A Freelancers Marketing Profile Matters Because Their Digital Presence

Weekly Newsletter for The Freelancers: Here is the latest newsletter of the week starting on 12th August 2019.

Today we live in two different worlds: the everyday world and the digital world. In the digital world first impressions matter because from that your future clients make the initial business decision about your professionalism.

In the digital world your identity can be stolen by hackers and we call this identity theft. It can take many years and a lot of time and money for you to fix a case of stolen identity if you are a victim.

Similarly, if you do not present a professional image that does not reflect your abilities, it is like a case of identity theft. Your future clients can form a wrong impression of your abilities if you do not have a professional online presence.

This may be even though you have great skills and competencies but were careless in putting together your professional profile. Your true professional identity has gone, and you are the cause of it.

It does not matter where your digital profile is presented, on a platform or a personal WordPress website. Getting noticed favourably matters.

Melanie Feltham has written about how to get noticed with a great profile for the Upwork Blog. You can read Melanie’s Blog post here.

Motivate Yourself!

Do You Wait For The Motivation To Start A New Venture Or Do You Just Do It?

Self-motivation can be tricky to manage. Freelancers need to be self-starters if they are to achieve their income goals. They cannot wait for motivation to happen. Self-motivation is essential.

If you face a daunting project that you have had on your To Do List for some time, but you know that it has to be done, it is often better to place it at the top of the To Do List for the day rather than carrying it forward from one week to another.

I have been guilty of having things on the too hard to do today list and carried them forward for weeks. Doing your tax return is one of those that quite often becomes stuck on a freelancers To Do List.

Having a coping strategy to get you motivated is one of a freelancer’s most important skills, because making money is very much associated with self-motivation.

Henry Edberg has looked at the issue in The Positivity Blog and has come up with 22 Smart and Simple Ways to Motivate Yourself. I think that number 17 can be very helpful for major projects. You can read Henry’s blog post here.

Productivity Tip Of The Week

What Is The Most Important Productivity Issue For Your Computer Work?

Image Credit pixabay.com

For most of us computers are now an essential part of our daily work. This is especially true of online freelance workers.

Many of us use freelancing platforms to hold business profiles or else a WordPress website. Yet, these resources are very vulnerable to attack from hackers or from ourselves making a mistake in the migration of information from one website to another.

Have you ever had this happen to you and felt the sinking feeling that you have just taken a major blow to your productivity? I have, and it is not a nice feeling.

It is easy to prevent this problem by using migration and backup plugins.

Jeff Smith has written an article entitled 5 WordPress Plugins for Backups and Migrations that appears in the SitePoint Blog. You can read Jeff’s article here.

Work-Life Balance Tip Of The Week

Have You Ever Wondered About How to Achieve Happiness?

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to
success. If you love what you are doing, you will be
successful.”

– Albert Schweitzer

It is normal to start to think about happiness when you are starting out as a freelancer. Often it is because you were unhappy with your 9 to 5 job, that you switched to freelance. It can be a work life balance issue or even a case of bullying in the workplace.

I have seen bullying occur several times in my career and it can be devastating for the victim. The victim often never fully recovers from the episode of bullying but gets on with their life as best they can.

I think that Albert Schweitzer’s maxim is clearly a key to happiness. I know many freelancers that have achieved happiness through obtaining a better work life balance.

Often this is due to a married couple being able to obtain more time for their family by one partner working from home. It takes time pressure off, the family who can then better organize around family activities.

Many couples for one reason or another (usually because of the family mortgage) endure both partners working 9 to 5 jobs (or later) for years. Later in life, when their children have grown up, they regret the “lost” years with their children.

Susan Murray has written on the Dumb Little Man Blog about this situation in 5 Happiness hacks that you need to try today. You can read Susan’s article here.

Serena Norr has written 10 ways moms can balance work and family for www.parents.com which you can read here.

Financial Tip of the Week

Do You Find Saving For Retirement Hard To Do?

In Australia, where I live, there is currently a hot debate about the level of debt that consumers are carrying. “So what?” you may ask. It is important for freelancers to learn the lessons of middle-income America where it was a similar credit binge before the GFC. When the correction came it caused housing negative equity which eroded their retirement savings.

Debt also matters to freelancers because it can erode your ability to accumulate assets that are needed to fund your retirement. This is true even though freelancers are lucky in that they can change their work life balance and retire part-time. Establishing habits that will benefit you in later life is essential.

Ideas are important in that they can change your life. This might not happen immediately, but often when you look back in ten years’ time you can identify turning points in your life.

Osamudiamen Kelvin Omere has written about some simple ideas that can change your financial life. You can read his article 5 Simple Hacks to Increase Your Retirement Savings which appears in the Dumb Little Man Blog by clicking here.

Skills Development and Inspiration News

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:

The most important soft skills that a freelancer needs to develop from Willgrgsb for www.freelancer.com which you can read here.
USB operating systems and how they work by Alex Coyne for www.identity-theft-scout.com which you can read here.
Top 20 reasons why businesses need to use video in contact marketing from our website because freelancing is a business. You can read the post 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. Here is an article on podcasts: 5 must listen to podcasts for freelancers launching a business from www.lazimillennial.com which you can read 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

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

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 article Best Tool Backpack – Top 5 Recommended. There have been 67 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 and online scams.

The Australian Government’s Scamwatch shares real case studies of people that have been caught by scams of which there are many on the internet every day. You can read some of the victims’ stories by clicking here.

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