ThinkerPool.Com

Confession time: I kind of, sort of, almost miss my 9-to-5 office grind. Granted, my home office comes equipped with a bottle of scotch and I’m not stuck using Internet Explorer, but there are some things a staff position at an established magazine or company can offer freelancers that harder to come by on our own.

What I miss most about going to the office every day are the people in all those departments that are usually ignored, but are so integral to the smooth turning of the gears: Legal, Accounting, Tech Support, Reception, the list goes on. Whether there was trouble with a libel suit or just a printer problem, it was easy to find an expert with an answer somewhere down the hall. Freelancers aren’t lost though, since there’s a wealth of online resources that’ll act as your support staff and help you through the workday.

Tech Support

Protonic.com is run by a staff of tech-savvy volunteers that offer free answers to questions about hardware, software, operating systems, or even a kink in your CSS. An answer can often take a day or so to make its way to you, but sometimes you’ll get answers within an hour. It’s the next best thing to sending a support ticket to the IT guys on the third floor.

If you’re willing to exert just a little bit of effort, you may want to browse the forums at Tech Support Guy. Chances are, your question has already been asked and discussed at length. If you’re worried about taking the advice of a stranger who might not know what they’re talking about, forum posters are ranked from Junior up to Distinguished Member, and their posts give a little bit of info about their experience and skills.

Your Own Legal Team

For those of you who might be facing certain legal doom, let’s start right away with attorneys who might help you free of charge. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a non-profit organization that tackles tech-related cases, from a file sharing to online free speech, with a team of lawyers who all work pro bono. If you need a lawyer to have your back in a case that involves technology issues, this is the first place to look.

If all you need is a quick answer to a legal question, in an effort to avoid the aforementioned certain doom, LawGuru.com has a network of more than 5,000 attorneys who review and answer queries, often within a few hours, sent through a simple online submission form. They handle more than technology, too, so you can ask about anything from contracts to parking tickets.

Once LawGuru has answered your questions about patenting your new web application, or forming an LLC with your colleagues, you’ll want to spring into action and do it. Nolo Press offers plenty of free or cheap services to do so, as well as software you can use to make your own legal documents.

A Personal Assistant

It’s sort of counter-intuitive that, if we can have IT personnel and Harvard law graduates at our fingertips, the freelancer’s personal assistant is the only resource that doesn’t involve an actual human being. Sandy, the personal email assistant from Values on n (the same company that brought us Stikkit), holds her own among her flesh and blood counterparts, though.

I Want Sandy helps you stay organized by turning emails to yourself into to-do lists, address book updates and calendar appointments. Just send a message to yourself with Sandy CCed, and she’ll complete her tasks according to your simple commands (i.e. ‘reminder’, ‘lookup’ and ‘update’). Granted, there are plenty of programs out there that create to-do’s and keep track of your calendar, but for all of those to work you need to actually open the application to update it as well as read it. Raise your hand if you’ve ever missed an appointment because you forgot to check your Google calendar or lost precious time tackling your to-do list because you spent hours compiling it.

Sandy eliminates the need to update and check all those lists and calendars regularly. Everything is done through email, which you’ve probably got open all the time, anyway. She sends you a message when you need to leave for an appointment across town, reminds you to return your library books on the way home and, if you ask, sends a client’s phone number that’s buried too far in your address book to find. You can also text her commands or ask for info when you’re on the go. Sandy’s just finished her on-the-job training (read: beta form), and is accepting signups for free accounts.

What more could you need?

So there you go, you’re not alone and you can impress friends by talking about your personal assistant and crack legal team. Now just sit back and wait until someone creates a website that’ll brew your coffee and take your socks to the Laundromat.

Original post by FreelanceSwitch.com

Everywhere you go, people tell you the secret to packing your client list is networking. Schmooze like there’s no tomorrow, befriend everyone, hand out your cards, trade e-mails, IMs, IDs and CVs. Go to conferences, buy everyone within a 100-foot radius a beer (or non-alcoholic organic vegan hemp-nut smoothie).

For sure, the fastest way to grow your business is cultivating relationships. Problem is…there’s only one of you and infinite opportunities for you to spend time, energy and money connecting with a whole lot of people, only a few of whom will ever really throw any significant business your way. Which leaves us which a question. How do you choose who to be-friend?

Be-friend, don’t use.

Let’s get one fundamental premise behind us, before anyone jumps up and down about the bastardization of making friends. If you approach someone in a professional setting where it is crystal clear that both you and that person are interested, first and foremost, in a professional exchange, go for it. The nature of that connection is transparent. And the opportunity for the relationship to become predatory or abusive is substantially minimized. You’re both on equal footing.

But, if you approach someone under the guise of making a new friend, while your hidden agenda is really pure business exploitation with no genuine interest in the relationship or the person beyond what they can do for your bank account…that relationship will never end well.

Does that mean you should abandon the effort? No, but it does mean you should actively seek to find a more genuine, personal connection and, if you still can’t find one, then either be transparent about your motives or move on. Nobody likes to be used. Okay, with that out of the way, let’s get back to our question.

How do you choose who to be-friend?

You have two big-picture options here. Go for the influencers or go for the individuals. Most people go for the individuals, the people who might become clients. Why, because they are the most accessible. And, a small-ish chunk of your time should be allocated to direct prospect networking.

But, getting back to our realization that there are a limited number of hours in each day, the bigger part of your time will be much better spent connecting not with potential clients, but with the gatekeepers and influencers.

Who are the gatekeepers and influencers?

The gatekeepers are people who have already spent months, years or decades of their own time, energy and money amassing relationships with large groups of people or companies that you would love to have as clients.

For example, if you were, say, a yoga instructor or personal trainer who specialized in stress-reduction, prime gatekeepers you’d want to befriend would include psychotherapists, doctors and massage-therapists and nutritionists. These are the people who have the ability to grow your business not client-by-client, but geometrically, by granting access to their customers, clients and patients.

The influencers are people who have the eyes and ears of large numbers of individuals who can be influenced by what that influencer says, writes or does. Magazine and newspaper editors, writers and producers would be examples.

Maximum bang for your networking buck.

I learned, early on, that befriending gatekeepers and influencers takes the same basic energy as befriending individual prospects, but the return on your investment is exponential, rather than incremental.

This is why I’ve spent a fair amount of time developing relationships with mainstream press over the years, and less and less time advertising to and networking directly with those who would become clients. Doing so has landed me and my companies in more than 50 national magazines and newspapers, TV and radio and helped launch and grow a number of business initiatives.

I am not saying to avoid direct client relationships. At some point, you need to get tight with your prospects to turn them into clients. What I am saying, though, is that there are only so many hours in the day. And it will very likely take the same 100 hours to befriend and land a client that it would take to befriend and land a gatekeeper or influencer who would likely lead to dozens or hundreds of clients over a period of years.

Simple fact—networking is a zero-sum game, so use your time optimally.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas in the comments below.

Original post by FreelanceSwitch.com

While FreelanceSwitch has to be - in my unashamedly biased opinion - the essential Freelance blog, there are dozens of other great blogs that write up some really useful freelancing tips and great articles.

So today I thought I’d link up my ten favourite blogs for freelancers:

1. FreelanceFolder

   FreelanceFolder has been going for a few months now and I’ve been impressed by some of their articles. Stand outs include: My Top 5 Biggest Freelancing Mistakes by the super talented Chris Garrett (who we’ve just hired to write on FSw too!) and 7 Can’t Miss Ways to Kick-Start the Writing Habit by Dave Navarro - not that Dave Navarro, the *other* Dave Navarro. Brilliant work guys, keep it up!

2. IllustrationCastle

   Heather Castles is a heck of an illustrator, and on her blog she writes quite a few posts about the “Business of Illustration” which includes great freelance articles like How to Build an Illustration Portfolio and How Much to Charge for Illustrations?.

3. Wake Up Later

   Wake Up Later is the blog of Samuel Ryan who has a good section on Freelance Lessons a few of which we’ve linked up previously in LinkSwitches. I’m also terribly biased to liking Sam because he’s a member of one of our other communities too!

4. The All Freelance Blog

   It may not be the most attractive blog around, but AllFreelance’s blog has some pretty good stuff in it, including a ton of business card designs which as a designer I love looking through!

5. WebWorkerDaily

   WebWorker isn’t strictly aimed at freelancers, but they have a lot of great content that suits us well. And a couple of days ago they redesigned, so even if you’ve been there before, head over and see what you think of the new look. I love their logo and concept, it’s one of those sites I wish I’d thought of!

6. FreelanceTipster

   This blog belonging to Jen Gordon partly inspired FreelanceSwitch’s creation earlier this year. Jen doesn’t update it much any more which is a pity, because there is some good stuff in there.

7. SoloGig News

   SoloGig News is a lovely blend of interviews and articles and once even featured an interview yours truly, back just before we launched FSw!

8. Business of Design Online

   The rather funnily abbreviated BoDo is a deep resource of articles and links that any freelancer - not just designers - will find rewarding.

9. Flying Solo

   Flying Solo is a fellow Australian site and packed with advice for small businesses, including freelance ones, Cyan and I met the founder Robert Gerrish for breakfast a few weeks ago and he was a really lovely guy!

10. Contract Worker

    Another really good freelancing blog is B5Media’s Contract Worker. It’s well worth a visit, and today I found this rather amusing cartoon of the many ways a project can screw up:

    

Know any others?
So there’s a few of my favourites, there are plenty of others as well like FreelanceUK, our very own ShaneAndPeter, the IrreverentFreelancer and lots more. Do you know any great freelancing blogs? Comment them in!

Original post by FreelanceSwitch.com

What do you hate most about freelancing? I expect right up there will be either sales or not having enough work. Cold-calling, pitching, struggling to pay bills, worrying if you are doing the right sort of promotion, freelancers have enough stress without all this sales stuff.

You can tell when you are doing well with your freelance business, instead of chasing new work, clients come to you. The most successful have to reject work, it seems they are beating customers off with a stick.

How do you achieve that dream scenario?

In brief:

1. Potential clients need to know you
2. You need a hook
3. Leads are only half the equation; you need to close

When you start out you have the greatest challenge. Getting your name known and building a profile should be high on your agenda but this needs to be combined with creating a compelling hook.

You need a hook

Of course customers need to be able to find you easily, but more importantly you need a hook so they know why they should.

What do I mean by a hook? Something that makes you stand out from the rest of the herd. To use Seth Godin’s phrase, something remarkable.

If a company is looking to take on freelancers they will likely have a pool to choose from. They might review a few and short-list, until whittling down to the final candidate(s).

The goal should be that you are the only choice, second-best would be to show you are the strongest candidate.

Freelancers with only the basic skills and ho-um experience are not going to break through to this zone. At best they need to compete on price or personality.

Achieving a Premium

What makes you premium? Commodity freelancers inevitably get paid commodity prices and have to join the queue for work

While most people do not like to restrict their potential pool of work, having a specialism can actually improve your chances of landing gigs over your competitors. It’s the old story of brain surgeon versus general practitioner, who would you rather have rummaging around your noggin?

If you have a hook then you can work on fame and credibility. Anything goes, it could be a unique and specialist skill, niche-leading blog, name-dropping a huge client, or it might be a fantastic piece of work. Memorable plus credible is a powerful combination and actually serves to help market itself.

Specializing also helps you define your prospect, which in turn helps you land work. Rather than the whole world being your potential customer, you can better target allowing you to promote in a way your specific dream client would love rather than many people merely “like”.

An Example

I am a blogger, and I am often in need of freelance help. What would appeal to me more, a person who describes themselves as “a web developer” and lists skills as “web design” or a “WordPress developer” who has a portfolio of kick-ass WordPress plugins or themes?

The WordPress specialist will have a far easier time reaching me too, you can simply work out where a blogger hangs out and what they might be interested in rather than “anyone interested in having a website built”! Find where your prospects are likely to go to network and find solutions. Get known and show you can be useful to know.

Memorable + Credible + Well Connected = Golden

Consider Aaron Wall. He started off by being helpful on the major webmaster forums, now he has a very popular and memorable blog, with an extremely popular ebook product, all of which adds to his credibility. His SEO services can be charged at a premium because he can pick and choose what he works on.

Once you have started building a profile amongst your target market you will need to tune your sales process. Learn as much about your prospect, their business, their goals and their requirements as you can. Treat it like you are going on safari, understanding your prospect makes it far easier to land one.

Actually making sales is vital. It could be you like to work on a project or hourly basis, and this is fine, but I find it often helps to have a small introductory offer or package. Something easy to agree to where you can show off what a brilliant freelancer you really are. For me this is some initial consultancy, or some writing. I particularly like freelance blogging because it’s fun, can pay reasonably well but most importantly it serves to further market my services!

Understanding Why

When you do land a new gig, or even if you don’t try to understand why. This way you can continually improve and refine your process. When you do absolutely delight your client, ask for referrals and a testimonial. Researching how customers find you, what they like, what you could improve and your over all service could pay dividends down the line.

In the end there is one question you need to continually ask yourself; why would anyone choose you over anyone else. If you can come up with an attention grabbing answer then success is assured.

Got any tips to share for creating a compelling hook or building your profile? Have I missed a piece of the strategy? Please share in the comments …

Original post by FreelanceSwitch.com

The fifth episode of Freelance Radio, the official FreelanceSwitch podcast, is hot off the presses! This episode, the panel is full again and we talk about some site news, contract adjustments, Craigslist and more!

Subscriptions to the podcast are available via iTunes and an archive of all podcasts will appear in the podcast section. We hope you enjoy it!

Subscribe to Freelance Radio on iTunes

You can subscribe on other podcast aggregators by using our podcast feed–it’s simply http://feeds.feedburner.com/FreelanceRadio.

The Shownotes:

• News from the Site: We talk about some news and happenings at FreelanceSwitch.com.
• Money Matters/Legalese:We talk about how to deal with changes with clients, and how to make those changes work with a contract.
• Word of Mouth: We talk about the holidays, and offer up some advice for freelancers looking to stay in touch with clients over the holidays. Dickie suggests adopting a sheep and Cyan mentions using OxFam to give on behalf of your clients, which Collis mentioned in a recent post.
• Fantastic Forum Post and Mailbag: We discuss the merits and dangers of Craigslist, mention a lawyer review site suggested by a listener and talk generally about managing the financial side of freelancing.
• Freelance Radio Recommends…: Each panelist recommends a freelancing tool. John goes with Jott, a phone transcription/email service. Dickie suggests a subscription to Inc. magazine (http://www.inc.com) and Cyan puts in a vote for Millennium Jazz.
• Outro: This week’s song is by Stephen Joseph and is called Set Me Free from his album Pluto’s Revenge. The song can be obtained by going to http://www.myspace.com/stephenjosephband.

And that’s the fifth episode! If you like it, please feel free to rate it in iTunes or your favorite podcast aggregator (check us out on Digg at http://www.digg.com/podcasts/Freelance_Radio), and don’t forget to email your questions/comments via the Freelance Radio form. If you’d like to record a question/comment or submit an original outro song, you can upload them via this form!

Original post by FreelanceSwitch.com

Something you hear as common advice for new freelancers is “Don’t work for free.”

That’s true, for the most part, but there’s an exception. And it’s a big one. Give away your advice for free, and you can grow your business and make much more money in the long run.

I don’t recommend that you take on jobs for no money - that’s just devaluing your services and your profession. Your work is worth money, and you need to be sure to get paid. Giving away services is a bad idea in general.

But if you can give away your advice … which is really a service … and not charge a dime, that’s a great strategy. If your advice is good, giving it away can result in amazing growth and lots of new business.

Take myself, for example. I have a blog (Zen Habits) where I give away advice for free. Now, when I first started the blog, I was not considered an expert at anything. But the advice I give away on my blog has been very well received by readers, and my readership has grown phenomenally over the last 10 months.

Take a look at what giving away my advice for free has done for me, professionally:

1. I have become an expert at productivity and organization.

   I certainly wasn’t an expert a year ago, but now I have people who ask for my advice, who pay for it (in the form of an ebook I recently published), who interview me about these topics, who want to have me in their books or blogs or radio shows or podcasts. In fact, I can’t keep up with all the requests.

2. I have also become an expert at blogging and writing.

   Again, I wasn’t an expert a year ago, but partly because of my writing here at FreelanceSwitch, and my freelance writing elsewhere, I am viewed by many as an expert of sorts. And in the field of blogging, where I consider myself a relative novice (as compared to some of the true veterans and experts), many new bloggers come to me for advice. I’ve even had people willing to pay me to consult on their blog (I didn’t take them up on that, as I don’t have the time) or ask me to be a mentor.

3. The demand for my work is incredible.

   I’m not trying to brag, but just to demonstrate the power of giving away very useful advice. I could have charged for this advice, but again, a year ago no one would have paid for it. Now they would, if I charged. But there are many people who are asking me to write for their publications or blogs, who want to hire me as a speaker or a consultant, who would like my expertise. Frankly, the demand is too great - I cannot possibly do all this work.

4. I can now sell my advice.

   After giving my advice away for free for so long, I’ve proven its worth. And while I would never start charging for my blog’s content, when I sold some of my advice in an ebook recently (Zen To Done - The Ultimate Productivity System), it did phenomenally well (well over a thousand copies sold in two weeks). And I have a print book that’s being auctioned up to publishers as we speak.

All of this wasn’t said in order to brag. It’s just one example of how giving away my expertise for free has done so much for one freelancer - it’s done just as much for many others as well.

Let’s take a look some suggestions for how you can grow your business by giving away your services:

1. Blog, ebook or newsletter.

   These three formats are great ways to give away advice. My blog has worked really well for me, but be warned that it takes a LOT of time commitment to grow your blog to the point where it will help your business. Giving away an ebook or sending out a free newsletter are two other great ways of doing the same thing, but with less time commitment.

2. Write with authority.

   I’ve always made it clear to my readers that I am just a regular guy, writing about things I’ve tried out that have worked for me. But because I have actually accomplished many of the things I’m talking about, I can write with authority. I can tell people how to become an early riser, because I successfully transitioned to waking at 4:00 a.m., three hours earlier than I used to wake up. I can write with some authority about running, because I’ve completed a marathon. I can write about productivity, because I have a full-time job, six kids, a lot of freelance work, a Top 100 blog, and several other projects on top of that. Writing with authority establishes you as an expert.

3. Be insanely useful.

   It’s one thing to whet your reader’s appetite with some introductory advice, and then charge them for more advanced advice. They’ll read that and then go elsewhere. Instead, be as useful to your readers as humanly possible. Give them everything they need and more. If you are extremely useful to them, the readers will come back for more, and will appreciate what you’re giving them.

4. Give it time.

   You can’t give away 10 great articles on your blog, and expect to see increased business overnight. It takes time for you to establish credibility, to reach a wider audience, to prove yourself, to build up a library of useful resources. Give it a year, at least. Sure, some have done it in less time, but if you go out with the intention of accomplishing everything in a few months, you’ll probably fail. Shoot for long-term success.

5. Capitalize only after you’ve built readership.

   Your goal in the beginning should be to build an audience, not to monetize or grow your business right away. Reach new audiences by writing guest posts for other blogs, or freelancing for a number of blogs. Build your readership by writing very useful content, and interacting with your readers, answering questions and giving away advice for free. Only after you’ve built up that audience should you think about selling an ebook or making a lot of money on ads or making more money on your consulting or freelance business.

Original post by FreelanceSwitch.com

Editor’s Note: Mosso are a FreelanceSwitch sponsor, this review was written by Corby Simpson, a freelancer who we interviewed in September who volunteered to write about Mosso after using them.

As a web developer or designer, there’s no better way to make some extra money than by providing website hosting for your clients. It can be as simple as an invoice and when you have enough clients, you can just watch the money roll in to early retirement!

However, there’s a decision to be made and it’s this: “Who am I going to rely on for hosting my websites?”

There are so many options to choose from. You can choose a cheap $20/month “Host unlimited websites” provider that you will no doubt have problems with as you grow and require technical support (Been there, done that!). On the other hand you can purchase an expensive dedicated server as long as you know how to maintain, manage and operate it…

Or there’s another option. Mosso Web Hosting.

Mosso is not your typical hosting provider. They have positioned themselves for people who make websites. If you’re looking to be a private label reseller and want to control every feature and detail of a server, they’re not for you. However, If you make websites (as many of us do) and you want to provide robust and problem free hosting for your clients, then keep reading.

I don’t want to be a network administrator and I don’t want to deal with technical server issues. That’s why I’ve chosen Mosso.

I’ve actually set up two separate accounts with Mosso over the past year and so far they have been incredible. I’ve never once had a problem and that includes hosting projects for some very large clients. On occasion I need to contact them with a question about technology and their toll free number is always answered quickly. Even their liv