Do You Know Your Rights As A Freelancer?

Weekly Newsletter for The Freelancers: Here is the latest newsletter of the week starting on 29th July 2019.

It would seem pretty obvious, but all freelancers should know their rights as an independent worker. Imagine that you made a bid for a gig where it required multiple skills, some of which you did not have.

Do you know whether you have the right to outsource some of the work so that you can meet the overall contract? I would say that this situation is quite common these days. It is nearly impossible to master all the skills necessary in the digital world. This is because the skills required are constantly evolving.

In the UpWork Skills Index for the first quarter of 2019 there are skills that I will never have and others of which I will never be the master. You can look at Upwork’s report here.

I can remember quite clearly having a landing page and graphic design work outsourced. I am sure that many of you would be in the same situation. What skills have you outsourced?

We have researched for three articles on freelancers rights from three different countries and provide the raw links without comments below:

Motivate Yourself!

Do You Know How To Use Visualization To Achieve Your Goals?

When you are starting out as a freelancer, you have to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve. You may even have a written plan, which I would recommend, but unless you believe that you can achieve your plan you are more likely to fail.

The way to move your belief in yourself and your abilities to achieve the goal is very important. One of the best ways to do this is by using visualization techniques.

Visualization talks to your subconscious and your sense of self belief because it reinforces your imagined or written plans so that you see yourself achieving the goals that you have set.

This is a very powerful technique that even sports people and others use when they wish to be in the zone of top performance. This quote is very appropriate:

“Visualization – it’s been huge for me. Your mind doesn’t know the difference between imagination and reality. You can’t always practice perfectly – my fingers will play a little bit out of tune, or my dance moves might not be as sharp – but in my mind, I can practice perfectly.”

– Lindsey Stirling

Frank Niles PhD. has written an article for The Huffington Post Blog entitled How to Use Visualization to Achieve Your Goals. You can read Frank’s article here.

If you would like to read more about the power of visualization to help you achieve your goals and staying motivated you can read the review of the top selling book Creative Visualization: Use the Power of Your Imagination to Create What You Want in Your Life by clicking on the icon below:

Amazon Disclosure: The links used are affiliate links. By buying through the links I may receive a commission for the sale. This has no effect on the price for you.

Productivity Tip Of The Week

What Productivity Tools Do You Use When Working As Part Of A Remote Team?

Image Credit pixabay.com

Working remotely as part of a team is very common today. It is, of course, because there are so many jobs that can be done over the internet. This increases weekly as entrepreneurs are inventing new types of digital work that can be completed over the internet.

The online team approach to work has made it necessary to have online tools to make the members of the team able to communicate readily and share where projects are up to. Ones that easily come to mind are Google Docs and Google Drive. However, there would be many others that are not so commonly used, but can help lift productivity.

Another simple use of online tools is Facebook. Here is an example: I am currently involved in a campaign to improve the protection of home loan borrowers and I share this goal with the Administrators of this Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/betterdwelling/.

They are in Canada and I am in Australia. We send messages to one another and I can comment on their posts that are appropriate to both our countries and tweet about them. Here is an example:

“#TraditionalMortgages #BankOfCanada highlights risks. World Bank, IMF, OECD should lead dld.bz/fQuTN Pls Rt.”

Globalization is changing the world for the better and we need to stay abreast of the tools that are applicable. Anne has written an article for the Freelancer.com Community Blog entitled Collaborating Remotely? – 7 Awesome tool Picks to Make Your Job (And Life) Easier! You can read Anne’s article here.

Work-Life Balance Tip Of The Week

Freelancing Can Help You Overcome The Work Life Balance Problems Caused By A Negative Equity Crisis

Medium Declining House Prices Negative Equity for freelancers

If you are in many countries of the world you will immediately know what negative equity is because it has become a common expression. It has become a part of a country’s culture!

For those countries where this has not happened, it means that you owe more on your mortgage than the value of your home that is subject to the mortgage.

When this happens, it presents the homeowners with a work-life balance issue. There are even regulators’ websites that are focused on what to do when you are trapped in that situation. Here is one of them here which is based in the United Kingdom.

One of the solutions that is not often mentioned is to lift your household income to pay off the debt sooner than you planned. Internationally there are many families that face this dilemma. It is likely that it will be increasingly so in some countries. Canada and the United Kingdom are two of them.

Freelancing offers families the opportunity to maintain a reasonable work life balance and pay off their debt sooner. It is very disturbing to know that you owe more than your house’s value and the sooner you rectify it the better.

Financial Tip of the Week

Should You Register A Business Name As A Freelancer?

Recently I paid the renewal of a business name that I have registered because I operate the website https://www.freelance-work-guide.com/. I also own the domain name and have a registered Trademark in the United States.

If you are a freelancer and trade under your own name, you have to weigh up the pros and cons as to whether you should or should not. It is different of course, if you are trading under an unregistered business name e.g. Mitcham Graphic Design Services. Then I would say it would be wise to register your business name or someone else could very easily do so.

In Australia I believe that a registered business name would prevail against an unregistered name if there was a dispute. It may differ in other countries.

The Australian Securities & Investments Commission in Australia is the entity that is responsible for the Registration of Business Names, plus a lot of other responsibilities. The cost of registering a business name for one year in Australia is A$34. It would vary from country to country.

Preston Lee has written an article for the Millo Blog entitled Freelancing: Using your own name vs. creating a business name. You can read Preston’s article: https://millo.co/your-own-name-vs-business-name.

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:

Can journaling improve your mental health: Serena Dorf for www.thedoctorweighsin.com which you can read here.
Visualization can improve mood, support mental health: Zawn Villines for www.goodtherapy.com which you can read here.
How to cope with redundancy: from mental health to managing money: Natasha Hinde for www.huffingtonpost.co.uk which you can read 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 four on the list is explainer videos. You can read an article about explainer videos by Kate Harrison entitled What you really need to know about explainer videos for www.forbes.com by clicking here.

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

https://www.freelance-work-guide.com/drought-proof-your-farming-business.html
https://www.freelance-work-guide.com/millennials-freelancing-home-mortgage-save.html
https://www.freelance-work-guide.com/students-freelancing-student-loans.html
https://www.freelance-work-guide.com/freelancing-repay-housing-negative-equity.html
https://www.freelance-work-guide.com/millennial-families-pay-energy-bills-by-freelancing.html

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 Pressure Washer For Cars. 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 received an email from the Australian Government’s Scamwatch which gave the address for checking whether your email has been compromised.

Here is there message:
Cybercriminals can use your personal details to their advantage, like manipulating your email address if it has been caught up in a data breach. You can check if any of your email addresses have been in a data breach by visiting the website https://haveibeenpwned.com.

You can read about this website and whether it is genuine (as I did!) by visiting here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_I_Been_Pwned%3F..

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.