|
|
One of the most frequent questions asked by freelancers is “How do I save more time and be more productive? How do I get some time to rest?”. Since it doesn’t make sense to be making money without having the time to enjoy it, I’d say managing time is of the essence in the home and freelancing business. Because there is abundant job for freelancers, it is only natural to take and accept so many jobs. But when it gets too much, it becomes hazardous not only to the freelancer but to the freelancer’s family and loved ones.
The novelty of working for ourselves and determining how much time we have to ourselves is an appealing concept. The interesting thing about freelancing is you get to determine how much time you spend by yourself, your working hours, and most importantly, your income. However, the novelty of working for just a few hours wears off after you start getting jobs as a freelancer. If your work and reputation is good, you are bound to get more jobs and consequently, less time to relax.
Unfortunately, so many freelancers just keep working. The time to relax and spend more time with the family is suddenly not just there anymore. So, how do you manage your time to not only afford you enough time to spend with your kids, but also to maximize your productivity
1. Don’t bite more off than you can chew.
Activity does not necessarily mean progress. Accepting every job that comes your way is not only dangerous, it is suicidal. You’ll end up working yourself to death for just a few extra bucks. Choose your jobs wisely as you do not want to be swamped. If you have a specified target, go for jobs that will help you achieve that target. If not, you’ll end up leaving the really important things like family, relationships and love behind while thinking “I’ll soon have time for them”. If you have to say “No” to an offer, say it. It doesn’t matter how juicy the offer is. The single biggest reason people opt for freelancing is to be able to spend more time with their loved ones. Imagine the disappointment your son would feel if you failed in your promise to help him build that tree house he’s been asking for over the weekend all because of a project you had to attend to.
2. Outsource.
If you have a huge workload and cant seem to meet the deadline, outsource your work. There are other freelancers that are willing to take the work off your hands. Develop networks and partnerships with other freelancers that you trust. For example, you can write the article and find someone else to type or proofread it, thus freeing up some of your time.
3. Map out time for every activity.
There’s no need working in your business when you should be growing it. Spending the whole day sending and replying emails, making and taking phone calls can be frustrating when you have a target to meet. Set out time for each of these and do not exceed it. If you have to turn off your phone, avoid checking your mails, lock the door, retreat to the basement, hire a nanny, do it. If on the other hand, you feel the phone calls and emails are important, hire an assistant to help with those. It won’t cost you much and gives your job a touch of professionalism. If you are second-guessing this, think when you get burned out, how long will you be in the hospital for the needed rest? That should help make up your mind.
4. Try Dictation
One important method that has helped me a lot is dictating. It works like magic and it doesn’t cost you anything extra except if you want to buy a Dictaphone. All you need do is connect a microphone to your computer. I have been able to as a result, churn out over 15 articles in a day all within 6 hours, each of which took me about 15 minutes to dictate and an extra five minutes to edit. Not bad eh? This article was produced using that method.
Note: The time you spend depends on how many words you are writing, and your speed of dictation.
The good thing about it is with frequent use, you become adept at it. The above-mentioned example was for 600 word articles. Imagine doing that six days a week. That’s 90 articles. If you sold each for just $10-which is cheap- that’s $900 a week and $3600 a month. If you can’t spare six hours a day, you can choose your time. I spend that much. For the dictating technique, please follow carefully the instructions here. Most PCs are enabled to use a microphone. This can be done using Microsoft word which comes with the Microsoft Office package. To do this effectively, use the following tips:
Requirements:
- A high quality close-talk (headset) microphone with gain adjustment (gain adjustment: A microphone feature that allows your input to be amplified so that it is made louder for use by the system.) support. (A universal serial bus (USB) microphone is recommended.)
- A 400 megahertz (MHz) or faster computer. If you don’t know how to check this, click Start tab, then Control Panel – this can be seen on the right side of the two divides, then double-click System. When this loads, you should be able to see it towards the lower right corner of the page.
- 128 MB or more of memory
- At least Windows 2000 with Service Pack 3 or Windows XP or later
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 or later
Positioning the speech recognition microphone.
Position the microphone so that:
- It is about an inch, or a thumb’s width, to the side of your mouth
- It is not directly in front of your mouth, and you are not breathing directly into it.
- Note If you inadvertently move the microphone as you speak, remember to bring it back to the correct position.
Speech recognition capability is built into all Office programs by initially using the feature in Microsoft Word or by doing a custom installation. fter speech recognition is installed, you can increase speech recognition accuracy by taking a few minutes to train the computer to recognize how you speak.
If you need more help on this, to learn more about this click the Help tab in Microsoft word and type in the keyword ”using microphone” or “speech recognition. You’ll find quite a number of topics like how to speak to a computer; things you can do or say with speech recognition etc. Take your time to get familiar with this incredible tool. If you have to spend one to two hours learning this so you can hasten your work, do it. That’s it. Use this tip and you are on your way to making lots of money, working effectively, and saving lots of time.
Follow these tips and you’ll have a well-balanced life, enough time for yourself, your loved ones, and time to enjoy the money you’re working so hard for.
Happy Freelancing!
![[Slashdot]](http://slashdot.org/favicon.ico)
![[Digg]](http://digg.com/favicon.ico)
![[Reddit]](http://reddit.com/favicon.ico)
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif)
![[Facebook]](http://www.facebook.com/favicon.ico)
![[Technorati]](http://technorati.com/favicon.ico)
![[Google]](http://www.google.com/favicon.ico)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.stumbleupon.com/favicon.ico)
With the explosive growth of business possibilities on the World Wide Web, freelance writing for the Internet has become a huge money making industry. With so many great opportunities available to those interested in writing for the web there are writers of all skill sets starting online businesses. While it will take some work to become established in the online writing world it is possible to become success even if you have never been paid for anything that you have written.
So let’s dive right in and get to some hot money making avenues for freelance writers on the web.
Writing articles for websites is an extremely profitable niche to get into. Webmasters are always on the search for fresh original content for their websites. If you are able to create quality content within a reasonable amount of time you can base your entire web writing business solely on writing articles for websites.
The topics that you will be writing articles on will depend on the particular niche of the website. If you are writing for a cooking website you will be writing on topics like cooking tips and recipes if you are writing for a poker website you are going to likely be creating content concerning poker strategies.
To gain some experience in writing articles for the Internet sign up for a freelance bidding website such as Scriptlance, Elance, oDesk, etc. and place some bids for writing projects. You are not likely to make a huge profit on these projects but you will gain some much needed experience and exposure.
Blogging is yet another blazing hot field for writers to get into. Blogs are enormously popular because they are short and easy to write and they can become indexed by search engines in as little as twenty-four hours. This fact alone makes blogs an essentially important part of online business and opens up many job opportunities for bloggers.
As with creating articles for websites you can check out freelance bidding websites to find some blogging jobs to add to your portfolio. Additionally you could start your own blog on a topic that you enjoy writing about to get some practice and use as an example for potential clients to view.
This next money making opportunity is more for more experienced writers. Once you have become an established web writer you need to turn your attentions to writing content for and building your own websites to resell. Since experienced web writers know exactly what kind of content is going to make a website great they can develop websites for people that are looking for a fast way to start an online business.
So there you go – three super hot ways to making money on the World Wide Web by writing. So get out there and make use of your talents, as your skills increase so will your profits. And remember, online forums are a great place to find work and clients, and generate ideas.
The most popular home based businesses to start are those that take little monetary investment. Establishing yourself as a freelance writer is a business you can do from home or anywhere in the world. The key to success as a freelance writer is knowledge of how to market yourself and focusing your writing on areas where your expertise lies.
Freelance writing as a home based business is easy to start up with relatively little monetary investment. Of course it is more than about just writing. You have to determine if you are skilled at writing and if you can market yourself in order to gain clients. It would also be beneficial if you determine some areas you have expertise in because these will probably be from where your best works will originate. Let’s look at some of these points to consider in more detail:
Can you do freelance writing? Be honest with yourself. You don’t necessarily need an English degree to do freelance writing although you will find most major in this area. What you need is a solid foundation and skill in writing that only comes from education and practice. Can you generate your own ideas, write them down, and expand on them? Can you formulate sentences that are in an informative and easy-to-read tone and grammatically correct? Are you writing in your native language? Unless you are very proficient in it, do not attempt to write in anything but your native language. You might consider yourself fluent in another language but because it is not your native language, you won’t be able to formulate the commonly-used phrases and words that no textbook will tell you, unless this is a language that you are very proficient in.
Have one or more specialized areas you can write in. No one knows everything about everything. When you are doing freelance writing, you will have the greatest success when you know more than the average person about some area. Usually this knowledge comes from a combination of education and experience. For example, people who are educated and have experience in business plus have an ability to write do well writing business-related articles. A certified public accountant who also has writing ability will more than likely do well writing on taxation and generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP).
Do you have a marketing plan for your freelance writing? So you’ve determined you can write and you have a specialization. Have you researched the market for your style of freelance writing? If you don’t look at what people are buying in the way of articles, product reviews, e-books, and press releases then you are wasting your time with freelance writing and won’t be able to turn it into much profit at all. A good place to see what people are buying is to go to webmaster forums, freelance job bidding sites, and freelance writer blogs. There are so many of them and all it requires is going to a search engine like Google.com and typing in the words “freelance writing.” You can sell the works you write on webmaster forums or online marketplaces. Webmaster forums are great places to begin selling your own freelance writing works because web designers use the content to fill new or existing web sites. Marketing your freelance writing can seem scary and many who do freelance writing mistakenly avoid it. But it is a very basic rule: You can’t sell what no one wants.
Are you willing to improve your knowledge? Freelance writing is not for everyone. You have to be the type of person who takes the initiative to read and stay up-to-date in your specialization subject area so that you can constantly come up with new ideas for articles and other writing works. In addition to new ideas, you want to stay abreast of updates in your specialization area so that your freelance writing will be accurate and beneficial to those who read it.
It can be hard to be motivated and stay productive as a freelancer, especially during those times when the work dwindles and we’re in a lull. It can also be difficult when the work you’re doing doesn’t interest you, or you’re working with a difficult client (and you will have those), or you’re overloaded and behind on your deadlines. This is when you need to have some motivation boosters and ideas to keep you going.
Of course the biggest and most inherent motivator towards productivity is independent income – it’s the reason we became freelancers. Knowing that you need to pay your bills and buy that new gadget or pay for those prescriptions is sometimes enough to get you going. But when even that isn’t enough, we need to call the troops in.
My biggest external sources of motivation come from reading about other people’s experiences, successes, lessons, and ideas. I know this may sound like a strange source of productivity boost, but it works really well because:
- You don’t feel so alone. When others share their experiences you can almost always identify elements of yourself your experiences in their stories. This can help you to feel and know that you are not plugging along in no man’s land, that you are part of a community.
- You learn great lessons. None of us is the ultimate self-contained fount of wisdom. Even the gurus have lessons to learn. In the stories and ideas of others you will always learn something new, or relearn something you had forgotten.
- You can pick up great tools. You’d be amazed at how many resources are out there to help you be more productive, whether they be personal planners, or software applications, or some workflow or template that someone has created and shared.
- You network. When I read blogs and forums I always leave comments and share my thoughts, and become part of the dialogue. In the process, I build relationships and networks through which I can find work, refer work, and just build great support systems.
I could go on and on listing all the benefits to be gained from reading to boost your productivity, but I think you get the idea. I will share here with you my most favorite blogs/websites that help me to boost my productivity. I subscribe to their feeds and check them every day, and many times several times a day.
- Lifehack - Absolutely my favorite source of motivational ideas and productivity boosters. With a variety of very skilled writers, Lifehack brings a wealth of information and resources and very practical tips to its readers everyday.
- Scott H. Young – Scott’s blog is inspirational, to say the least. For someone who is interested in productivity, excellence, and personal development, this is a great place to camp and learn.
- LifeGoalAction - I have to mention this blog because even though the author seems to have gone MIA as of this posting, his few posts absolutely blew my mind and have helped me shift my thinking in radical ways. I hope he returns to share more with us.
These two are my absolute staples. Others sites that I find teach me a lot in general about being productive, although not necessarily directly:
- Creating Passionate Users – Even though this blog is no longer updated, it’s still a gold mine of information and ideas that are useful, and more importantly, that will help you think outside the box. I have dug out some excellent business concepts and ideas on how to deal with clients and create better business relationships.
- Lifehacker – Not to be confused with Lifehack listed above, Lifehacker brings you every day tips and ideas on different things to do with general living, tech stuff, how to shave without razor bumps, and such. It’s definitely an interesting read.
What do you do as a freelancer that increases your motivation and boosts your productivity?
Are there any websites or resources that you have found particularly useful and effective?
|
|