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

One of the great benefits of social media is the ability to reach a large audience at little cost. Using the popular hashtag notation, you can spread your brand, take advantage of popular trends, and get your message out.

Hashtags are a great way to promote your business. Learn how hashtags work, as well as how to use popular tools to assist you with reaching your audience through social media. Continue Reading

Disability is one of those things that can happen suddenly. Or it can develop over a period of years. It can also be a fact of life that you’ve dealt with since birth. It’s a challenge for those affected.

From hearing loss, to brain injuries, and degenerative diseases, there are freelancers working with all sorts of disabilities. The good news is that it’s possible to do well as a freelancer with a disability

Learn how freelancers with disabilities can achieve great success by structuring their workflow, using assistive technology, and pushing forward with determination. Whether you struggle as a freelancer with a disability or not, read on, there are some inspiring stories that follow. Continue Reading

Google Plus is the thinking person’s social network. It’s rapidly becoming the place to go for anyone looking to take part in thoughtful and engaging discussion online.

This makes Google Plus a great place for learning, research and sharing ideas, especially if you learn best through conversation and dialogue.

As a freelancer, you can use Google Plus’s features to research your target market and prospects, learn new skills to enhance your business, curate content to share on social networks, and connect with like-minded people who are willing to teach what they know or help you brainstorm ideas.

Let’s take a look at how to use Google Plus for research. Continue Reading

We all read articles about how important it is to market ourselves through social media.

I’ve been talking to successful freelancers to find out the realities of using social media for business and getting their tips for the best ways to network and promote their work. Here are 7 tips that will boost your social media effectiveness.

1. Develop a Social Media Strategy

Being clear from the outset on why you are using social media for business purposes will save you a lot of time and wasted effort in the long run.

What is the aim of your social media time? Are you trying to drive more potential clients towards your website, network with other professionals to make useful contacts, boost traffic to your blog, or raise your status as an expert? A social media strategy doesn’t have to be complicated, but it will help to keep this aim in mind when you are sharing information and interacting with other people. Continue Reading

Whenever a reader marks your email newsletter as spam, you’ve got problems. The better classes of email service providers keep track of how many times they’re told a particular email newsletter is spam. If the number gets too high, they’ll shut down that newsletter. There can even be legal repercussions for sending out newsletters that are considered spam — including a $16,000 penalty for each recipient of an individual piece of spam in the US.

If you’re publishing an email newsletter — for marketing purposes or otherwise — you need to make sure that you can minimize the chance it can be mistaken for spam. There will always be occasional marks against you, from people who don’t remember signing up for your newsletter or who just want to get it out of their inboxes quickly. But the more you can do to keep those problems to a minimum, the better.

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For freelancers, especially those just starting out, it can be difficult to find the time and money needed to launch your website.

Many, in fact, simply opt to use social media sites in place of a website in the beginning of their career. This can be quite detrimental to a small startup, however, and end up causing your career to grow more slowly than necessary.

A dedicated website shows prospects that you are serious about your business – that you believe in yourself as a viable resource. A website adds legitimacy to your freelance work; without it prospects may turn away, scared you may be just another scam artist. Also, a website makes it easier for would-be clients to find you on the web.

You may already know just how important a website is, and your only drawback is that your budget cannot afford to hire a professional web developer. Or maybe you know a little about web design and development but simply do not have the time to put together your own site.

This article helps to solve all of these problems for you with step-by-step instructions on launching your own freelance website in a single day – or less – by gathering the right supplies and using a site builder.

So set aside a day, and be prepared to complete your website launch by the end of this article. Keep in mind that even those of you who have no technical experience at all can still easily walk through these freelance tips in a matter of hours.
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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 CakePHP and WordPress Development, Responsive Web Development, 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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Is your blog a lonely place? Often, freelancers start a blog about the type of work they do, in hopes of attracting clients with their posts.

But nothing happens.

The reason is usually that your tiny startup blog doesn’t have much traffic. Search engines don’t rank it highly and aren’t sending you many readers off of searches for the key terms you’re using in hopes of catching prospects’ attention.

You’re on page 57 of the Google search for “freelance designer,” and nobody comes.

You can solve this problem, get higher rankings in search and attract more visitors who are prospects by guest posting on more popular blogs.

The bigger, the better. Continue Reading

The relaunch of my freelance writing business in early 2012 began on Google Hangouts. I’d been hired as part of a team of ebook writers and editors. We hooked up from all around the world: from Canada to New Zealand, from Ohio to England, yet on Google Hangouts it felt as though we were in the same room together.

Meeting up every couple of weeks on Google Hangouts, we became a close-knit team. The project ended in August 2012, yet to this day we remain in close contact because of the bonds we developed meeting face to face on Hangouts.

Since then, Hangouts have earned a place close to my heart, and I use them regularly to meet with clients, other freelancers, and friends.

Hangouts are a powerful freelancing tool, and are far more than a Skype replacement. Read on to find out how they can give a video boost to your freelancing business. Continue Reading

We’re ready to announce something new and exciting — the Tuts+ Hub beta!

As you know, Tuts+ is all about helping people learn. With Hub, we’ve worked to deliver an experience that makes it easy for you to find exactly what you’d like to learn, with a delightful interface for reading.

What you see is a brand new layer that sits atop our current websites. All the articles and tutorials are still here (along with your comments), but we’ve designed a new way of presenting them and built new tools to help you navigate the library. Take a look now, and read on to find out more.

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