Jon Morrow

Are you tired of slaving over your blog posts, only to find you end up with seven readers?

If so, you need to change what you’re writing about. Probably where you’re publishing it, too.

That’s the word from Copyblogger associate editor Jon Morrow, whose own new site is the wildly popular Boost Blog Traffic.

Jon is a longtime mentor of mine, and I had the privilege of meeting him in person and attending his presentation on how he gets big traffic at the New Media Expo (formerly BlogWorld).

He’s the author of three separate blog posts that have notched over 100,000 views, including On Dying, Mothers, and Fighting for Your Ideas.

In his NMX session, he analyzed the success of his big posts and spotlighted five elements the posts all have in common that helped them get massive traffic: Continue Reading

One of the key decisions in establishing a creative agency is how to structure it. When you’re working on your own, structure doesn’t matter very much. Dividing your workload, even just between administrative work and client work, doesn’t seem to matter overly much when you’re the person who will need to do all of it, no matter what divisions you come up with. But when you may wind up with several people working on client projects and perhaps even an assistant on the administrative side of things, you need to be very clear on who is responsible for what.

The danger of not clearly establishing structure is that you can easily wind up in situations where you need to pay someone for time in which they did no work or did the same work that another person had already completed. Putting a solid structure and clear workflow in place that shows how different tasks pass through your business processes are necessary for an agency to grow. Continue Reading

To paraphrase Shakespeare to the point of mangling:

To schedule, or not to schedule, that is the question:
Whether ’tis better to always be present
In person when you tweet,
Or to prepare tweets in advance,
Ever ready for what you will say next.

Whether or not to schedule Twitter updates is a topic of hot debate in the social media community. Numerous tools – including BufferApp and Tweetdeck – allow you to set up Tweets in advance, helping you save time while boosting your Twitter presence. On the other hand, opponents of scheduling argue that pre-scheduled tweets are lazy, and show a disrespect for your audience.

In this article, I look at the cons and pros of scheduling. Admittedly, I favor a mix of scheduled and live tweets. For me, scheduling a tweet is similar to scheduling a blog post. It’s convenient for you, as it saves you time, and it’s convenient for your audience, as it spreads your tweets across the day.

I’ll be as objective as I can, but bear in mind I’m biased towards scheduling. 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 Web Developer, Web and Graphic Design, Corona App Development 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

It’s probably been a while since you learned the skills that moved you ahead in your career, but to keep that success going, you need to continue learning, indefinitely. But logging classroom time isn’t the only way to grow – by keeping an eye on like-minded entrepreneurs, you can stay abreast of current trends, keep your pricing competitive, obtain ideas for ad copy, and more.

Unlike large companies, investing time and resources toward this effort may not be an option. But a free product, Evernote, can help you organize competitive data quickly and easily. Continue Reading

As a freelancer it’s critical to keep projects flowing and LinkedIn is a powerful tool for finding small and large clients. In this video, you’ll learn tips and tricks I use to keep projects flowing and how to get your LinkedIn account up to speed fast using the latest features.

The key points of this video include:

• Preparing your LinkedIn profile
• Using the Endorse feature
• Finding and engaging groups
• Searching jobs
• Getting in touch with industry specific individuals

To keep your Twitter account active and your followers engaged, you need to send out several tweets a day. A mere 140 characters sounds easy enough to write. That is, until you have to do it daily, over and over again.

In this article, I’ll provide a framework for what freelancers should Tweet about, and ask thought-provoking questions to help you create your own freelancer Twitter editorial.

I’m not providing a “one Tweeter strategy fits all freelancers” solution for one simple reason: There’s no right answer for choosing what to Tweet about. Every freelance business is different, and it’s a matter of what works for you, your business and, most importantly, your clients. Continue Reading

Most freelancers are ambitious. We have to be if we want to build up a solid client roster and bring home enough income to justify not getting a day job. But that’s not the end of the line — in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t take a freelancer all that long to build up a full-time income. Then we have to ask ourselves what we want to do next. There’s not a clear career path that we can follow, like one might climb up the corporate ladder.

One of the options that appeals to many freelancers is building an agency, which can allow you to keep working on the types of projects you like in a much larger quantity. Running an agency isn’t exactly something to jump into without prep work, but if that’s the direction your freelance career is evolving into, it’s a surprisingly practical option. 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

Effectively taking on a huge freelance project can be daunting if you don’t know where to begin. This article shows that by breaking the project down into bite-sized deliverables, combined with leveraging the experience of outsourced, professional specialists, can yield positive results in terms of both quality of output and freelancer happiness.

The most treasured of all freelance consulting gigs are the ones that offer huge pay and high prominence. Successfully implementing one or two of these types of projects can be a huge boon to your portfolio and can help garner you even bigger and better contracts in the future.

Continue Reading

Did you make a resolution to learn a new skill in the new year? Then Tuts+ Premium is here to help you do it!

To celebrate the new year, we’re offering a sale on our subscription for the very first time. Sign up before January 31st and save 25% off the already discounted year membership price! You can now enjoy an entire year of Tuts+ Premium content for only $135. That’s a cumulative savings of $93 off the monthly price. Continue Reading