Weekly Newsletter for The Freelancers: Here is the latest newsletter of the week starting on 9th of December 2019.
Do you know what a millennial is (they are also known as Generation Y)? You can read more details about Generation Y here, but put simply it means people born between the early 1980s and the early 2000’s.
It is this generation that is struggling financially with high levels of debt and housing affordability as they struggle to stay in the middle class. It is a global issue as this article in www.cnbc.com by Alicia Adamczyk reveals: Here’s why millennials have to fight harder than their parents did to stay in the middle class. You can read Alicia’s article here.
If you are interested in why this has occurred you can read about it here and here.
However, what this newsletter is about is finding solutions. Freelancing could provide financial solutions for Generation Y (Millennials). To help with freelancing we have developed the Ultimate Freelancing Library which you can visit by clicking here.
Mastermind groups have often been used in the past to overcome problems as members of the Mastermind Group learn from one another and brainstorm solutions.
Motivate Yourself!
“I believe whatever smart; ambitious people are working on
will be the trend of the future. I do think that it’s worth
thinking critically about what the future will be.”
– Sam Altman
Why You Should Motivate Yourself to Monitor Freelancing Trends
Critical to the success of being a freelancer is being motivated to keep up to date with trends in freelancing in the marketplace. This is because freelancing trends are clearly showing that freelancers are not only at the cutting edge of the future of work, but also social change.
These are global changes and are unstoppable because technology is empowering people to be self-employed. This is of particular benefit to women who have previously been disadvantaged by being out of the workforce while having a family.
This is shown in a recent article entitled Twice as many self-employed mothers than in 2008 that appeared in Freelanceuk.com and can be read here.
Why this above-mentioned article is of importance is this quote that appears in it:
Speaking ahead of today’s Spring Statement 2018, IPSE added:
“[The government] should make a particular effort to ensure self-employed
mothers have all the assistance and support they need, such as by making
them – like employees – eligible for Statutory Maternity Pay.“
This proposed change is an important social change for families, and you should raise this issue with your local Federal member of parliament no matter which country you live in.
Productivity Tip Of The Week
Did You Know That the Impostor Syndrome Can Cost You Money?
If you are like me, you will need to read about the impostor syndrome to get an understanding of it because it is important to freelancers. Wikipedia entry on the subject is here.
In summary, the main danger for freelancers is that they will undercharge for their services even after they have built up a solid background of providing quality services to satisfied clients.
This article by Cat DiStasio entitled What freelancers need to know about impostor syndrome appears in Themedium.com and you can read it here.
Once you have identified the enemy it is nice to know that you are not alone, and others have triumphed over the impostor syndrome. Here is what 25 famous women have said about it here. This quote by Helen Mirren sums up the issue perfectly:
“It would be wrong to think that you’re always right and correct and perfect
and brilliant. Self-doubt is the thing that drives you to try to improve
yourself.” — Esquire, August 2011
If you require further inspiration from others who have overcome the impostor syndrome try this Amazon Kindle eBook:
Work-Life Balance Tip Of The Week
How Do Freelancers Protect Their Rights at Work?
It may seem a strange question to ask a freelancer because most know that there are very few if any rights.
This can have a direct impact on your work-life balance because if you have a bad debt for work that you have completed. It goes straight to your bottom line.
In short, you must work longer to make up for the money that you have lost and this impacts on your work-life balance. Globally, freelancer protection is an issue.
Yuki Noguchi has written Unequal Rights: Contract Workers Have Few Workplace Protections. Her article appears in www.npr.org which you can read here.
This is an enormous social change that is driven by technology that is sweeping the world and changing the future of work, family life, superannuation, retirement, and pension schemes.
It is important that you are involved and that your voice is heard. Here are 10 reasons that freelancers union membership matters.
Have you asked your local member of parliament what they think of this article: Call to extend shared parental leave to freelancers? If there is a State or Federal Election coming up in the next twelve months ask the question.
Financial Tip of the Week
How to Get Paid More for Your Freelancing Services by Negotiating Better
Have you been on a holiday to a country where street vendors bargain with you to get you to pay a higher price and you haggle to get a lower price?
Why I ask this is because when I was working in a bank in Fiji many years ago it was quite a remarkable sight to see the tourists from the cruise ships flooding the duty-free stores for bargains. They all knew the importance of negotiation.
They knew that in some circumstances they could decrease the cost of a camera or a luxury item by as much as 30%. Negotiations are important to us too as freelancers.
I have known Fiverr freelancers who do this regularly by the skilful use of price to change the priority of delivery in the queue or for extras e.g. photos for an article being written.
Yet, many freelancers are hesitant to do this. The impostor syndrome is one of the reasons, but another reason is not knowing how to do it.
Katie Perry has written The freelancer’s guide to setting and negotiating rates which appear in the www.Invisionapp.com Blog and you can read here.
I will re-post this article frequently because it is so important.
Skills Development and Inspiration
Image Credit Pixabay.com
We are constantly searching for news articles and videos on skills development and inspiration for freelancers as well as developing our own products.
Each week we have decided to bring you the links to what we consider are the top three articles or videos. This week we thought we would we would bring you some more TEDx talks on important issues for freelancers:
Imposter Syndrome | Mike Cannon-Brookes | TEDxSydney
Change Your Mindset and Achieve Anything | Colin O’Brady | TEDxPortland
Choices that can Change your Life | Caroline Myss | TEDxFindhornSalon
There are now 5,000 skills in 90 categories that the digital economy can offer, according to Upwork’s 2nd. Quarter 2019 Skills Index which you can read here.
Number nineteen on the list is SEOMoz. If you are like me, you will probably want to know more about SEOMoz. I looked it up on Google and this is a what it is here. What is interesting about Upwork’s list is that there are new digital skills and they are evolving very quickly. Innovation and technology are very important to countries. In Australia this is particularly important because these skills are applicable to country areas impacted by drought. The value of the digital economy to Australia is shown here.
We have been developing an Amazon eBook series on freelancing for those starting out freelancing. Here are some early eBooks listed below. Click on an icon to have a look inside at the index for each one:
Amazon News
The weekly AWS news video link to acloud.guru is here. They are the leading trainers globally for Amazon Web Services certification for 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.
We have changed our strategy to include guest posts and this is one from our cybersecurity website. The guest contributor is Rebecca James with How can we prevent email-based social engineering attacks? (click on the link).
We will let you know when another is posted. The goal is to increase traffic and diversify product promotion. There have been approximately 30 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. This is the latest one from Australian Competition and Consumers Commission’s warning about the scam Mobile premium services (click on the link).
Robert Siciliano is an identity theft expert and consultant. He also runs a cyber security and fraud prevention website which you can see here.
Image Source: ROBERT SICILIANO
How Do I Distinguish the Good Hackers from the Bad? (Part-1)
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