Should You Hire a Social Media Manager?
As a freelancer, you do everything—manage the books, handle the sales, and make the coffee. All this on top of your actual job, be it writing, photography, graphic design, event planning…whatever.
There are some things you can outsource. You can hire a bookkeeper to keep your finances straight. These people already know how to use such software as Quickbooks, and outsourcing means you don’t have to spend the time learning the program or inputting numbers into a spreadsheet.
Did you know you can also outsource your social media? There are people out there whose job is to handle other peoples’ social media marketing, saving them oodles of time on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Constant Contact, you name it.
Maybe you aren’t good at keeping up a presence on these social media platforms. Maybe you don’t know how to leverage them. Maybe you are just so busy that you don’t really want to take the time to learn. But should you hand over your online branding to someone? This is the exact question answered by the Young Entrepreneur Council for The Washington Post. Some of their answers, included here, are worth pondering. Continue Reading
7 Warning Signs to Watch for When Working with Subcontractors
Subcontractors can make a world of difference when it comes to how quickly you can complete a project. But if a problem creeps in, the back and forth with a subcontractor can drag out a project.
Making sure that you work with reliable people, whether we’re talking about a subcontractor you work with normally or another freelancer you’re bringing in just for a particular project, is important.
After all, on a project subcontractors are helping you with, you’re ultimately responsible for their work, as well as your own. If anything goes wrong, you have to fix it or take the ding to your professional reputation.
There are certain warning signs that are worth looking for, to make sure that you have the best opportunity for a smooth project. If you see any of the signs listed below, it may be worth choosing another subcontractor. Continue Reading
How to Use a Ghostwriter in Your Own Business
Many freelancers, in a wide range of fields, think of hired writing help as something for larger projects, for corporate clients, not something for the independent one-person shop. It can be hard to imagine hiring someone to help with writing tasks if you:
- Cannot see a reason why you would need writing help, or
- Cannot visualize how you would work with that writer.
Why Hire Writing Help?
Some freelancers feel a little guilty when they do not do their own writing. It’s on their list of tasks they mean to do. But they avoid it, or they do not have time, or what they write just does not seem to have the impact they are looking for.
Part of the problem is that everyone one of us knows how to write, and we all do it every day. It is hard to farm out a task that seems like an extension of a daily activity. And that’s just the kind of thinking that perpetually postpones the creation of marketing content.
It isn’t a question of whether you should do your own writing on principle. It is a question of what gets the writing done. A white paper that is never finished (or never started) will bring you exactly zero new prospects.
What are some symptoms that point to the need for a little help?
5 Ways to Find Freelancing Virtual Assistants
Credit: by Pressmaster on Photodune
As a freelancer, there are always days when I could use a spare pair of hands. Just having someone who can send out some emails or reformat a couple of files to meet a client’s needs can make a world of difference.
But, also as a freelancer, I’m not really in a position to hire someone as a full-time employee and pay all the payroll taxes and other expenses that go along with such an arrangement. Hiring someone on a contract basis, like a virtual assistant, for just those hours that I need her, is the simplest solution. From there, it becomes a matter of finding the right virtual assistant.
Global Outsourcing: Is It Wrong to Pay Someone Less Based on Location?
Credit: Elenathewise on Photodune
Lately, I’ve heard of plenty of freelancers hiring virtual assistants or subcontractors based on the other side of the globe — choosing people based in places where $200 a month is a very respectable income. The general consensus among freelancers taking utilizing this is that it can be a great way to bring on help when you can’t fully afford someone locally. It’s a way to use geography to your advantage.
I’ve also heard plenty of people declaring that paying a designer or a virtual assistant or any other type of help less than they would make in the U.S, the U.K, Europe or Australia is morally wrong.
On that side of the discussion, there are some arguments that this trend is dragging down prices for freelancers across the board, along with the idea that location shouldn’t be a consideration when you hire someone.
The Question of Outsourcing
Outsourcing has been on my mind a lot: I’ve had to turn down a couple of projects lately that I just didn’t have time to do. I keep thinking that if I could have outsourced at least part of those projects, I could have gotten them done — and gotten the paychecks that went along with them.
The idea of outsourcing is pretty attractive on the surface. If you work with another freelancer in your field — perhaps one with a little less experience — you can take on at least a few more projects than you might manage to otherwise. If you work with freelancers in other fields, you can take on bigger projects: a web designer, for instance, might take on the whole development of a website (including the content) and subcontract the writing to a freelancer who specializes in web copy.
As long as you’re the freelancer who went out looking for the project and arranged to bring in other freelancers, you get paid. Even if you only get a small slice of the pie on a project where someone else does the lion’s share of the work, you still get paid.
The Benefits of Personal Outsourcing — Pt II
A few months ago, I wrote a brief post about the benefits of personal outsourcing. I explained how outsourcing some of your personal tasks — specifically those that you’re not fond of AND those that someone else can do more cost effectively — can help free up some of your time and enable you to become a more profitable and focused freelancer.
Many of you commented on how helpful the ideas were. You even asked for more suggestions on other tasks that could conceivably be outsourced. So I was asked to write a second post with a more exhaustive list of potentially “outsourceable” tasks.
Glad to do that. But first, I want to clarify a misconception I often hear when the topic of personal outsourcing comes up: the claim that paying someone else to take care of your personal responsibilities is a sign of laziness.
To Firm or Not to Firm? How to Choose Between Going Solo or Going Big
Before going out on their own, many freelancers struggle with the idea of how to position themselves in their market of expertise. Considering many freelancers have at one time worked in an agency setting, it’s tempting to have the agency mind-set when crafting your promotional materials.
For example, the decision of whether to use ‘I’ or ‘We’ can dramatically affect the way you’re perceived by prospective clients; “We can deliver excellent results” sounds much larger than “I can deliver excellent results”. The big question, then, is this: do you want to be an agency or a freelancer? Continue Reading
How to Earn More and Play More: Getting Started With Personal Outsourcing
Please note: if you like this article, stay tuned: Kristen Fischer will be interviewing Ed tomorrow! — Skellie
I remember it like it was yesterday.
We were new parents and our newborn baby boy had a severe case of reflux. He was constantly crying and was waking up 6 to 8 times every night.
My wife had very little time for herself. She was exhausted. I was working long hours but did everything I could to help in the evenings and on weekends.
Around that time, my wife called one of her good friends to vent her frustrations.
She told her about how tired she was—and how she didn’t even have time to clean the house. She was on the verge of tears.
Then my wife’s friend said something I’ll never forget: “Why don’t you just hire a house cleaner? You’ll have one less thing to worry about.”
It was such a simple idea. But (I hate to admit this) we’d never thought of it! Continue Reading
20 Types of Freelance Work Identified and Explained
If freelancers could invent our own clichés, one might be: no two jobs are the same. Each gig we take on brings with it new personalities, new challenges and new rewards. Despite these differences, most any freelancing gig will fit into one of these twenty types.
Where does the job you’re (supposed to be) working on now fit in? Have you done each of these kinds of jobs before? My guess is that most experienced freelancers will have encountered quite a few!
1. The magnum opus
The job you’ve always wanted, the job you’ll tell your grand-kids about. You get asked to write a book, land design work for a super-company like Coca Cola or get an article published in Business Week. The money doesn’t really matter — though it’s probably pretty good! Because this kind of opportunity doesn’t come along every day, you make this job personal, you obsess over it and make sure every single detail has been polished to a brilliant shine.
The pros:
These kinds of jobs can feel more like play than work. They’re hard to forget for all the right reasons, and can take your credibility and perceived value as a freelancer to the next level.
The cons:
Magnum opus jobs can be time vacuums. Being paid $X,000 for a project doesn’t work out to much if you spend a total 100s of hours polishing up the bells and whistles.
Why Freelancers Should Watch Their Backs (And How To Turn The Threat Into An Opportunity)
If you take a look back through the comments here on the ‘Switch there seems to be an uneasy current of tension that appears whenever anyone mentions working with freelancers who live in less than first world countries and charge rates of $10-15 per hour (or less).
You typically hear cries of “You get what you pay for”, “You’re exploiting them” or “You’re devaluing the work of professionals in your own country”; they’re classic defensive statements.
The problem is that with the globalisation of the economy and the increasingly internet-enabled population in less developed countries, it’s opening up many industries to growing competition from all parts of the world.
And as a freelancer and business owner, it’s not good enough to simply sit there and say “It’s not fair”… it is what it is and only the savviest of freelancers will not only secure themselves and their business against the threat, they may even find a way of turning it to their advantage.
So here’s why the defensive statements just aren’t going to do you any good – and how you can turn the threat into an opportunity:
