View engaging conference lectures, interesting how to discussions, and high quality freelance advice via video here on FreelanceSwitch. This week we look at The Battle Between Your Present and Future Self by Daniel Goldstein.

In this video learn about commitment devices and other tools. Discover new ways to plan for the future and how to make decisions that have good consequences for our future selves and future freelance businesses. Continue Reading

I really like the 60-Second Solutions videos on Entrepreneur.com. I thought that the recent video by communications coach Carmine Gallo on creating a 60 second strategy to tell your story was especially useful.

Sometimes it’s hard to explain to people what it is you really do. Many people hear the word ‘freelancer’ and don’t quite understand what it means, other than you probably work from home in your pajamas.

Gallo suggests you come up with one sentence answers to the following four questions to keep your “What I Do” story to 60 seconds.

What do you do?

Are you a graphic designer? A freelancer writer or photographer? Do you have a niche or topic (like small business, agriculture, health) that you concentrate on? Turn this into one sentence. Example: I am a freelance blogger and I write about small business financing for several online magazines. Continue Reading

At the end of last year, a fellow freelancer and I were discussing how 2011 panned out for each of us.

“It was overall successful, but when I reviewed where my income came from, I realized I’d become too focused on just one market,” she told me. “I need to spread myself out.”

The beginning of a new year is always a good time to take stock of your business, and plan your direction for the coming year.  Some freelancers work toward building up a name for themselves within a niche; others intentionally avoid focusing too much in one area.

Here’s a breakdown of the pros and cons of each approach. Continue Reading

The term customer service reminds me of wasted time spent on the telephone with some huge conglomerate that somehow messed up something I purchased. Right now I’m dealing with customer service for both my cable/TV company and my home/auto insurance. It’s infuriating.

But customer service isn’t just for big box stores and insurance agencies. It’s important to freelancers, too.

As consumers, we’ve become disenchanted with advertising and marketing of all sorts, having being duped, tricked or made to feel foolish on more than one occasion. The last true medium that holds sway is referrals from friends, colleagues, or online reviews from the likes of Yelp, AngiesList or TripAdvisor. —Matt Mickiewicz for Forbes.com

According to an American Marketing Association survey, 90% of consumers trust peer reviews and 70% trust online reviews. The author of this post is Matt Mickiewicz, the co-founder of 99designs. He offers three rules that small businesses (and freelancers) should follow to offer their clients great customer service. Continue Reading

In this issue of Ask FreelanceSwitch, we look at client disputes and lack of communication. Ask FreelanceSwitch is a regular column here that allows us to help beginners get a grip on freelancing. If you have a question about freelancing that you want answered, send an email to askfreelanceswitch@gmail.com.

Question 1

I have been working as a freelancer since August. Recently I started at Elance and someone asked for something special. I sent him a proposal, he accepted, we made the job. When delivered he was apparently happy and paid. I charged $280.

Now I got an e-mail from him saying that he found someone (in the same country) who did the same job for him, charging only $35. I don’t know where he found someone to do that for that amount, but I charged him a fair amount considering the time that the job took, the quality of it, and what I clearly specified in the proposal.

He is also sending me insulting mails saying that my job was a joke and he is filling a dispute. I am actually a bit worried, not for the dispute, but because this issue made me think that maybe I am not calculating my fees well. I was not trying to overcharge the client…

I don’t know how to save this. Do you have any suggestions to deal with this situation?

If you charged him a fair amount and he accepted your proposal, you’re in the right. We’re often reluctant to see things in black and white, but that’s the truth. But as long as we deliver on what we offer, there’s no legitimate reason for a client to come back and complain. Sending insulting emails is wrong — just because we work as freelancers doesn’t mean that clients shouldn’t treat us with the same respect they treat their other business contacts with. Continue Reading

I was tickled when I found this list of 12 words that should be banned in 2012 on PRDaily.com. What started in 1975 as a publicity ploy at Lake Superior State University in Michigan has turned into a phenomenon.

The List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness gets submissions from around the world. The word with the most nominations this year? AMAZING. It’s the first time the word has made the list.

Here’s a list of all 12 words (some of them are more than one word phrases) that made this year’s list, in order of the number of submissions they received:

• Amazing
• Baby bump
• Shared sacrifice
• Occupy
• Blowback
• Man cave
• The new normal
• Pet parents
• Win the future
• Trickeration
• Ginormous
• Thank you in advance

Continue Reading

Physical and mental distractions are stunting the growth of your freelance business. In line with getting focused on my writing career for 2012, I’ve vowed to cut out as many distractions as possible, at the computer and beyond.

Here are eight strategies to get your business in a distraction-free zone!

Continue Reading

I don’t really connect to Mark Cuban (the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks). But I do connect to his business rationale: the only thing you can control in your life is your own effort.

As freelancers, we don’t have anyone but ourselves to be accountable for. If I don’t roll out of bed until 10 am, I have no one to blame but myself. If I don’t make time to really look into what Google+ can do (or can’t do) for me, it’s my own fault.

When you work in an office environment, you have coworkers, bosses, and assistants to help you with your job. When you are a freelancer, you have to do everything from getting insurance to buying computer equipment, to calling clients who are late on their payments. It can be overwhelming at times, but when you worry about only pleasing yourself at the end of the day, it can be pretty great.

Below are some quotes from Mark Cuban’s new book, How to Win at the Sport of Business, that I found in an article on businessinsider.com and what I took away from them:

In sports, the only thing a player can truly control is effort. The same applies to business. The only thing any entrepreneur, salesperson or anyone in any position can control is their effort.

Continue Reading

Mozilla Firefox is a real treasure for freelancers worldwide. Why? It’s an advanced, fast and secure web browser.

In the last 7 years the open source browser has proved – it’s more than a web surfer. Mozilla Firefox is translated into over 70 languages, enriched with dozens of extensions, and beautified by many persona designs.

Firefox may be modified according to your needs on the fly. With a couple of useful add-ons the browser turns into your developer, designer, or SEO fellow-worker. Today, we continue our top Firefox extensions topic with a roundup of excellent free Firefox addons. These extensions will improve your productivity and level up your freelancing performance. Continue Reading

Do freelancers really need market research? After all, some freelancers – and even some businesses – manage to get paying customers without putting a bit of thought into how to acquire those customers. Maybe you could be as lucky as they are, your inbox always full of messages from potential clients, without ever spending even a minute researching them.

But it’s doubtful everyone’s that lucky. Odds are, you need to do even the most basic type of market research to keep your freelance practice going. Your research doesn’t have to include complex graphs and lengthy questionnaires. Market research simply means gathering and analyzing information about your target clients. This information can range from basic demographic information, such as their location, to more abstract information such as what makes your potential clients “tick”.

The good news is you don’t need to hire a pricey marketing firm to learn these things, nor do you need to sign up for Market Research 101 classes. You can start with the following simple tasks…

Continue Reading

Now that the holidays are over it’s back to the grindstone. However, many businesses and freelancers struggle in January to get rolling. This blog post by Carol Tice on Entrepreneur.com gives some good info on how to beat the January doldrums. I’ve taken the tips that pertain to freelancers and put in my own two cents:

Poll Your Clients

You are probably not the only one dealing with a slow January—your clients might be in the same boat. Why not involve them by sending them a poll? If you’re trying to figure out what direction you want to go in in 2012, have your clients help shape your path! Thinking about blogging more? Find out how it would be accepted by your readers.

Entice responses with a prize, such as an Amazon gift card or ad space on your website for a certain amount of time. If there is incentive to fill out your poll, people will be more likely to take the time to do it. 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