Weekly Newsletter for The Freelancers: Here is the latest newsletter of the week starting on 15th July 2019.


You only have to be a user of Facebook to know that video is becoming more and more important in communicating. It does not matter whether it is social or business … and freelancers are in business, right?

explainer video

If you are a graphic designer working on Thursday Island in the far north of Australia you can have a video explaining what your themes are and the areas of graphic design on which you are concentrating.

There will be readers wondering where in the world is Thursday Island? You can read about it here. The internet connection on Thursday Island is excellent.

For global freelancers there is the opportunity to have a business producing explainer videos for other freelancers and businesses. Here are some UpWork freelancers who are doing just that.

I am an advocate of freelancers not only having an explainer video about their services, but also of them looking at the possibility of adding this service to their skills set. You can check out the reasons why from TechCrunch by clicking here.

For those who want to look inside the Amazon eBook Explain Yourself!: How To Do Explainer Videos The Right Way Kindle Edition you can click on the icon below:


Motivate Yourself!

Building Your Personal Brand Is A Part Of Self-Motivation

personal brand

Personal branding is important in self-motivation because it goes to the core of who you are when you are a freelancer. The reason is that it means you know your value statement and what you can deliver. It appears simple, right?

However, personal branding does require a degree of self-knowledge if you are to be successful.

Do you have a LinkedIn profile and does your bio emphasize your personal branding? This may seem very obvious, but self-awareness can be tricky. This quote is very appropriate:

“The keys to brand success are self-definition, transparency,
authenticity and accountability.”

– Simon Mainwaring

If you would like to read more about personal branding Jacinta Spies has written an article for Freelancer.com community and you can read it here.


Productivity Tip Of The Week

What Are The Secrets Of Increasing Your Website Conversions?

website conversions

Image Credit Pexels.com

It does not matter what type of freelancer you are, from graphic designer, to writer and all of those in between, if your business page visitors do not convert to sales opportunities, your productivity falls.

This, of course, also applies to explainer videos and every other method of promoting your products.

I currently have this problem with one of my websites that is getting traffic, but not converting into sales.

Here is the link: http://www.identity-theft-scout.com/eugdpr-training-resources.html. It is a critical issue in the European Union on an ongoing basis and everywhere else for that matter. If you have some input, I am always open to constructive feedback.

Jacinta Spies has written an article for the Freelancer.com Community entitled 15 Ways to Increase Your Website Conversions. You can read Jacinta article here.


Work-Life Balance Tip Of The Week

Sometimes Work-Life Balance Requires A Family Plan

family work life balance

When you are a freelancer, sometimes it is necessary to compromise on your work-life balance focus, especially with your family.

Some time ago I returned from a holiday trip to the North of Australia with my wife. When we returned I found that I had more emails than I could poke a stick at, to quote an Australian expression.

My wife who was recovering from back surgery was very committed to getting back to bushwalking and bike riding (with me). I had a heap of emails needing a response which I wanted to get on to.

This required a compromise that was a family plan for work-life balance so that I worked in the morning and we moved the bike riding to the afternoon. It worked! We both achieved our goals. This is not to say that focus for freelancers is not important, because it is.


Financial Tip of the Week

Critical For Your Freelance Business Is Choosing The Right Domain Name

domain name

Choosing a domain name for your business website is important whatever type of business, profession or freelance activity you are in.

This is because the name of your digital presence should give a strong indication of your services or value statement unless you are a very strong brand name.

The simple reason is that people search by keyword unless they are specifically looking for your business. The more you rise in the keyword ranking the more your business will benefit.

A very good example of the importance of keywords relating to a service was with the introduction of the European General Data Protection Regulation (EUGDPR) in the European Union.

It became compulsory for all businesses dealing with the identities of people resident in the European Union countries.

There are 500 million people in the EU and it is therefore one of the most important trading blocks in the world. Imagine that you were a freelancer in the EU wanting to provide services to companies relating to EUGDPR.

It makes sense to own GDPRfreelancers.com. The same reasoning also applies to a whole range of services.

Here are some tips from Brenda Alvarez on choosing your domain name, entitled Domain Name Search Tips: How to Choose a Domain Name. It appears in the Freelancer.com Community articles. You can read Brenda’s article here.


Freelancer Skills Development and Inspiration News

Freelancer Skills Development

Image Credit Pixabay.com

We are constantly searching for news articles and videos on skills development and inspiration for freelancers.

Each week we have decided to bring you the links to what we consider are the top three articles or videos. Here they are for this week:

  • Creative thinking – how to get out of the box and generate ideas: Giovanni Corazza at TEDxRoma – For the You Tube video with 2.1 million view click here.
  • 10 ways to beat freelancer anxiety and depression by Shannon Byrne for www.blog.cloudpeeps.com. You can read it by clicking here.
  • How to develop task management skills as a freelancer by Jake Rochaleau for www.designshack.net. You can read Jake’s article by clicking here.

There are now 5,000 skills in 90 categories that the digital economy can offer, according to Upwork’s 1st. quarter 2019 Skills Index which you can read here.

Number twenty on the list is podcasting. You can read about podcasting by clicking here.

Articles now on our website that are relevant to the outcome of new skills training are listed here:

The latest one is here:

https://www.freelance-work-guide.com/retirees-freelancing-medical-hospital-ancillary-insurance.html


Amazon News

news

The weekly AWS news video link to acloud.guru is here. They are the leading trainers globally for Amazon Web Services freelancers.


Amazon Associates Website Case Study

case study

As discussed in previous newsletters we are focussing on the niche website in the future because it is producing better results i.e. sales.

Here is a recent Best Tool Backpack – Top 5 recommended. There have been 70 Amazon product sales (across all our websites) in the past month due to the keyword research and skills of Mamun, my virtual assistant.


Freelancers And Cyber Security

We have decided to expand our search for appropriate articles for freelancers about cybersecurity.

This week we have found a further article from the Australian Government Department: Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network (ACORN).

The article for this week is about common types of cybercrime. You can read the article here.

We have gained approval from Robert Siciliano to bring you extracts from his books related to cyber security for freelancers.

Robert Siciliano is an identity theft expert and consultant. He also runs a cyber security and fraud prevention website which you can see here.

Robert Siciliano

Image Source: ROBERT SICILIANO 

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