Photo by Noël Zia Lee.

Since freelancers tend to spend long hours hunched in front of a computer, it makes sense that many of them have also congregated on Twitter. Think of it as a virtual watercolor where you can chat about new projects, catch up on industry news, or just take a quick break. Some freelancers are also using the microblogging platform to find new clients and promote their business.

For those who are new to Twitter or just need some new follows, we’ve rounded up 50 users who often tweet about freelance-related topics. Not surprisingly, writers are very well represented on Twitter, but we’ve also uncovered some designers, developers, and other freelance folks. Obviously, there are many more than 50 freelancers on Twitter, so feel to leave your username in the comments.

Continue Reading

Photo by laihiu.

Handling the legal aspects of doing business has got to be the most dreaded part of freelancing. Most of us have very little knowledge in this field without taking the time to do some research, and even then it can be confusing and frustrating.

Of course, this isn’t one of the core functions of your freelance business, and it’s easy to see any time spent on legal issues as a loss in terms of available working hours. For this reason it’s good to take advantage of the legal resources that are available to freelancers.

In this post we’ll take a look at a number of resources, both online and off, that may be able to make your life easier and help you to achieve more productivity while protecting the legality of your business. Feel free to add your own favorites in the comments.

Continue Reading

Image by carrotcreative.

Twitter is some kind a strange marriage between a blogging platform and an instant messaging client.

You post updates that are made public (known as “tweets”) and people are able to respond to you directly, should they feel the need to comment. Keeping the platform “micro” is the 140 character limit on anything you post.

Posting can also be done in a variety of ways: through the Twitter web site, through integration with some IM clients like Google Talk, by text messaging a number from your cell phone or through a desktop client like Twirl.

Like almost every web-based service these days, it has a social aspect as well. You can make a list of people to “follow” so you’re given a list of all their updates.

Now, like many, when Twitter first hit the scene I raised an eyebrow and said “Why?” At first it seemed to be people posting instant updates and updating the world on how fast the line at the grocery store was moving.

But as I’ve slowly adopted the service, as a freelancer writer, I’m beginning to find more and more uses for it. Continue Reading

Photo by Torchondo.

If you’re a web-working freelancer of any sort, you’re probably following umpteen RSS feeds in your favorite feed reader (Feed Demon, Google Reader, etc.), with your subscription list growing by the day. Are you overwhelmed by the number of RSS feed items in your feed reader that you haven’t read? Are you tired of the “same” items appearing over and over in your subscriptions, even though you’ve read them already? Is using an RSS feed reader becoming counterproductive, even with a structured folder system?

Maybe it’s time to declare RSS “feed reader bankruptcy” and find another way to monitor your niches.

That’s what I did maybe 8-9 months ago, though I’ve never said it publicly. In fact, I didn’t even admit it to myself until recently, fully intending to go back to my Feed Demon app. The massive quantities of unread items and the duplicates generated by some blogging platforms just overwhelmed me. Half my day was spent browsing through feed items I’d never have time to read or use in any way.

What Now?

Freelancers tend to be generalists, which means they need to monitor multiple niches all the time. For some people, a good RSS reader is ideal. If you’re not ready to give up feed readers just yet, I recommend you read Chris Garrett’s excellent 21 Niche News and Feed Reading Productivity Tips.

However, if you are fed up with using an RSS reader, what do you do instead to stay on top of a specific niche? Continue Reading