For Freelancers What You Don't Know Can Hurt You!

Weekly Newsletter for The Freelancers: Here is the latest newsletter of the week starting on 25th February 2019.

Can you remember the old proverb “What you don’t know can’t hurt you”? Obviously, the person who said it didn’t live in the digital age when clearly things that you don’t know can hurt you. This is especially true of freelancers and internet workers because there is just so much to know and keep up to date with.

I have told you in previous newsletters that Google Adwords is the biggest marketing tool for advertisers in the world. Many freelancers should be using it if they are not already doing so, but you have to be careful. This story shows just how true it is and why you need to take notice:

I was promoting this website landing page here. The services that were being promoted are based in the United Kingdom because the European General Data Protection Regulation training was underway for implementation date on 25/5/2018.

Clearly, this was business related and I needed to target the UK geographic area and I needed to set the time zone for displaying the ads correctly.

However, what was not clear was whether US Pacific Time settings would have to be taken into account when setting the time of display of the advertisements in the UK. I had trouble finding a clear answer to this.

It was something I did not know that could clearly impact on the effectiveness of my Google Adwords campaign and cost me money. I subsequently found out I had made a mistake and the correct answer from Google here.

The purpose of the Google Adwords story is to let you know that mistakes can be costly. It is better to learn from someone else rather than by experience which is a hard teacher.

Nicole Malczan has written an article entitled 20 Freelance Mistakes You Make That Could Hurt Your Income Stream that appears in the Income School Blog and you can read Nicole’s article here.

If you would like to read more about avoiding mistakes you can read the preview of The Top 25 Mistakes Freelance Writers Make (And How to Fix Them) by Courtney Herz by clicking on the icon below:

Motivate Yourself!

“The life of the professional writer – like that of any
freelance, whether she be a plumber or a podiatrist – is
predicated on willpower. Without it, there simply wouldn’t be
any remuneration, period.”

– Will Self

Do You Know How To Find Local Freelance Gigs?

How To Find Local Freelance Gigs
If you have been freelancing even for a short while, you will know that the international freelancing market is enormous and very competitive on price. You will find that you are competing in a global market place where the pay per hour can be a lot lower than in your country.

This can be very demotivating and discouraging. In this article, we are going to try to motivate you to think outside the box as to what you can do to counteract this. This quote about will power is very appropriate:

“The life of the professional writer – like that of any freelance, whether she be a plumber or a podiatrist – is predicated on willpower. Without it, there simply wouldn’t be any remuneration, period.”

Will Self

Previously I wrote about Upwork and Hiring Guides. The reason for the article was to make freelancers think about strategy and to place themselves in the shoes of a potential employer.

The question that the freelancer was encouraged to ask then, as it is now, is why would a local employer choose a local freelancer over an overseas freelancer where they could probably get the job done cheaper?

This article entitled How to Find Local Freelance Gigs appears in the SkillShare.com Blog and you can read it here. I will always be on the lookout to find information to help you with this issue on how to find local gigs.

It is all about helping you get fair and reasonable payment for your skills in a very competitive global marketplace.

Productivity Tip Of The Week

Do You Know What a Chat Bot is and Why They Matter to Freelancers?

Work changes that increase your productivity matter to freelancers. Chat Bots are mostly aimed at increasing productivity and that is why they matter to freelancers. If you are not too sure what Chat Bots are, you can read more about them here.

Technology innovations are constantly evolving and Chat Bots are an evolution from apps to increase productivity. It is one of the reasons why freelancers need to be constantly upgrading their skills.

If you use Facebook for your freelancing business there is a good argument that you should understand Chat Bots. There are now Udemy courses about Chat Bots, see here: How To Build A Facebook Messenger Chat Bot From Scratch. You can read more about the Udemy course here. This is not an affiliate link.

Work-Life Balance Tip Of The Week

Do You Know When to Use the Two Letter Word?

When you are a freelancer with family responsibilities and have to weigh the pros and cons of a lot of your decision making you need one eye on your family responsibilities and the other on the flow of gigs and income to pay the bills.

To achieve a work-life balance it is sometimes necessary to say “No!” This week’s article is aimed at helping you say “No!” when it is necessary for both family and friends plus to clients and gigs.

This quote from Steve Jobs is right for all of us:

It is only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.

I have chosen two separate links taking the two different viewpoints: of when to say no generally and when to say no to clients and gigs specifically.

Laura Spencer has written an article entitled 21 times for a freelancer to say no. Laura’s article appears in the freelancefolder.com and you can read it by clicking here. .

Emma Morgan from The Freelance Collective has looked at When to say “no” to a client and how to do it without burning bridges. You can read Emma’s article by clicking here.

Financial Tip of the Week

Can Freelancing Save Your Family From Mortgage Stress?

For many moderate and low-income families living on a tight budget, mortgage stress is their number one financial issue. It is because during the past few years’ families in many countries have taken on very high mortgage debts because of the global housing affordability crisis and low interest rates.

However, those on variable home loan interest rates are starting to be concerned because global interest rates have started to show signs of increasing in the medium term. Where I live in Australia some political leaders have stated that this is the case, see here.

These press articles and even national television programs such as this one here have families thinking about what they can do to prepare their family for increasing loan repayments.

One way to prepare for the increased loan repayments and the general rising cost of living expenses is to increase the family income. It is possible to do this by freelancing part-time. This newsletter is aimed at helping you do this.

When people are starting to consider freelancing from home they want to know whether it is possible to make a reasonable income. It is possible and this article by Roshan Perera entitled How Much Do Freelancers Really Make? (Hint: It’s More Than You Think) explains what a reasonable expectancy is.

Roshan’s article appears in the Freelancing Hacks blog and you can read it by clicking here. You can share the article by using social media buttons below.

Drought and Flood News

Image Credit abc.net.au

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology was moved to issue a special report about how exceptional the floods in Northern Australia were. You can read their report via www.abc.net.au. It can take individuals and communities many years to recover and some businesses never will.

The www.abc.net.au is keeping a full coverage of the drought crisis in Australia and you can read about it here.

I will maintain the links for my opinion of the New Economy and that skills and job-focused training is one of the possible solutions for long term structural assistance to rural communities.

This article sets out the reasons: Training choices matter for freelancers and career changers. You can read it by clicking on the link here.

There are now 5,000 skills in 90 categories that the digital economy can offer according to Upwork’s 3rd Quarter Skills Index for 2018, see here.

Articles now on our website that are relevant are listed here:

The latest one is here:

https://www.freelance-work-guide.com/millennial-families-pay-energy-bills-by-freelancing.html

Amazon News

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

Amazon Associates Website Case Study

The latest article on www.bestsellershourly.com Amazon Case Study website is entitled Winter clothing shopping with Amazon Wardrobe – 15 top reasons to use the service which you can read here.

You can read the latest article from the niche Amazon website Case Study entitled Best Garage Workbench of 2019: Top 5+ Recommended by clicking here.

Freelancers And Cyber Security

In view of the recent hack of Reddit we have decided to link to the Australian Bankers Association fact sheet entitled Small Business – Protecting Your Business Information Online which you can access here. We urge you look at other Fact Sheets that are available from the Association as well related to business and personal security.

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.