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I?ll be honest? my home life is completely insane. My house is like a zoo with two feral monkeys on the loose, tearing apart everything they can get their little hands on.
There are spills, wrecks, crying jags, minor explosions, loud thumping sounds (heads on walls probably), and occasional horror-movie-style screams. It?s amazing that two tiny people can create so much chaos.
My wife does all she can, but she?s outnumbered. I provide back-up, but I?ve also got a job to do. In spite of all the madness, I still somehow manage to write for several hours each day.
Speaking of which, I should get started on some work right now while they’re eating pancakes. Here are 5 of the ways I keep from going completely nuts and manage to keep my freelance writing projects on track.
Even when your life is absolute madness, there are always ways to de-stress. Maybe it’s exercise, soothing music, meditation, games of computer solitaire ? whatever works to get your mind off the insanity. Find one or two things that help you de-stress and schedule short sessions throughout your day. If you don?t schedule them, they won’t get done.
Also, make sure they?re not in any way bad for your health. A fifth of Jim Beam each day might cure your stress, but you?ll end up with worse problems. Taking potshots at birds through your office window may help you stay grounded, but it?s dangerous and illegal. Drilling a tiny hole in your forehead may make everything all right, but? you get the point.
Kids operate on their own time. You have to be on that time with them. You also need to be focused on your work. If you work at home, they?re going to distract you and you should let them. When they need something, stop work and forget about what you were doing. When you’re with the kids, be only with the kids. When you’re working, be only working.
This shifting of gears is a bit tricky at first. In fact, switching too much actually adds to your stress. If I can?t work 30 minutes or more, I don?t bother trying. The reason is that working in 15 minute chunks alternating with taking care of kids leads to mental meltdown. It?s better to work only when you have a reasonable stretch of time, even if you have to wait for it.
There are two ways of doing this ? get up early or stay up late.
You can get up while the world is still dark outside and watch the morning joggers while you work away. You?ll get several precious hours done before the first child wakes up and starts harassing you. Or you can wait until the kids are tucked in and snoring, and then get down to business.
I’ve made the shift to mornings even though it’s painful for me. I’m used to it now and it’s a much more productive time for me. Experiment with it and find out what works best for you. Just make sure you get enough sleep. If you’re zombified by sleep deprivation, you’ll make things much harder for your brain (and your patience).
As a writer, I?m obsessed with deadlines and the work I have to finish today. But through my hectic family life, I’ve learned how to let things go completely and forget all about it. Somehow, it gets done. Learning to give up on the idea of controlling things in your life is an important skill to learn when you’re a parent.
Of course, you can?t let go too much or else you’ll never get anything done. I set hopeful deadlines for myself and realistic deadlines for my clients. The work usually gets done somewhere in-between. If there’s a sick kid or an emergency afternoon playing at the park, it helps to have the leeway.
What keeps me going even though my house looks like a tornado and Godzilla hit it at the same time? My passion for writing. If you keep in mind why you do what you do, it’s much easier to work anytime you’re allowed to. When my time gets squeezed into a few small hours at night when reasonable people are sleeping, I come alive. Keep your mind focused on doing what you love to do and you?ll get through it.
Do you have any ideas on working at home with your active children underfoot?
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Bid sites have become a part of freelancing, no matter how much some of us dig in our heels and scream otherwise. It?s become very common for a freelancer to land her first clients through a site like Elance or Odesk, or for a freelancer to pick up some work to fill in holes in their schedule.
Sure, the rates are lower than what we can probably get when we?re dealing with clients on our own ? or at least they feel that way after the site takes a bite out of our revenues. But there is a level of convenience that bid sites offer.
It’s important to weigh the pros and cons of job bid sites before you start using them.
If you?re working through a bid site, even on an irregular basis, it?s worthwhile to take a look at how that site makes its money ? to understand exactly how things work (or don?t work) in your favor. For instance, Elance made $156 million in 2011 ? by charging between 6.75 percent and 8.75 percent on any project payment made through the site, as well as by charging freelancers who accept more than a handful of projects through the site for a membership plan. That?s certainly not bad for a company that was founded less than fifteen years ago.
It?s easy for a freelancer to look at those numbers and worry ? after all, why should we share millions of dollars of revenue with a company that isn?t actually doing any of the work on our projects? But the reality is that these companies are providing a valuable service; otherwise people simply wouldn?t use them. The important thing is to understand how they handle money so that you can earn the maximum possible if you?re working through such sites.
It?s easy enough to see that making a comparable amount on clients you find through a bid site and clients you find on your own, you need to bid higher ? at least enough to cover the percentage that the bid site collects for its fee. Most sites have variations in their fees: for Elance, the biggest question is how large the project is. If you?re earning more than $10,000 on a project, you can qualify for the lower fee structure. You need to read up on the specifics of any site you consider using. When in doubt, bid high enough to absorb the highest fees a site might charge.
But that isn?t enough: you also need to consider two other sources of fees that reduce the income you take home from any bid site: membership fees and money transfer fees. While most bid sites have a free membership level that you can use if you?re only bidding on a handful of projects, many do charge a monthly fee for heavier users.
Exactly how membership plans can break down can be complicated. Elance in particular, has a complex system: you can pay a yearly fee starting at $120 and going up to get the ability to bid on more projects (called ?connects? on Elance), as well as buy connects individually. Depending on how many projects you handle through a bid site, membership fees can add up quickly.
You also need to take into consideration how you?re going to get any money you earn back out of a bid site. There tend to be all sorts of different options, like checks, wire transfers and PayPal ? each of which may have different costs associated with them.
You may also incur further fees if you?re located outside of the country that a site operates in: you may have to pay for currency conversion or international wire transfers. It?s not always clear whether you?ll get hit with fees on the other end, like PayPal?s standard fees. Depending on the specific situation, you may be looking at a total of 10 percent of a given project going to all these costs, possibly more.
The best way to deal with those fees, at least from a business perspective, is to bid high enough to cover them for every project. The problem you may encounter, though, is that on bid sites, lower bids tend to win. That?s not always the case: savvy businesses will choose freelancers who will clearly be able to get a project done rather than the lowest bid on any given project, but to do well on bid sites, you do have to be competitive.
There is an argument that bid sites speed up the process of finding work for freelancers significantly. You have to decide for yourself if that convenience is worth it to you if you have to charge lower rates to land those clients. It?s a hard choice to make, and for many freelancers it doesn?t make sense. But it is also a personal choice. If you freelance part time or otherwise don?t have a lot of time to devote to landing new clients, using bid sites may be an effective strategy for you.
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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 learning freelance web development, grammar goofs, working on the road, and more.
7 Steps to Learning Freelance Web Development, So you want to become a freelance web developer. Maybe you?re already a front-end developer and want to dig deeper into web applications, or maybe you?re a copy wiz and are eyeing the countless developer positions out there. Either way, it?s an entirely new skill you?ll be picking up. Here?s how to do it successfully. The challenge for most is finding the right resources, understanding them, and staying motivated when you hit walls. While learning from quality resources is needed, it?s the process behind learning that will set you apart. It?s important to create the best learning environment to ensure your success.
15 Grammar Goofs That Make You Look Silly Making some grammatical errors just makes you look bad, and hurts your effectiveness. Assembled here (as a handy reference) are the 15 most egregious grammar goofs into one helpful infographic.
12 Things That Will Kill Your Blog Post Every Time Blogging is a lot like fishing. Some people do it all the time and never catch anything?while others catch everything. Why is that? You know better than to say it is luck. So let?s call it what it is?when you look around at successful blogs?whatever industry or topic?there are several undeniable basics to success. And it starts with blog posts that kill it?rather than get killed. But what kills a blog post? Here?s a list of 12 things?ignore them and you will have a tough time being successful.
On The Road: How To Produce Great Work While Traveling The World So what’s the secret to taking the plunge? Jump into this interview with professional travelers on the99percent.
7 New Facebook Changes Impacting Businesses Facebook pages are changing. And that means your business strategy will need to change. In fact, Facebook has made many new changes that will impact anyone with a Facebook page. These changes emerged from Facebook?s fMC 2012 Conference. The overall message was that Facebook is looking at pages as a ?mission control? point (which is where the MC comes from in the conference title). Here is an overview of the changes and how brands can take advantage of some of the new features.
A Scientific Approach to Writing Page Titles Most clever bloggers spend a little thought on each page title?they think carefully about how to word it in such a way as to get both the search engines and the potential readers to pay attention. But let?s face it, if this is your method, all you are really doing is typing something that ?sounds good.? Learn a slightly more scientific approach to page titles.
Earning More When You Have No Free Time: How a full-time law student earned $50k on the side Learn how liz earned $50,000 on the side as a law student? With a part-time job and a new baby – quite a few barriers to work around with regard to to time mangement. Learn how she doubled her average hourly rate and tips on how you can do it too.
The Cold, Hard Truth About Guest Posts Learn the problems with most guest post submissions. How to avoid them and increase your acceptance ratio. You’d be surprised how slapped-together and filled with grammar and structural problems most guest post submissions have.
The Freelancer?s Pros and Cons of Early Adoption As a freelancer, should you be an early adopter? The answer is, that depends? This post weighs the pros and cons of becoming an early adopter from a freelancing standpoint.
4 To-Dos for the ?Someday? Entrepreneur Surprisingly, the ability to take the plunge into entrepreneurship has a lot less to do with people?s personalities, and a lot more to do with how accessible and familiar the experience of entrepreneurship is to them. Those who can picture themselves running a business often do.
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I got a call yesterday from a publishing house in New York City. One of my former interns had given them my contact information to use as a reference for the job she was applying for. I was pleasantly surprised to get the call.
A lot of the former interns who have worked for me, or with me, go out and look for jobs. And a lot of them use me as a reference. Rarely do I ever get a call from an employer who is interviewing these students. I always wonder why.
According to researchers at Cornell University, people are more likely to lie about their work experience on a traditional resume than they are on a social media page, like LinkedIn. In fact, the study found that 92% of college students lie at least once on their resumes.
The study says that websites such as LinkedIn can lead to greater honesty when it comes to r�sum� claims such as experience and responsibilities. That’s because claims are more easily verified in a public, online setting, so liars are more likely to get caught. ?Associated Press
Sure, many people fib on their resumes to make themselves look better. They say their hobbies include reading classical literature or writing poetry when really they spend the majority of their time watching reality television. These things are hard to verify. Which is why people have interviews?to test the legitimacy of the actual resume.
But college students, and others who are looking for work, need to be aware that employers are savvy. They are looking you up online before they call you in for an interview. And if they?re not?they should be.
When I was in graduate school, I was an online reporter intern for Inc.com. I made friends with the interns on the print side who were hired to help put together the magazine?s Inc. 500 list. It was 2006 and I wasn?t yet on Facebook.
The print team were looking to hire a new group of interns for their project, and they were looking up every college student applicant on Facebook and finding out some very interesting things. One girl, that looked impressive on paper, had photos on Facebook of her smoking a bong at a party. The editors were not impressed. I believe her resume went into the circular filing cabinet?the trash.
It was my first glimpse into how social media was affecting hiring practices, and I never forgot it. Here are some other tips on how to make yourself look better online for potential jobs:
Make sure you don?t have any compromising photos on Facebook. Do a search for images that your friends have tagged you in and make sure they?re clean. Even if you and your friends have privacy settings in place, that doesn?t mean this info is ever really private. If an image makes you think twice, get rid of it.
As an adjunct professor, I?ve seen some pretty ridiculous email addresses from students. It?s time to ditch cupcakekitty69@webaddress.com and get something more professional. If an email address like that comes into my inbox, either my spam filter will catch it or I will?and I won?t find it amusing or cute. When you are out there sending your resume and clips for potential freelance jobs, you need to put your best foot forward?and most often that starts with your email address.
Make sure the same information you have on your resume matches what you have on your social media sites?because people will check. Any discrepancies automatically raise a red flag. The information should match?or at least be similar enough that it doesn?t look like you are lying.
Of course you are going to tailor your resume, pitches, and cover letters to each new opportunity, but don?t fabricate. If you dropped out of college a few credits shy of graduation, you did not graduate. If you paid for a seminar or professional development class, but didn?t really attend, you didn?t go.
If things don?t go your way on a job, and you don?t part ways amicably, do not use social media to ?get back at them? because it only makes you look bad. Avoid complaining about clients online all together.
Not only can the client easily find out, if they are ever contacted by a potential future employee, they won?t hold back. Plus, no future employer wants to take the chance that they might end up the brunt of jokes and complaining on your Facebook or Twitter. They?ll just hire someone else that isn?t a loose canon.
Social media makes our lives easier in some respects, like staying in touch with family and friends, as well as sharing information. But unless you are careful, your online persona could get in the way of your professional one.
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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 learning freelance web development, grammar goofs, working on the road, and more.
7 Steps to Learning Freelance Web Development, So you want to become a freelance web developer. Maybe you?re already a front-end developer and want to dig deeper into web applications, or maybe you?re a copy wiz and are eyeing the countless developer positions out there. Either way, it?s an entirely new skill you?ll be picking up. Here?s how to do it successfully. The challenge for most is finding the right resources, understanding them, and staying motivated when you hit walls. While learning from quality resources is needed, it?s the process behind learning that will set you apart. It?s important to create the best learning environment to ensure your success.
15 Grammar Goofs That Make You Look Silly Making some grammatical errors just makes you look bad, and hurts your effectiveness. Assembled here (as a handy reference) are the 15 most egregious grammar goofs into one helpful infographic.
12 Things That Will Kill Your Blog Post Every Time Blogging is a lot like fishing. Some people do it all the time and never catch anything?while others catch everything. Why is that? You know better than to say it is luck. So let?s call it what it is?when you look around at successful blogs?whatever industry or topic?there are several undeniable basics to success. And it starts with blog posts that kill it?rather than get killed. But what kills a blog post? Here?s a list of 12 things?ignore them and you will have a tough time being successful.
On The Road: How To Produce Great Work While Traveling The World So what’s the secret to taking the plunge? Jump into this interview with professional travelers on the99percent.
7 New Facebook Changes Impacting Businesses Facebook pages are changing. And that means your business strategy will need to change. In fact, Facebook has made many new changes that will impact anyone with a Facebook page. These changes emerged from Facebook?s fMC 2012 Conference. The overall message was that Facebook is looking at pages as a ?mission control? point (which is where the MC comes from in the conference title). Here is an overview of the changes and how brands can take advantage of some of the new features.
A Scientific Approach to Writing Page Titles Most clever bloggers spend a little thought on each page title?they think carefully about how to word it in such a way as to get both the search engines and the potential readers to pay attention. But let?s face it, if this is your method, all you are really doing is typing something that ?sounds good.? Learn a slightly more scientific approach to page titles.
Earning More When You Have No Free Time: How a full-time law student earned $50k on the side Learn how liz earned $50,000 on the side as a law student? With a part-time job and a new baby – quite a few barriers to work around with regard to to time mangement. Learn how she doubled her average hourly rate and tips on how you can do it too.
The Cold, Hard Truth About Guest Posts Learn the problems with most guest post submissions. How to avoid them and increase your acceptance ratio. You’d be surprised how slapped-together and filled with grammar and structural problems most guest post submissions have.
The Freelancer?s Pros and Cons of Early Adoption As a freelancer, should you be an early adopter? The answer is, that depends? This post weighs the pros and cons of becoming an early adopter from a freelancing standpoint.
4 To-Dos for the ?Someday? Entrepreneur Surprisingly, the ability to take the plunge into entrepreneurship has a lot less to do with people?s personalities, and a lot more to do with how accessible and familiar the experience of entrepreneurship is to them. Those who can picture themselves running a business often do.
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