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 CakePHP and WordPress Development, Responsive Web Development, Web Design 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

Is your blog a lonely place? Often, freelancers start a blog about the type of work they do, in hopes of attracting clients with their posts.

But nothing happens.

The reason is usually that your tiny startup blog doesn’t have much traffic. Search engines don’t rank it highly and aren’t sending you many readers off of searches for the key terms you’re using in hopes of catching prospects’ attention.

You’re on page 57 of the Google search for “freelance designer,” and nobody comes.

You can solve this problem, get higher rankings in search and attract more visitors who are prospects by guest posting on more popular blogs.

The bigger, the better. Continue Reading

The relaunch of my freelance writing business in early 2012 began on Google Hangouts. I’d been hired as part of a team of ebook writers and editors. We hooked up from all around the world: from Canada to New Zealand, from Ohio to England, yet on Google Hangouts it felt as though we were in the same room together.

Meeting up every couple of weeks on Google Hangouts, we became a close-knit team. The project ended in August 2012, yet to this day we remain in close contact because of the bonds we developed meeting face to face on Hangouts.

Since then, Hangouts have earned a place close to my heart, and I use them regularly to meet with clients, other freelancers, and friends.

Hangouts are a powerful freelancing tool, and are far more than a Skype replacement. Read on to find out how they can give a video boost to your freelancing business. Continue Reading

We’re ready to announce something new and exciting — the Tuts+ Hub beta!

As you know, Tuts+ is all about helping people learn. With Hub, we’ve worked to deliver an experience that makes it easy for you to find exactly what you’d like to learn, with a delightful interface for reading.

What you see is a brand new layer that sits atop our current websites. All the articles and tutorials are still here (along with your comments), but we’ve designed a new way of presenting them and built new tools to help you navigate the library. Take a look now, and read on to find out more.

Continue Reading

Once you’ve got a newsletter set up to bring you in new clients, you may start to think about what else you can do with the newsletter format to promote your freelance business. One of the options worth considering is sending a newsletter to the clients you’ve already landed.

The logic behind this is clear: if you’ve knocked the socks off of a client already, that company may be more than happy to work with you again. But you need to remind them that you are available and point out the services you offer, particularly beyond what you’ve already done. A newsletter can provide a useful reminder to past clients of your existence.

Of course, you have to be targeting a specific niche of clients if you really want to make sure that your newsletter is effective: it’s much harder to create a broad newsletter that appeals to every client who has ever hired you to design a website than just writing for those clients who operate ecommerce sites. When it comes to newsletters, narrow is good. 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

Editing files in Google Drive can be a bit confusing at first because Google Drive has their own native files. While you’re likely used to editing Word and Excel documents, Google Drive has their own documents and spreadsheet formats.

Knowing when and which file type to use is important so you don’t find yourself frustrated if you need to collaborate in real-time or just need simple backing up of files as you edit them.

In this video I will show you how to edit files that are stored in your Google Drive that are not native Google Drive file types: Word docx, Excel xlsx, Photoshop PSD, and Illustrator AI files are just a few examples. But I’ll also give a quick demo of editing the native file types.

Continue Reading

“How do I find work?” is one of the toughest questions freelancers face.

While there’s no magical work fairy to grant your wish for new clients, there are things you can do to make it more likely that potential clients find you and hire you. In today’s world, using social media effectively is a key component of this.

In this article, I show you how to use Google Plus to attract, seek out and engage with prospects. I also explain why Google Plus is the place to be – right now – if you want to stay ahead of the game with your online marketing.

Hold tight, it’s going to be an exciting ride! Continue Reading

If you’re a freelancer and you have a blog, you’re probably hoping your posts will impress clients and get them to hire you.

Unfortunately, most freelancer blogs don’t get so much as a nibble, much less a steady stream of clients.

If your blog has a nice clean design and you know how to write an interesting blog post, it’s time to look deeper at why your blog isn’t getting the results you want.

Here is my list of 12 different ways to get prospects subscribing to your blog — and keep them on your email list: 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 Ecommerce Development, Interactive Media, iOS and Android 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