Is Amazon Prime Membership a Good Deal for Freelancers?

Weekly Newsletter for The Freelancers: Here is the latest newsletter of the week starting on 18th February 2019.

Freelancers of all types have one thing in common, that is a need for good time management because they work for themselves. Productivity and being able to get on with their work and have good work-life balance is a critical need for all freelancers.

On these two accounts, Amazon Prime delivers abundantly. Efficiency is one of Amazon Prime’s key benefits and is the foundation of Amazon’s service philosophy. This quote from Jeff Bezos is right on target:

The best customer service is if the customer doesn’t need to call you, doesn’t need to talk to you. It just works.

Here are some of the Amazon Prime benefits that particularly help freelancers:

free two-day delivery
discounted residential express delivery on eligible items, to eligible addresses
Prime Exclusive Deals
Amazon Alexa Voice Shopping
Discounted Priority Delivery on eligible items

You will notice that delivery efficiency plays a major role in customer service for Amazon Prime members. This is exactly what freelancers want and for US$59 per annum, this is a great deal because it saves you time and makes you more productive.

You can read the article Amazon Prime free trial February 2019 by Finder by clicking here.

Motivate Yourself!

“The attitude you have as a parent is what your kids will
learn from more than what you tell them. They don’t
remember what you try to teach them. They remember what
you are.”

– Jim Henson

Do You Believe That Habits Are A Part Of Motivation To Get Things Done?

Are you a morning person or a night person in setting your work habits? This is an important question because for many people it is the key to feeling motivated to get things done.

For freelancers that often means being creative and for some reason, people often feel more creative and productive at certain times of the day.

If you have any doubts about how this can impact on whether you are creative and motivated at certain times of the day read this article from The Harvard Business Review here.

If you need help with asking yourself the right questions to find out whether you are a night person or morning person try this questionnaire from a Psychology Today article here.

There is a reason for this article, it is to help you identify when your best creative work is likely to be achieved because of the type of person that you are.I know that I am a morning person and if I want to get some writing done easily it is best to schedule it for the morning.

If you want to read more about this topic Charles Duhigg has written the article Habits willpower and motivation for the Brilliant Living HQ and you can read it by clicking here.

This is the link to the Amazon Australia’s best sellers in creativity self-help here.

Productivity Tip Of The Week

How Many Days Have You Carried Forward Your Top 4 On Your To Do List?

Doing the right things first matters to freelancers more than any other profession! Now, read that sentence again before reading this quote from Bruce Lee:

If you spend too much time thinking about a thing you’ll never get it done.

I try to keep no more than four strategic things on my To Do List for each week and try to name a day that I will do them and stick to it. Since I have been doing this I have stopped carrying forward items from week to week.

Often these items are hard to do and frequently would have the best impact on my bottom line. Do you find that you can relate to this?

Bruce Lee’s quote is right on target, it is easier to pretend that you are waiting for the right moment or you want to think about it more before getting stuck into the job that you know that you must do.

Carl Pullein has written a post for the ToDoIst.com blog entitled How to use your to-do list to prioritize the things that truly matter. You can read Carl’s article by clicking here.

Work-Life Balance Tip Of The Week

Exercise Matters To Freelancers Because It Is a Part of Work-Life Balance

Freelancing can be a pain in the neck, and other parts of the body, if you are sitting all day at a computer and haven’t got a stand up desk yet, see here.

I have just returned from my regular monthly check-up with my osteopath who fixes my neck pain when I have been sitting too long. It gets worse when I forget to use my stand up desk during an intense period of work.

The reason I am telling you this is that exercise and looking after yourself as a freelancer is a critical part of being a freelancer, let alone the 9 to 5 community.

However, don’t take my word for it as the Harvard Business Review (HBR) believes that exercise is a part of work-life balance too.

Russell Clayton has written an article about this issue for HBR entitled How Regular Exercise Helps You Balance Work and Family. You can read Russell’s article by clicking here.

The HBR article has got it right about exercise because ill health, aches, and pains etc go straight to the bottom line if you have to take time out for treatment, let alone the cost of an osteopath or physiotherapist.

By the way, there is a lot of YouTube videos to help freelancers to cope with being chair bound, one video was produced by Forbes Magazine and can be seen by clicking here.

Parents who work at home can be particularly prone to sitting at their computers for too long. Erin who is a work at home parent has written an article entitled Why Freelancers Should Exercise Every Day which appears on her website www.FreelancingMama.com which you can read by visiting her website.

Visit her Facebook Page and give it a Like and say Hi for being a can-do freelancer: https://www.facebook.com/freelancingmamablog/.

Financial Tip of the WeeK

Do You Know What Outsourcers Think of Freelancers Versus Agencies?

One of the most important financial advantages you can have in preparing a pitch for a gig is to be able to understand what a possible employer is thinking.

One of the questions any outsourcing employer will be asking is whether it is better to employ an agency worker or a freelancer. In your pitch letter to become a freelancer, you should be able to answer all the questions that your potential hirer will have.

The answers to these questions should also appear on your website in your portfolio presentation. It is a good idea to read about the pros and cons of employing agency workers or freelancers.

Here is one article on the topic:

Content Marketing Outsourcing: The Agency Vs Freelancer Question by Mariame Bakkouri for www.jeffbullas.com which you can read here.

The pros and cons of outsourcing online marketing is discussed in this article:

Joe Palko has written an article entitled The Pros And Cons Of Outsourcing Your Online Marketing for www.forbes.com which you can read here.

Drought News

There would be very few Australians that are not aware of the human and animal suffering caused by Australia’s devastating natural disasters. It ranges from floods in Northern Australia to droughts and bushfires in Southern States.

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 Eastern Australia and it is now embracing the Murray Darling system which you can read about 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.

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.

He also gives self defense and personal safety seminars. Robert provides safety and identity theft fraud prevention tips and advice on multimedia channels in the United States. We have his approval to bring you weekly extracts from his books: