Linkswitch #78, Cross Selling, Career Tracks, Effortless Decisions
Cross Selling More than Just Your Services
As freelancers, the main thing we can sell is our services. Clients come to us because they want a particular project completed and we have the right skill set to accomplish it. But the truth of the matter is that we have a little more room to maneuver, at least when it comes to what we sell. We can upsell and cross sell our services to further establish our relationship with our clients and improve our bottom line.
How To Sell Your Designs Without The Sales Pitch
If you learn how to sell yourself (without a sleazy sales pitch) you will be able to sell your designs more easily. This means fewer revisions, happier clients, more referrals, and a higher quality of work.
5 Apps to Improve Productivity and Collaboration
If you’re like me, your to-do list has taken on a life of its own, and after several failed attempts at taming it, you’re now simply looking for a way to peacefully co-exist. Fortunately, new apps and devices are being created almost daily to help us improve our productivity and collaboration.
Linkswitch #77, Buy Creativity, Damn Lazy, Half Life
10 Apps for More Efficient Tweeting
As Twitter continues to grow at an incredible pace each day, the importance of the platform grows with it. Developing a strong social media presence and growing your network of followers demands being active on Twitter. Fortunately, there exist many tools out there that assist us in making our life easier and more efficient on Twitter. Here are ten tools that will increase your efficiency, while allowing you to retain your genuine personality when tweeting.
Why You Can’t Buy Creativity
“The work had better be good, I’m paying them enough.” Over the years I’ve heard this statement – or versions of it – from many different managers charged with getting creative work out of their teams. From a conventional management perspective, it probably sounds like common sense. But to anyone who understands the nature of creativity and what motivates creative people, it’s a recipe for disaster.
How to Grow Social Media Leads: New Research
Have you wondered, “How often should I post articles on my blog?” or “How does my social media reach impact lead generation and traffic?” Two brand-new studies by HubSpot and Edison Research provide fresh insights on these important questions. Consider these five findings as you enhance your social media and blogging strategies.
Linkswitch #76, Global Outsourcing, Gaining Traction, Create For You
Global Outsourcing: Is It Wrong to Pay Someone Less Based on Location?
Lately, I’ve heard of plenty of freelancers hiring virtual assistants or subcontractors based on the other side of the globe — choosing people based in places where $200 a month is a very respectable income. The general consensus among freelancers taking utilizing this is that it can be a great way to bring on help when you can’t fully afford someone locally. It’s a way to use geography to your advantage. I’ve also heard plenty of people declaring that paying a designer or a virtual assistant or any other type of help less than they would make in the U.S, the U.K, Europe or Australia is morally wrong.
Gaining Traction: What It Is and How It Will Make You Successful
Most people are just treading water – logging the minimum monthly work hours to pay the bills and stay afloat. If you are a blogger or entrepreneur of any sort, you were probably seduced by the notion of being your own boss and thereby becoming a master of your own fate. Unfortunately, the hard reality is that most people in this position of independence work even harder than the norm for fewer results. The work ethic is certainly commendable, but many fail to ever develop real traction and therefore never get to live the lifestyle they envisioned.
Mentors are key to a successful career
Mentorship can help both new and established small business owners move on to the next step in their careers. Who better to help you get to the place you need to go than someone who’s already there? Mentors can help you move past a plateau, expose you to new clients, and generally help you get your foot in the door (and sometimes even help you step through). The key is finding the one that suits you and your career objectives and that means taking steps to plan for what you want out of the relationship.
Linkswitch #75, Creative Blogging, Guide to Google+, Inspirational Writing
17 Pillar Articles to Help You Master Creative Briefs
Creatives need a detailed brief. Without it we are feeling in the dark, with little clue of our destination. We need targeted information from our clients to deliver high quality finished work that meets the client’s expectations. We want to deliver polished work and we need the right information to do that.
Are You a Creative Blogger?
It doesn’t take a genius to stroll around cyberspace and quickly find that the World Wide Web is littered with junk. There is a lot of “stuff” out there, most of which isn’t very good. On the flip side, though, there are still many amazing gems hidden beneath the rubble. The magical ingredient that marks the divide is creativity. Creativity isn’t just part of a fairytale that only children believe in. It really exists, and is the one thing that will polish you into a masterful blogger.
10 Effective Steps to Amazingly Inspirational Writing
What’s it like when you remember a moment in time when you read a book or an article that made your heart sing? There was something about the writing that touched something deep inside and inspired you to view the world from a different perspective. Inspirational writing is something every writer is capable of. Yes, that means you, too.
Linkswitch #74, Casting Vision, Money Rules, Seamless Workspace
Cast a Vision – and Stick to It
One of the most powerful lessons I have learned is to cast a vision and stick to it. This lesson applies to freelance work, but it also applies to life in general. Casting a vision for your career is hard and can take years to fully develop, which requires sticktoitiveness. But, if you apply tenacity over time, you will find the end result is powerful and motivating in a way nothing else can be.
Why Disconnectors Are Critical In Keeping Your Readers Awake
Imagine you’re driving a car. And the highway stretches in front of you straight as an arrow. Mile after mile of the same, same seems to suck you into vortex of yawns. Then suddenly you you see a curve in the road. The curve is the disconnector. It’s the thingamajig on the journey that jolts you back to life. You’re all alert. You’re all eyes and ears. And you’re paying close attention.
Improve Your Writing With Grammarly
The bad news is that the ability to read a well-written sentence does not translate into the ability to write one. With more of our interaction taking place through emails, text messages, status updates, tweets, blog posts — heck, with more of us having to become writers — there are also more people in need of writing help than any time in human history. Thankfully, Grammarly can give us that help. For a price.
Linkswitch #73, Unique Selling Point, Twitter Experience, Comprehensive SEO
7 Top-Notch Blogs for the Savvy Freelance Blog Writer
In addition to FreelanceSwtich, there are a handful of blogs that stand out a cut above the rest, and are well worth reading for freelance blog writers. These blogs are dedicated to blogging, writing, utilizing internet tools and trends to maximize your freelance writing income, and more.
Are Social Media “Experts” Worthless?
Gary Vaynerchuk, in his usual low-key, mellow way, said last month that 99.5% of social media experts are clowns. What interests me is what it takes to make that last 0.5%. What do the social media experts look like who aren’t clowns?
How to Finish What You Start: A Five-Step Plan for Writers
You’ve got plenty of great ideas, and you just can’t resist throwing yourself into them. Unfortunately, your motivation seems to vanish … and you’re left with a bunch of notes, outlines and first drafts that aren’t going anywhere. No-one’s going to buy a half-written novel. No-one’s going to read a blog post that stops short after two paragraphs. So whether your writing aspirations involve hitting the New York Times bestseller list or living from the passive income from your ebooks, you need to finish what you start.
Linkswitch #72, Collaboration Marketing, Speed Writing, Creative Practice
Collaboration Marketing as a Freelance Web Designer
Here’s the skinny… Too many designers are sitting at home, talking about the elusive “portfolio” they plan on building or waiting for word of mouth to take them where they want to go. Here’s some tough love: what good is your portfolio if no one is talking about you or visiting your site? Word of mouth can take you a long way if people truly are referring you to their friends, but instead of waiting around for others to do you favors, try putting the words in their mouth’s for them through collaboration marketing.
4 Ways to Grow Your Blog with the Power of Experts
Do you want to attract more readers? Do you want to grab the attention of the big players in your industry and leverage their star power? Silly questions, right? In this article I’ll share how you can grow a loyal and sustained fan base by working with the top experts in your niche.
10 Simple Ways to Double the Speed of Your Writing … Right Now
Imagine being able to produce the same amount of writing you do now in half the time. Or even producing double the amount of work you do now in the same amount of time. It’s not only possible to do, but very simple. I’ve written thousands of articles during the period I’ve been making a full time living online, and I’ve discovered that the only thing holding me back from writing faster is myself. You see, we all have beliefs within that tell us what our writing speed limit is. As I’ve let go of these beliefs and blocks, I’ve found myself writing faster and getting into the writing zone effortlessly.
Linkswitch #71, Email Newsletters, Pen and Paper, Benefits Of Meditation
Strengthen Client Relationships with an Email Newsletter
There are countless posts online which explain why all freelancers should have a website. In short, it’s one of the most effective ways to showcase who you are and what you can do. Of course, if you want to position yourself as an expert, you should seriously consider a blog too. Producing this kind of content is good not only for your reputation, but also for search-engine rankings.
The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: Leadership Edition
One area I’ve been reading about quite a bit lately is leadership. How does a person who is a bit on the introverted side and is scared of leading a social group actually leap across that chasm and lead a community organization?
(More) Useful Web Usability Testing Tools
Usability and User Experience (UX) are two extremely important factors for developing a site or app that really stands out from the competition. With the increasing competition in sites and apps, there are also an ever increasing number of tools to help you make your site or app more usable, and to help you ensure you provide a great experience for your users.
Linkswitch #70, Personal Branding, Motivational Quotes, Coffee Shops
How to Pick the Right Colors for Your (Personal) Brand
As a freelancer, your business image isn’t just a reflection of your work, it’s a statement of your personal identity. With every project you complete, a portion of your personal design beliefs, creative insights and unique identity is woven into the results. These ties should be reflected in the freelance identity portrayed to your clients.
35 Great Inspirations & Apps for Your Facebook Page
Facebook pages are a great way to foster user engagement and promote a brand. Over time, Facebook has added a lot of features to make business pages more functional and feature rich. Lot of brands are building cool and extremely interactive business pages on top of the world’s largest social network. One has to see at least a few of these designs to get a good idea how powerful Facebook pages can be.
Better Image Management With WordPress
With the advent of sophisticated and user-friendly content management systems like WordPress, textual content has become increasingly easier to manage. The architecture of these systems aims to deliver a well-formed code foundation; this means that if you are a good writer, then your content will be just as awesome as the structure and quality of the code that runs it.
Linkswitch #69, Bookmarklets, Time Management, Brand Ambassadors
The secret power of bookmarklets
Bookmarklets are special links that users can add to their browser’s favorites. These special links include code (i.e. not just a target URL), and they trigger various kinds of useful functionality, allowing you to modify and extend any web page.
15 Photoshop Tutorials for Designing Advertisements
The design of an advertisement can have a huge impact on the level of success of the ad campaign. Being able to design attractive and effective advertisements will lead to better results for you and your clients. In this post we’ll showcase 15 tutorials that will lead you through the process of designing an ad in Photoshop. Most of the tutorials are for designing poster/flyer type ads.
5 Time Management Tips for Freelancers
Do you find that you’re constantly up against the clock? Is managing your work / life balance an ongoing battle? Freelancers frequently find the main barrier to developing and growing their client base is their own time. William Penn, businessman and philosopher said “Time is what we want most, but what we use worst,” few of us would argue with this sentiment.
Linkswitch #68, Brave New World, Mobile Branding, Web Designer Happiness
Online Writing: A Brave New World
Throughout my career, I’ve had three freelancing phases interspersed between staff positions. The first time, I edited with a red pencil on hard copy, jotted queries on sticky (Post-it) notes attached to the margins, typed out my style sheets and invoices on a typewriter, and mailed them along with the manuscript via the U.S. Postal Service or delivery truck.
How to Deal with Organizational Change
As a professional writer, I value the input of editors whom I trust. When I get a good editor who knows my work, I usually do my best to keep him or her happy. I try to build a great professional relationship with my editors, and I do my best to make it lasting.
Linkswitch #67, Boost Business, Boost Your Happiness, Simplify Sign-Ups
Boost Business with 4 Old School Marketing Tactics
Everyone’s focused on the digital world these days, and rightfully so. There’s always a new technology rolling out and its exciting to be amazed at what our favorite gadgets can do. But when it comes to customer service and getting clients, you’ve got to integrate the old with the new. Why? Not all clients are using things like social media. And even those that do may appreciate–and respond better to–”old school” techniques. Here are four big ones you may not be leveraging.
How to Avoid Freelancing Burnout
Work burnout is a physical, mental and psychological state of exhaustion. The name says a lot about what it feels like. When you’re burnt out, you feel like a lamp running out of fuel and, thus, burn out. When you’re burnt out, you don’t have the energy to keep going.
