Finding The Perfect Freelancer Online: What Questions Would You Ask?

Weekly Newsletter for The Freelancers: Here is the latest newsletter of the week starting on 11th March 2019.

In a previous newsletter, we asked the question “How Valuable Is Your Time?” The reason that we asked you the question is because it is important from a work life balance perspective that you know the answer.

This enables you to know what you could outsource to other freelancers and still make a fair and reasonable profit. You could then take your children on an outing during the school holidays.

If you are wise you would foresee when you were undertaking a gig that was complex and had parts that you could outsource during the school holidays that you were prepared to do it.

One of the most essential parts of a successful outsourcing is to know the questions to ask of the potential freelancer to help you with the gig. It means you are then comfortable with your delegation of the work.

This is an important knowledge to have because you can enjoy the break with your family. It is also called effective delegation if you can remember your 9 to 5 work in the corporate world.

Upwork have published 9 Interview questions to find the perfect freelancer online which appears in their Upwork Hiring Headquarters blog which you can read here.

In my copy of The Freelancer’s Bible written by the founder of the Freelancers Union, Sara Horowitz with Toni Sciarra Poynter there is an entire chapter (number 11 on page 283) entitled The Nimble Freelancer: Subcontracting and Building Teams. This is an important skill that you need to develop. Click on the icon below to have a look inside the eBook.

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

Should You Quit Your 9 to 5 Job Without A Backup Plan?

When your boss finally has got you to the stage of wanting to quit your job and walk out and not come back, should you? There are numerous people that have been in this position. However, should you cool it and think? There are two points of view on this and here they are:

One point of view is that if your boss has finally crossed the red line and you can’t take it anymore e.g. bullying, you are better to make a stand and leave on the spot before you lose your courage.

There is an article from Inc.com by Quora entitled 10 Things I Learned When I Quit My Job With No Solid Backup Plan. This article takes the point of view of someone that did not have a plan and what they learned from doing it. It is an important article. This is especially true if you feel that you are approaching that situation. You can read that article by clicking here.

The second point of view is for those people who leave their 9 to 5 job and have a plan for what they are going to do. As an ex-financial planner, you will know what approach that I favour.

Sarah Li Cain has written 5 Critical Steps to take before quitting your job for good and it appears on the blog of Lifehack.org. You can read Sarah’s article here.

They are both worth reading because you can profit from the experience of other people who have travelled the path before you. Many freelancers go down this path.

I will be on the lookout for top rating ebooks on this subject. These articles are worth sharing with friends if you are aware they are going through this situation.

Productivity Tip Of The Week

Getting the Productivity and Work Life Balance Equation Right by Raising Your Rates

Freelancing can be tough on your family life when you need to earn more money to balance the family budget. Many freelancers immediately think that the solution is to take on more gigs which will eat into your family time.

However, there is another way if you have established clients that appreciate your services. The strategy is simple, it is called raising your freelancing rates. A lot of freelancers avoid this solution because it requires having a strategy and negotiation skills. The required strategy and skills can be learned from how other people who have successfully done it.

The Freshbooks blog has produced some articles on this issue. The first article is entitled It’s Time to Raise Your Freelance Rates – How to do it without losing your best clients.

This article is about the main fear – losing existing clients! Importantly, they have included in this article a link to Megan Santos’ article entitled What’s Your Rate? Determine How Much to Charge Clients Using This Strategy.

Freshbooks produce accounting software for small businesses and clearly have thought this issue through. It is important that you determine what is a fair and reasonable price for your services so that you are confident in your negotiations.

Success in this overall strategy will mean increasing your income without putting stress on your family time. That is a top idea for any freelancer!

You can read both of the articles mentioned above and other related articles by clicking here.

Work-Life Balance Tip Of The Week

Freelancers Need a Home Office To Focus On Work – Yes or No?

Most freelancers working from home will have to confront whether it is more productive to move to a co-working space outside the home or not. This is usually because of the work life balance distractions that occur from home.

However, the big consideration is that it requires money to move to a co-working space which means you have to earn more to justify the move. It is not a simple decision. If you have young children and you are the caring parent the decision is made for you and you should try to set up a home office.

Laura Vanderkam has written an article for FastCompany.com entitled 10 quick tips to create a home office you’ll actually want to work in. You can read Laura’s article here.

If you have been freelancing for a while, there are no parenting responsibilities and you have an established business with reasonably good cash flow working in a co-working space has some advantages.

One of the main ones is that you can share technology costs and outsource to other freelancers with different skills in the same co-working space. It can be similar to a freelancers’ flash team on the internet, but you can discuss projects over a cup of coffee!

Financial Tip of the Week

Finance and Work

The future of work is clearly changing very quickly and should be a top concern to all of us, especially freelancers. The reason for freelancers to be concerned is they are the boss of everything for their businesses and if a change that will impact their careers is missed it will impact their finances.

A good indication of where changes are going to come from is to monitor the research and development (R&D) by technical companies. Guess which company is leading in research and development?

It is also a leading company in innovation and impact on everyday citizens. It is worth looking back a few years and see the current day impact of previous research and development expenditure.

This article for www.recode.net was written by Rani Molla in 2017 and it is about the world’s leading tech company and you can read it here.

The question that freelancers have to ask themselves, especially if they are moonlighting to help the family budget, how can they take advantage of the changes? If you have checked the article link you will know that the global leading company in R&D is Amazon.

Do you have an Amazon website to help boost your income? An important part of the Amazon global business model is that it allows everyday citizens to have an Amazon Associates account and make money. You can see how this global strategy works here.

This allows everyday citizens to build a website to supplement their income. You can see an Amazon niche website here https://www.pressurewashertoday.com.

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 here. It can take individuals and communities many years to recover and some businesses never will.

This summer has been the hottest on record for 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

We are focussing on the niche website in the future because it is producing better results i.e. sales. Here is a recent article: https://www.pressurewashertoday.com/best-pressure-washer-for-cars/.

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.