As a freelancer, one of the benes is often times being able to work from home or wherever your fancy takes you.  We all know there are some days that heading out to the office is just not in the cards.

Until recently, using the handy dandy screen share feature offered through Skype was the way to go for those “don’t want to leave the house” kind of days.  Until we wanted to use the screen share with a few people in a conference call.  Turns out that option isn’t available if there are more than two people in on the Skype call.

Enter Join Me! to save the day!  

Join me is one of those fabulous, FREE, online features that can make life a whole lot easier. Windows, Mac and Mobile users can begin using at the drop of a hat with no registration, no sign up, no hassle; AND there isn’t a messy toolbar cluttering things up while you’re trying to navigate.

The beauty of all of it is you can use it WITH Skype so keep on making your conference calls through Skype and integrate the join me feature to really wow the folks you’re talking to.  It’s a win win!!

They actually have two versions, FREE and PRO.  With some programs the FREE version is a great illustration of “you get what you pay for” but not with Join me.  Since I’ve started using the free version, I haven’t noticed anything missing that makes me wish I’d gone pro.

Join Me Free:

• Screen Sharing
• 250 Viewers
• Share Control
• Multi Monitor
• Chat
• Send Files

Join Me Pro:

• All the goodies in Free… plus,
• Presenter Swap
• Pro Desktop App
• Personal link & Background
• Meeting Scheduler
• Meeting Lock
• Viewer: iPad/iPhone or Android
• User Management
• International Conference Lines

As far as common sense, simple to use, and there when you need it features: Join me has it all.  It’s a great way to work side by side in real time and get things done.

Normally I’d go on and fill you in on what your system needs in order to be able to use Join me, but I like the way they explain it on their site better (and it makes me giggle):

Nerdy
Viewer requirements Flash Player 10, Internet Explorer 7 or above, or the latest Firefox, Chrome, Safari
 
Nerdier
Host requirements Windows 7, Vista, XP, Server 2003, Server 2008 (32 or 64-bit) or Mac OS X Leopard (v10.5 Intel-based), Snow Leopard (v10.6 Intel-based),?Lion (v10.7 Intel-based) Broadband connectivity to the Internet (i.e., T1, cable modem, ISDN or DSL)
 
Nnnerdier
Security 256-bit SSL encryption — the same security levels used and trusted by major banking institutions.

With Cotweet.com you are able to schedule tweets and updates that fit the times and dates exactly as you need.  Cotweet by Exact Target gives you the opportunity to schedule tweets at any time and any day.  You are also able to schedule tweets and posts months in advance.  Cotweet is a social media management and reporting tool that will help companies of every size keep up with their social media demands and needs.   Cotweet also journals all retweets and mentions that come from the Twitter world in one place.  You are able to see quickly and easily who and when people are responding to your tweets and Facebook posts.  Cotweet is a very impressive tool for the freelancer that needs to be able to handle multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts and for those who have a need for multiple users.  CoTweet has an Outlook like interface which is extremely streamlined and simple. There is no clutter or apps to distract or complicate the user.  Posting a new tweet is as easy as clicking the “New Update” button.  Once you click this button a screen pops up allowing you to select the exact date and time of your tweet.  Type your tweet in this window and click post update.  The tweet then will publish at your preferred time. The composer window has the standard features that you expect with all Twitter apps.  You are also able to add the Bit.ly key to be able to track statistics of the clicks.

Microblogging news site, www.Microblink.com, gave Cotweet a glowing review.  Microblink stated that “Cotweet may just be the ultimate corporate Twitter tool.”   As well as, “what business users will probably be most excited about is the look and feel of this app. Everything is very polished,  just like any other piece of software that they’re used to using.”

Appappeal.com agreed and gave Cotweet.com a five out of five star rating.  ”CoTweet is a great tool for many businesses. The application helps users handle marketing tasks and monitor the popularity of their brand. CoTweet also provides users with collaboration and scheduling tools.”

Cotweet standard has free versions for those who are just starting out and on a limited budget as well as an Enterprise version for companies with multiple accounts and users.  The Enterprise version also works with salesforce.com, integrated Bit.ly, and twitpic.

photo credit: ANSESGOB

To be honest, I do not send very many faxes anymore. Back in the days before the internet and email this was a great technology, allowing people to transmit documents of nearly any size across town or across the world in mere minutes.

Assuming the document was not too big.

And the receiving machine was on.

And it had paper loaded.

And toner. And….

Anyway while I do not have too many occasions to send a fax some people still do, especially those in the medical and legal professions where faxes are sometimes still required to maintain legal compliance. And yet faxes are normally not that secure, as anyone in the office can just walk up to the machine, grab the fax and read it.

Enter sfaxme. sfaxme is a secure online faxing service that lets you send and receive faxes online, using end-to-end encryption and your own toll-free number. When a fax is sent to you, it is encrypted and made immediately available in your online account of the sfaxme site. Simply log in like you would an online email program to see your faxes. When you want to send a fax, you log into the site, fill out the destination form, create an optional cover sheet, and upload a file you would like to send. The fax is then sent to the recipient. The receiver will get their fax on their fax machine as normal or in their account.

One of the interesting things about this service is that the encryption makes it compliant with privacy laws such as the Healthcare Information Portability and Privacy Act (HIPPA) which requires hospitals and other medical professionals to secure and protect all data related to their patients. This makes faxing difficult , and yet they are often still required to send faxes. sfaxme could eliminate many of these headaches. My only complaint is that when a fax comes into my account, I would like to receive an email telling me I had received a fax. I do not expect the email to disclose the contents of the fax (that would defeat the purpose of the secure service), just tell me I have one.

sfaxme comes with a 14 day free trial and starts at the very affordable $24.00 for one year of service for up to 100 pages. They have other plans that include more pages and premium services if you need it, and will even do custom tailored plans if necessary. We recommend this service for anyone who needs to send faxes but does not want to purchase and maintain a dedicated fax machine and fax line, or who needs security in their faxing service.

photo credit: Yortw

Social media – from Facebook to Twitter and everything in between – does have value for businesses if used correctly. Companies need to find the right audience and deliver high value messages to them, but they need to do more: Social media is about engagement, not JUST marketing. Therefore, businesses using social media need to interact with their audience at increasingly deeper levels. In yesterday’s business, it was enough to interact with a customer over the phone when they were ready to buy. Today, businesses need to build relationships with customers that are deeper and longer lasting: In Twitter, this means reading and retweeting what your prospects are saying. In Facebook, this means “liking” their statuses, commenting on photos, sharing links, and more.

But businesses need to drive that engagement further. Twitter and Facebook aren’t a panacea. They are entry points for prospects and customers to meet you. But you can engage them in other ways.

One way is with Slinkset. Slinkset’s claim is that they allow you to create a social news site. But this claim falls far short of the opportunities they provide. On their website they describe several other possibilities: Slinkset gives businesses the opportunity to create a link blog. They give businesses the opportunity to create a site where users can share links back and forth. They let users write ideas that readers can vote up or down. So, you can have people voting on feature requests. In fact, FourHourWorkWeek creator Tim Ferris uses Slinkset to invite readers to vote on topics they want him talking about in his conference and in his blog. And, users can use Slinkset as an internal repository of research.

This is a great way to engage your audience. A Slinkset page is extremely easy to set up (it took me less than 15 seconds) and it’s configurable enough for many uses. In fact, here are a few more uses that Slinkset doesn’t mention:

• You can add feeds so it is like a personal RSS reader
• Add custom sidebar and Google Analytics to track viewership
• Create multiple categories – “clients”, “portfolio”, “feeds” and use this site as your main site.
• Position your business as an expert by collecting industry content
• Add value to clients by creating individual sites for each of them and gathering information for them
• Use Slinkset as a sort-of “link-sharing intranet” for your business
• Create polls and find out what your audience is really thinking

It’s easy to create a customized site with a unique URL, unique sidebar, multiple categories, voting, comments, and more.

Slinkset is a powerful website that gives users some exciting opportunities to engage their audience and grow their business. Drive readers from Twitter and Facebook to Slinkset to involve them in deeper engagement.

photo credit: ericfromelsalvador

Instapaper has been around for a while and is a fairly popular service with avid readers. The idea is pretty simple: create a free account on their site, then drag their “read later” button to the bookmarks toolbar of your web browser. When you find an article that you would like to, well, “read later,” simply click on the “read later” button. A copy of the article will be saved to your account. You can also add articles by adding the url to your account at their website or via email. You can then read the article on their website, on your Kindle, or on their free app for iOS. Unfortunately there is currently no app version available for Android, but that may change as the Android platform increases in popularity.

Another great tool for helping you read articles on the go is a software program called Calibre. Calibre converts files into ePub books. This program is very helpful for times when you find a link to a PDF report or ebook you want to read but simply do not have time to read it during your work or home computer time. PDF’s can be downloaded to most eReaders and smartphones, however the text is often too small to read and requires scrolling both horizontally and vertically in order to read the article. Calibre makes the file fit to the size of your eReader so that only vertical scrolling or page turning is necessary, and the font is adjusted to a size that is easier to read on a small device.

After installing Calibre you can add documents to it by dragging and dropping, or using the “add books” button. Calibre can convert files to and from a long list of formats, but for now we will stick with converting a PDF to ePub. Once the document is in Calibre, select it and click the “convert books” button. Select ePub as the output format, change any of the default conversion settings if you want (although you probably will not need to). and click “OK.” The amount of time it will take for Calibre to convert the file varies based on size and computer speed, however it should be done by the time you take a sip of coffee unless it is a really big file (the largest I have converted is 2 MB).

Once the conversion is completed drag the file to the software for your chosen eReader and synchronize it (in my case I drag the file to the books section of iTunes). You will then be able to easily read the file on your eReader of choice.

These two resources should help you get more reading done, even away from your computer. What resources do you use for converting files to read offline? What type of device do you use for reading away from the computer?

photo credit: antonioxalonso

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?

Online directories are organized collections of links to other websites. It’s the internet version of the yellow pages, only bigger. Much bigger.

Generally the directories are categorized to specific topics, services or products. Your first step is deciding exactly what category you want to feature your product or service. Once that has been decided, you need to find a home for your link.

Here are a few online directories that may fit your needs and get you noticed:

HOTvsNot
This website has a bunch of categories from A to Z. Each website featured in their directory is added by their editors or submitted by general web users and reviewed by the editors for inclusion. No automatic additions, each site is approved by a real live human being. In their editorial policy they confess to firing the monkeys last year. It’s reassuring to know you won’t be running the risk of your site showing up in the company of less desirable sites that may cost you a potential client.

Article Directory Online
This website is a free service to submit articles and information that reaches out to potential clients. Not so much in the form of advertisement, but more in the form of introducing yourself to folks and getting them interested in what you offer. You can dramatically boost you website traffic, sales and newsletter opt- ins. Your articles are picked up by other websites, featured in newsletters, and sent out in ezines. This will create additional traffic and result in more exposure and traffic!

Once you submit your articles and others begin using them, you’ll enjoy a flood of free traffic that will come rolling in and it won’t cost you a dime. You’ll never have to rely on search engines for this free traffic and you won’t be able to stop it even if you try! If you are a website owner or a newsletter/ezine publisher, Articleonlinedirectory.com provides you with a dynamic resource of relevant, on topic content that you can use free of charge.

Free Web Directory
This website has both free and paid listings as their offerings. For a small, independent business they recommend the free listing. Free listings are absolutely without charge, you don’t have to pay a penny in order to register, submit web site and promote it in their internet directory. The one and the only thing you have to do is provide a reciprocal link. As with any site of this type, you run the risk of the automated system periodically associating your content with content you may not want to be associated with.

Directory Mix
Here at directory mix you can find a lot of various news articles, publications, blogs and happenings. If you have something you need to get the word out about, this is the place. You can submit a link to your site with a brief description to peak viewer’s interest, you can submit a blog about the happenings in or business or the services you offer. Free to use and you control the content offered.

Free Web Submission
This site provides webmasters and site owners with free manual and auto submission to the highest-rated, free internet search engines and directories. They also provide free templates, free forum hosting, Word Press themes and much more. With the top 50 search engines and directories as part of their offerings, you are certain to gain some traffic and exposure with their free service.

The key is deciding how you want the directory to promote you, what sort of offerings you want to market and exactly who you want to attract. Once those things are all in place, you will quickly be on your way to gaining the exposure needed to grow and promote your business.

photo credit: Jamiesrabbits

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.

Toggl

An online time tracking tool featuring 1-click time tracking and allows you to see exactly where your time is going. They offer a free version and an upgraded version with more specific features and more detailed management applications.Toggl is a timesheet killer.

The Toggl free plan provides an easy way to track time spent on projects. Toggl works well for both teams and freelancers. It is Internet based, so you can start using it in less than a minute. Toggl has desktop widgets, an iPhone application and an iGoogle gadget for even faster access. You can use all the basic time tracking and reporting features for free. There are no limits on the amount of projects. You can have a maximum of five team members with the free plan.

The Pro plans offer additional features that make Toggl more practical for the business user: hourly rates, professional-looking reports with your logo, time rounding, etc.

Launchy

Launchy is a cross-platform utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager.
Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!
This program is offered free to all users. Developed by a college student, he invites you to make a donation based on your satisfaction with the product.

Google Calendar

All features of Google calendar are free to use. The calendar makes it easy for you to share your schedule with others, have access to your calendar while on the go, send invitations and track RSVPs, and allows you to sync with your desktop applications and work offline. Having all your deadlines, meetings, phone calls etc all in one easy to read place will streamline your productivity and impress your clients with your punctuality and professionalism.

Rescue time

Rescue time is an analytical tool that tracks your online travels. You may be surprised to discover that all those “quick little visits” to your personal social networking sites eat up 27% of your working day.(Not actual data, I chose that number for dramatic purposes).  With rescue time, you can see the data and adjust your working habits if necessary and also maybe impose a little self discipline, if necessary of course.
A free version is offered, but as said by the developers, “free forever, but kind of wimpy.” Your best bet would be to sign up for the SoloPro for Six to Nine dollars a month and get the full benefit of the program.

Mind 42

Mind 42 uses the application of Mind mapping as the basis of their helpful tool. Mind mapping is about collecting ideas arranged in a tree like diagram. From a programmer’s point of view, the creation of such diagrams requires graphical processing. As web browsers weren’t able to do graphical processing for a long time, such applications only existed as classical desktop applications which had to be installed. But times have changed, computers got faster and browsers became more powerful. Mind42 is one of the first solutions for mind mapping which is a pure web application – with all its advantages. No installation required – accessible everywhere! And free to all users!

Mind42 is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) mind map editor supporting keyboard shortcuts, drag and drop, zooming and much more. No forms and lists which are generally used in web application. A real application – within your browser.
Being a web application, mind42 enables another interesting feature realizable on the web: collaboration. Brainstorming is no single user activity – the more people take part in a brainstorming session, the better the results will be. When using mind42, every participant of a brainstorming session has an immediately updated view onto all the already collected ideas.

So check out these handy dandy helpers to bring some organization and ease to the wonderful world of freelancing.

photo credit: conskeptical

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.

These licenses are drawn from the Creative Commons licenses that offer more useful and potentially collaborative licenses than the overarching and fairly restrictive Copyright.

Here’s how it works: When someone on Flickr uploads a picture, they assign a license to it. Sometimes they will assign a fairly restrictive license because they don’t want anyone to use it. Other times they will assign a license that allows people to use the picture but not for commercial gain. And other licenses allow users to resell pictures or freely share pictures or modify the picture.

You can view pictures on Flickr through each of these licenses here: Visit this page, check out the various license options and be sure to read the key in the sidebar that helps to explain what each of the licenses mean.

So, if you have a blog and want to post a picture to your blog, you might choose the Attribution or Attribution, No-Derivatives license. If you have a personal blog, you might choose one of the non-commercial options for even more selection. Ebooks might only be allowed to use content with the Attribution license.

Here’s the process to follow

1. Go to Flickr’s Creative Commons page and find the license that applies to your situation. Content to be used in your freelance business is generally NOT going to be a non-commercial.
2. Browse through for pictures (or search in that category using related keywords). I like to use a couple of comma-separated keywords and synonyms to get a good amount of choice.
3. Find the picture, choose the size. When you do that, you’ll get either a link to embed the picture or a place to download the size you want.
4. Embed the link or paste the picture into your content.
5. Include the appropriate attribution (if necessary).
6. As a courtesy, let the user know where the picture has been posted. (It’s the least you can do since they’ve given it to you for free).

That’s it! You can get great looking pictures for free using Flickr’s Creative Commons licensing. Just make sure that you use the licenses appropriately. Even if you don’t think you’ll get caught, just remember that you want other people treating your content with the same regard that you are treating these pictures. Take the first step and honor the licenses.

Flickr provides a really easy “no-brainer” way to add great pictures to your content!

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.

Yep, that’s it. Just that. You go there. You draw. End of story. There are a few different ways to draw – you get lines of different thickness, you get shapes and text of different sizes, and you can control the color and undo your work. Yeah, I know, it doesn’t sound that amazing; nor does it sound really any different than you might find by simply opening the Microsoft Paint program in your PC.

But here’s why I like it: You can share your drawings with others. You can collaborate on drawing by simply inviting someone others to draw with you. And that makes a world of difference. I’ve since had other people tell me about different tools that do a similar job but I’ve yet to find one that is as simple and elegant and yet robust as ImaginationCubed.com.

Since that initial project, I’ve used it frequently. When I’m not designing my next tattoo or drawing hilarious stick figures, I’m actually working on it, walking clients through ways to communicate a concept visually.

Here are some ways I’ve used it recently with clients and collaborators:

• I’ve drawn out a rough picture representing a line-drawn animation that would go along with the narration I was writing for a training project. The collaborators could immediately see how I was envisioning the animation and how it was influencing the narration. They could make changes and that helped me to shape the narration.
• I‘ve drawn out a sales funnel and had client confirm, with some small amendments, that I basically understood what their sales funnel was and how my work fit into it.
• I’ve drawn out flow charts as I’ve worked with clients and collaborators on how the best workflow should go in a new collaboration.

ImaginationCubed.com isn’t the most feature-rich site you’ll ever encounter and there are other great collaborative visual communication sites that do the trick, but this free, fast site is great for those quick times when you’re talking on the phone and you wish that you could show instead of just tell.

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. 

And the list goes on with even more specialized apps that you might have a use for (but I haven’t used myself). These include an online notetaker, wikis, On-demand remote support, chat, web conferencing, and way more.

So, why is it that I’m so excited about Zoho and their gigantic suite of apps?

There are a few reason:

• First, freelancing is a freeing business. You’re not tied down anywhere. You can work here, there, somewhere else, and then next door. And you’re not stuck accessing stuff on your laptop. You just need a computer – any computer – and you’re good to go.
• Second, it also enhances the continuity if your business because – if your computer suddenly dies – you can simply log on with another computer and everything is stored online. (Folks, that’s the wave of the future when it comes to computers, by the way: Nothing stored on the hardware itself).
• Third, it helps you run a serious business. Your freelance writing business (for example) might be successful running just a word processing program. But it will be more successful when you’re running project management software and CRM software and more. This is big-business thinking scaled down to make small businesses more successful.

Now, just in case you think I’m on their payroll (I’m not), I will admit that they aren’t perfect. For example, I find their pricing is a little confusing and not always easy to navigate around, but they will answer questions if you email a question to them. And there is some functionality that you don’t get in Zoho apps (like Zoho Writer) that you do get in offline apps (like Microsoft Word). But for the most part, everything you need to run a business is conveniently there!