our forum members chimed in with some excellent advice.

Are you trapped in the wrong freelance profession? If you’re not comfortable in your work, it might be something to think about, and our friends at FreelanceFreedom have written about this here.

Here’s an interesting Web 2.0-style take on doing referrals: Refural.

TUAW published an interesting article called “The Freelancer’s iPhone: Productivity solutions for independent professionals,” a very interesting read for all iPhone-owning freelancers (thanks for the tip, Alex!).

We were featured in this article titled 100 Awesome Social Sites for Every Aspect of Your Life — thanks OnlineColleges.net!

The oDesk Blog’s Work from Home Tuesday post discusses freelance etiquette — this post could save your reputation!

Reader Michael wrote in to ask, “I am wondering if you might review and respond to this article. It paints a sad picture.” The New York Times recently published an article on the self-employed depression. In my experience as a freelancer who is friends with many freelancers, and the editor of this site, the picture painted is a skewed one, and it seems that there was no attempt made at all to see how many freelancers are still doing well or even doing better. Many freelancers have found that their businesses have only received more work and grown further since the start of the recession. While there are still the same old sad stories of failure, I’m hearing from people every day who’ve been laid off recently and found their new freelance venture to be successful.

I won’t deny that times are tough. There’s a recession, the economy is in bad shape, whatever: freelancers are still doing it.

There are a whole wide range of reasons why people take up freelancing. Some people are forced into it when they suddenly lose their job or need to make more money than they can otherwise to pay the bills. Others do it so they can take control over various areas of their lives, and there has to be at least one person who freelances purely because it’s only way they can use their skillset in their pajamas (the goal of this poll is to find that person). Let us know why you started freelancing in this week’s poll.

Last Poll: Where are you taking your business?

In the last poll we asked you where you planned to take your freelance business in the future. 1,500 of you have answered at the time of this writing (an awfully round number, don’t you think?). Let’s see what the most popular answers were:

• Expansionist thinking dominates with 33% of you intending to play with passive income and 32% intending to expand your freelance business into a firm, for a total of 65% of respondents who are not satisfied as small-scale service providers.
• A significant minority of 27% of respondents intend to continue their freelance businesses as they are — small-scale solo operations. That’s still four times the number of people who are using freelancing as a gateway to a Real Job, which came last at 7% of respondents (or 103 people).
• The Other option was used only 17 times, but the bulk of these responses simply listed a combination of two or more of the first three options.

When freelancers get together, they’ll almost inevitably get around to discussing where they plan to take their businesses in the future. As a party to many of these conversations, I’ve noticed that there are four prevailing goals for the future among our kind: those who enjoy freelancing for the solo and simple work life it provides them and want to keep it that way, those who want to transition to a passive income through selling products they can create with the skills they provide to others, those who want to take on employees and start a firm, and those using freelancing as a gateway to employment.

Most people I’ve talked to plan to stay in the first category — not surprisingly, as freelancing can be a great way to make a living. Those who want to take on employees and grow their enterprise take second place. Conversation, however, isn’t the most scientific way of gathering evidence and I’m curious to see where FreelanceSwitch readers hope to take their businesses in the months and years to come. For those who don’t fit into one of those four categories, I’ve left an “Other” option. Have at it and let us know!

As much as it can get tiring to see every second article begin with the words, “In this economy…”, dealing with recession from a business perspective is a serious issue for freelancers. Behance has an excellent article on the topic: Five Ways To Market Yourself During A Recession.

Personal finance is a topic oft ignored by people of all types, both freelancers and the employed. But it’s perhaps even more important for freelancers to be conscious of their personal finance habits because income fluctuates so much. Trent Hamm from the Simple Dollar has produced an excellent resource, Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance On Just One Page.

While we’re on the subject, here are 64 funny, inspiring and stupid money quotes from famous people — a funny read. “I used to have a drug problem, but now I have enough money.” – David Lee Roth.

Ever wondered why there’s a whole market of clients out there willing to pay top dollar despite the horde of professionals offering dirt-cheap prices? Jonathan Fields knows why — find out for yourself in Paying Not to Be First.

It can be hard to start a business as a freelance writer if you’re the type to resist the need to sit down and get started. Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project has thirteen tips for getting some writing done.

Chris Guillebeau recently released an ebook that will be helpful to the vast majority of freelancers in the creative field. It’s called the Art of Nonconformity and deals with marketing yourself as a creative through social media and creating a new career.

Snappy Sentences has a look at The Ultimate Freelancer, an excellent book which should be part of your collection.

Have a suggestion for the next Linkswitch? Let us know here. (Real content only please — we prefer not to promote products in these posts).

Photo by jurvetson.

As a freelance writer, I always conducted my business exclusively via the Internet. I still do. There are still plenty of people doing the local, in-the-flesh freelance creative gig. That’s fine and the Internet as a marketplace doesn’t invalidate that way of working, and it’s good that we get to make choices in this area that suit the way we like to work. While good communication forms the backbone of all sorts of businesses, we’re going to approach the topic as relevant to the online business, where communication can be treated very differently.

Running an online business allows you to choose how communication is done, as simple a thing it may seem from a distance. Communication is the thing most businesspeople, including freelancers, end up spending most of the day on. Thus it’s important that you know how you want the communication to happen, how much of it you want to be doing, and how to make sure that communication is both efficient and effective by developing a skill for only communicating with clarity and purpose.

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Our job board is something we take great pride in: every job is moderated and we filter out every posting that tries to take advantage of working freelancers. We’ve created an innovative and unusual business model for online job boards that has worked very well (and drawn its fair share of controversy and compliments), and we’ve helped many freelancers get their start or enhance their career through the opportunities the board affords.

So we’re incredibly pleased to see that our job board now has over 300 open jobs, which is a concurrent open job peak record for us, indicative not just of the growth in membership and job postings, but the quality of the service itself. More than ten jobs a day are coming in (as opposed to an average of five a day last time we measured), and that number is after we filter a stunning number of those who would take advantage of you (you don’t want to know how many of those there are!).

Of course, when we get excited over things like this we tend to give things away. We’ll give a one year subscription to two lucky commenters — bonus points on your scoreboard if you say something meaningful, too.

Many freelancers think that posts on writing are for the benefit of freelance journalists and copywriters alone. You can’t really blame them — if your trade is based on the excellent design you deliver or your skill as a programmer, then it might seem that the ability to piece words together in a pleasing and practical way isn’t necessary for you to master.

I’m a writer so my opinion might be biased, but many others in all sorts of trades and careers have discovered the value of the written word as a tool for relationship building, problem solving, and idea expression. You can learn to use the deceptively simple tool of writing to your advantage as well.

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Up until September, 2008 I was a full-time freelance writer. I had built myself a little business that kept my family comfortable, and I have to admit, my writer friends who enjoyed hacking away at their fantasy novels after work were a little jealous. I was happy because my lifelong goal, ever since I could clasp a pencil between a few fingers, was to make my living from writing.

The problem in this story was unrestricted growth. Maybe you think I sound like a bit of an ass looking at growth as a problem when many people are losing their jobs and closing up their shops, but don’t make that mistake. Unrestricted growth can be a problem, and saying it can’t be is a bit like the obese person telling the anorexic that they don’t have any real problems.

I was killing myself with work, and still taking on new clients because I didn’t want to let any of that growth “go to waste.” Nobody wanted to be around me at the time because I could barely hold a conversation after spending long, hard days doing nothing but writing and editing.

When it became clear that I couldn’t take on any more work whatsoever and I wasn’t comfortable with raising my prices anymore than I already had, I did what anybody in my situation would do.

I took a job.

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In a short period of time, our @FreelanceSw Twitter account has gone from 0 updates and 0 friends to almost 7,500 followers and 715 updates. In the capable hands of Roger Byrne, the FreelanceSwitch Twitter account has become more than just a link feed — it’s a freelance resource of its own and a way for our readers to interact with us on a daily basis.

We want to interact with even more of you, so we’re working with our friends at Freshbooks to offer a whopping twelve months free on any Freshbooks subscription plan and a couple of additional runner-up prizes of two months free. All you have to do is follow @FreelanceSw on Twitter — and why not follow Freshbooks while you’re at it?

Once you’ve followed us on Twitter come back here and leave a comment containing:

• Your Twitter username for verification,
• And tell us why a Freshbooks subscription would benefit you.

Good luck!

Recently, Martha Retallick posted on the topic of building your contact list. As can be expected with such an important part of any business, there are a plethora of applications available for managing contacts and customers. You might be looking for something that’s lightweight, simple and fast, or perhaps you’re looking for a full-blown CRM (customer relationship management) solution. In this article, we’ll look at both types of application, and you can choose which is the best for you.

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… well, no promises (you can’t always expect straight talk from a cartoonist). We’re coming up on Freelance Freedom #100 and we have some cool stuff planned to celebrate, none of which you get to hear about until we actually publish Freelance Freedom #100. Except, that is, for the chance for our readership to collectively interview N.C. Winters about any unshakable questions you’ve had regarding the strip, N.C.’s art, process, or even first name. (No, I don’t know what it is.)

Pose your question in the comments below. Depending on volume, we may not be able to answer everyone, but it can’t hurt to pitch yours in.