A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog post on how freelancers can tackle projects like a software developer using a trend in software development called “Agile”, which calls for compressing development projects into short pieces.

Well I found another article, this time at The 99%, that calls for the benefits of working in small time blocks. Do you put off starting a project because you are waiting for the perfect time to do so? Guess what? There is no perfect time! Putting off starting a project in this way is procrastination, plain and simple. And procrastinating is never a good idea—in my humble opinion anyway.

I recently read a story in Elle magazine where writer, Bliss Broyard (author of One Drop: My Father’s Hidden Life—A Story of Race and Family Secrets) hires a life coach who chides her on not being able to find the three hours a day Bliss wants to sit down and write. What does Bliss do instead? Clean the house, wash the dishes, mope.

“A project I’d been working on for a long time and fully expected to be favorably received was rejected. I was given a few months to ‘turn the ship around,’ but it felt as if I’d found myself in the cockpit of a 747 and had just been told that I was going to land the thing myself.” —Elle

Broyard’s life coach gave her a week to wallow in her feelings of anger, self doubt, and sadness. Come Monday, Broyard was to get back on track. But she couldn’t.

“I kept falling short on my time commitment to work; I couldn’t get any traction for restarting my project. The truth was, I was paralyzed in the face of hard work, of the chance I wouldn’t succeed.” —Elle

I’ve been there. Continue Reading

Do you have to write a press release? It’s not as easy as you think. Writing headlines for anything—be it a press release or a story—is one of the hardest things to do.

The thing with a headline is that you have to create something that signifies what you are writing about while being clever, concise, and exciting. If someone doesn’t like or connect with your headline, they probably aren’t going to read your story.

There are editors out there whose job it is to create headlines. It’s what they’re good at. I am not one of these people.

One of my favorite parts of NBC’s The Tonight Show (which I am rarely awake to watch at night) is the part where Jay Leno shares some of the worst headlines with viewers. Here are some doozies:

• County to pay $250,000 to advertise lack of funds
• Brain gain: Additional schooling may boost IQ levels
• New sewer line is breath of fresh air
• Freetown residents living with odors at Crapo Hill
• Unanimous decision unopposed

Pretty bad, huh?

Sometimes, with the urge to be clever, the headline makes the writer look really, really stupid. Continue Reading

Headlines from the Internet last week about Pinterest: “How Pinterest is Changing Website Design Forever” Mashable.com. “How Pinterest is Secretly Profiting From Your Links”
Venturebeat.com. “Holy SMOKE! Pinterest is the Fastest Growing Site Ever” Businessinsider.com. “Pinterest Hits 10 Million U.S. Monthly Uniques Faster Than Any Standalone Site Ever” Techcrunch.com. Gosh that’s a lot of headlines…

Know what my chosen headline would be? Pinterest Schminterest. Continue Reading

Like many of you, I learned about Jeremy Lin of the New York Knicks just a few days ago, after his 38-point game against the L.A. Lakers.

Lin’s recent popularity has garnered him 200,000 Twitter followers and over 377,000 Facebook friends. The Chinese-American also has over 800,000 followers on Weibo—a Chinese hybrid of Twitter and Facebook.

What I also liked was this article on Forbes.com about what people can learn from Jeremy Lin. I’ve taken the author’s points, and twisted the answers for the freelance set. I hope you enjoy…

Believe in yourself when no one else does

Lin is up against some big odds—he’s only the third Harvard grad to make the NBA. And you don’t see many Asians on the court. You might be up against some big odds, too, but that doesn’t mean you don’t try. Maybe there’s a big project you really want to bid on, and you’re not feeling 100% confident about it. Put your best foot forward and go for it. If you don’t try, you will never succeed. Plus, you might surprise yourself! Continue Reading

When I read the headline of this FastCompany blog post, I immediately thought of all those freelancers out there who have made the switch from an unhappy existence in their full time job to freelance freedom.

The saying that “money can’t buy you happiness” is true. I know plenty of well-off people who are miserable. But can happiness really mean increased economic growth? Some people think so.

Happiness economics is a new term to me. What it is is the quantitative study of happiness—the positive and negative effect it has concerning economics. These happiness economists measure happiness using subjective measures, so the accuracy and reliability of responses to, say, a survey, is always a concern.

While money can’t buy you happiness, studies show that richer nations are also happier nations. According to the Easterlin paradox, it’s been found that once wealth reaches a certain level, it’s effectiveness to make people happy is diminished. A 2010 Princeton University study found that higher earners generally reported better life satisfaction but their day-to-day happiness only rose until they reached an income of $75,000.

Happiness in America peaked in the 1950s. The Great Depression was over and the soldiers were home from WWII. Europe was also rebuilding from the war. Television made its way into homes and the space race was on between the U.S. and the former U.S.S.R. There seemed to be a lot to be excited about. But that was 60 years ago. We need to get to peak happiness again.

Where do we start? How about in our daily lives?

How many of you reading this post are (or were) stuck in a job you weren’t happy about? Maybe you have a terrible boss or feel creatively stifled. Maybe there are no growth opportunities in your present job, that you aren’t being challenged, and you feel like there should be more out there for you. Continue Reading

One of the perks of being a freelancer is that you keep freelancer hours—you work when you want to. I happen to like to get started early so I get a good number of hours in while it’s still light outside. The art director I work with prefers to get up at 10 am and work late into the night.

My favorite jobs have been the ones where I can pretty much come and go as I please.

My favorite jobs have been the ones where I can pretty much come and go as I please. Of course, not all of my jobs have been so flexible. My first job out of college was a receptionist at a corporate real estate company. There I had the worst boss I have ever had in my entire life. She tracked my every move, every minute of the day. It wasn’t necessarily her fault—if my counterpart was out sick, she had to cover the phones for me when I ate lunch, went to the post office, or went to the bathroom—but that wasn’t often.

What really bothered me about her approach was that she was so mean about it. I was invited to lunch by some other women I worked with, and we were 5 minutes late getting back to the office. She never let me forget it and she never allowed me to have lunch with them again. She was mean, and I ended up quitting because of her.

When I read this article on Inc.com, I wanted to give the author—someone who manages others—a great, big hug. She get’s it.

You could say I’m the opposite of a control freak, in the sense that I have always resisted rules, for myself and for others. Why? Because once you have rules, you have to enforce them—and there’s no more tedious task in life. —Inc.com

My terrible boss liked having that control over me, and it made me miserable. Life is unpredictable! I ended up watching everything I drank during the day, making sure I didn’t drink too much because I was afraid to tell her I had to use the ladies room. Continue Reading

Like many other freelancers, I have a hard time selling myself. It’s something I know I have to work on this year. But as a freelancer, we don’t have someone else out there selling our services for us. It’s up to us to land our own jobs.

I recently read an interesting article on tailoring your sales technique based on who you are selling your services to.

…Tailor your sales technique based on the primary reason your customer wants to buy. “We have our preferred selling style and it’s one we have built up with layers over time,” says Jeff Tanner, professor of sales and marketing at the Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University. “I don’t always see entrepreneurs trying to understand the need from the buyer’s perspective.” —Entrepreneur.com

I don’t shop for a new car the same way I shop for a new sweater, so this advice hit home for me. Here are some tips from the article that I thought were very helpful.

Continue Reading

Have you heard about the trend of standing room only meetings? Instead of having a team sit around a conference table, they’re made to stand up for short meetings instead.

The trend is becoming prevalent in tech companies, and is meant to eliminate long, boring meetings where no one pays attention. Some companies have even instituted a penalty for being late to a meeting—either through sheer humiliation or a small fee.

If someone is rambling on for too long, an employee may hold up a rubber rat indicating it is time to move on. Companies make exceptions to their no-sitting rules if a worker is sick, injured or pregnant—but usually not for workers outside the office telecommuting on Skype. —wsj.com

The trend is fueled by an approach to software development called “Agile”, which calls for compressing development projects into short pieces. It also includes daily stand-up meetings where everyone can update everyone else with what they are currently working on and any obstacles that stand in their way.

I think it’s brilliant! I immediately started wondering how I could incorporate this way of thinking into my freelance life. I took a look at the Agile Manifesto and sought to translate it into something freelancers could use. Here’s my attempt: Continue Reading

Working in the creative field means you are an open target for criticism. Someone doesn’t like your photography work, they think you’re a bad writer, or your prices are unfair. And as freelancers, it can be hard not to take criticism—no matter how well meaning—personally.

I read this blog post on Forbes.com on how to deal with really tough criticism, written for people who are business leaders. While I’m not necessarily the target audience for this article, I did take away some good lessons that I’d like to share for the freelance set.

The first thing we need to consider is that criticism in inevitable. But if we keep our defenses up and get overly emotional about what our critics say, we aren’t doing ourselves any favors.

Here’s a recent example from my own life. I am the editor of a yearly wedding magazine. We took a big risk this year and changed the paper stock for our cover. Instead of a glossy cover, we went with matte. Some of us in the office loved it and some of us didn’t—so we took the opportunity to ask our advertisers, featured photographers, and other industry leaders what they thought.

It turns out, many other people didn’t like the matte cover, either, and they let us know on many different levels—from plugging their noses to smiling and offering heart felt advise. And while we were totally bummed that we took a risk that didn’t garner the results we wanted, we learned a lesson. We want to give people what they want—so next year, we’re going back to our glossy cover. Had we not asked, we may have decided otherwise.

Here are some tips from the article that I thought were useful. Continue Reading

A new study from Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science called “Who Gives a Tweet: Evaluating Microblogging Content Value” has unveiled what we like to read, and what we don’t like to read, on Twitter. I have to say, the results aren’t all that surprising.

A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and Georgia Tech launched a site asking for anonymous feedback from people like you and me in exchange for rating their tweets. Users had to sign in to their website and rate 10 tweets before getting any feedback on their own tweets.

Luckily for these researchers, their project went viral. Sites like Mashable, TechCrunch, and CNN wrote about their study. The analysis of the study was taken from data received between December 30, 2010 and January 17, 2011. They had over 43,000 responses to work with. Here’s what they found: Continue Reading

Reporters at The Washington Post are now actively engaging their readers by posting comments in streams on the paper’s news stories online, something they’ve never done in the past. The paper switched to a new website platform called Echo, which has helped them grow their online community. Reader comments at the paper have shot up 142% since March, 2011.

This is new territory for many journalists. Never before have they been urged to take part in the conversations the public is having online about their stories. This type of involvement helps reporters fend off rumors, speculation, and flame wars, according to this article published on the Nieman Journalism Lab website. It also allows reporters to share more information, as well as prove that they, too, are real people.

For freelancers, this new trend at one of America’s largest newspapers just goes to show how important it is to engage with your community.

Show You Care

I try to comment on the blog posts I write for FreelanceSwitch—especially the posts that have gotten a lot of action from the readers. I really do appreciate the time people take to share their thoughts and opinions on my blog posts. Comments help me gauge a posts’ success and help me decide what to write about in the future. The best way for me to show the readers that I am paying attention, is to tell them so. Continue Reading

There are a lot of stories written about home-based businesses—trust me, I just did a Google search. Working from home has changed drastically over the years, thanks to technology.

If you think back not even 20 years about home-based businesses, you might envision a low-tech service business such as a daycare or landscaping company. To run a professional business, you needed to be located in commercial office space. Not only did commercial space provide the technical services you needed, but it also provided a professional atmosphere appropriate for meeting with clients. —seacoastonline.com

Luckily, for us freelancers, that is no longer the case.

I have a computer, high speed internet, printer, and cell phone that allow me to do my work at home. And I have a nice office/laundry room to do it in. I know a bunch of people who work from home and I have some tips on how to run it right. See if you agree. Continue Reading