Successful Blog

How to find freelance work

by

Are you looking for a “side hustle?”

Perhaps you want to have some cash buffer while your real business ramps up.
Perhaps you just want holiday spending money.

The good news is that it’s easy to find gigs that supplement your primary paycheck.

Some marketplaces are focused on writers, some are focused on design, and some are just for general life tasks, so you can choose the type of work you want to do.

Before you sign up with one of these marketplaces, be sure to investigate. Look at reviews from others who have done work for them, and find out their payment policies, be sure you understand who owns your work product.

Above all, be sure that you’re receiving adequate payment for the work you do. Consider the opportunity cost of accepting the gig vs working on your primary business before you proceed.

Upwork

Upwork offers all types of services, from marketing to IT to translation services. All you need is a computer, Internet access, and your mad skills.

Upwork provides a user-friendly platform to help you communicate with your client, share files and project-related documents, track your time, and get paid. It’s free to join Upwork. Once you begin doing freelance work with a client on the platform, they deduct a percentage fee from each payment. So, be sure to price your services accordingly. Upwork also offers premium membership plans for an additional cost.

Upwork main web page

The Gig Saloon

screenshot - the gig saloon The Gig Saloon is an app for gig workers.

It’s one streamlined place where gig economy workers can go to find new jobs, stay up to date on gigs, and share their experiences.

The app aggregates jobs from across a wide array of sources, so it includes driving and delivery along with general marketplaces like TaskRabbit.

The cool thing is that you can share your experiences (and read about others’ experiences) in the discussion area. This app is still fairly new, but looks like a promising place to find and apply for jobs across a variety of employers.

 

 

Fiverr

Fiverr is a site where you create your ideal gig based on your own talents, time, and experience. Then people who need what you’re selling can come and hire you through the site.

Fiverr includes worker ratings, and provides a secure transaction service, so you don’t have to directly contact the person hiring you for payment.

Fiverr main page

99designs

99designs is a marketplace for design. Customers upload design briefs for potential projects, choose the “prize” (which is the price level offered for the work), and then designers can submit entries to win the work. Because of the contest format, 99designs could be a way to test the waters if you want to get some real-world feedback on the quality of your design work, or if you’re just getting started as a freelance designer and want to build your portfolio.

There is risk that your design won’t be selected, and you give copyright ownership to the customer, so read the fine print before you join.

99designs website

TaskRabbit

TaskRabbit’s marketplace revolves more around local gigs, and you can do general errands, cleaning, and personal assistance among other specialties.

You decide what you want to do, you decide how much you want to be paid, and TaskRabbit finds you local tasks. Members of TaskRabbit are called “taskers.” There’s a mobile app, and on-boarding/orientation provided by the company.

TaskRabbit main site

Hubstaff Talent

Hubstaff Talent makes it easy for freelancers find quality work, simply create a profile and wait for businesses to start contacting you. It’s an easy to use platform with a clean, professional design. Potential employers are able to reach out to freelancers directly – no middlemen involved, and no fees for either freelancers or the businesses hiring. Hubstaff Talent also recently launched a “Jobs” section on their website where freelancers can search through hundreds of remote jobs to find the right one for them.

Hubstaff Talent

 

Bidvine (NEW)

Bidvine.com is a local services marketplace and covers over 800 services from photography to personal training and handyman services. While some of the services covered by Bidvine require professional qualifications, others, such as furniture assembly or dog walking are available anyone with some previous experience. It’s free to sign up, you can view client inquires for free and you pay a small fee when you want to submit a bid – no commission to pay and all repeat business is yours to keep.

 

Have you used any of these services to supplement your income? Did I miss any great resources?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for Social Strata — makers of the Hoop.la community platform. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

How to start when you’re stuck

by

We have an electric golf cart we use to get around short distances in our town.

It has a mind of its own, sometimes starting on the first try, sometimes requiring elaborate finger-crossing, rituals, etc., to lurch to life. Sometimes we just sit for a few minutes, trying to change the mojo before jiggling the key in the ignition again.

Sometimes we just get stuck.

It happens to everyone. In life, in business, in relationships.

And when it happens, you just need a strategy. Are you going to yell into the wind, start experimenting, call for help, or just sit there?

How to Start When You’re Stuck

  • Change mood – Tony Robbins refers to this as “state.” When you’re stuck, you’re probably in a tired, bored, or uninspired state. Do something drastic to shift it, like wearing an evening gown to go grocery shopping, taking an ice cold shower like Julien Smith, chatting up a stranger in the grocery line. Focus your attention away from yourself.
  • Change location – Sometimes your physical environment is the problem. Try a small move, like working at a different desk, or standing up while you work. If you’re really in trouble, consider moving farther (I’ve moved from one coast to the other, but I know that’s a bit extreme).
  • Jiggle it a little – Stand up on your couch and dance around. Yell a little. Laugh into the mirror. Sprint down the street in front of your house and check your time. Can you get faster?
  • Add water – Our golf cart requires water in the battery compartment (who knew). Add an outside element to your stuck-ness. Watch a movie that inspires you, call a close friend, play with your dog. Anything that brings outside influence into your brain.
  • Get a new golf cart – Stop trying to do the thing. Do another, different thing. Just set it aside for a while and let it percolate in the background. Sometimes working on something else completely will work magic in your subconscious. Or maybe the think you’re stuck on is just not something you’re supposed to be doing right now.
  • Push it for a few feet to jump start – Find the tiniest piece of accomplishment in your big dream. Just do one small five-minute particle, to get it rolling. Five minutes at a time, you can make a bit of progress, especially if you do five minutes every day for a week.
  • Call someone to rescue you – Pull the fire alarm and call in reinforcements. That’s what friends are for.

Those are my ideas for getting un-stuck. What has worked for you?

 

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for Social Strata — makers of the Hoop.la community platform. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Featured image via Flickr CC: Chris Devers

Stop being productive, you will get more done

by

Planners, calendars, bullet journals, Trello boards, post-it notes, Moleskines–are supposed to make you more productive.

Newsletters, books, podcasts, e-books, blogs, live events– are supposed to teach you how to use those things to become more productive.

You’re a busy little bee with your productivity studies.

Tell the truth.

How deep is your productivity “to read” pile right now?

How would you feel if you could purge all of that for a while and just do your work?

That article on “sleeping habits of super-successful people?” Delete it and get an extra half hour of sleep tomorrow.

That blog series about “becoming super-productive in seven days?” Unsubscribe and write some original content yourself.

Those five weeks of podcasts on “super-charging your morning” that are stacked up in your “unplayed episodes” stream? Get real and delete the old episodes.

In fact, stop reading this article right now and go write/create/do something important.

Then you’ll feel super.

Once you’re feeling all super, come back here and share what you accomplished!

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for Social Strata — makers of the Hoop.la community platform. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Featured image via Flickr CC: Garry Knight

5 Unique Ways for Social Media Managers to Save Time

by

 

By Jessica Davis

As an entrepreneur or business owner, you must be familiar with the feeling of never being done with your work.

You’ re always on the move – daily tasks to complete, stats to analyze and new goals to accomplish –and there’s not much down time.

Time management is tedious but crucial. Without time management, you might as well work 24/7 without any extraordinary results. Find out how you can save time (and your sanity) with these five unique tips.

1. Social Content Calendar

Create a social calendar that helps you organize your upcoming posts. This could be done monthly to keep track of articles or topics.You can also figure out which articles/topics work best for your audience as they are all logged.

A simple spreadsheet with the name, themes, keywords and links (once published) is all it takes.

Once you find out what works for you – you can change the calendar accordingly to accommodate new topics and remove old ones.

A calendar is also useful for allocating your writing – you already know the topic and keywords, all that’s left is a little research and actually writing the post. If you’re meant to publish on Thursdays for example, you can start writing bits and parts on Tuesday, finalize the piece on Wednesday and make final edits before publishing on Thursday.

A social calendar will make it easier to stay motivated and organized.

2. Create Templates

Create templates for everything – blog posts, social media posts and even your emails. The amount of time this saves is mind blowing. Instead of custom creating every blog post/ social media post – you can just copy, paste, make relevant changes and you’re done.

If you know it’s a list post about social media tools, for example – having a template of your most used tools and small points about their features will allow you to spend less time while still putting out quality content. You can then create templates for social media – short templates focusing on individual points for Twitter, longer posts for Facebook and Google+ etc. This is the same for emails, having templates is like having your own FAQ page – copy and paste is all you have to do to save time.

3. Scheduling

Scheduling content in advance is a life saver. Many brands/ pages focus on pushing out as many posts a day as possible – this waters down the content and may even push your readers away. It is recommended to focus on scheduling content to go out at specific times of the day – based on your target audience’s location, most active time, the tool itself, etc.

There are various tools that help you with this – including DrumUp, Sprout Social and Commun.it – these tools let you schedule in advance on various social media platforms with ease. Also limit the number of posts you put out in a day – don’t push your audience too much.

4. 90-minute rule

As the name suggests, the 90-minute rule is a block of 90 minutes where you remove all the distractions from your life and focus completely on your work. Create a space for these 90 minutes every day and pinpoint one main task that you feel is most important. For those 90 minutes, all distractions need to be eliminated – close your email, close all the other tabs on your browser, put your phone on do-not- disturb mode – do whatever else is necessary to remain 100% focused on the tasks at hand.

It takes a while to get used to this, but once it becomes a part of your routine, you’ll notice that you get more work done in those 90 minutes compared to the rest of the day. A plus point is that you don’t have to worry about important tasks for the rest of the day and can work on already scheduled daily tasks from your social calendar.

5. Write Everything Down

You would have noticed that inspiration doesn’t really come when you’re sitting at your desk. It is a waste of your time to sit and wait for ideas to come along. More often than not, they come at the most random times – while commuting, eating, out with friends – and you tend to make a mental note about it but eventually end up forgetting.

To avoid this, write everything down – topics, themes, ideas about different areas – no matter how small you think it is, write it down. When you’re more focused, come back to the ideas and see which ones are actually beneficial and start working on them.

As a bonus tip, always remember to measure and analyze your efforts, this allows you to eliminate the least effective strategies and stay consistent. Using these tips in combination with each other will help you save time and open up your calendar for new ventures.

 

AUTHOR BIO: Jessica Davis has a keen interest in social media and content marketing, and writes extensively about it. She represents Godot Media, a leading content marketing firm.

Featured image: Business vector designed by Freepik

The most important thing you can focus on today

by

Have you ever heard the phrase, “all hat and no cattle?”

It’s a colorful description for someone who looks the part, dresses the part, but who actually has no substance.

If you spend all of your time on sales, marketing, PR, website, meetings, and accounting, you’re short-changing something extremely important: your actual product.

You will only achieve true business success when you maximize the time you spend improving your product or service.

All the rest is cowboy hat. Yes, it keeps the sun off your face, but it’s not the THING.

The THING is your service and the customers who buy it. (I’m not saying your customers are cattle…it’s just an analogy, folks!)

So prioritize, and focus on:

  • Customer ideation, getting actionable feedback
  • Adding features or services, actively innovating
  • Talking directly to your customers one-on-one
  • Re-looking at your offerings with fresh eyes, staying on top of market developments

Put these things in the back seat until the stuff above is done:

  • Reading Facebook posts
  • Coffee meetings (unless it’s with a customer)
  • Webinars on how to use Periscope
  • Fiddling with a new accounting software every week

If you keep your customer as your guiding star, it becomes simple to focus, and prioritize how you spend your day.

Another way to look at priorities is something I heard Becky McCray (of Small Biz Survival) say during a GeniusShared conference: “Do the things that generate actual revenue first.”

If you do that consistently, you are always building your business.

So stop worrying whether you need to get a SnapChat account, and go take a look at your product. Go get on the phone with one of your customers.

 

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for Social Strata — makers of the Hoop.la community platform. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Featured image via Flickr CC: Dave Young

2015 Business Goals – How to Accelerate Through the Finish Line

by

You’re at a track and field event. The leading runner anticipates the finish line, slows down, and allows the would-be second place finisher to blow past.

That’s all of us in November.

Are you already pulling out your post-Thanksgiving fat pants and planning a holiday getaway?

It’s definitely not too late to accomplish those important business goals you set up last January.

So re-tie your sneakers, step away from the pumpkin pie recipes, and let’s soar through the finish line tape of 2015 with our arms spread, victorious.

Step One: Look at the Goals

First of all, you should know exactly where your goals are, and where you stand on them, if you’ve been doing quarterly check-ins, right?

If any of your 2015 goals were “overtaken by events” or don’t make sense anymore, just strike a line through and forget about them.

Did you set any goals that were out of your own control to accomplish? Gather up the team and review those goals together.

Step Two: Celebrate the Victories

There’s no point in having goals if you don’t give yourself the joy of celebrating when they are achieved.

For any of the goals on your 2015 list that you’ve already accomplished, set aside some time to bask in the glow. Take your team out for lunch, high five, and savor a job well done.

If any specific colleague deserves credit for the accomplishment, be sure to recognize him/her with a thank you.

Step Three: Focus on the One Big Goal

For any 2015 business goals that are still in play, winnow it down to the one big one. Which project will make the biggest difference to your business if you were to buckle down over the next two months and get it done?

Take that one big goal and make it your total focus through the end of the year. Do you need to break it down into smaller bite-sized steps in order to get moving? What’s in your way? Has something stopped you from moving forward with it? Do you need to enlist additional resources? Gather the team and rally around your One Big Goal.

Make sure you have metrics in place for the “big goal.” Know when you will have achieved it!

Use your lessons-learned from this year’s goals as you think about your 2016 goals. Were you overly ambitious? Were you not ambitious enough? Do you need to tweak your work habits or methods to get a different outcome next year?

 

Let’s all work together to avoid coasting into December 31. Let’s accelerate together and go into January with momentum!

I’d love to hear about your 2015 goals…how did it go?

 

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for Social Strata — makers of the Hoop.la community platform. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee