freelancers be your own agency
Home-Based Business

Freelancers: Be Your Own Agency

Freelancers, you could be limiting yourself (and your income) if you try to only score work in one skill area and only through your own marketing. Yes, you can get known for excellence in a niche skill, but if you want to score big projects (e.g. tenders on TenderLink or consulting projects on Expert360), then Mark Fromson from LocalSolo has some advice for freelancers. We have a saying at LocalSolo that we try and impart to our freelancers: “You’re already your own agency.”   What this means is that we encourage our freelancers to go after full client projects where multiple team members with different skill sets are needed to execute. Don’t just focus on finding work for only your particular skillset.   Try to be the sales person and project manager for your client, and assemble your own team of freelancers to do the work.  If you’re…
Read more
Interview with startup manual author
Book Marketing

Author Interview: Donatas Jonikas Talks about Marketing his Book

Recently Jennifer interviewed Dr. Donatas Jonikas, Lithuanian author of Startup Evolution Curve, about his new book that scored many natural 5-star reviews on Amazon. You'll find many 'secrets to book success' within. Q. I noticed you give away 100 pages of the book, plus 20 templates based on the book. Did this move seem to lead to more book sales and interest? I did this at the very beginning, so I don’t have firm data about sales before sharing the excerpt and the set of templates. I can’t prove whether it was worth it or not, but generally, yes – it helped, but that was not the single factor. I would even say this was important, but not a vital success factor. A set of 20 templates was initially planned as an added value for book readers. To tell the truth,…
Read more
Tools of the Freelance Trade

Tools of the Freelance Trade

Whether you consult or freelance full-time or part-time as I do, certain freelance business tools can help to keep you on track. But which tools (i.e. software)? After eight years of freelancing, several software applications became my ‘go to’ apps. Now that I’m expanding my business to include author training courses, books, and book support services, it’s even more important to pick the best tools of today.   My Six Best Freelancer Tools and Why Harvest Chosen by The Freelance Collective members as the time tracker of choice, I have used Harvest as an invoicing tool and tracker for five years. It offers project time control with inbuilt reminders. In settings, you’ll find and tick “Estimates” – for years I didn’t know this existed, but it’s helpful for turning a quick quote into a deposit invoice. Price: 1 user, 2 projects…
Read more
How to Start a Freelance Business article
Home-Based Business

How to Start a Freelance Business – Part 1

It may feel daunting to launch your freelance business from scratch, so here we get right into the setting up process. For the uninitiated, there can be numerous hurdles to overcome on the way to having a successful freelancing career.  As a freelancer myself, I lived some of these hurdles firsthand. My working knowledge is summed up in “How to Start a Freelance Business in Australia”. ____ What is it?  Freelancing typically refers to copywriters, designers, programmers and so on, providing a business service. Freelancers offer their services to clients without a long-term commitment to them. They charge by the hour, day or job (fixed fee) and are usually soloists. (They may opt to outsource tasks they don’t specialise in, under one project fee). ___ Reaching out to a community of freelance professionals certainly helps get you started in the right…
Read more
advertising books in magazines
Book Marketing, Self-Publishing

Advertising your New Book in Magazines

Advertising a new book in magazines is a choice fraught with spending anxiety. Most Australian authors self-publishing (those surveyed) do not make much income from their writing — about $12,000 p.a. from royalties on average — so advertising and its results need to be assessed with a realistic view. Australian Book Advertising The first choice is whether to advertise in a Title Showcase in the dual deal:  Books+Publishing magazine and Good Reading magazine ($340 for a small listing). For Good Reading magazine, however, this advertising goes to a huge market of 50,000. This would be more worthwhile if you have a distributor, because that’s just the way it works in book retail land. If you’re a nonfiction author doing a blitz, then consider pulling out all stops with their combo deal. Combined Marketing Package for $530 AUD (incl GST): 1 x Title Showcase listing to appear…
Read more
freelance marketing

Market any Freelance Service in Just 4 Hours a Week

I know you just adore marketing (she says dryly), but why four hours a week? Well, if you consult or freelance around 20 hours a week, that’s 20% on top of your work time, and with proposal writing time, it brings you to a handy 24-26 hours – a perfect primary school parent work schedule. On the other hand, a full-time freelance schedule is often not thought out enough. The fact is, 30 billable hours (like on my calculator) is probably the best you can achieve in busy periods. Why? Because you need that 7-10 hour leeway to account for pre-work calls or emails, talking to peers, changing your website, setting up invoices, and doing proposals. And if you can fit it in… some other marketing. Click to get my new Hourly Rate Calculator offer via email. So based on 9…
Read more
Filters
Reset