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What Will You Do With Your Extra 50 Minutes a Day?

by Laura Spencer
on December 29, 2014

in Freelancing Life

Learn how to earn $125 or more per hour as a freelancer – Free Test Drive

Freelancing is risky. Freelancing is hard. Many freelancers fail.

We publish warnings so that potential freelancers don’t start freelancing without knowing the drawbacks. And there’s a good reason for those warnings. Some freelancing hype makes freelancing sound almost like a get-rich-quick scheme (which it’s most definitely not).

While freelancing has its drawbacks, it also has its benefits. One of the biggest benefits is not driving in traffic every day.

I should know, before I started freelancing I drove nearly two hours every single day just to go back and forth to work. I’m not the only one either.

According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics from WNYC, the average commuter drives just over 25 minutes a day to get to work. That’s nearly an hour–an hour that home-based freelancers don’t spend in their cars.

In this post, I’ll take a look at how that extra 50 minutes a day can make a real difference in your life.

If you like this post, you may also like Finding Your Balance as a Freelancer.

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How to Beat the Freelancer’s Dreaded Nemesis: Unbillable Time

by Laura Spencer
on November 21, 2014

in Freelancing Life

Learn how to earn $125 or more per hour as a freelancer – Free Test Drive


“Time is money.”

You’ve probably heard that saying before, but when you’re a freelancer those words take on a whole new meaning. If you’re freelancing and you’re not working on a billable project, you’re not making money.

As I point out in an earlier post, you don’t really have eight billable hours each day. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be trying to fill your freelancing day with as much billable work as you can realistically manage.

The truth is when you’re a freelancer, anything that keeps you from doing billable work is taking money out of your wallet.

In this post, I’ll identify seven culprits (including the administrative tasks I discussed in the earlier post) behind unbillable time. I’ll also explain how to minimize the amount of time you spend on those unbillable tasks so that you can earn more money.

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6 Ways to Capture the Attention of Key Freelancing Prospects through LinkedIn

by Laura Spencer
on September 24, 2014

in Social Media

Learn how to earn $125 or more per hour as a freelancer – Free Test Drive

Would you pass on the opportunity to attract the attention of hundreds of key prospects from all over the world for your freelancing business?

Without asking you specifically, I’m betting your answer is “no.” Yet, that’s exactly what you’re doing if you ignore LinkedIn. If you’re not on LinkedIn, you’re passing up an important opportunity to connect with prospects.

Most medium to larger companies maintain some sort of presence on LinkedIn. A recent Forrester study indicates that the vast majority of business decision-makers surveyed (81%) are on LinkedIn for business or personal reasons, even if they’re only watching what happens there. (See the article In Business, Everybody Uses Social Media For Work; The Question Is How from Zachary Reiss-Davis on Forrester for more details.)

Why would you pass up the opportunity to reach all of those decision-makers? Yet many freelancers still avoid LinkedIn involvement. One of the most common excuses I hear is that “LinkedIn is not designed for freelancers.

To that objection I would say, “have you looked at LinkedIn recently?” Recent updates to the LinkedIn platform make LinkedIn an even better marketing tool for freelancers.

In this post, I’ll list six ways you can capture the attention of key freelancing prospects through LinkedIn.

If you liked this post, you may also like How to Go Deeper with Social Media and Get Better Results.

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Why Your Freelancing Success Depends on You Taking Chances and What to Do About It Today

by Laura Spencer
on June 25, 2014

in Freelancing Life

Learn how to earn $125 or more per hour as a freelancer – Free Test Drive

What’s keeping you from freelancing success?

Sometimes, lack of opportunity isn’t the culprit. I’ve blogged about how freelancers sabotage themselves before.

The sabotages listed in my earlier post aren’t the only ways that freelancers hold themselves back. There’s another big problem that keeps many freelancers from succeeding. In fact, this problem is so common it deserves at least one post dedicated just to it.

That big problem is FEAR. We’re afraid to succeed. We’re afraid of failure. We’re afraid of taking chances. We’re afraid of rejection. We’re afraid of over committing. The list goes on and on.

So, we stay where we are. Not learning new things. Not taking chances. Playing it safe. Certainly not growing our freelancing business. Paralyzed by fear.

Is fear something you struggle with? If it is, this post is for you. I’ll discuss why we’re afraid and I’ll list four chances worth taking. You can start to overcome your fear of risk-taking today.

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Why You Can’t Succeed at Freelancing Unless You Turn Some Projects Down

by Laura Spencer
on June 16, 2014

in Marketing

Learn how to earn $125 or more per hour as a freelancer – Free Test Drive

“Whew. The famine is over. Someone just asked about my services. Thank goodness. Now I’ll have some work.”

Have you ever felt like this?

If you have, slow down. Not every prospect who contacts you should become your client. While some freelancers feel that they must accept all paying work that comes their way, that’s not a good tactic if you really want to succeed as a freelancer.

One of the most important things you can do as a freelancer is learn to say no.

In this post, I’ll list nine ways that bad projects harm your freelancing business. I’ll also provide more advice about saying no and include an email template.

If you liked this post, you may also like How to Keep Fake Clients from Stealing Your Time and Sapping Your Energy.

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