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

Let’s Talk Freelancing!

Yesterday, I talked about article marketing briefly and said I would discuss it more today. Article marketing is an inexpensive way to generate a buzz about your business and help you increase your PageRank in Google at the same time, while also branding you or your business as a sort of expert in your field.

Here’s how article directories go: you write a short article that is packed with some information your potential clients might find useful that shows you know what you’re talking about in your niche market and that other websites or ezines/newsletters might want to pick up as a feature article or filler content for their site or mailing.

With that article, your name (byline), and an author’s bio is attached, and that bio will have relevant links to your website. Your article gets indexed in Google, and the links are live, and so there’s a bump to PageRank incoming links, and people can click to come to your site. Then, as people pick up your article and it is distributed across the internet or put on other websites and blogs, with your author bio on it, those get indexed too, with your live links, and people again can come to your site and it helps increase PageRank.

If you do this right, you also can write in such a way that people who read it know you know what you’re talking about… it’s a more personal way of showing your potential clients that you know your stuff.

If you’re an editor, like me, you can do what I do: grammar hints and tips, information about how to improve writing, book reviews, etc.

If you’re an administrative freelancer, write about what you do and your field of admin work, or without being ’salesy’, write about why potential clients should outsource their services to freelancers like you. If you’re in the tech field, write some brief how-to things that let potential clients know how to do something simple, and then in the bio section, tell them if they need more help with more advanced things, visit your site.

Of course, if you sell products, you can write information, reviews, uses for your products; tout their benefits, give inside information, and then of course, links to get to your site where you sell the product. (though this blog is really for freelancers, not product sellers)

My favorite article directory is EzineArticles. I have found them to have the best traffic and the best exposure for pick up and reprint on other sites. I highly recommend them. You can see my articles over there by clicking here.

I know some of you who are writers are going to balk at the fact that you’re putting articles up for free, when I say on my other blog about freelance WRITING that you should never give you writing away for free. This is true that I say this, but understand two things 1) THIS blog isn’t about freelance writing but rather about freelancing in general, and that means not everyone who freelances is going to be a writer and 2) I never said not to give writing away for free, but rather, not to give it away without some type of value attached to it. Linkbacks and word-of-mouth advertising and marketing is worth actual money if you’re trying to drive traffic to your site to get customers and to your blogs and other pages that are monetized.

Freelance writers can write articles about why it’s important to hire writers to do web copy, why it’s important to foster a good relationship with writers, why professional writers are better than doing your own writing, what ghostwriting is and how it can benefit the client, etc.

Other freelancers pick their niche and write about benefits of using their services, inside tips and tricks about what they do, etc.

Article directories are an awesome way to help your site get noticed, drive traffic and brand you as a knowledgeable ‘expert’ in your field.

Happy Freelancing!

Love and stuff,
Michy

    Let’s talk freelancing!

So now you’ve set up your website and got your supplies in order, you’ve mailed out your intro letters, so now it’s time to start generating some buzz about your business.

PageRank for Your Business Website

Google PageRank (PR) is essentially a tool in Google that tells the value of the link to your website (at least as far as Google is concerned). The higher your PR is, the higher you will appear in search engine rankings when people use the keywords for your site and your services. The higher you appear in search engine rankings, the moer people looking for your services will find your website, and if your site is quality, the more people who will consider hiring you to provide freelance services to them.

One way to get higher PR is to get quality links to your site. By quality links, I mean links from relevant sites that have decent PRs themselves. This isn’t going to happen overnight, and if you don’t create a bit of a buzz about your website, it’s not going to happen at all.

Create a Buzz: Social Networking

So the first thing you can do to create this buzz is to network on social networking sites. The more professional these social networking sites are, the better. LinkedIn is a good ‘professional’ place, and then you can go with other places like Facebook, Myspace or some of the other social networks. You don’t really want to spam or promote too much on these networks, but they are a chance to create your profile, tell the world who you are and what you do, and then drop your links into your profile so that people can find your website, and then the links help build PR.

Submit Press Releases

Also, you should consider Googling ‘free press release submissions’ and then reading a bit about how to create a press release, and then you can do a press release announcing your business, one announcing your services, one announcing your website, and one for each of your social networks announcing you and your business as a new members.

You can do this on multiple press release sites as well, taking only the amount of time required to copy and paste the release you’ve written on the sites. Yes, there is software you can buy to do this, but I’m a frugal freelancer, and I know many people who dream of running their own freelance business and working from home don’t have the money to fork over for these programs. At worst, more people will see your website and press release and might come visit; at best, several places will pick up at least one of you releases for distribution and lots of people will come to your website and see it.

Expert Articles for Reprint / Article Directories

Next, you can write short, insightful, creative, interesting articles for article directories. My next blog post will explain this more in depth. For now, you can just add it to your list.

Blogs

If you maintain any blogs (and you really should at least have one, doesn’t everyone?), you should put the link to your business on the sidebar of all your blogs. It wouldn’t hurt to post an excited and personal post on your blog about how you are freelancing now, and ask everyone to check out your new website as a favor. You never know who might see it and think, “Hey, I could use their services!”

Ask Others To Help / Network

When you put up the blog posts and social networks, ask your friends and readership if they will help you promote your business. Simply ask them to visit your site, and if they like what they see, to please add your link and business name to their blogroll. You can also find blogs or content sites where people do website reviews for free and ask them if they’ll put up a review of your website.

Advertise

As a last resort, you can advertise your site. There are lots of ways to do this, some of which will cost time and some of which will cost money. I actually created a video promo for free (just my time) for my writers forum, and posted it everywhere I can think to post it without spamming. You can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci0SUE1YjI4.

If you pay for advertising, don’t spend a lot. I’ve found word of mouth and web exposure pays a lot more than paying for ads in the beginning. You can create a few banner ads and ask others to put them up wherever they want/can though, like on blogs and their own websites.

That’s it for today. Just a quickie here: these tips also work for writers who write for paid-to-view content websites to help promote their profiles and articles on those sites as well. Never spam. Never, ever spam. Spamming will hurt your business more than doing nothing at all to promote your business.

Stay tuned for: article marketing for your business and blogs.

Happy freelancing!

Love and stuff,

Michy

  Let’s talk freelancing!

You’ve picked a business name, applied for your EIN or other necessary business licenses and numbers, bought your business cards, set up your home office, purchased all the required equipment, have a website and email set up, and you’re ready to go with your freelance business.

Now all you need are clients.

Uhmmm, how do you find clients for a new business?

NETWORKING!

Networking is the best way to find clients for your freelance business. Who you know, who knows you, and word of mouth are the biggest things that will get your business going and keep it moving forward. Make a list of all your past business contacts. Think outside the box here. Start with obvious folks, people you’ve worked with or for in the past, people you have wanted to work for or with, and competitors of people you’ve worked with and for!

Then think beyond that to anyone you know in the industry you have chosen, as well as businesses in the industry that provide the types of services you’re going to offer. For example, I am a freelance writer, so I made a listing of all the magazines and websites I might be interested in writing for, as well as a list of people who managed ezines and newsletters I have read over the years.

Make the list and get contact information for them, including email address, postal address, contact name (try to get a direct name and not just a title), and a phone number.

After you’ve made your list, first, write a print letter, a physical letter of introduction, and sign and mail it to these people. In the letter, basically just introduce yourself and your new freelance business. Try in this letter not to be too ’salesy’ here. Remember, at this point, you’re only introducing yourself and announcing your new business, NOT trying to gain a client yet. Marketing is much different than making a sale. You want to network with these people, not necessarily work FOR them.

What’s the difference? Well, networking is saying, “Here I am, here’s what I do, you do something similar, so we should know each other.” Making a sale is trying to get them to purchase your services or DO something. You don’t really want to go there yet. Start by mailing the letter and sending a copy of your business card with the letter.

I don’t suppose I can stress enough how important it is that this letter be professional in the writing, the content and the appearance. Make a nice letterhead or get one for free from the Microsoft Office website for Word. Be sure to put your business name, your name, your contact information including: email address, physical address, phone number, and website. Be sure everything is spelled properly and the grammar is good. Keep it to one page only. Don’t send any sales letters, flyers or advertisements yet. These things can come later. However, you can consider sending goodies. Free pens, scratch pads, lollipops with your business name on the sticks, something cute and memborable that doesn’t cost a lot can really make people remember you.

After  you mail that letter, you can then follow up with an email that addresses the letter, about two weeks after sending the letter out. The email can just basically say something along the lines of following up on the letter you sent, mention that you hope they kept your business card, and then provide them with a link to your website. This will keep you in their mind as well as providing an easy to access link to your website. Most people will at least click to see your site, but they won’t take a printed letter and type your website URL to see it.

About a week after the email, if you still haven’t heard from them, you can either let it go, or follow up with a direct phone call. Make a lunch date. Offer to take them to lunch (and pay for it!), something, anything to get a chance to network with these people you want to work with and for.

Then, always leave it with a, “…keep me in mind, and if you know anyone….”

Letters of introduction do work. However, keep in mind, they don’t work immediately, and you still need to follow up - this is just a way to get your foot in the door and to announce yourself to them.

Tomorrow, I’ll discuss other ways of networking and finding clients for your freelance business, but letters of introduction are a good way to, well, to introduce yourself!

Stay tuned tomorrow for other ways to connect with potential clients and stay tuned also for information about freelance bid sites and how to use them to gain a client list and get references.

Until then, Happy Freelancing!

Love and stuff,

Michy

  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

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