Linkswitch #94, Attract Clients, Conduct Experiments, Remote Work

Every other week we roundup some of the highest quality articles and resources that benefit freelancers from across the web. We present these articles here on various helpful topics. This week we have articles on attracting clients without being too pushy, conducting freelance experiments, and working more effectively as a remote worker.

3 Great Ways To Attract Higher Quality Clients

You have probably been in a situation where you felt like a client was not willing to pay you enough or did not appreciate the quality of work you had put into a project. For freelancers & business owners, this is not something unusual. Many people who hire you, especially if you are a freelancer, may undervalue your work.

3 Ways to Succeed as a Freelancer by Conducting Experiments

I see it all the time: Aspiring freelance writers stay stuck in newbie-land because they don’t know precisely what to do. They fear that they need to always be doing the exact right thing at the exact right time — or why bother? Guess what? There is no one exact right way. There is only the right way for you.

Promote Your Business Without Being Pushy

So how do you sell your goods and services effectively without being pushy? It’s all about exposure, relationships and systems.

5 Ways to Draw Readers Into Your Articles

So when someone starts reading your article, you have just a few seconds to draw her in and convince her to keep going. The same applies to a query letter — you have only a sentence or two to grab the editor and make him want to finish reading your pitch.

10 Extraordinary Examples of Effective Link Bait

Despite what most SEOs will tell you, it’s not easy to create outstanding content that people will want to link to. So many “SEOs” make it seem like there’s a key on your keyboard that magically turns what you just wrote into something link worthy. In reality, it’s never that simple.

How Taking an Online Course Can Transform Your Business

Most people I know with extraordinarily successful careers say a university education can be a waste of time. They’ve seen many, many students who attend university only to finish with degrees that are completely irrelevant to their future career. The same successful people will tell you that an online course can absolutely transform your business, your career, and your success.

Self-knowledge: The secret ingredient for successful remote work

Working from home has obvious benefits, but it has equally glaring and hard to fix drawbacks: the loneliness, the endless supply of interesting links and the tendency for work to seep into more and more of your personal life. So what’s to be done to make working from home, well work?

6 Steps to Getting Started With Google+

Google+ has had a growth rate much faster than that of Facebook or Twitter. More importantly, where Facebook and Twitter try to get you to be on their site, many millions of people are already on Google’s sites: Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Reader and YouTube to name a few. Here are six easy steps to get you started on the right foot.

The Documentation Dilemma

Since then we’ve often advised other companies to spend less time on paperwork artifacts and more time on real prototypes. But just saying that isn’t enough. How does a team that is accustomed to a heavy paper flow wean themselves off of it? I used to think design teams made so many diagrams and documents because… well, they like that sort of thing. Now I’m suspecting there’s more to it.

The Counter-Intuitive Benefits of Small Time Blocks

It’s a common assertion that doing hard, creative work requires long stretches of concentrated attention. And if you have the luxury of big, open blocks of time, it is a great way to get things done. But what if you don’t? What if you get interrupted left and right by clients and co-workers? Is there a way to push creative projects forward in this non-optimal environment?