And now, for the winners of the Light Product Review and Giveaway!

We couldn’t go past Drury Bynum as our pick for originality:

With the extra money generated from using Light, I would invest in efforts to learn to better communicate with animals. My office surrounded by trees and birds and every time I go outside they are chattering away. I know their language is complex and specific, like alerting one another when I’m around, “Brown Cap Man! Brown Cap Man.” Heck, they probably even make jokes about me, “Ugly shoes, bad choice, Ugly shoes, I’d go with purple”. Purple, I know, but birds like different colors than we do, that’s one thing I’ve learned.
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THE GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED. THANKS TO ALL THOSE THAT ENTERED!
Disclosure: Light is a paying sponsor of FreelanceSwitch. My opinion however is not (nor can be) paid for

If you’ve ever built a website for a client you’ll know all about those tedious and annoying updates clients love. Sure they can be an OK money earner for not that much work, but if you’re anything like me half the time you don’t charge for them and the other half you put it off until your client gets annoyed and you finally get around to doing something that takes you a few seconds and then you don’t charge for it anyway.

The alternative is to give your client some way to manage the content themselves. This can mean building a custom system, giving them a copy of Contribute and hoping they don’t hurt themselves, or using an off the shelf product. I’ve tried the first two options, but today we’re going to take a look at the last, specifically a product called the Light Content Management System or just Light for the keyboard challenged.

Using Light I built the Guide to Passive Income subsite that we launched last week and now know the system inside out.
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The Freelance Writer’s Bible: Your Guide to a Profitable Writing Career Within One Year by David Trottier.

The Freelance Writer’s Bible by David Trottier

According to Wikipedia, the term “Bible” may be used as a generic term to describe a book or text that any devotee to an idea should read, or a book that lays out a way to do things in a particularly well-accepted way. David Trottier, author of “The Screenwriter’s Bible”, apparently intends his new book, “The Freelance Writer’s Bible (Your Guide to a Profitible Writing Career Within One Year)” to be just that, an authoritative source for Freelance Writers. Can it live up to his and our expectations? Read on to see if we agree.

Are You The Touchy-Feely Type?
Alright, I’ll come right out and admit it, I’m the type of guy who enjoys a well-done chick flick as much as I enjoy a good action movie. But after the first two pages (essentially the introduction), things get a little, uhm, odd. Perhaps I should explain better. When I first started this review, I thought it would be another interesting title on freelance writing, covering the same topics I’ve read before, but perhaps giving a new twist here and there. What I didn’t expect was a lot of idioms and philosophical discussions about my inner Warrior or my Safe Harbour.

I understand that this will appeal to some. But to others, sentences like “Invariably, the first three pages will be crap…”, and “in the voice of Morpheus from The Matrix…” wear on the reader (at least this one) very quickly.

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Six Figure Freelancing (The Writer’s Guide to Making More Money) by Kelly James-Enger

Six Figure Freelancing by Kelly James-Enger

The title, when combined with a cover that looks like it came from the US Treasury, and using a dollar sign in place of the “S”, practically screams: “You too can make big, big money writing freelance!” Sure, we freelancers are interested in how to make more money in our particular fields. And self-help books can both help or hinder your goals. Could Kelly James-Enger’s version of bringing home the big paycheck be the definitive answer? We’ve read it from cover to cover and bring you the results.

But I’m Not A Freelancer Writer…
Let us get this first bump out of the way: just because you don’t write freelance for a living doesn’t mean that this book can’t help you. Kelly does focus mainly on the paper medium, as it is where she most successfully placed herself, writing for so many sources that you are bound to recognize a few. That said, her concepts could be easily adapted to any freelancer today, with a little translation to your specific world.
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By Dickie Adams

“The time which we have at our disposal every day is elastic; the passions we feel expand it, those that we inspire contract it, and habit fills up what remains.”
- Marcel Proust

In the realm of freelancing, one of the most important tasks you have is tracking your time accurately and efficiently. It is your product (or creates it), and therefore, you need to simultaneously protect and distribute this valuable commodity. Unless you consistently bill and quote flat rates, you’ve likely experienced the extreme pain that timecards and time tracking can create. Seeing that our goal here is to provide you with the resources you need to be successful, we are reviewing Tick, a web-based time tracking solution from Molehill.
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We’ve drawn the two winners of the Color Schemer Studio contest. Drumroll please…

The winner of the best answer to the question “What’s your favourite colour and why” is Andy Martin with:

My favorite color is vermilion because it sounds like a small creature and something irresistibly delicious at the same time.

The winner of our random draw is Rhys with:

My favorite colour is R:246 G:242 B:235 because it’s the colour of my wife’s face when the sun is rising on a early Sunday morning, when we camp outside around the camp fire, about an hour NW from Captains Flat in NSW.

Yay for (Aussie!) Rhys and his wife’s face

Thank you to everyone who entered, and to Color Schemer Studio for the great prizes!

Color or Colour as we like to spell it over here in Australia, is critical for designers of every medium. While finding a nice harmonious colour palette is something most of us do by eye, it is easy to fall back on the same few tried and tested palettes over and over. Personally I am very guilty of using beige in just about every site I design, case in point: FreelanceSwitch!

So today we are reviewing a product called Color Schemer Studio which aims to help you find the perfect colour palette for your next project. And for two lucky readers we’re giving away full licenses for the software, read on to find out how to get one! Continue Reading