Freelance Weekly

Back in the old days, when someone was in the market for a particular service they just asked a few friends for a suggestion or picked up the yellow pages. Now, with the internet opening so many other options for services, it can be easy to get lost in the crowd. What can you do to find the best location for you to attract the optimal client base? Click here to read more »

In our June 28 Market Yourself; we talked about your management skills possibly affecting your marketability. Time management is one of the needed requirements to keeping yourself and your business on track and at its best. Here are a few of our favorite tools to assist you in the sometimes overwhelming task of organization. Click here to read more »

They say a picture is worth a thousand words so sometimes freelancers need to provide a picture with their content to clarify, illuminate, or capture attention. But where do you get pictures from and, more importantly, where can you get pictures from that won’t result in a rabid lawyer hunting you down and suing your freelancing pants off for copyright infringement.

There are paid and free options of varying quality and you can read about some of them on Freelance Weekly. But one of my favorite go-to sources is Flickr. Flickr offers many different licenses for you to use some of their user-generated content. Click here to read more »

Once upon a time I was working a HUGE project for a client and I was collaborating with a team scattered throughout the country. I had an idea for communicating the information graphically but I’m not an artist. I bused out my whiteboard markers, drew it on my whiteboard then took a picture of it with my digital camera and sent it to the researcher who fact-checked it and sent it on to the graphic designer. It wasn’t an elegant system but it did the trick.

Then I found a site created by those smart light-bulb-making folks at GE. It changed how I collaborated on these visual projects and you might find it helpful, too.

The site is called ImaginationCubed.com. And before you go there, I should tell you that it is really addictive so make sure the rest of your work is done before you visit the site! Basically, the site is just one page and you can draw on it. Click here to read more »

I love Zoho.com. I just want to make that disclaimer before I get too far into this post and you start to wonder about me. To summarize Zoho in a phrase, I would say that it is your business online. Zoho offers web-based apps for just about everything your business will ever need.

There are the standard office suite apps like a word processing app (Zoho Writer) and a spreadsheet app (Zoho Sheet) and a presentation app (Zoho Show). These are the ones that I use most frequently and they work just like the other web-based apps you’re used to (like GoogleDocs) or computer-based apps you’re used to (like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint).

But when it’s time to take your business to the next level, you can do that too. Zoho also has apps like a customer relationship management (Zoho CRM), a project management app (Zoho Project) an invoicing app (Zoho Invoices), a planning app (Zoho Planner), a document management app (Zoho Docs) and a central repository (Zoho Share). While most freelancers may happily use the basic office suite tools, they can use these “next level” business tools to make significant improvements in how their businesses perform.  Click here to read more »

When I first started freelancing, my Skype and my home number were sufficient. But over time, I realized that I needed to step up the professionalism if I wanted to charge more money.

Not only that, I needed to start separating my business and my personal life (a reality that was highlighted for me when a client called my home number late at night on, my birthday, and demanded that I work on his new project immediately).

Click here to read more »

Beginning a new project without a contract in place can be a very risky move. Contracts will protect both the freelancer and the client and can avoid a lot of potential headaches. After securing a job with a client, your very next step should be drafting the contract to include all the pertinent points of the agreed upon task. Time frame, specific details of the job and compensation need to be clearly stated on the contract. With the beauty of the internet, face to face exchanging of these contracts is not necessary to fulfill their value. Everything can be done via e mail. Click here to read more »

For freelancers that do graphics or games or photography, 10 Steps.SG is for you. Featuring reviews and links to many of the photoshop applications available, it is a one stop shop to see which may be right for you. The company was developed by a full time art director for a gaming company. His interest and passion for anything artistic and creative motivated him to develop this site for anyone that shares the same interests. Click here to read more »