What to Do When a Pitch for a Gig Is Rejected or Even Your Work!

Weekly Newsletter for The Freelancers: Here is the latest newsletter of the week starting on 4th March 2019.

There are a lot of freelancers that participate in the creative industries and it is a global trend. If you have wondered why you can read about it here. However, it does not matter why you are in a freelancing creative role when your pitch for a gig or even your best creative work is rejected.

It hurts, there are no two ways about it. Creative people often feel the pain of rejection far more than other freelancers because quite often it is their brainchild that they have created whether for a contract or not.

All freelancers have to learn to handle rejection and failure because it is a part of being a freelancer and you must go on to the next pitch or gig. If it is a rejection of your work and you believe that it has met the guidelines set out in the contract then you have a problem.

The first point of call is to try and negotiate a peaceful settlement. Laura Spencer has written How to Handle Your Unhappy Client in 5 Easy Steps for the www.vandelaydesign.com blog which you can read by clicking here.

If you have been smart you will have used a freelancing platform like https://www.freelancer.com or https://www.upwork.com and you will have their dispute arbitration system to help you reach a settlement.

Every freelancer starting out should have in their library a copy of the s Freelancer’s Bible written by the Freelancers Union’s, previous Executive Director, Sara Horowitz together with Toni Sciarra Poynter.

There is a link at the end of this article to a preview. There is a chapter on troubleshooting included in the Freelancers Bible.

Carol Tice of the Make a Living Writing Blog has written an article entitled Dealing With Rejection: 5 Bulletproof Strategies for Writers. You can read Carol’s article here.

To look inside the Freelancer’s Bible click on the icon below:

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

Do You See A Link Between Procrastination, Motivation, and Productivity?

Have you ever heard of the saying for online businesses that the value is on the email list? This is because when you come to sell your business sometime in the future the purchaser is going to want your email list as it is his future clients.

It is about adding value to your business, right? Yet many creative businesses have not started a newsletter despite numerous articles appearing on the internet such as this one by Pat Flynn How to Start an Email List. Pat’s article appears as a tutorial on the smartpassiveincome.com website and you can read the evergreen article here.

The reason that most online freelancer businesses don’t have a newsletter is because of one simple word and it is called “procrastination”. Procrastination can cost you a lot of money in the valuation of your business.

This should be the motivation to make you get on with the job of adding value to your business. It is motivating because although it may have sat on your mental To-Do list for a long time. Productivity for freelancers is ultimately measured by money in the bank.

Matt Benfield’s article 10 Tips to Overcome Procrastination as a Freelancer which appears in Social Media Week blog and you can read it here. Then it is time to start building the value of your business with a newsletter.

Productivity Tip Of The Week

Have You Heard About The One, Three, Five Rule For Productivity?

There are many systems for making freelancers more productive. Some will hit a hot button for you and it will work. Other ideas will not. It is all about your personal preference and what you believe will work for you.

Often it is necessary to try systems and see if they work for you or not. It is important to give ideas a good try before making an evaluation. From my point of view my role it is to present you with articles and ideas that will make you more productive.

This quote by Robin Williams is very appropriate because for freelancers it is very true:

No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.

For Robin Williams fans who can remember the scene from the Dead Poets Society, you can revisit here.

Nick Burka has written I just want to do One Big Thing for the Minimal Hero blog which you can read here.

Work-Life Balance Tip Of The Week

Freelancing From Home And Being A Successful Parent

Traditional careers are on their way out, but most people are not in this for an alternative career. They are in this for the kids. This is a quote from this article a Third of Freelancers Consider Kids To Be More Important Than A Traditional Career.

The article was written by Chirag Kulkarni and appears on the Entrepreneur.com website here. If you have a family and are working from home you will not be surprised by this finding.

It does not matter whether you started down the freelancer path when the Global Financial Crisis hit in 2008 or not freelancing is increasingly looking like the future of work for many people.

This means that work-life balance and productivity are increasing to the fore because you want quality time with your family.

This is one of the reasons that Amazon is so successful because it supports freelancing and families generally with customer service membership programs that are made for good time management and work-life balance.

Freelancers with a family are always on the lookout for top tips for work-life balance and we are too to share with you, here is 8 tips for freelancing from home without ignoring your kids by Preston Lee which appears in the Millo blog which you can read here.

If you have ideas to share contact us via the form at the bottom of this newsletter.

Financial Tip of the Week

Do You Know What Your Average Income Is?

Knowing what your average income is one of the essential building blocks of developing a good budget for your freelancing business. It is only when you have calculated your average income that you can come to grips with a realistic budget.

It also enables you to calculate what you should be able to save and start to trim your expenses to reach your net income goal.

When you go to see your financial planner, which I recommend, it will be one of the first questions asked.

The question is asked because if you don’t know as a freelancer or business person it means that you do not have a realistic business plan on which to build a financial plan for your life and your family.

When you approach a bank for a business loan or a housing loan they will want to know what your average income is.

However, that is enough from me because Katie Lane has written Tips For Freelancers which is published in Work Made For Hire and you can read here.

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. 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

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.