Freelancers Home Offices Requires Business Cybersecurity

Weekly Newsletter for The Freelancers: Here is the latest newsletter of the week starting on 22nd April 2019.

Whether you are moonlighting or working full time as a freelancer cybersecurity is a critical issue for you. Often you will be dealing with business information for a client as well as your personal information.

Both can be compromised and it can cost you money. If you are smart you will have read about cybersecurity when you were making your plans to be a freelancer. CIO.com’s Kim Lindros and Ed Tittel have written What is cyber insurance and why you need it. You can read their article here.

BusinessNewsDaily.com has focused an article on securing your client’s data, it is written by Nicole Fallon and it is entitled Cybersecurity for Freelancers: Protecting Your Clients’ Data. You can read Nicole’s article here.

Graham Day has written an Amazon eBook: Security in the Digital World: For the home user, parent, consumer and home which you can look inside by clicking on the icon below:

Motivate Yourself!

“The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that
changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed
to fail is not taking risks.”

– Mark Zuckerberg

Should You Wait to Start to Look for Low-Cost Business Ideas or Motivate Yourself Now?

Image Credit unsplash.com

The cost of living usually increases over time. You can check the most expensive city in Oceania (for example) by clicking here.

What is particularly unusual about these times is that wages are stagnating for many people; see this OECD report here. Not that you need a survey to tell you this!

For many people in the developed countries with high household debt, this presents a problem if interest rates increase or, on the other hand, the value of their home slips into negative equity.

It raises the question for families on tight budgets as to whether to wait and see what happens or be proactive and start looking for ways and means of lifting the family income.

In my view, the answer to the question is do not wait! Helping you is what this newsletter is about.

Freelancer.com’s Nick Golding has written Low-Cost Business Ideas: Need a Business Idea? Here are 55 which you can read about here. There is, of course, another way to help the family budget and that is by reducing your expenses.

Kate Kershner has written 10 Money-saving Tips for Families for HowStuffWorks.com blog which you can read here. If you have ideas to share with other readers you can post them on our Facebook page here.

Productivity Tip Of The Week

Productivity for Freelancers is About Getting More Work Done Efficiently

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If you work in a 9 to 5 job your productivity is measured by your boss and your key performance indicators. This is not the case if you are a freelancer.

As a freelancer, you measure your productivity by getting things done that will earn you an income. At the same time, you need to look after your work life balance and make sure that you give your family and yourself quality time.

This means that smart freelancers will always be on the lookout for ideas that will help them reach this goal. Apps can help freelancers do things more efficiently.

Ryan Roberston has written 5 Best Productivity Apps for Freelancers to Get More Work Done for TheBalance.com blog which you can read here.

For freelancers it is important to manage your time better to get things done. This is especially true if you are on a fixed price for a gig rather than on an hourly basis.

The more quickly and efficiently you can get a job done the more quickly you will be able to move on to the next gig.

The article 8 Great Time-Tracking Apps for Freelancers has been written by Cynthia Johnson for Entrepreneur.com and you can read it here.

Work-Life Balance Tip Of The Week

Being Resilient Matters for Freelancers Work-Life Balance

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Do you have a mantra that you can use when work-life balance requires you to put in a superhuman effort to keep everyone in your family happy?

If you are not too sure what a mantra is you can read about them here. Here are some examples:

“You can disagree without being disagreeable.”

– Larry Hogan

“What you reject today, you could accept tomorrow. And
what you accept today, you could reject tomorrow. Never say
never unless you can predict the future.”

– Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy
Kassem

“Respect yourself, Respect others, be Responsible for your
actions.”

– Kevin Green

6 inspiring mantras to help you master work-life balance was written by Fred Mouawad for Mashable.com which you can read here.

There is no doubt that being a freelancer and also, quite often, the main family work-life balance officer in charge of the family while another navigates a 9 to 5 job takes a lot of skill and resilience.

Kara Baskin has looked at this issue for freelancers and written The 6 Work/Life Balance Habits of Resilient People for www.mequilibrium.com which you can read here.

Financial Tip of the Week

Freelancers Need to keep their Skills up to Date to Maintain their Ability to Earn a Living

Image Credit Pixabay.com

Freelancers are at the cutting edge of changes to the future of work because the gig economy is innovative and fast moving. If an employer wants some work done for which that those on their payroll do not have the skill set they can go to a freelancing platform such as Freelancer.com or Upwork.com.

It is also simple for freelancers to monitor the in-demand freelancing skills by looking at Upwork’s Skills Index here. They can then upgrade their skills online by using Udemy, Coursera, LinkedIn Learning or MOOC.

Lydia Dishman has written Freelancers Are Planning For The Future Of Work Faster Than Anyone Else for www.FastCompany.com which you can read here.

Freelancers are not only working for themselves but using technology that can create online businesses to help produce an income for themselves and their family. This helps balance the family budget.

Freelancer Skills Development and Inspiration News

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We are constantly researching 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 (click on the article description):

Lolly Daskal for www.inc.com with 23 Powerful Ways to Motivate Yourself

Preston Li for www.psychologytoday.com and How to Unleash Your Creativity and Find Inspiration Today

Cheryl Syrett from the www.freelancersunion.com with Take Your Skills To The Next Level With Online Learning

I will maintain the links on how the new economy can help rural communities. 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 Upworks 4th quarter 2018 Skills Index which you can read here.

Articles now on our website that are relevant 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 AWS 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 Vinyl Siding Cleaner. There have been 25 sales 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 an interesting article from the Australian Government Department: Australian Signals Directorate called Detecting Socially Engineered Messages (click on the link to read the article)

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.