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This week we look at Career Interview with a Freelance Radio Journalist by Creative Interviews. In this video Career interview with freelance radio journalist, Rene Gutel discusses the freedom and challenges of being a freelance journalist for NPR.

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Is your website delivering new clients on a regular basis? Is your site’s sales funnel optimized? Have you been meaning to make changes to your site that improve your bottom line? Realistically, how effective is your freelance business website today?

If you rely on the web for your business, then you worry about getting more people to your site, and converting more of them into clients. Most people worry a lot about the former, and a little about the latter. This is backwards, because a small amount of quality traffic combined with a high-converting website can yield much greater returns for a freelancer than lots of traffic and a poor website.

The good news is that there are many simple changes you can make to your own site to increase the bites you get from prospects. Let’s look at setting objectives, targeting headings and graphics, utilizing each page area of your site, calls to action, and more. Here are ten quick website changes that will take you no more than 30 minutes each to implement.

1. Figure out your site’s objective

What is the business goal of your website? Surprisingly few freelancers have a clear answer. If you don’t know the ultimate objective of your site, then the site is a liability rather than an asset. Any clients you get from it are purely accidental.

So the first thing you need to work out is the purpose of your site in terms of your business goals. Let me offer a word of hard-won advice here: the primary objective of your site is probably not to make sales. That’s because the vast majority of prospects will not decide to hire you on their first visit. Repeat visitors are more likely to hire you. So your site’s primary objective should probably be to get prospects to come back.

2. Figure out each page’s objective

Needless to say, each page on your site must have an objective that relates back to your central business goal.

Needless to say, each page on your site must have an objective that relates back to your central business goal. You need to map out how your pages contribute to this goal, placing their objectives into a logical thought sequence for prospects. For example, it doesn’t make sense to ask someone to hire you straight from your homepage—he won’t yet know enough about you to make that kind of commitment. It makes sense to ask him to learn about your services, maybe; or to learn about the problem that he faces which you can solve.

I suggest two objectives per page, because very often a prospect will be interested in achieving one or the other of them, depending on how informed he is. On your services page it’s smart to have an objective for someone who has seen enough to know he wants to talk; and another for someone who is still thinking and wants to learn more about you. By presenting an either/or decision, rather than a yes/no one, you are more likely to get a positive response and so capture both prospects.

3. Fix your masthead

If you don’t have a masthead that clearly articulates where your prospect is as soon as he arrives on your site, you’re going to lose an awful lot of potential clients. Someone who can’t figure out where he is won’t stick around.

Nearly all websites do this wrong, and freelancers’ sites are no exception. Take a look at your masthead now. Does it articulate where someone has come from when landing on your website? Does it use the language your prospect would use? It’s generally best to have both a logotype and a tagline, even if your company name is self-explanatory (like “Mac’s Web Design”), just to set your prospect at ease.

4. Develop prospect-centered headlines for every page

As an average rule, only about 20% of the people who read a headline will read the copy. The purpose of the headline is to increase that number as much as possible. If you don’t have a good headline on each page, then prospects won’t read your copy.

Just as in real life, talking about yourself turns people off.

To ensure they do, you need to convey value. To do that, you must engage with what your prospect is thinking. When he arrives on your homepage, for example, he’s thinking about his problem, and certainly not about you. He doesn’t know you.

Yet, a huge number of freelance sites have giant headlines saying something like, “Hi, I’m James, and I love web design”. Nothing could interest your prospects less. Just as in real life, talking about yourself turns people off. Unlike real life, though, this faux pas will cost you a lot of money.

5. Speak normally

Assuming your headlines get your prospect into the page content, you now face another hurdle. If your copy doesn’t speak in the way your prospect would speak—and if it doesn’t talk about the things that are most interesting to him—then he won’t read it. In real life, if you walk up to someone and start talking in a very strange way like a brochure, or if you start talking about yourself, it turns people off; they think you’re a little bit special and they try to leave.

Don’t make people leave your website. Check that your copy is talking about your prospect and his problems. The number of times the words “you” and “your” appear should vastly outweigh the number of times the words “I” and “me” do.

6. Ask for an action

Calls to action are critical. If you don’t ask people to act, they won’t.

Calls to action are critical. If you don’t ask people to act, they won’t. People actually want to be told what to do on a website; they want to be given specific actions to take, so they don’t have to figure out what comes next and how to do it.

If you rely on your navigation to get people around, then you’re going to find that a lot of them don’t get around; they just leave. Calls to action that reflect the two objectives on each page, and move prospects through a logical sequence on your site, will dramatically increase conversions.

Make sure your calls to action are weighted, so one of them is visually dominant over the other. This helps prospects decide which to click. One orange CTA and one gray one will do better than two orange ones.

7. Make your navigation boring

One of the worst blights for prospects is branded navigation. For example, your about page has some cute name reflecting your obscure origins, or your contact page is called “Carrier Pigeon”. If prospects don’t know what a navigation entry means, they won’t experiment to find out.

People almost never click links if they aren’t confident about where they go. When prospects don’t find the word “Contact” in your nav bar, they don’t click the carrier pigeon. They find a freelancer who does have a contact link. So make your navigation as boring and predictable as possible.

8. Make it readable

Sensible typography is crucial to engaging prospects. If they can’t read your copy, they’ll leave. There are five things you need to check here, and although you might need the help of your web designer, most themes will let you do this stuff yourself:

• All your body copy should be aligned to a single left margin. If it’s not, it’s harder to read, harder to follow, harder to pick out as body copy in the first place—and people will read it less.
• Make sure it’s at least 16 pixels in size. You might think 16px looks big, but that’s just because you’re accustomed to smaller fonts, because a lot of web designers think 14 and 13px fonts look swish. If your audience is over twenty, you’re going to lose readers below 16px; it’s that simple. 16px is the minimum.
• Have a reasonable line-height: the distance between each line of text should be 130% to 150% of the text size.
• Check your measure: the width of a line should be no more than 75 characters. After this the eye has trouble following one line to the next, and your readership drops off again.
• Make sure your copy is set black or dark gray on white, and not the other way round—where fifty per cent of the people who would read it, won’t.

9. Check your images

Images have only two purposes: to tease a prospect, or convey value.

Images have only two purposes: to tease a prospect, or convey value. An image must present some kind of situation where your prospect thinks, “Ooh, what’s going on here? I want to read the copy and find out”; or it must convey value more clearly than the copy itself could—for example using a chart or a product image, where even if you used several paragraphs of copy you couldn’t get across the point as clearly and forcibly.

Any other kind of image is a waste of upload bandwidth, and a waste of your prospects’ time, because its visual dominance means prospects are looking at it, rather than reading your copy. And if they’re not reading your copy, they’re not buying your freelance services.

10. Create a footer

This final suggestion sounds incredibly simple, but you’d be surprised at its effectiveness. A footer with your full contact information—that’s your physical address and your phone number (and even your fax number if you’re a time traveler from 1980)—will incline many people to trust you. They scroll down to the bottom of the page to make sure you’re a legitimate company that really exists in the real world, and not some kind of scam in cyberspace.

If you have this information in your footer, people feel much more comfortable with you—especially older people who, like my own father, are still a little bit concerned about using their credit card online because as soon as they enter it someone, somewhere is magically going to steal it.

Get to it!

So that’s ten things you can start doing today to increase your online sales. Go to your website now, and check it against this list. Make a note of the things that could be improved, and then commit to doing one thing each day. I guarantee you’ll see results within a week.

Photo credit: Some rights reserved by elenathewise.

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As freelancers, the main thing we can sell is our services. Clients come to us because they want a particular project completed and we have the right skill set to accomplish it. But the truth of the matter is that we have a little more room to maneuver, at least when it comes to what we sell. We can upsell and cross sell our services to further establish our relationship with our clients and improve our bottom line.

Selling the Next Step in the Process

If, for instance, you create websites for your clients, you’ve probably been asked to arrange for domain names and hosting in the past. Actually acting as a hosting provider for your clients may not be at the top of the list of things you want to do, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t sell them hosting: many hosts offer the ability to resell their packages, as well as set up domain names through them. You don’t have to worry about actually handling the hosting, but you can still be in on the deal.

The same goes for other products that help your clients achieve their end goals. Many freelancers have long worked with printers and other companies to offer clients a one-stop service. You can do the same — although, if you want to stand out, it’s worth digging a little more into what your clients ultimately need.

Selling the Products You Recommend

A writer may be brought in just to write the content for a client’s email newsletter, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t get asked to recommend the software necessary for actually sending out the newsletter in question. Many such tools and products have affiliate programs that make it easy to sell to your clients, and receive a benefit from the purchase. You can also set yourself up as a reseller of such products, depending on how much time and energy you’re willing to put into the project.

Selling the Training Your Clients Need

Setting up a blog for a client isn’t going to do either of you any good if she doesn’t know how to use it and keeps calling you for help. By offering training materials, like ebooks or videos, you can head that problem off before it actually becomes an issue. There are many products available that you can resell or, if you’re really familiar with the tool or work in question, you can make your own.

There is a benefit in creating your own products to sell, in that you get to keep the entire sales price. Of course, you will have to invest time and money into creating a product worth selling in the first place, but, depending on your freelancing situation, that may be relatively simple. Go through the numbers and see what you think you can make before committing yourself to creating your own product.

The Secret to Selling More than Freelance Services

If selling a few things beyond your services appeals to you, there are certain steps you have to take. Most importantly, you need to make sure that everything you even consider selling is a good fit with the types of projects you already take on. By being the best freelancer your clients have every worked with, you’ve already established yourself as an expert in their eyes. But that expertise only extends so far. If you’re recommending certain products, you want to make sure that your clientele will understand that you’re the right person to buy products from — it’s a direct connection from your expertise as a freelancer.

It’s also important not to promote products over your services. In most cases, you won’t be selling products with such a high margin that each sale is more lucrative than landing a new project. Cross selling a product should be a follow up — a softer sale — to your own services, which will bring you the most money up front. There’s a careful balance that you have to strike.

Photo credit: Some rights reserved by james.gordon6108.

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Recently I parted ways with a long time client.  It was an agonizing decision: my contact person had always been wonderful to work with.  The projects I worked on were always right up my alley.  So why did I ditch this seemingly perfect client?  Their payment came from a third party, and typically took up to a year to arrive. And if I didn’t put pressure on them, I’d probably never get paid at all.

I had prepped myself for this for months.  I told myself that before taking another project, I’ll explain the problem and suggest better payment terms. If no improvement could be made, I’ll pass on the job. However, I accepted ‘just one more’ assignment a few too many times before I finally bit the bullet.

It can be hard to turn down a client, especially in this still-questionable economy. But there are times when it’s better to draw your shutter than to jeopardize your sanity and work flow just to please one client. Here are five examples of when it may be time to let go of a client by firing them:

1. Unreliable Payer

As I discovered, when payment arrives on a slow boat from China, or if a client acts financially unpredictable more than once, rethink why you stick with them.

2. High Overhead

An overly demanding customer will steal time away from your other endeavors.  “I once turned down a client because the ongoing work would have consumed about 80% or more of my time,” says Rachel Lom, Corporate Writer and owner of Write Image, LLC in Appleton, Wisconsin. “I think it can be bad business practice to put all your proverbial eggs into one basket. To make this work, I would have had to turn down other work and basically devote myself to this client.”

3. Too Annoying

Some clients just have a high annoyance factor: they require too much hand-holding, insist you follow specific procedures or attend unrelated meetings, or other potential problems. These annoyances may become apparent from your previous experiences with them, from rumors mentioned by other freelancers, or just the vibe they give you. Decide what your red flags are, and stand by them.

4. Questionable Outcome

Sometimes, trusting your instinct is a smart business move. “As a professional ghostwriter, I always trust my intuition and turn down book projects that I feel are too unfocused, plagiaristic, not marketable,” says Novelist/Playwright/Ghostwriter/Script Consultant Christina Hamlett of Pasadena, California.  “In the initial consultation I do with each prospective client, I can generally glean a sense of what they’d be like by the types of questions they ask, the amount of work they’ve already done, and their knowledge of the publishing industry.”

5. Too Random

Some clients micro-manage you, others set you free like a helium balloon on a summer’s day. The latter will leave you spending too much time trying to figure out exactly what they want.  They themselves probably don’t know what they want, until you’re finished, when they’re certain that what you delivered wasn’t what they wanted.  “I’m always wary of  ’mission creep‘, that is, when the assignment expands for the same money agreed to at the outset, or some other rendition of that,” says Financial Writer Bruce W. Fraser. If a potential project seems too unspecified, get the details before going further, and be sure to clarify your terms for revisions and rework.

It can be tough to say no, but if you do end up bypassing a job, don’t beat yourself up over it. Remind yourself of your reasons, then use your energy to focus on marketing efforts.

Photo credit: Some rights reserved by Lucas Cobb.

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Successful freelancers know that time is money. Efficient task and time management are the key factors for freelancers. One freelancer may simultaneously lead several projects, need to communicate with a dozen of clients, and have numerous deadlines to hit. To turn freelance chaos into prioritized work order, there are many project management tools in the getting things done software market.

However, most project management tools are expensive or don’t meet freelance needs. Let’s face the truth: the majority of freelancers are budget-limited, work in small teams with multiple clients located worldwide, or are scattered all over the country. Thus, freelancers want cheap, ideally free, highly customizable project management solutions for efficient team-working.

Let me introduce 10 free, open source project management products that are likely to fit your freelance requirements:

1. Collabtive

Collabtive is a web-based open source project management suite. A quick look inside shows that Collabtive has all the basic features: milestones, task management, time tracking, calendar. Moreover, you can import Basecamp projects and get RSS updates. Laconic, clean interface can be enriched by paid plugins provided by the vendor.

2. GanttProject

GanttProject is a free cross-platform project management tool. If you are a Gantt chart addict, than give a try to GanttProject. You can set milestones, plan resources, measure results, make reports and share projects.

3. phpCollab

phpCollab is a customizable open source team-working solution. You can manage projects, set tasks, view milestones. Launched in 2002, phpCollab stands out for sufficient online collaboration tools such as discussions, notifications, support requests.

4. phpEasyProject

phpEasyProject is invented for small teams. Though the interface is incredibly simple and clean, all the basic collaboration features are packed. You can create projects, set up tasks and manage to-do list. Dotproject includes a report export feature and performance statistics. So you can keep track of all current team activity.

5. Project.net

Project.net describes itself as enterprise-level project management software with open code. You can manage projects, collaborate, and use social sharing tools within your team. To tack projects easier, try project templates and dashboards. Besides, Project.net offers paid services like training or top-priority support so you can migrate to the new project management system smoothly.

6. ]project-open[

]project-open[ is more than just a project management suite. It claims to cover related business areas like CRM, invoicing and payments. Standing close to ERP software, ]project-open[ performs all basic project management tasks. You can manage projects, assign tasks, generate reports and track overall results.

7. Redmine

Redmine is a flexible web-platform for project management. Redmine is based on Ruby on Rails framework and has multiple database support: Postgre SQL, SQLite and MySQL. The application is multilingual and available in more than 30 languages. Redmine provides users with Gantt chart, calendar, time tracking features which are essential for project planning.

8. TaskJuggler

TaskJuggler is project management software for serious project managers as it’s written on the website. No matter how serious you are, TaskHuggler will help you to manage tasks, project files, analyze project performance. The data is presented in dashboards and charts so you can have all info at your hand.

9. Teamlab

Full Disclosure: I work on Teamlab.

Teamlab is a A-grade free project management software. It has 4 modules: project management, business collaboration, documents processing and instant messaging. You can set tasks, milestones, track project activity and generate reports, share bookmarks and wiki pages with your colleagues, keep your teammates up to date with news and even create a poll. Teamlab has a fully featured document management suite. Users can edit, store and share documents right on the corporate portal. Thus you can get rid of Google Docs or Dropbox/Box.net file uploads.

10. WebCollab

WebCollab is online collaboration platform suitable for freelancers. You can make to-do lists, manage tasks via calendar, and manage projects. WeCollab supports social activity. You can post messages in forums or add new contacts or files for further team work.

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There is an old adage in the business world that “employees don’t quit jobs, they quit managers.” The idea is rather basic and reminds us that it is most often the people and not the actual job that generates turnover.

I think this philosophy holds true to running a freelance based business. But consider it this way: “clients don’t quit projects, they quit freelancers.” Heck, a client might be using a freelancer to begin with because they quit an agency that was driving them nuts.

What I want to talk about here are some ways to develop a business based on clients that don’t want to quit. After all, if we effectively retain our clients we will spend less time searching for new ones. Not to mention that extremely happy clients will most often refer new business.

Here are four things to keep in mind:

1 – Learn to listen

As a customer of any type, one of the most frustrating things is to not be heard.

As a customer of any type, one of the most frustrating things is to not be heard. Many companies will turn to freelancers as an alternative to larger companies for this reason alone.

This is a point of real opportunity for the freelancer. We have the opportunity to create a personal experience. And this begins with listening. The more you listen to them, the more you will know how to tweak your services to suit their needs.

I am not suggesting we bend our business to fit every client. Instead I am suggesting that if we simply listen to the needs of our client we will quickly identify small ways to tweak things to make them exceptionally happy.

Never forget that your client knows their business better then you. So if you are called in as an expert in your niche, it doesn’t mean you rule them.

2 – Stick to your passions

I have written here on Freelance Switch about casting a vision and sticking to it before so I won’t repeat myself in depth. But I do want to point out that the more we stick to the things we absolutely love; the more likely we are to do a fantastic job. As a result, your clients will get a better product and be all the happier for it.

It can be very tempting to allow ourselves to be drawn into lucrative work that simply doesn’t strike at our core passions. For example, I am not a fan of SEO work. It might be tempting to sell people on those services, but I am not very excited about it, so I don’t even try.

Being a one man show means you have to be extra careful to only take on the type of work you will enjoy. Sure you might have to bend this at times, but hopefully over time your passions result in such great work that new clients line up and you have no trouble filling your schedule.

3 – Focus on results

Depending on the type of work you do this idea might present varying degrees of difficulty. But the idea is to make sure you’re always focused on the results your work will produce for your clients. This ties directly into listening, but almost always means trying to address the client’s bottom line. Let’s consider some examples.

Look for ways to help your client with a real focus on results and you will find that business owners respond very well.

Let’s say you’re a freelance accountant. It is one thing to simply do what you’re told, to track the money and generate tax forms. But what if you were to review things and help your clients understand how to more effectively manage their money and increase their profits. I imagine this is par for the course with larger business, but most likely a freelance accountant would work with smaller shops.

Another example might be a freelance web designer. Focus on results for your client by digging into their analytics to better understand their audience. And try to design around real tangible goals. In particular look for the points of conversion that will turn their visitors into paying customers. It seems so fundamental and obvious, yet many fail to take such a focus.

Look for ways to help your client with a real focus on results and you will find that business owners respond very well.

4 – Go above and beyond

One of the easiest ways to avoid losing clients is to go above and beyond. Providing that extra wow factor to your clients is a great way to make them feel they are getting great value for their investment in you.

One way to do this is to plan ahead. Come up with 2 or 3 bonus features ahead of time that can be somewhat generically applied to all clients. Prep them ahead of time so that your bonus feature has great value, but costs you very little in time or money.

This could be as simple as guided instructions for important follow up items after launching a new site. Or even a before and after assessment of site traffic after a rebuild. Things like this show value to the client and yet, can be very easy to pull off.

One of my favorite examples of this is using a Google alert for your client’s company name. And when you see interesting things come in send them an email. It gives you a reason to contact your client, and makes you look as though you’re watching out for them. Depending on how web savvy your client is this can be a simple and effective technique.

It might take some creative thinking, but look for ways to build a wow factor into your every day work.

Don’t get fired

After observing the shortcomings of agencies I really believe it creates an opportunity for freelancers to shine and avoid getting fired. I hope these ideas challenge you to build lasting relationships with your clients in new ways.

Photo credit: Some rights reserved by disorderly.

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Looking for a new client? The FreelanceSwitch job board is a great resource of freelance gigs and opportunities. These opportunities are in various fields, from development to writing to design, and come from a wide range of potential clients. The job board is hand-moderated by dedicated staff and volunteers from the freelance community.

Each week, we’ll feature a selection of the best job opportunities posted for the week. This week, we’re featuring jobs in Freelance Magneto Developer, Social Media, Front End Web Development and more!

To apply for any of these jobs, simply pick up a FreelanceSwitch membership for an affordable $7 a month. See something you like? Join now!

Freelance Magneto Developer

Budget: $$1,000 to $2,500

Do you pride yourself in producing awesome ecommerce websites using Magento? Do people find it surprising that you can fit both your creative and technical sensibilities into one brain?

We are looking for an Freelance Magento Developer to come on and help us take on essential project using the Magento platform.

Currently small and versatile, we have recently moved into the heart of New York’s Digital District and are just about bursting at the seams with all of the work we have. You will be freelancing with a rapidly growing company with the expectation that you will help us manage this growth and perpetuate the culture that has gotten us this far: constant learning and improvement, a cerebral yet open approach to brainstorming, and also the periodic “Watch This”, the phrase we say when we’re about to demolish expectations.

Learn more & apply!

A Fast (x)html / html5 / CSS Coder

Budget: $500 to $1,000

Hi Guys, I need 3 FAST html/css coders for ongoing freelance work…
We like projects to be swiftly complete and it can be very painful for the process when our projects are held up due to slow turnaround times.

• When submitting examples please provide QUALITY designs that you have coded, please do not show low level rubbish.
• Html5/ css3 is where the web is heading so we would expect that you are able to do so.
• Jquery is the way of the web these days, so a basic knowledge to implement widgets and operate basic functions is desireable.

To clarify…we are looking for css/html coders ONLY not multi-discipline specialists, so please ensure you fit the criteria?

Learn more & apply!

Social Media

Budget: $500 to $1,000

I need to recommend to a client of mine somebody with social media expertise. We need to increase interaction with Facebook page, create a twitter account and get followers on twitter account.

It could need some work on the Facebook fan page. We’re not looking for a SEO work. Please send me your Portfolio and few clients you helped and how. Eventually a budget range you expect to be paid for this type of work.

We need somebody in USA so you can deal with the client directly.

Learn more & apply!

Freelance Front End Web Developer

Budget: $5,000 to $10,000

We are looking for an expert front end web developer. This is a fairly large project where you’d work on site at least 2 days a week and working on your own some too. This is a fun environment and you’ll be working on a team of employees and freelancers together so you’ll need to be able to collaborate and work in a team environment. Hourly rate is between $40 and $60 an hour depending on experience.

Needed skills and knowledge: HTML, CSS3, Basic Photoshop, An eye for design Nice, but not necessary skills: Javascript, PHP, Graphic Design Send your information, a link to your work and or online portfolio and anything else we should know about you.

Learn more & apply!

Freelance Interactive Designer w/email Design Experience

Budget: $1,000 to $2,500

As a freelance creative team member, you will work closely with our Studio, Designers and ADs to design polished and professional online (and sometimes print) marketing for our diverse range of clients.

Projects rage from eMails, ad banners, facebook pages, web pages, print collateral, menus, and newsletters.

This position requires excellent communication skills, understanding of direct response marketing, and the ability to multi-task on multiple projects at the same time.

Headquartered in Marina Del Rey, we are a multi-disciplinary advertising agency focused on smart creative campaigns backed up by measurable data.

Core Duties and Responsibilities:

• Create and produce sound creative design on-brief and on-time
• Handle multiple requests simultaneously
• Consistently develop fresh concepts that directly impact product sales while maintaining brand standards
• Strong command of design, layout and typography
• Demonstrate excellent problem-solving and communication skills
• Attention to detail, ask questions and suggest improvements to create the most engaging work possible

Learn more & apply!

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10 Apps for More Efficient Tweeting

As Twitter continues to grow at an incredible pace each day, the importance of the platform grows with it. Developing a strong social media presence and growing your network of followers demands being active on Twitter. Fortunately, there exist many tools out there that assist us in making our life easier and more efficient on Twitter.

Here are ten tools that will increase your efficiency, while allowing you to retain your genuine personality when tweeting.

Why You Can’t Buy Creativity

“The work had better be good, I’m paying them enough.” Over the years I’ve heard this statement – or versions of it – from many different managers charged with getting creative work out of their teams. From a conventional management perspective, it probably sounds like common sense. But to anyone who understands the nature of creativity and what motivates creative people, it’s a recipe for disaster.

How to Grow Social Media Leads: New Research

Have you wondered, “How often should I post articles on my blog?” or “How does my social media reach impact lead generation and traffic?” Two brand-new studies by HubSpot and Edison Research provide fresh insights on these important questions. Consider these five findings as you enhance your social media and blogging strategies.

Google+ in 15 Minutes a Day

There’s value in social media – I can trace real revenue to it, and I’m not the only one. The first 30 minutes are incredibly valuable – it’s the next 7 hours that are the problem. I understand both extremes – I once spent 24 straight hours on Twitter, and I’ve quit social media cold-turkey for 30 days twice. So, here are a few tips for adding Google+ to the mix without losing what little work-day you have left

How do I stop being so damn lazy?

Perhaps our generation’s greatest failing is how lazy we are. How many of my readers have sent me emails talking about how they want to change…how they want to improve their finances, or earn more, or get healthier…or even READ my book (which is sitting under their bed)…but they simply can’t find the motivation to do so?

3 Steps To Avert Disaster When Things Go Wrong

Savvy entrepreneurs know there are a set of simple steps that can be taken in just about any gone-wrong scenario to help get – whatever disaster has befallen – back on track. Let’s explore those steps together.

Half life

The sales cycle of the typical popular book, for example, has a half-life of about two months After two months, the book will probably have made half of all the sales it will make in its entire lifetime. For an internet viral sensation, the half-life is probably closer to six hours, measured from the moment the traffic peaks.

Picking A Mobile Support Strategy For Your Website

many website owners have begun to develop a strategy for providing information and services to their mobile visitors. However, mobile strategies can vary massively from website to website, depending on what the company wants to offer visitors. For example, eBay’s strategy will be very different from an individual’s strategy for a portfolio website, which might simply be to improve readability for those viewing on a mobile device.

10 Strategic Questions to Ask Before You Become a Freelancer

Becoming independent is going to be the best thing you’ve ever done for your career–if you do it right. Not everyone is meant for, or even comfortable with, working on their own. It’s important to figure this out before becoming enamored with all the freedom freelancing brings.

You don’t want to leave a good job and then realize too late that freelancing isn’t right for you. So, make sure you ask yourself these questions first in order to determine the answer to the most important question–should you freelance?

7 Sound Techniques for Effective Writing

The following rhetorical tools enrich writing by eliciting a primal emotional response in readers. Be sure they have intrinsic value to the content and do not simply showcase your cleverness. Employ them in moderation, and be true to your voice and the tone of your writing.

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View awesome conference lectures, engaging how to discussions, and high quality freelance business advice via video here on FreelanceSwitch.

This week we look at How To Grow Your Business With Content by Michael Stelzner. Are you wondering why your business needs content? When you produce high-quality content, it’s a gift to your audience that they appreciate.

If you think of your business as a rocket, content is the fuel that moves it forward. Be sure to watch this edition of Social Media Examiner TV where Michael shares 6 awesome ways to grow your business with content and take it to the stratosphere.

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