The last installment in Tut+ Premium’s freelancing course, Freelance Bootcamp, is all about advancing your career. If you’re a Premium member and following along, this is your space to share your ideas with fellow FreelanceSwitch readers!  The section starts with Marketing for Freelancers. In the last section of the series, James Clear examines the essential strategies for growing your business, including:

• Focusing your marketing
• The down and dirty on your legal needs
• How to raise your rates
• And finally, the importance of referrals and mentors.

If you’re a Premium member who’s completed the Freelance Bootcamp course with us, what’s your feedback? Did you find the course worth recommending to fellow freelancers?  Continue Reading

As the unemployment rate in many industrialized countries continues to languish in double digits – or close to it – government policy makers are devising all sorts of programs that will put people back to work. Most, if not all of them, focus on the creation of jobs.

Now, since this is FreelanceSwitch, the j-word is something that provokes a rather strong reaction. Many of us have not had the happiest of experiences with conventional employment. And we’re not going back to the job world unless it kidnaps us. Which is unlikely to happen.

But when it comes to the world’s economic recovery, we’re anything but a sideshow. If anything, we’re a major part of the solution. To the point, we’re building a new economy.

This article takes you on a tour of three of this freelance economy’s major features. Continue Reading

photo credit: sansreproache/flickr

Rockable Press recently shared some statistics from their up-coming freelancing book, Freelance Confidential, with their mailing list. The book includes results from the survey conducted here at FreelanceSwitch a few months ago that polled 3,200 freelancers on every aspect of their work. There were a lot of nifty facts about freelancing in there, but nothing generated more heated discussion more than this simple line:

44% of freelancers are self-taught and never received any university or technical college training in their field.

Some responses were shocked that the number was that high and saw it as a bad thing for the industry. Others thought it should be higher and that education adds little value for freelancers. I thought the responses were so strong that it would be great to open it up to a discussion for the FreelanceSwitch community. So tell us what you think!

• Does a freelancer need a college education or technical training to be successful?
• Is there a difference between self-taught freelancers and freelancers with formal training?
• What value does formal training or education add for freelancers?

What do you think? Continue Reading

In this issue of Ask FreelanceSwitch, we look at building portfolios and teaching students. 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. Continue Reading

I often find that when I invest in my freelance career, I experience a boost, whether it’s in ideas, time management skills, or actual, y’know, money. And there’s no shortage of opportunities to invest, whether it’s in coaching, e-courses, college courses, books and e-books, or even retreats for entrepreneurs. But not all freelancers are good candidates for these products and opportunities, and not all times are the right time to invest.

Here’s when not to spend your hard-earned cash on your career development. This isn’t to say that it’s never worth doing, but that the time may not be right for you. Continue Reading

As a freelancer, you’ll encounter two schools of thought: you should either specialize and make your name as an expert in your niche or you should diversify and land as many different gigs as you can. No matter which approach you feel is correct, though, developing new skills is critical.

If you’re an expert in your particular brand of freelancing, certain skills can help you support your position as an expert. If, for instance, you’re a website designer who specializes in e-commerce sites, being able to set up a Google AdWords campaign that will bring traffic to that new site you just designed can help you endear yourself to your client (and charge higher rates). In some cases, you may not even need to make use of your skills — simply being able to guide a client through the process of finding the right help or being able to tell that help exactly what needs to be done.

If you’re taking a more diversified approach, the benefit of new skills may be more obvious. The more types of projects you can take on, the more work is available to you. Either way, every freelancer should keep learning, whether that means taking classes, buying informational products or simply experimenting with new technology. Continue Reading

The number of blogs and websites offering up information on freelancing has exploded over the past couple of years. In a way, this is a good thing: the more information freelancers have access to, the better decisions we can make and the more money we can earn. But in other ways, it makes things harder.

Not only do we have to spend time deciding how reliable a particular site is, but we also need to spend at least a little time working, rather than just reading how other people are doing it each day.

Continue Reading

Last week I introduced you to the latest collaboration between Rockable Press and FreelanceSwitch, How to Write Great Copy for the Web by Donna Spencer. I am happy to announce that the book has been launched today and Rockin’ List members get a $5 discount code on the digital book, bringing the book’s price down to just $10. Get subscribed and check out the book.

“In How to Write Great Copy for the Web, author Donna Spencer will help you start writing content for the web that works! Learn about how writing web copy differs from other forms of writing, and how writing useful, functional and concise copy can both help persuade your readers, and also help with search engine optimization!

Whether it’s for your own site, or for somebody else’s, How to Write Great Copy for the Web will quickly bring you up to speed with some clever strategies that will make you popular with your site’s visitors, or with your clients!”

We know it’s hard to judge a book by its cover, so we’re making the first chapter and the table of contents available to download for anyone who is interested. That way you can decide for yourself if this book is right for you. We think it’s great for any sort of freelancer who wants to write web copy, be they freelancer writers who are new to the web, or web designers whose clients keep asking them to take care of copy—it happens all the time, so it’s a great idea to learn the skill and make some money out of it!

• Download the first chapter here.
• Get your discount by signing up for the Rockin’ List here—your coupon code will arrive within 24 hours.
• Purchase How to Write Great Copy for the Web here.

Update: Our $5 off for subscribers offer closes in under 48 hours.

In my previous post, I talked about pitfalls that await someone who leaves a crummy job for an ill-fated business venture.

For me, the crummy job was in the publications and publicity office of a fundraising organization. This organization lavished all sorts of loving kindness on its donors, but couldn’t extend the same courtesy to its staff. The ill-fated business was a bicycle book publishing venture.

During the summer before I left my job, I attended the Stanford Professional Publishing Course (SPPC), which was held on the campus of Stanford University. This was considered to be one of the most prestigious courses in the publishing industry, and I was thrilled when I got the acceptance letter.

Continue Reading