Freelancing: Freelance Hints, Tips & Strategies by Michelle L Devon

  Let’s talk freelancing!

Now that you have a domain name, have purchased a hosting package, or have decided to use the free Geocities or Google Pages or some type of a blog template platform and forward your domain there, it’s time to consider what should be included on your freelance webpage.

The most important thing to include on your website is going to be your name and your company name. After that, you’ll need all of the following:

About Page

Your main page of your website is your welcome and for a smaller business, it’s probably going to be your  ‘about’ page too. Here you want to tell the potential clients about your business, a bit about you, and provide the tone and feel for the rest of the website.

Contact Information

In order to get clients for your freelance business, they will need to have some way to contact you. I recommend using both an address and a phone number, as well as email addresses. If you’re worried about giving your home address out on the internet (and let’s face it, who can blame you?), I suggest getting a PO Box. However, not just any PO Box. If you go to one of the mailbox stores, you can usually get a physical street address, making it look like your address is a physical address, while not revealing anything personal about where you live. These can run anywhere from $35 per year up to quite expensive.

As for phone numbers, we all know that getting an address from a phone number is pretty easy to do, which would negate the need to get the PO Box. Another option for phone numbers is to get a toll-free number that forwards to your home phone line or to get a VOIP (voice over internet protocol) line. Skype has some that are fully internet based, while Vonage can offer you some that can double as a ‘land line’ type phone.

I personally got a second line in my home and then got a toll-free number to forward to that line. The line is unlisted, and the toll-free number doesn’t list a physical address, and that way, customers can call me for free from anywhere in the USA. There’s a charge of .25 cents per connect and .11 cents per minute for the toll-free calls that are incoming, but it’s worth it to me.

Then, of course, email addresses where you can be contacted are important too. Tomorrow’s blog will give you a nifty way to avoid having strippers/spammers grab your email address from your website but still make it clickable and available to your clients too, so stay tuned for that!

 Services Provided

Depending on what  type of freelancing you plan to do, you’ll need to determine your list of services and display those on your website, with at least brief information about what the services entail. If you want to post prices too, that’s okay. Some people do. I personally don’t put up my cost, because every project is unique and depending on how much work the project will require, how much I already know about the topic/subject, how much research, how much time… etc, prices will vary.
Samples  / Mock Ups / Experience

First, if you have finished projects available for potential clients to see, by all means link to those. For example, if you design websites, link to some of the website you’ve worked on. If you are a writer, list the publications and sites where you have written in the past. If you’re a graphic designer, give links to images other clients have used of yours.

If you provide services, chances are you have some sample of the type of work you do that you can provide for potential clients to see. If you’re brand new to freelancing and don’t have any paid gigs yet to use as examples of past work, then simply create some mock ups or samples of the type of work you can do and put those up on your website for potential clients to see.

The services you provided in the past aren’t as important as the services you are talented enough and capable of providing now. The past services and work only serves to confirm that, but they aren’t required.

References / Testimonials

Rerferences and testimonials aren’t required either, but if you have good references or quotes from clients who have said you’ve done a good job, put them up as references for your work. Be sure not to give personal information about clients on your website though, like email address or phone numbers, without their permission to do so.

Essentially, a freelance website is a combination of a business website detailing services provided and a portfolio of the freelancer. Call it an interactive extended resume of sorts.

I highly recommend searching for other freelance websites and see what works and doesn’t work from looking at real-life examples of other freelancers.

If you’re just getting started and you have a resume detailing your experience, you can convert your resume to PDF and upload it to your website as well, and this will suffice until you can finish getting the site built.

The website doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive. All you need are the basics and to have a web presence where clients can contact you and see a list of your services.

I know, these are just generic tips, and you’ll likely find what works for you after a bit of trial and error, tweaking and changing things, and getting it perfect.

Happy Freelancing!

Love and stuff,

Michy

   Let’s Talk Freelancing!

Okay, so you’ve set up your freelance business, you’ve made the business cards, invoices, letterhead, company name… you’ve applied for an EIN with the IRS… you set up your workspace in your home and have all the necessary supplies.

Now what?

The next step is to look for ways to promote your business, so people can find you or have a place to go to learn more about you when you find them.

You Need a Web Presence!

It is nearly impossible in today’s market to have a business without at least some sort of web presence. Freelancing is so much easier when you have a website where you can put samples, mock-ups, contact information and have an online portfolio of sorts, all in one place for potential clients to see.

Websites don’t have to be expensive. Hosting can be as cheap as two or three dollars per month all the way up to a couple hundred per month, depending on what you plan to do with it. The typical freelancer doesn’t need a big fancy web package though. Let’s look at what you need to do to get a website up and running for your freelance business.

Buy a Domain

The domain name is the name that is going to go in your browser for the URL. That is, the link that you will give to others to make it to your website. The domain name is likely going to be your email address too, if you use a domain mail service, so you might want to consider that when deciding on the length of your domain name. For my personal website, I purchased the domain www.MichelleLDevon.com, which is, of course, the pen name I use for my writing. For my business, I used www.AccentuateServices.com, which is the name of my business. For my writing forum, I chose www.writersforum.info . These are simple, easy to remember domain names that all refer to what the website is all about. They are all hosted on the same hosting package, though, so two of them are forwarded to the main domain.

When buying a domain, you’ll want to consider the name as well as the extension, i.e. dot com, dot info, dot net, etc. The .com and .net domain extensions are the most popular, but that also means they are the most expensive. The .info domain and the .biz domains are less popular, and some services actually look at these extensions as being ‘less than’ the .com or .net domain extensions. Still, a .info or .biz domain is much cheaper than their .com and .net counterparts.

If you can afford it, I recommend purchasing both the .net and .com versions of your domain name. My business, Accentuate Services, had a web presence for nearly three years, when suddenly, I noticed another Accentuate Services pop up on my Google searches. They had purchased the accentuateservices.net domain, and then, because of my hard work in promoting my website, they appeared immediately under mine in the searches, with a really bad website, offering similar administrative services as I offered. I wish I had chunked down the extra seven bucks to purchase both domains.

Even if you can’t afford hosting, buy the domain as soon as you settle on a name for your business, or purchase your ‘name’ as a domain, so you are certain to have the domain. I’ll discuss ways to use the domain later, without paying for hosting, if you need to. Domains can be as cheap as $2-10 bucks. They are well worth the investment.

Hosting Package

Purchasing a domain doesn’t necessarily mean you are purchasing a hosting package. Some domain registrars, like GoDaddy, offer free hosting packages for individuals with the purchase of the domain, and then you can add on special services you want to add. I have found hosting packages for really cheap and I’ve found them for really expensive. Do your homework, because sometimes you do get what you pay for. Search for scams and warnings and information about the host prior to purchasing a package. Some hosting packages will let you pay by the month, while others will advertise a monthly payment, but will require a year in advance to get that low ‘monthly’ rate.

Can’t Afford Hosting?

I know that purchasing hosting can be expensive when you are first starting out. Some companies don’t let you pay by the month, so you have to cough up a hundred bucks or more to get hosting for your domain for the year. As I said earlier, some domain registrars offer free simple hosting for purchasing a domain. If you can find one of them, do so!

Another option for hosting is to use a free hosting site, like Geocities (Yahoo!), Google Pages, or other websites that offer free personal hosting. You can go into your domain control panel and set it up so your domain is forwarded to one of those free hosting platforms.

Another option many people are starting to use is blogs as websites. WordPress blogs have ‘pages’ you can add, so there is navigation similar to a website, and you can pick all sorts of nice, professional templates making it as easy as typing a blog post to build a webpage for your site. Take your domain and forward it to the blog site that is hosting the blog. Blogger, Wordpress, and a few other blog platforms offer very easy to use publishing formats, they’re free, and you can even put advertising on the sites through these blogs (though I don’t really recommend advertising on the freelancing part of your website).

Domain Email

Email doesn’t always come standard with a domain or hosting package, so be sure that you purchase domain mail if you want to use a professional looking and easy to remember email name that is related to your business. I have michelle@accentuateservices.com and michelle@michelleldevon.com for my emails, but I also have a ‘catch all’ so I can get other emails with the same domain name, but different email name. It’s not professional looking to use a ‘free’ email service like Yahoo or Hotmail for your professional email, so using a domain email is a great way to appear more professional in your business dealings.

Building the Site

There is no need to be fearful of building a website for yourself. It’s not as hard as you might think, and most hosting providers even have very easy templates with drag and drop WYSIWYG editors (what you see is what you get). It’s as simple as picking a template, uploading the pictures you want to use, drag and drop them where you want them, and then write your text. Again, GoDaddy has some simple free hosting packages with decent templates to get you started, and you can always add to the templates and alter them or even build your own site later when you learn more about building webpages. The simple templates will get you started though, at a reasonable cost.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk a little bit about what to put on a freelance website, so you have a good online portfolio, must-haves, don’ts and more, so stay tuned!

For now, if you don’t have a web presence, start searching! Purchase your domain name today! I’m not necessarily recommending GoDaddy, nor endorsing them, per se, but they do have reasonable prices, easy to use navigation and domain control, free hosting packages, and they accept PayPal for those who don’t want to give out financial information.

Stay tuned tomorrow for some tips on building a freelance website.

Happy freelancing!

Love and stuff,
Michy

From time to time on this blog, I intend to provide reviews of places geared toward offering services to freelancers or offering a place for freelancers to find work. Some of these reviews are going to help you find new places for great opportunities, while some are going to tip you off to scammers and spammers.

In this instance, I have found a site that pretty much is both of those things: a scammer and a spammer.

I won’t link to the site, so as to not give them linkbacks, but the name of the site is freelancehomewriters.com. I have seen advertisements and glowing endorsements for this website for a couple of years now, but I have never heard of a real writer making any money from this program. How can these glowing endorsements be real if no one has ever made money from signing up with these folks?

Turns out, they make money through their affiliate program, so those glowing endorsements are only to get people to sign up so the reviewer will make a quick buck.

Here’s what I know about freelancehomewriters.com:

At best, FreelanceHomeWriters or Freelance Home Writers, depending on how they are sending out emails this week - are spammers. At worst, they are scammers.

Here’s my short review Freelance Home Writers:

First, the website looks nice, great colors, professionally done - all well and good, but when you click on more information it takes you to a a really high pressured copy written sales page that is just not what a ‘writer’ would typically see for a business posting job offers for writing. It talks about how much money you can make - how if you write three article per day you can make 10,000 bucks per year - wow oh wow, whatever, and man, just think if you do 8-10 per day - you’ll be rich rich rich.

Yeah, BS. First, most people can’t write quality articles at the rate of 10 article per day every single day. Second, I’m really suspicious that they even have enough listings to cover that many per day for every person who wants to do that many.

So I decided I’d at least give them the benefit of the doubt and check them out before making any further judgments about them. I signed up - something I had to do before I could see job postings, and once I did, I figured I’d be able to see at least a partial listing of jobs.

Boy was I wrong. Instead, once they had my email address (thankfully I use a Yahoo! address just for testing sites like this one so they can’t spam my real email), I was then taken to a screen where I was told that TODAY ONLY! I could get my membership from them not at the high 99.95 they usually charge, but for only 49.95!

They even give a nifty membership card and all that other good crap. You cannot see the job postings unless you pay - so there is no way to see if there is even a job posting.

So I was thinking in my head: SCAM!

So what did I do? I went to read the FAQs and here is #1 listed on their Frequently Asked Questions:

” How do I know this isn’t a scam?
Answer: Absolutely not! We wouldn’t be able to do business online very long if we were only here to blindly take your money and leave you high and dry. We’ve been online for nearly 6 years now and are very proud to be legit!”

First - Absolutely not! didn’t actually answer the question that was asked, but you know - when it comes down to it, any place that has to actively tell you that they are not as scam are, indeed, usually a scam.”

Secondly, they charge a fee without even letting you look at what the site has to offer…

Okay, I wrote this article:

http://freelancing.today.com/2008/09/22/ten-tips-for-freelance-contractors/

Which is about tips for freelance contractors to protect yourself when freelancing, and with the exception of freelance bid sites, no one should EVER pay for a freelance job to the employer themselves. Freelance contract employers pay you - you don’t pay them!

Never ever pay someone money to give you job - EVER!

Then, they offer you special discounts - emails pushing you, and saying that you can do a ‘trial membership’ for a smaller fee - about $1.95-2.95 depending on which email you happen to get (they are different for different folks).

I’ve seen people pushing them and saying they are a great place. I discovered those folks are affiliates who are not actually writers, but are internet marketers out to make a few bucks from your membership sale - so when I contacted a few of them, some were honest enough to admit they never actually used the program - only the affiliate part.

They absolutely SPAM you - and you don’t really even have to sign up with them to get the spam. My fourteen year old son who has his own email and has never signed up for any work from home information received an email from Freelance Home Writers saying he had requested the info.

Uh, no, he didn’t.

I’m also pretty sure they either sell your email address or else they are affiliate marketers too and are sending out emails to the email you use to get more information EVEN IF YOU DO NOT purchase a membership. And most of the emails FROM them have NOTHING to do with freelance writing.

I have a mole who just signed up for the program awhile back who is about to try to take advantage of the 100% money back guarantee.

I’ll update with more info when that is confirmed that they likely don’t give refunds, even though they say they do. I’ll keep ya’ll posted.

For now, they are spammers at best and scammers at worst. Stay away!

You can get free writing leads from multiple places online, including the paying writing leads thread on my free writers forum. You do NOT need FreelanceHomeWriters.com to make a good freelance living!

Love and stuff,
Michy

Let’s talk freelancing!

Freelance contractors are more commonplace than ever before. Working from home or telecommuting, with the high gas prices and companies looking to save on overhead, has become an option for many employers, while Freelance contracting provides an opportunity to work from home, be self-employed, or make extra money from freelancing, without spending a fortune on business start-up costs.

The problem with the increase in freelance contractors is that scam artists have become more common too. Freelance independent contractors should know these ten tips for freelance contractors to protect themselves from freelance scams. There are other things to keep in mind too, but these are the ones I know are important from personal experience or from having heard from others.

1. Never pay someone to give you a freelance contract.

A legitimate freelance contract will not require you to pay money to the employer in order to provide a job or freelance contract. While some internet sites require users to purchase a membership to bid on freelance jobs, the person who awards the freelance job should never charge a fee in order to gain the freelance contract. Be very leery of any site that claims to charge a membership fee. Freelance bid sites like Elance and Guru.com are legitimate, but FreelanceHomeWriters (dot) com is not. Do your research before you pay a membership, and NEVER pay a fee directly to the person/company who contracts with you.

2. Secure a deposit or milestone payments on freelance assignments.

Some freelance contractors, especially over the internet, require payment in advance for freelance contracts. However, especially when you are a new, unproven freelance contractor, it is difficult to find employers who are willing to provide payment in advance.

One solution to this problem is to request milestone payments. The freelance contractor can decide what milestones of completion exist in the project, and then partial payments are made to the freelancer once each milestone is completed. Another solution is to secure a deposit on the freelance contract, which shows the freelance employer is willing to put up funds to secure the freelance contract.

3. Do not give employers personal information.

Go to this IRS website and apply for an employer identification number (EIN). This will prevent you from having to provide the freelance employer your social security number. After you have this number, you need not provide the employer with any other information besides your business name and EIN.

4. Do not give bank information to a freelance employer.

Do not fall for the scam of a freelance employer asking for your bank account information in order to send a bank transfer. Someone who has your bank information can wipe out your bank account.

If the freelance employer says bank transfer is the only way they can pay, upgrade to a business account with PayPal and send a request for funds to the employer. The employer can initiate an eCheck transfer to your PayPal account without having any personal information except the PayPal email address. The freelance employer doesn’t even have to have a PayPal account to pay you this way. Again NEVER give bank information to a freelance employer, ever.

5. Never wire, forward or transfer money for a freelance employer for any reason to a third party.

When a freelance employer asks you to forward money to someone else or transfer money to someone else, this is a warning sign of a scam or illegal activity. Never forward money to a third party for the freelance employer, even if they send you the money to do so.

6. Do not send an overpayment back to an employer.

Another common scam is for a freelance employer to send a check or money order in excess of the invoice and ask you to send the balance back to them. Don’t fall for this. Return the entire check or money order and immediately request the freelance employer issue a new payment for the proper amount.

7. Always have a freelance scope of work or freelance independent contractor agreement with every freelance employer.

It’s not unusual for an employer to hire you as a freelancer and agree upon a price- for the freelance services but then discover later the freelance services the freelance employer expects more than the original agreement. Have a firm freelance contract that details exactly what freelance services you provide prior to beginning the freelance assignment.

8. Make sure you have contact details for the employer.

An email address or website is not enough to secure payment if an employer chooses not to pay or skip out on the invoice. You need to be sure to get a person’s name who is responsible for paying the freelance contract and a mailing address and phone number in case the freelance employer doesn’t pay.

9. Keep a good record of all communications with the freelance employer.

Save all your emails and if you are required to talk to the employer on the phone, always follow up with a short email that says something like, “Just following up on our phone call on (date), about (insert topic) and wanted to verify that you requested I (insert the job, etc).” Doing this provides you with a record of your work and conversations, so that if there’s ever a dispute, you have documentation for recovering your loss, in court if need be. (I had to secure an attorney once to get payment on a big project. It CAN happen!)

10. When asked for samples, be careful about giving read-to-use samples!

What I am referring to here are customers who will say they are interested in your bid, quote, services, etc, but they want to see if you can handle the job, so if you would just send them two samples of such and such done to their specifications. This is particularly true when asking for writing samples or graphics samples. What happens is, they ask several people to do the same things, then they have your samples and they use them and never pay you, telling you they selected someone else.

Mock-ups are great when you can use them. A mock-up is a reduced quality version of what they are asking for, to give them an idea you know what they are talking about, but not quite good enough they can use it professionally. This works great with website design, graphics, logos, etc. Mock-ups are great because you don’t put a huge amount of time into it, you can use it as a sample for someone else later down the road, but they can’t use it for any professional purpose. Mock-ups can include watermarks, low-quality, pixelization, or weird characters in the code that messes up the display for professional use.

For writing, though, mock-ups are a bit more difficult. The best way to handle samples for writing is to tell the client that you can show them samples of similar content you’ve done for other clients, but that you cannot submit special request samples without getting paid. If they balk at that, they probably aren’t going to be people you want to work for anyway. After all, an employer would never ask you to work for two days for free to see if you’re going to work out. Submitting special request samples that you will not be paid for is the same thing. Point that out to the employer. If, however, they are willing to pay you for the samples, then by all means, consider it.

***

A freelance contractor can provide quality service and receive fair payment, while the freelance employer saves money on overhead. Freelance contracting can be a win/win situation for both the freelance independent contractor and the freelance employer.

However, one bad scammer and the freelance contractor can lose a lot of money and suffer a setback from which it may be difficult to recover. Use common sense, trust your intuition if something doesn’t feel right and follow these steps above and freelance contracting can be a very profitable and rewarding business.

Let’s talk freelancing! 

Okay, so now you have your business mostly set up and you’re good to go as far as starting to market and promote yourself. Next week, I’ll be chatting with you more about how to go about doing that, but today, I wanted to point out a few places you can familiarize yourself with and then go from there.

Up above this blog, you’ll see some tabs you can click on. Those tabs will take you to a page here on my blog with links to a few places I’ve either personally used to find freelance jobs or that I have verified as legitimate leads and gigs for freelancers. I’m not endorsing them or even recommending them, but rather just making them available to you. However, I won’t post any links to places I know to be frauds and in fact on my blog here, I will discuss fraudulent sites or sites that I know for a fact are not legit or that don’t provide what they promise.

You’re going to hear me tell you repeatedly that you don’t want to ever have to pay someone to give you a job, ever. This is important. However, know that the freelance bid sites do usually require a membership, and this is where some of the fraudulent sites ‘trick’ people into paying for ‘memberships’.

Anyway, I just wanted to point out the links above for those who were wondering what they were. I intend to update those links as I find and verify new sites or links that you can use for your freelancing career. If you read me say in a blog post that I updated one of the tabs, that’s what I’m referring to… I will have added a new link or removed one.

Okay, that’s the short and sweet today. I’ll be back with more later!

Keep freelancing!

Love and stuff,

Michy

Let’s Talk Freelancing!

Some of you, particularly those of you who are members of my forum as well as reading me on my blogs, know I’ve been battling my health for the last two years or so, and particularly so this last year.

Well, today I want to talk about health insurance as a freelancer.

When you quit working or are not working and then you start freelancing, you will be self-employed, and that means, unless you’re lucky enough to be married to someone who has good insurance, you’re without health insurance and you will have to go self-pay or get your own insurance.

Sure, if you’re young and healthy, you’re thinking nothing bad can happen to you, and there’s no need, but let me tell you something…. I was relatively young and thought I was healthy when I quit the corporate world back in 2003 to freelance full time instead of part time on the side, and since then, my health has deteriorated very quickly. Unfortunately, it happened at a time I was without insurance, planning to get some soon but never quite thinking I could afford it. That makes most of what I deal with now a pre-existing condition and it’s very expensive to insure someone with existing health problems.

Get insurance.

I can’t stress it enough. You can go a few months to a year without it, a gamble, but for sure by that time you’d better have insurance, and you best take really good care of your health during the time you’re without - and if you can help it, try to avoid the doctor diagnosing you with ANYTHING other than a common cold while you are uninsured, to avoid a pre-existing condition when you do get insurance.

Don’t think it can’t happen to you. Don’t think you’re too young (the things wrong with me usually don’t happen to people my age, but here I am dealing with them), and don’t think you’re invincible.

You’re not. No one is.

Get insured, and get that way as quickly as possible.

Now, as for health. It’s easy when freelancing from home to work long hours, particularly if you are just getting started or you really love what you do. Working 10 plus hours per day as many freelancers do, and particularly so if you’re sitting and not moving around much….  Get up and move your body. Stretch and walk around the house at least once per hour and take a walk around the block now and then.

Eat properly and eat well… it’s easy to snack on junk while working and your brain not actively be aware you’re doing it. Plan balanced and nutritious meals and keep easy to fix and eat healthy snacks, not junk.

Carpal tunnel and repetitive stress disorders are common with those who type and work at a computer a lot. Buy quality items, like keyboards and mouses, that will reduce strain and then again, stretch and move your fingers and hands regularly to avoid pain and discomfort.

Rest your eyes and wear anti-reflective computer glasses when working at the computer. Set the screen for the lowest brightness you can stand without having to strain to see the screen. Put the screen at the right height so you are looking directly at it or slightly up at it and not downward. Position your chair properly and sit properly in the chair when working.

Take breaks. Not only will you feel better, but you’ll probably do better work if you’re rested and take a few breaks now and then.

Freelancing from home is often solitary as well as sedentary, so be sure to find an outlet for social interaction. If you have kids, do things with them, plan family time. Be sure not to neglect a spouse, partner, significant other. If you’re single and live alone, try to avoid the hermit-syndrome and hole yourself up for days at a time with no social interaction. Remember, one of the reasons you’re probably freelancing is so that you are working for income, not living to work.

Join forums with other freelancers and network. At the very least, socialize with those going through the same things. Don’t allow yourself to sit alone, day in and day out, just working, or work can become a negative thing that isolates and is depressing. It would be a shame to lose your passion for it simply because you isolated yourself. Take the time to do things outside, with people.

Take care of yourself first, because when it comes right down to it, when you’re sick, or worse - dead - you aren’t going to be able to work. Health comes first; then working.

Sorry if this sounds preachy or whatever… but trust me, as I sit here feeling like I do today, looking at my foot, clenching my teeth from the pain, debating whether I should take a nap or try to force through it and work, while thinking of the pile of medical bills that insurance is not going to pay - well, maybe my situation can help you protect yourself too.

Take care of you, get insurance, socialize…. and THEN happy freelancing!

Love and stuff,
Michy

  Let’s talk freelancing!

Before you begin freelancing, or providing any services to a client, you want to prepare your business, so you can focus on the work and not the behind the scenes paperwork. There are a few things you’re going to want to set up before you start doing any freelance work. Let’s look at a few of them you should consider today.

Business Cards

To be honest, I have never needed business cards while freelancing, since the majority of the work I do is via email, phone or snail mail. If you are going to be meeting people in person though, a nice, professional, simple business card is a great thing to have, to give to the potential client at the end of your meeting with them. Generally speaking, a simple, plain business card is best - but as soon as I say that, someone will point out a fancy business card some big business or corporation has. Well, sure, if they are a huge corporation with an existing reputation, a cute, funny, colorful, silly business card might work, but for a new freelancer, it just might make you look unprofessional.

Business cards don’t have to be expensive. You can even get some for free. I wrote an article about inexpensive and free business cards here, if you’re looking for professional business cards without breaking your budget.

Invoices

When I first started freelancing online, I never considered I’d need invoices, but several of my clients asked me to invoice them., particularly when working with a business and not an individual, because they need invoices to get the payment processed through their accounts payable department. You can find free invoices online, particularly if you have MS Word. Go to Microsoft’s Office website and  search for invoice templates. You’ll find them in both Word and Excel. Pick one you like, tweak it to make it personalized for your business, and you’re good to go. These can be printed and mailed or they can be attached to an email. You can also send invoices via PayPal.

PayPal Account/Bank Account

You’ll need a way to both send and receive payments online without compromising your or your client’s privacy. PayPal is the most common form of payment online, though there are other merchant account processors. A merchant account is simply a special account set up with a third party to allow you to receive payments via credit card and bank transfers. If you use a merchant account no one has heard of, you may end up with client hesitant to pay you.

Starting a PayPal account is a great idea, since it is likely one of the most used merchant accounts online, and people either love or hate it, but overall, they seem to trust the PayPal logo. You’ll want to go ahead and upgrade to a premier or business account, otherwise you’ll be limited on credit card payments and a few other things. Yes, there’s a fee for business accounts, but that fee is deductible, and it is likely less expensive than paying a monthly fee for a credit card processing merchant account.

You’ll need a bank account to associate with your PayPal account, and it’s best if you set up a small business account with your bank. This is super easy to do if you have set up an EIN for your business . Just print out the application confirmation with your EIN number on it or take the certificate the IRS sends you in the mail, and it’s easy to get a business bank account. This allows you to deposit and cash checks made out to your name, any principal’s name for your business, and made out to the business name.

Create Logs (Excel?)

You’re going to be signing up for certain websites, services, programs and such to facilitate your freelance career, so you need to find a place to log all your passwords, usernames, account numbers, and other information required to access these accounts. I know many of you will think that your browser, such as Firefox or IE, will store this for you, but if anything happens to your computer, you’ll be super glad you have this log somewhere in hard copy. Keep it safely stored somewhere away from your computer so no one can hack into your computer easily, but be sure to pull it out often and update it with new sites or services to which you subscribe. Later in this blog, when I talk about promoting your business, you’ll be signing up for even more services, so this really is more important than you think.

Hardware/Software

I would highly recommend you get a copy of MS Word, at the very least. While it’s not required, it is still primarily the standard, and somewhat universally used. If your client is using MS Word, you’ll need to be able to format and such in Word to return things to them. OpenOffice.org has a comprable open source program, and I do highly recommend it for most things, except editing using the editing tools, if you’re looking to save some money. OpenOffice is a free program, and there are other MS comparable programs available through them.

I guess it goes without saying that you’ll need a computer and an email program of some sort, and of course, an email address. It is best to use a domain address of even get your own website from a place like GoDaddy.com or some other domain providers, preferably one that matches your business so you can later make a company website (all businesses need some sort of web presence!), and use that email address instead of using a free email provider, like Yahoo!, Hotmail, AOL, etc. If you absolutely must use a free email service, I highly recommend Google’s Gmail. It has one of the best spam filters built in I’ve ever used, and it also allows POP3 and IMAP access to get your email in Outlook or some other program (Like Mozilla’s Thunderbird), and also email forwarding. Free email addresses just look a bit cheesey and unprofessional when compared to a domain mail’s email address.

When you can afford it, you’re going to want to buy an external harddrive or a tape drive to back up your computer. Please don’t neglect this. Buy one as soon as you can afford to do so, because if you do lose your computer for any reason, the cost of having purchased the backup drive is neglible compared to the cost of losing everything… everything! Your computer will likely BE your business. Protect it! It could take weeks or even months to recover, and you might never recover everything!

If you can’t afford an external hard drive yet, I suggest you email your work to a Gmail account or some other web-based email service with unlimited storage space, so you can keep a copy of it accessible online, from any computer.

There are likely other things you’ll want to buy or prepare for your business, depending on what type of freelance business you plan to do, but I feel these small things are the biggest things you can do for preparing for your freelance business.

Keep it Cheap

You don’t really need a lot of money to do all this though. Until your business starts making money, there’s not a big reason to send a lot of money upfront. I built my freelancing business in a shoestring budget - nah, more like a nonexistent budget. I was a single mom with two kids living at home, trying to pay a mortgage and a car payment and pinching every penny when I started freelancing.

I let one client’s payment pay for the next thing I needed to take on a bigger client, or a bigger job, or purchase a subscription service for a bid site, or whatever… so don’t think you need a ton of working capital to start a freelance business. You don’t! This is particularly true if you are going to start freelancing part time while maintaining a full-time job. Plus,it’s much more encouraging when you start turning a profit freelancing as quickly as you can, instead of having to wait to make a profit until you make up all the money you’ve invested.

For me, that’s part of the beauty of freelancing services–you don’t have to pay a lot of start up costs; all you have to do is just start working, and then get the equipment you need as you go. For example, I used to freelance transcription work. I found a free transcription software online that let me use the F keys as hotkeys for pause, rewind, etc, and even let me play back at a reduced speed. Until I could afford to buy a good pair of headphones, I would listen to the audio to transcribe over my regular computer speakers. While not ideal, a couple of jobs that way enabled me to afford the nice headphones I wanted with noise reduction. I let my business pay for my business, because goodness knows I was too broke to do it!

You don’t have to be rich to start your own freelance business; you just have to be smart and be willing to improvise when necessary.

Okay, this post is getting to be a bit long, so I’ll leave off there, and talk some more about getting started tomorrow!

Happy Freelancing!

Love and stuff,

Michy

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  Ready to talk freelancing? Here we go!

In THIS ARTICLE, I wrote about how to protect yourself when freelancing for lots of different places.

One of the points in the article talks about how, as I mentioned in my previous post here, different places you might sign up to freelance for or with are going to require some type of taxpaying identifying number. For most individuals, this number is your social security number. They are indeed required by law to ask for this information and retain it on file if they are in or do material business in the United States. Just asking for personal information is not a sign of a scam, but it is a sign to proceed with caution, particularly if it’s a new company.

First, before you ever give your identifying information to a company, be sure to check them out. How long have they been in business? Can you contact other freelance contractors who have worked for them before and verify they are legit and not scamming folks? And most importantly, do they list full, real contact information so you can reach them - an email address and website is not enough, neither is a PO Box. You need a real phone number, full mailing/postal address and physical address and preferably a contact name as well.

Even with all this, it’s still not a great idea to go spreading around your social security number every time you sign up to work for a website or freelance a job with a company. You may think they are legit, but you never know about their security of their online servers and where they keep their database with your personal information and how secure that is.

So the better choice is to get an employer identification number, or EIN, from the IRS, and use it in place of your social security number.

An EIN is an employer identification number, and in the US, it is a legal substitute for giving your social.

Now, if you are only looking for a little part-time income, and are not planning on professionally freelancing much at all, getting an EIN might be more trouble than it’s worth. If, however, you plan to grow your business, intend on making a career out of freelancing, I suggest you get one as soon as possible.

Things to consider prior to signing up for a free EIN: An EIN makes you an ‘official’ business, and as such, you will have to file and claim the income on your taxes as self -employment, and the EIN will be treated as though you own a sole-proprietorship.

Now, the good part of that is you can take more deductions as a business than you can with just misc. income. The downside, you have to pay self-employment tax at the end of the year. If you make more than a few hundred dollars, the EIN likely benefits you more than it would cause problems, and if you don’t have a lot of business expenses, you can still take the standard deduction, but at least with the EIN, you have the choice.

Applying for an EIN is free - you can do so online through the IRS’s website at:

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=102767,00.html

You can either make a freelancing ‘business’ or you can choose your name or pen name as your ‘business name’.

Me, personally, I have two businesses - one is Accentuate Services, where I have an EIN under that business name. I’ve been in business since 1994 with that business name, but I used my social security number as a sole proprietorship until 2000. Prior to 2000, I worked only with people I knew and had met in person, locally. When I began to expand my freelance business and work it full time instead of part time, and started providing virtual services online, I applied for the EIN and have used it ever since.

My other ‘business’ is my writing. You see, I don’t use my real name as a writer or online. I used a registered pseudonym: Michelle L Devon. This registered pseudonym is able to be used in place of my real name for several reasons - 1) I filed a fictious name license, 2) when I applied for my second EIN with the IRS, I registered my ‘business’ name as Michelle L Devon. I use my pen name as my business name. Why? Well, Michelle L Devon is not my legal name. Because of this, when someone pays me, I would have to reveal my real name to a bunch of people to get a check I can cash or deposit at my bank.

If, however, as I did, I registered for an EIN to make my business name my pen name, then I can take that EIN paperwork to the bank and add my pen name to the signature card of my bank account and thus I am allowed to cash or deposit payments into my bank account, without having to tell any of the contract places what my legal name is, social security number, and home mailing address is - I never have to reveal my real name or information to anyone, and it’s all perfectly legal.

NOTE: some banks require a business account when you do this, some don’t. Some business accounts charge a monthly maintenance fee - just another thing to keep in mind. This maintenance fee is deductible if you itemize deductions.

If you’re worried about freelancing for someone because they are asking for your social security number, having an EIN is an easy, free way to bypass the social request, give the EIN instead, and if you are freelancing full time as your career, it may give you some tax breaks at the end of the year too.

Unlike a social security number, an EIN cannot be used by itself to establish credit, identify an individual (it only identifies a business), or to start charge accounts with vendors - all of those things require the social of the principals of the business or articles of incoproration from from a business to do that. A social security number, on the other hand, can be used for identity theft, to establish credit and charge accounts, and to identify a person. Of the two, and EIN is absolutely the safest way to go.

Keep freelancing!

Love and stuff,

Michy

PS: I didn’t start my work day until almost 4pm today. THIS is the freedom that freelancing as a career can afford you. I didn’t even have to call my boss to call in ’sick’!

Hi everyone! Ready to talk freelancing today?

There are a few things to consider prior to starting a freelance career - things like whether you want to work full time or part time as a freelancer, whether you want to work from home, what services you want to provide, etc. These things are important. I actually started my freelancing career offering administrative services, virtual assisting and the like. I later moved to bookkeeping and tax filing, which was actually quite lucrative. After that, I added audio and video transcribing. My goodness, there is a ton of money and work available in the transcription field if you can type fast and don’t mind being chained to a set of headphones all day.

Eventually, I landed an editing gig with one of the freelance bid sites (Elance.com , and yes, I’ll be talking more about bid sites as the blog progresses),  and that led me to editing some ebooks for a small publisher, who in turn referred me to a larger publisher, that publisher was impressed with my work, and that lead to another referral… and editing just became my niche. Within a year, I knew that I no longer wanted to do the administrative services, and since I was writing in my spare time on the side, I decided to combine the two, drop the adminsitrative work, and the rest, as they say, is history.

You’ll eventually find your niche too. My niche is editing and writing services for my freelancing career. I am a freelance editor and a freelance writer, and those are really the only things I do anymore. I love doing both of them, and they require different skill sets, so I never get bored. To start with, decide what you’re good at, then decide what you enjoy (not always the same thing: I was excellent at accounting and taxes but hated that line of work). You might want to start with what you’re good at, while doing what you enjoy on the side, and then slowly balance the two, then phase out the things you don’t enjoy anymore once you’re making money.

Once you’ve decided what you want to do, then you have to set about how you’re going to do it.

It is not as simple as just sitting down and working. Our world is truly a global economy, and I have worked as a contractor for people in Spain, England, Australia, India and more, not to mention people right here in the good old USA. Fortunately, as a freelancer, you don’t need to worry about the laws and taxes in these other locations, but you absolutely need to know about them in yours.

So, according to the government, what do you need to tell them about your business?

TAXES

If you plan to freelance from home, part time, and you hold down a full time job or a part time job elsewhere where you pay taxes, you really don’t have to tell the government much about your freelancing business. However, and this is very important, you absolutely must report all money earned from freelancing on your taxes. If it’s five bucks or 500,000, it must be reported. Now, the amount of money you make, how you make it, and how you are paid become important in how you report it.

I won’t get into the tax code right now, as that is something even tax professionals have trouble understanding, and I’m surely not going to give tax advice either, but the point is that you should know what your tax liabilities and responsibilities are when you start freelancing.

W9, 1099-MISC, IDENTIFYING INFORMATION

Any one business or entity in the US paying you more than 500 in one calendar year is going to be required to send you a 1099-misc for at the end of the year. They will fill out this form by requesting form you an W9. Now, some companies don’t require w9s on file, but will ask you for information the same as what is needed for a w9 and by registering for work with them, registering for their website, etc, you are agreeing to the w9 information being used.

This information will include your name, address, mailing address, account number with the company (if necessary), and some type of tax identifying number. This might include an EIN, TIN or social security number. Tomorrow’s post will talk about what each of these items are and how to choose the right one for you. For now, know that as you go about setting up work for your freelancing business, these companies do indeed have a legitimate right to ask for this information, and in fact, they are required to keep it on file for anyone making more than the threshold.

LOCAL, STATE, FEDERAL FREELANCING REGULATIONS

Another thing to consider when starting a freelance business is going to be  what the business codes are in your area, state, etc. Federally, you are not required to register your business in any way, and if you are a sole proprietor (meaning YOU are the only one to ‘own’ your business, and most freelancers are sole proprietorships, so there’s really not much to do until it comes time to file taxes at the end of the first year (and perhaps at the quarter the following year if your income is significant).

However, with states and city/muncipality codes, some places require that if you operate a business, work from home, you must register that business with your city, state or county. Mostly, this is because of zoning issues and wanting to know if there’s going to be traffic in and out during the day and such. There may be a license or a fee required to start freelancing from home as self employed. You will want to call your local officials to ask those questions before you start making significant money and building your business.

SUPPLIES, SPACE, TIME

Lastly, you want to  be sure to set aside an ‘office’ space in your home, however small it may be. I know this might not seem necessary to you, since you’re working from home, you play on the computer all the time, think it’ll all be okay, but truth is, when you start working from home full time, you are really going to want a place that is ‘work’ and a place that is ‘home’. The lines between the two WILL blur, but you’ll want a designated space just for your work items, work files, information, etc, that is separate from your home.

In the beginning, you’ll want to make a schedule and adhere to it. Once you’re in the swing of things, you can break the schedule and do whatever needs done, when it needs done, but in the beginning, especially if you’re transitioning from J-O-B to freelancing from home, the temptation to sleep in, and piddle around the house will be great. Set aside specific times to work, and specific times to play, until you get used to the new routine.

I wrote an article detailing the top five myths and truths about working from home. Give it a read, and you’ll understand exactly why I’m suggesting you make this schedule and adhere to it in the beginning.

Tomorrow, I’m going to talk a little bit about how to protect yourself when freelancing online, what to look for to show a legitimate opportunity versus a scam, and talk a bit about identification numbers and personal information when checking out freelance opportunities, so stick with me!

Everyone have a good day, and happy freelancing!

Love and stuff,

Michy

  Hi everyone! Michelle L Devon here, or Michy, if you will.

A few months ago, I posted a link to Today.com in my writers forum, letting folks know it was a legitimate paying lead for freelance writers. I had verified the lead with others who had written for Today.com, but  I never actually came over here to sign up myself. Strange, huh?

Well, tonight, after seeing how everyone was doing, and being a glutton for punishment, not to mention loving to blog, I decided to sign up to blog for Today.com myself, and add just one more blog to the long list of existing blogs I manage. Call me crazy!

The result of that decision is this blog, called: Freelancing!

On this blog, I will be writing about freelancing tips, hints and strategies. While I’ll primarily focus on freelance writing, I will also be talking about other freelancing strategies and avenues for income while working from home or being self employed. These strategies may include things such as paid-to-blog, paid-to-read, bid sites (such a oDesk, Elance and Guru), as well as discussing how to promote a freelance business - regardless of the services or products your company provides - through avenues such as article promotion, advertising, pinging, link reciprocity, social networking, press releases and more. Also, I intend to discuss some of the legal and fiscal aspects of freelancing, including some potential pitfalls that sometimes cause self-employed professionals to give it up and go back to the corporate world, and ways to prevent that from happening.

Again, I will focus mostly on writing, because that is the biggest part of what I do, and any good company needs to be able to ‘write’ well, or at least hire someone who can, to promote the company… but mostly, I want this blog to be about the struggles and triumphs of freelancing, in general, for those who want to build their own freelance business, regardless of the services provided.

Soon, I will have some great links and places to visit in the blogroll here to help with your freelancing career, along with some neat tools to subscribe to this blog, my newsletter, or other things to help you build your freelancing career, particularly if you are wanting to be a freelance writer, but for anybody looking to freelance for a living, give up your day job, or just bring in a few hundred bucks more per month.

Thanks for visiting, and I hope you’ll keep coming back everyday for new updates. I’ll do my besst to update by 10am, central time, Mon-Fri, at a minimum, sometimes more than that!

Love and stuff,

Michy