Articles Tagged 'Freelancing'
Grow Your Business or Stay Solo?
TsvetiFreedom is one of the major reasons to become a freelancer. Freedom from a stupid boss, malicious co-workers, and the whole office politics circle. However, soon you discover that working solo is not that good either. It comes to your mind that if you grow your business and start hiring people, life will be awesome. Could be but more often than not, growing your business not in the right time and not in the right way brings so much trouble that you wish you knew all this in advance. Failure as a manager isn't fun! Common sense says that the purpose of every business is to grow, grow, grow. However, as life proves, growth for growth's sake is disaster in its purest form. It would have been much better if you hadn't taken the expansion road but who knew this? If you don't want to end in a situation like the one above, before you start growing your business, you need to analyze the pros and cons of this. Here are some thoughts in this direction.
How to be More Productive and Start Earning More as a Freelance Designer
OnibalusiBeing a freelance designer can be a great way to make money with your skills but the time will come when it seems you just can't earn more. A major fear of every freelancer is the fear of not being able to earn more money due to a limit in productivity or effectiveness of the freelancer. I have also been a victim of a situation like this and as professionals we need constant training and tools to stay ahead of the competition, and what this only means is that we need more money to keep ourselves afloat. This kind of situation is very unique and it isn't a result of lack of skills or lack of clients, but it is simply because we can't get more done. If you've been experiencing problems with making more money as a designer due to lack of time then you simply need to learn how to get things done in less than half the time it takes without having to sacrifice quality for speed. Having the right productivity tips and making effective use of them can make a whole lot of difference in how fast you succeed as a freelancer and it can mean the difference in you making four figures in a month or you making five figures in a month. Below are some of the tips that have helped double my productivity and thus increased my income over the months.
20 Most Inspiring Interview Statements
Ruben D'OliveiraIn one of my latest posts - 9 Tips on How To Improve Yourself as a Web Designer, I made a quick reference to the fact that reading interviews is as important as reading magazines and books. That's because in interviews you get straight and direct answers from the best in the field. For the purpose of this article, I've selected some of the best interview statements of several different professionals. Interviews give you great insights about how a person thinks, works and feels about his job and life. If you don't usually read interviews, this is an opportunity to get an idea about how reading them can be an extremely useful learning method. Let's get started!
Stay Organized and Stay Ahead of Your Competition
Ranjith KumarThe web is a super highway of information! With the phenomenal growth of the network, and the advancement of technologies, the growing number of netizens are left with a bombardment of choices online, be it spending time on their favorite social networking site, browsing through the ocean of links, or be it just idling around, between tweets born every milliseconds. As design professionals, the most vital resource that we all have to manage well is just one single thing – TIME! Yes, time forms the basic unit of all our efforts and the productivity and the efficiency of a design professional is directly proportional to the time he spends on useful and productive things. Nowadays, with plenty of distractions available online, it has become really hard to get some quality time to be productive. With your FB page and a Twitter client opened in a browser tab, and mail coming every now and then to your inbox, it's a challenge to get work done. Now is the time to keep all those distractions at bay and find out what part of the day you're the most productive and capitalize on those times to get work done.
How to Take a Sick Leave as a Freelancer
Samar OwaisI’m going to let you in on a little secret which will shock, dismay and maybe even anger you. You’re not invincible. Some day or other you’re going to get sick and will be unable to meet a deadline. When that happens, the world won’t fall apart and neither will your or your client’s business. No matter how much you believe it would. I can see from your expressions that you’re stupified. Horrified. Even terrified. So was I the first time I realized that. I was ill and wasn’t going to be able to meet deadlines and *gasp* the freelancing world as I knew it didn’t end! My clients all understood, my reputation remained intact and my business didn’t suffer at all! The thing with a freelance business is that there isn't any paid leave. There are also no sick days and no vacation time. Many freelancers end up panicking when they fall ill. Who is going to complete the project? I can barely stand on my feet, how will I meet the deadline? Unfortunately, cold and flu don’t give a warning before attacking. You may wake up feeling fine in the morning but by the afternoon, your throat would be aching so much you can hardly swallow and your eyes would be burning. And as much as you want to continue working, you simply can’t. To avoid the panic, you need to have a backup plan. A system you can put into place soon as you feel the first sniffles. Schedule your work around the possibility that you may fall ill.
Multiple Ways to Earn as a Freelancer
RyJekWe freelance for various reasons. Many begin that path just as a first job, while they are still under their parents' roof. It's a great way to gain an extra buck and while at it, get some valuable experience and create one more entry for the future CV. Some of those folks are successful enough to keep freelancing as their job. Some choose to open their own advertisement agencies, other just get employed in one. I pretty much did everything on that list and yet I reverted back to freelancing full-time as my job of choice. When people make a pros and cons list of that model of making a living, one of the entries you're going to see most often in the cons section is "unsteady income." That's absolutely true, but you're indeed working for yourself so the "unsteady" factor can be minimized to the extent where you don't really need to worry about paying your bills. People do say that freelancing is a much harder job than if you're just employed and work the regular 9-5.. Every week, every month... every year.
Organizing Your Freelance Business Before Going on a Vacation
If I told you that you were to take a two-week break right now, what would your response be? I’m willing to bet that none of you jumped up in the air and screamed ‘Yes!’ much less fall to the ground in thanks. Your first thought probably was ‘I can’t take a vacation. I have work to do!’ The most annoying thing about freelancing is our inability to take vacations. Sure, theoretically, we can take them. Practically, it’s nearly impossible. After all, who’s going to run the business if we’re on leave? Running a freelance business means that there is no paid leave. If a freelancer wants to take a vacation, he can’t just pack his suitcase and leave for two weeks. There are clients to answer to after all! Unfortunately, if you don’t take a break, you’re going to burn out faster than a tire on a race car. And to avoid burnout you need to– you guessed it – take a vacation.
Pros and Cons of Multitasking in Information Technology Jobs
FaizaIT individuals who have a desire to earn higher position in business are always willing to take on as many jobs as possible. It's now quite common for almost anyone who works on a computer to have multiple windows open at the same time. Multitasking is a fairly common skill most freelancers have, or at the very least, think they have. If used correctly, all the technology we have at our finger tips can be streamlined and make the jobs easier. Multitasking was introduced to make computers more productive, operating systems perform multiple tasks by scheduling processes that use different strategies which may or may not have profitable effects. In this article I will provide you with some pros and cons of multitasking along with some suggestions to use it more effectively. I hope it will facilitate you in your work with multiple screens.
10 Secrets to Be a Better Freelancer
The struggle in freelancing is quite far from the competition of regular businesses. The word "freelancer" was first used to describe a "medieval mercenary warrior" to point out that that lancer does not work under any lord. An out-worker has to experience as much contenders as there are drops in the sea. In order to leave a mark in freelancing, one has to fight with a countless amount of people from different regions and work cultures. In this situation, a freelancer does not even know about how he can get over his opponent. To spot the imprint of a lancer’s matchlessness, one has to keep mounting his spirit high and has to set his own distinguish rules of work because only he is the boss of himself. There are plenty of ways showed by the rulers of this industry, on the basis of which I gathered points which in my opinion are necessary to identify and market the uniqueness of one's freelance business.
15 Entertaining and Useful Facebook Applications
Charina TorresNowadays, many people have put Facebooking as part of their daily routine… a daily routine for some, and an addiction to many. On this popular social networking site, you don’t only check on what is happening with your friend’s by their status updates, uploaded photos or videos, you can also enjoy using hundreds of applications. These are just a few of the reasons that Facebook is the most popular social networking website. You can find many applications on Facebook that are created for fun,productivity, whether they're games, or useful. Have you ever wondered if there are applications that could be useful for designers, writers, and developers? Here are a few of Facebook's applications that may interest you.
