Audience building is all the rage, and it’s hard to read a blog post that doesn’t mention social media or the importance of community.

But does it matter to freelancers?

You bet it does; an engaged and loyal audience means that you can work on the projects that you like working on best, and that you never have to worry about business, because there’s always more prospects waiting in the wings for you to have time to service them.

The question is, then, how do you do it? How do you build that engaged audience to begin with?

Keep reading, and I’ll tell you… Continue Reading

A recent New York Times article follows a handful of people who have left their high paying jobs (either by choice or by the recession) to start small businesses focused on their dream jobs. The spoiler? It’s really hard—but that hasn’t stopped anyone.

“Indeed, since the dawn of the Great Recession, more Americans have started businesses (565,000 of them a month in 2010) than at any period in the last decade and a half, according to the Kauffman Foundation, which tracks statistics on entrepreneurship in the United States.” —New York Times

The lures of quitting your day job to focus on freelancing are pretty much the same as starting a small business—no boss, working from home in your pajamas, fulfillment that you are doing what you want to do. The downside is the same, too—lack of security, pay fluxuation, and sheer exhaustion. Continue Reading

If your freelance business isn’t where you want it to be, then it’s time to own up to your choices and make a change.

Here are 10 reasons your freelance career is failing. If you want to turn it around, then it’s up to you.

Consider this your “tough love” article of the week.

1. You know your craft, but not your business.

Sure, you’re an excellent artist or a skilled tradesman. You understand your task and you can do it well.

But you don’t understand marketing or sales or any of that other business stuff.

Guess what? It’s on you to figure it out. Learning new skills and adapting to the environment is part of the job. Continue Reading

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 HTML/CSS Design, Writing, Magento/PHP Contractor 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

View engaging conference lectures, interesting how to discussions, and high quality freelance advice via video here on FreelanceSwitch.

This week we look at A Smarter Twitter Page in Under 15 Minutes by Adi Purdila. In this video learn to design a smart, vintage modern background to welcome visitors to your Twitter page. Discover layout considerations, then dive into Photoshop. Continue Reading

If you’re still growing your Freelancer’s Thick Skin, this one’s for you.

You’ve all read the books about starting out in freelancing – the ones that discount the time spent “preparing and perfecting” your brand, as a means to avoid shouting: “I’m in business! Come and get it!”

I couldn’t wait to begin full-time freelancing, but dreaded the sales aspect. Loud announcements? Drawing attention to myself? Horrifying.

Cold calling? Are you even a little serious? I don’t even like calling for pizza.

Maybe I could just… get the world to come to me. Random girl typing away from random laptop… sure, they’d beat the door down any day. I settled on the lesser of two evils: I’d send emails. Continue Reading

Want to make your tax preparer the happiest person on the planet? By spending a few minutes on your financial paperwork now, you can make your life easier, as well as theirs.

As a freelancer, it’s easy to tell yourself that your financial paperwork really isn’t that complicated and that you can put it off indefinitely. If you do so, sometime in early March — assuming that you’re based in the U.S. — you will frantically go through all your old receipts and invoices, trying to run some numbers that you can hand off to your tax preparer, so that she can finish your tax return in time for that April 15th deadline. I’ve taken that approach more than once myself.

But there is a perfectly valid alternative to spending most of March freaking out, provided you’re willing to put in a little time now. You can get your paperwork in order early.

Start a Folder and a Shoebox

I realize that we’re all living in the digital age and hard copy is just one more thing to lose, but the fact of the matter is that a large portion of the paperwork you’ll need for your taxes is not going to come electronically.

So, write ‘Taxes’ and the year on a file folder and put it in your filing cabinet. Every time you have something that you know that you’re going to have to give to your tax preparer, put it in that folder. It’s harder than it sounds, but it’s necessary.

The ideal result is a shoebox with neatly organized receipts inside and a report totaling up your business expenses in different categories.

You also need some sort of storage device for your receipts. I use shoeboxes because they’re free, although I don’t ascribe to the paperwork philosophy of ‘throw it all in and let the tax preparer sort it out.’ Personally, I use two shoeboxes — one for personal receipts and one for business receipts.

I really ought to have a third, for medical expenses and other receipts that can be tax-deductible in the right situation, but since those are fewer and farther between, I generally just put them straight into my folder. Continue Reading

There are gymnasts, tennis players and other athletes who have been training in their sports for years — if not decades — who wouldn’t dream of working without a coach. Recently, a surgeon in New York decided to see if his work could also benefit from the analysis and suggestions of a coach. His answer was yes — which, in turn, leads me to wonder if freelancers can benefit from working with coaches.

A brief search turns up a few different types of coaches who make it clear that they work with freelancers. A lot of them fall into a sort of life coaching category: they are effectively cheerleaders there to work with freelancers who need more of a support structure than they may be getting elsewhere. That’s all well and good, but that’s not the type of coach I’m talking about. Continue Reading

Freelancing can be fun and exciting, especially when you’re first getting started.

You have a new income stream, a new amount of freedom and control, and if feels like you’re taking charge of your skills and talents.

Of course, those are just a pipe dreams if you can’t find a client.

So how do you get started? How do you actually go about finding that first client? I don’t have all the answers, but here are a few ideas for kick-starting your freelance career. Continue Reading

Engagement From Scratch! is a classic tale of learning from other peoples’ mistakes. Thirty professional bloggers prove that hindsight really is 20/20. And you can benefit from their advice thanks to Danny Iny.

I was pretty pumped that I was asked by FreelanceSwitch to preview this book. I had previously written a review for this site on Danny Iny’s online marketing course through his business, Firepole Marketing. I thought Iny’s product was really interesting and provided a lot of great tools, so I was interested to delve into Engagement From Scratch!

The premise is simple. Iny asked 30 bloggers from the very big (Brian Clark of copyblogger.com and Guy Kawasaki) to the up-and-coming (Onibalusi Bamidele from youngprepro.com) what they would do if they had to build a following all over again.

The overarching themes these bloggers shared were pretty straightforward, and nothing you probably don’t already know, such as:

• Be yourself.
• Comment on other blogs thoughtfully.
• Create great content.
• Know who your audience is.
• Find or create your niche.
• It’s not the size of your audience that matters, it’s how engaged they are.
• Write guest posts for other bloggers and have them write for you.

As I read through each essay, I’d nod my head, take some notes for this blog post, and read on. And I listened. I finally listened. Continue Reading

If someone came up to your clients and asked them, “What is that freelancer doing for you?” what do you think your client will say? Will they sing your praises or scratch their heads and wonder why they hired you in the first place?

While your clients can check your invoices for a list of accomplished tasks, invoices weren’t designed to explain why these tasks are important, nor do they justify the cost. A project proposal may contain these details, but this is written at the beginning of the project. Clients need to know what you’ve done for them lately – and they need a recurring reminder.

For your client to understand your value, you need to assert it yourself. You can do this by creating a “Monthly Value Report”. This document shows them how much you’re contributing to their business.

Continue Reading