Ever wanted to know how some freelancers jump on those job postings before everyone else, and still manage to get the gig?

It’s not with canned responses, I can assure you. These don’t go over well when it comes to pitching for a job. But there are techniques one can use to get their name in the hat early in the piece.

Some have questioned the point of jumping on a job quickly. Let me tell you, as someone who has advertised for and applied for many, it counts. I know a whole slew of people who employ freelancers who stop reading applications after the first 50 or 100 come in, and that can be anywhere from twenty minutes after posting the job, to twenty hours later.

That’s not the only reason to get in early, of course. If a client only has to see two or three applications before finding the perfect match, they’re usually ecstatic. Nobody enjoys wading through applications.

To get inside that first batch of responses, we’ll be using a little bit of automatic “here’s one we prepared earlier” magic, but piecing these together in a way tailored to each job —as such they’re not canned responses, but we’ve made sure those things that will stay more or less the same across the board are quickly dealt with. Continue Reading

Credit: Jim Linwood on Flickr

Once you’ve done time as a gun-for-hire, there’s no other work that feels quite the same. There’s always a voice in your head begging you to go back, no matter how rewarding your job is. Take a full-time job or a long-term contract, and everything that was so exciting about freelancing is gone. The risk of not making enough to make ends meet for the month is gone, but so is the excitement that goes with that sort of risk. The pressure of having to make sound business decisions is gone, but with that, you’re at the mercy of someone else’s decisions, no matter what you think about them.

You can find excitement of different kinds and a sense of accomplishment of a different kind after you leave the world of freelancing, but it’s never quite the same.

There’s no ‘best of both worlds’ between those two worlds, either. You’ve got to make a choice. You could argue that part time work or a long-term contract fits the bill, but they’re really just pale versions of either situation with the same pros and cons, not to mention problems of their own.

When you come out of full-time work after three years and go back to freelancing, it’s a bit of a shock. So much of it seems to come back naturally, but there’s a whole world of things you need to do each day that you’ve forgotten about. It’s definitely something that comes with a mandatory adjustment period.

If you find yourself in a situation where you’re returning to freelancing after a long break doing what your grandmother might call ‘a real job,’ this piece is for you. Here’s how to get back on your feet again in the world you left behind.

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Each month we round up the best posts from WorkAwesome and FreelanceSwitch so that you can catch up on anything awesome you might have missed. There’s a ton of great advice in November’s archives, so make sure you check out the links we’ve compiled for you! Continue Reading

Each month we round up the best posts from WorkAwesome and FreelanceSwitch so that you can catch up on anything awesome you might have missed. Pay extra attention to the Global Freelancers Survey–with only a few days left, the clock is ticking on the opportunity to win an iPad and prizes from MOO Business Cards and the Envato Marketplaces! Continue Reading

Sick of being cooped up in the home office (or bedroom as the case may be?) DesksNear.Me is a new service that helps you find the nearest co-working locations to your home.

Co-working locations are offices specifically set up so that freelancers can work in an office-like space around other likeminded people. While many freelancers get out of their day jobs so they can work from home, just as many of us aren’t capable of getting any work done unless we’re out of the house. Those Seinfeld re-runs can be awfully tempting.

DesksNear.Me will try to discern your location and help you quickly find a location, or you can use the search function if your location can’t be determined, or you’re planning a workspace for a working holiday. Once you select a place from a map, you’ll see a page with availability and other relevant information. For instance, here’s the page for the OpenHub, a place a much younger Envato called its office for some time.

If you run a co-working space, you can add it to the DesksNear.Me directory for free–just fill out a few questions about your location, number of desks, booking preferences and provide a general description. For now it’s free to list all types of co-working space but in the future those who charge for a desk may need to pay a listing fee.

DesksNear.Me was developed for the Rails Rumble and came in at 6th place. Congratulations to developers Keith, Warren, Bodaniel and Alex! Some of you may know Alex as a marketplace user and the developer of the Sales Summit iPhone app for tracking your marketplace sales.

Check out DesksNear.Me.

It’s been a big day at Envato, first with the launch of Webdesigntuts+ and now we’re pleased to announce the first ever AppStorm book is available to buy for just $19. iPhone App Entrepreneur brings together insight and ideas from experienced iPhone developers and users to help you understand how to approach the development of your own app.

Whether you’re an experienced developer or just starting to think about creating an iPhone app, this book will help you make your next release a real success. Read on to find out more, read a few testimonials, and grab a discount! Continue Reading

Blog Action Day, founded by our own Collis and Cyan Ta’eed and now under the fantastic care of Change.org, is coming. On Friday the 15th of October, countless blogs will take the time to post about one important topic. This year’s topic is water.

As always, all Envato blogs–including FreelanceSwitch and WorkAwesome–will be participating. We hope you’ll head over to the Blog Action Day website and sign your blog up as well!

The Blog Action Day website says:

Right now, almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. That’s one in eight of us who are subject to preventable disease and even death because of something that many of us take for granted.

Access to clean water is not just a human rights issue. It’s an environmental issue. An animal welfare issue. A sustainability issue. Water is a global issue, and it affects all of us.

The site also has a list of issues involved that you might like to choose from if you’re stuck.

At the start of each month, we round up the best posts from the business network of blogs and directing you to them. Here’s the best of business in September, with articles from FreelanceSwitch and WorkAwesome. Continue Reading

One of the great advantages of freelancing is the ability to work from anywhere. On Web.AppStorm, Justin Stravarius looks at fifty web apps that can replace desktop applications you depend on. It’s worth a look.

Even without the help of the ground breaking features in HTML5, web apps have come of age. While not all web apps rival their desktop counterparts, some clearly do. One solid example being online To-do apps with invoicing and project management apps also competent enough for a neck to neck fight.

We’ve compiled a list of 50 worthy web app alternatives to standalone desktop apps. Let’s take a look!

Read “50 Great Web Alternatives to Desktop Software” on Web.AppStorm.

At the start of every month, we’ll be rounding up the best posts from the business network of blogs and directing you to them. Here’s the best of business in July, including articles from WorkAwesome, the Netsetter and FreelanceSwitch. Continue Reading

New web service Tischen is on a mission to rid the world of unemployment. The site provides users with a variety of ways to showcase their skillset on the Internet and make themselves available for contact with prospects, whether they be freelancers in need of clients or job seekers on the search for steady work. At the core of Tischen’s mission seems to be the belief that a lack of visibility is the biggest barrier to getting a job.

There are two kinds of memberships–free, and Plus memberships for $9 a month. Free members get their own Tischen page, an availability calendar and business card templates with their page URL. Plus memberships afford several benefits, including:

• A domain name included in the price
• Text alerts to your phone when you get a job request
• Preference in search results

The site’s founder, Saman Rahmanian, says that Tischen “is based on the premise that everyone has a skill to offer and that no matter how bad the economy, people still need to get stuff done. So Tischen is a platform that lets people show what skills they have and when exactly they can offer them. People in turn can search for these folks on the site to get their work done.”

It’s an interesting concept, and at the very least it’s another place for new freelancers to get their name out there. Go take a look.

It’s been a great three years and an excellent 45 episodes of Freelance Radio, but all good things must come to an end. Freelance Radio’s next episode is going to be its last. For a variety of reasons, we’re closing the curtains on the show and leaving it on a high, but the good news is that we’re giving it one big send-off.

John, Dickie, Von, Kristen and a special guest will be answering a big mailbag of your questions during the last show, and because of the importance of this episode we want to give you all the chance to get your questions in now. The deadline for questions is the 26th of July, and you can post your questions in the comments below for the panel to consider.

Finally, I’d like to take the opportunity to say that while one important chapter of FreelanceSwitch’s history is coming to a close, we’ve got exciting things planned for the rest of this year and beyond; don’t worry–FreelanceSwitch isn’t going anywhere, and you’ll continue to see your favorite podcast panelists here and on other Envato sites in the future!