According to an article in the Indianapolis Star, nearly 5% of the workforce in the U.S. held multiple jobs in November, up slightly from the same time last year.

For some, working two jobs has become the only practical way to get by. Some who take on extra work do it to pay off debt, cushion their savings or provide a fallback in case they lose their primary job. Others take part-time work hoping it turns into a full-time position, despite typically low wages and few, if any, benefits —Indianapolis Star

Holding two jobs for many freelancers is a way of life. Let’s take a look at a few case examples of how this can work well, and a few pitfalls to consider!

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Credit: Yuri Arcurs on Photodune

The art of interviewing is just that—an art. Writers can spend an ungodly amount of time conducting interviews, which in turn costs them money. Here are some tips you can implement to make the process smoother, faster, and even more enjoyable.

1. Do Your Homework

Before you even head out the door for the interview you should be prepared—especially if you are interviewing someone who is in the public eye. Don’t waste your time fishing for answers you could easily find somewhere else. Being prepared is one of the most important interview techniques.

Perhaps the person has a bio online or has been featured in other articles. Find out, and read everything you can find. Do they work for a company that has a media relations person? Ask them to send over any information they have on the person. You then want to create a list of questions that fit your story. If you ask yes or no questions you’re going to get yes or no answers—craft your questions in a way that elicits a thoughtful response.

Don’t waste your time fishing for answers you could easily find somewhere else.

If I am looking for specific facts and figures, I’ll send my subject these questions ahead of time so they, too, can be prepared. It’s tough being in an interview and having the person say, over and over again, “I don’t know the numbers off the top of my head, I’ll have to send them to you later.” If they’re a busy person, they might not get you the statistics you need in a timely manner. Ask your subject if they can have this information ready for you on the day of your interview.

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In his book, My Startup Life, Ben Casnocha offers a 30-day plan for becoming a better entrepreneur. I’m not going to rehash Ben’s plan – you’re better off reading the book than hearing about it from me. But I am going to elaborate on the task he assigns for Day 28:

Have multiple side projects going. Diversify your portfolio of interests and activities.

This begs the question: What is a side project?

I like to define them as projects that we usually aren’t paid for and are done in our non-work hours. Here are three examples:

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My youngest nephew, Will, is on the cusp of two years old—that adorably maddening tipping point between babydom and full-functioning Big Boy.  Sometimes he struggles to communicate his needs, at which point he defaults to a full-throated, full-fake cry; sometimes, he’s clearly and efficiently out-sentencing most reality show contestants.

And sometimes he switches from one to the other within no interval between the two.  Recently he was struggling to open a toy, and, seeing a facsimile of an Official Adult nearby in me, he wailed aloud.  I bent down to unfasten the latches for him. I might not be willing to endure labor, breastfeeding, and adolescence, but I can unlock the plastic stops on a Fisher-Price barn. Most of the time.

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In this article, I’m going to talk about how you can hold yourself accountable on a monthly basis. The first two articles in this series covered:

1. Daily accountability
2. Weekly accountability

The focus of the first two articles was on things that you can do with words – evaluating your day and your week. When we move up to the monthly level, the focus shifts to numbers. Which means that it’s time to talk about accounting software and your business. Yes, I know that this is a sore spot for many creatives. It was for me for many years, but I got over it.

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Photo by Michel Filion (aka Mike9Alive).

Recently on FreelanceSwitch, I talked about attaining a good work-life balance. In that article, one of the methods for attaining a better balance was making a clear-cut decision about when you’ll work and how many hours you spend working each day, and sticking to those hours. We throw work-life balance off by creeping past those hours to get “just that bit more” done.

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Undeniably, one of the most difficult things about working at home is keeping people from perpetually distracting you during the workday, simply because you’re right there and they have nothing better to do. Or want you to take the trash out right then and there (hey, it has happened to me!).

To get anything done, you’ve really got to guard the home office and its status as a distraction-free zone. You’ve got to guard it so fiercely, you might even call it guarding the sanctity of the office. Here are five methods I use for keeping distractions at bay.

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It was one of the most brilliant article ideas you’ve ever had. You sat down and wrote up a beautiful query letter, tailored it perfectly to the publication you were targeting and sent it off. Now to sit and wait to receive the assignment from the editor.

The reply comes faster than usual but instead of containing a word count and a deadline it’s…the form rejection letter.

It wouldn’t normally be a big deal except the article was about a niche topic and this was the perfect magazine to publish it.

Time to toss the idea and move on, right? Wrong. It’s merely time to re-examine it and consider other ways it could be written.

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Freelance Folder recently published a post on 5 Surefire Ways to Meet Deadlines for Freelancers and Web Workers by Abhijeet Mukherjee. If you haven’t read the post, it gives a nice breakdown of the topic. I’d like to take this opportunity to build on that post by looking not only at how we can increase our productivity in our day-to-day work, but also how we can change our mentality towards deadlines to create a healthier and more efficient workflow.

Abhijeet’s points and suggestions for meeting deadlines are:

1. Set expectations… with yourself.
2. Prioritize your work.
3. Keep track of dates and occasions.
4. Analyze your accomplishments every day.
5. Try to work only five days a week.

These points are great for keeping yourself on track and maintaining a proper balance in your work. From my experience I’ve found that it can also be helpful to turn the tables and put deadlines to work for you, rather than working against you. Continue Reading

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Freelancing is often a juggling act. Not only are you working on several different projects at any given time, but you’ve probably also got projects that are all at various stages of development.

Starting new projects, finishing others, and diving deeper into even more can make organization and planning a difficult task. You’ll constantly be facing the challenge of managing your time effectively to balance all of your clients and to keep completing jobs.

If you’re like me, there’s nothing more satisfying than completing a job and crossing it off of your to-do list (well, getting paid is pretty rewarding too, but that’s getting off track). Personally, I function far more effectively when I have a challenging but realistic list of tasks for each day and each week. Without planning for the use of my time I tend to lose focus and spend my time less productively.

As I’m creating my task list for each day, and throughout the day as I determine how to allocate my time for each task, I have to prioritize. Effective prioritizing is a necessity for freelancers to maximize their efficiency and productivity. Because we’re all different, what works for me may not work for you. There’s no right or wrong approach, but we all need to find our own ideal method of prioritizing. Continue Reading

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Ever have one of those days when you can’t seem to write anything?

This is especially disheartening to the freelancer, since no work done means no billable hours. Here’s a personal account of an approach that I started using about seven years ago that really helped with my writing productivity — though it’s adaptable to other types of cerebral freelance work.

It started in Jan 2002, after an offline contract ended. I took a vacation to pursue personal short fiction writing projects. My intent was to make the best of three months, before going out to look for more offline work. (Which didn’t actually happen, as I landed a non-fiction book contract, and then life happened and diverted all my plans.) The net result of three months of productivity was the outlining of 100 short stories and novelettes outlined and sixty completed — or about twenty per month. Continue Reading

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Many freelancers struggle with seeing the true value of their own time and respecting it for what it is worth. In order to have a truly successful career we all need to understand that our time is what allows us to make a living, and the more efficiently we use it, the more profitable our work will be.

As a freelancer, if you don’t respect your own time, no one else will. Personally, I have to say that I have struggled with all of these issues at one time or another.

Here are 8 ways that freelancers tend to disrespect their own time:

1 – Underpricing

Pricing is a difficult decision for many freelancers, especially those who are not yet established. It’s always tempting to underprice your services thinking that it will lead to more work. However, there are real consequences to underpricing. First, you’ll have to work more to make what you could make with higher rates. Plus, customers may view your prices as a sign of your skill level and experience. Continue Reading