2 Tips for a Productive Freelancer’s Home Office

Guest post by Gary Lim, founder of Action Pronto, an advisory and coaching firm based in Manlius, N.Y. 

If you’re freelancing, you’re likely working out of an office in your home. That’s the beauty and the curse of being a freelancer.

The home-based office represents the biggest opportunity to get distracted. Your spouse might see you sitting at your desk, and out of habit ask you if there’s any leftover chicken in the fridge (“Can’t you look?”). Or one of your children might ask you if you can play.

Gary Lim

Even if you live alone, you might decide that now’s a good time to do the laundry because no one else is using the community laundry room. Or you might figure that the middle of the morning is a good time to go to the gym because it’s not as crowded.

All of these things, and more, have happened to me. I’ve been either self-employed or a business owner for a long time, so I’ve had the benefit of training myself over the years to maintain my focus when I work out of a home office. Still, I’m susceptible once in a while to getting distracted – it’s only human.

So I’m going to offer you some quick advice for staying focused while working from a home-based office. There are 2 main conditions that you’ll need to create:

* A dedicated work space for your freelance business activities, and
* A style-of-work agreement with the other members of your home life, whether they’re family members or roommates.

Gary Lim’s home office.

Regarding the dedicated work space, do just that: Dedicate a space in your home where you work on your freelancing business. Whether it’s a spare room with a door that you consider your office, or just a desk in a corner of the living room, designate it and dedicate it to your business. You must have an area you can call your work area, or you will have difficulty being able to work productively. Here’s why:

Let’s say, for example, your workspace is part of the dining table in your dining room that’s hardly used. You spread your stuff out and use the table like it’s your desk. Add a laptop with a wireless LAN connection, and you’re all set, right?

Wrong. There’s going to be traffic passing the dining room. “Hi Dad”, “Hi Mom”, or “What’re you working on?” will be heard often. Or maybe, “Honey, can you run to the store? We’re out of milk.” How about, “Would you mind helping me with the leaves out front?” Even if someone just walks by your dining room, you’ll look up to see who it is.

When the holidays roll around, the dining room will be needed to serve those delicious holiday meals for visiting family and friends. And you’ll have to remove everything from the dining table and under it, so you can use the room for its original purpose. Where will you work during that time?

Pick a work area that ideally has the following characteristics:
* It’s not in the middle of a flow of foot traffic.
* It’s not in a room where you’ll have to move your stuff during certain times of the year.
* It’s an area where the physical boundaries of your space are reasonably understandable.

Once you get your dedicated work space figured out, it’s time for the second important component of having an effective home office: a style-of-work agreement. In short, this is an agreement where you and your family members (or whoever else lives in your home) agree on general guidelines for when you’re working. Some of the things you might discuss and agree upon include:

*What happens when you make or receive a business phone call? (For example, does everyone need to be quiet, do you close the door, or do you go somewhere else in the house to take the call?)
* Guidelines for when you’re just working at your desk or on your computer, reading or writing something (Is it okay for folks to watch TV nearby if it’s not too loud, or do you need total quiet?)
* Guidelines about errands during the business day (like no spur-of-the-moment grocery store runs for more butter or ice cream)
* Understanding how to handle the needs of any children in the house (Who handles after-school snack requests, homework checks, naptime, or playtime?)

This last item is a key discussion point. There is no single right answer; you have to figure out what works best for your situation if you have kids. In my household, my wife (who also runs her business from a home office) decided that during the school year, she would consider her work day as ending at the time our daughter arrives home from school. At that time, she would tend to the things like after-school snacks and getting her started on any homework. This allowed me to still schedule time for consulting conference calls, coaching calls, and handling customer calls to my wife’s company.

During the times when my wife needs to finish development of a new product, we would agree on how to be sure she has the dedicated time and concentrated period to do so. Sometimes she’d say that she needs to work through the weekend to finish the project. So that weekend I would be the main “entertainer” for our daughter, allowing my wife to work productively without distraction.

A style-of-work agreement is simply a discussion you have with the others who live with you, about the things you need when you’re working on your business. You and your spouse or significant other, and even any children, should be clear about the types of activities that you might have in your business, and what conditions you’d ideally prefer. When those activities take place, they need to respect that you are working and are not available.

It’s challenging to work from home, to avoid being repeatedly distracted, and to be productive enough to meet your goals. But if you can make it work by having a dedicated work space and a good style-of-work agreement, it can be rewarding – from both financial and family perspectives.

Gary Lim blogs at http://myActionPronto.com.

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Silver Linings in Hurricane Sandy

First of all, if you’ve been affected by Hurricane Sandy this week, good luck and we’re wishing you a speedy recovery and return to normal.

Here are a few thoughts and tips on coping:

Reach out. The freelance life can feel isolating at a time like this. Remember that you do have a network of support: it just doesn’t look like that of a traditional workplace. Reach out to friends and colleagues who work at home and work for themselves to share stories and find out if people need support. This week, as Elaine (who lives in hard-hit New Jersey) was without power and Internet, I stepped up to take over one of her freelance projects. She did the same for me a couple of months ago. I’m in Alexandria, and thankfully have only had to cope with a couple of days without power and a couple of kids without school.

Be resourceful. If you’re considering becoming a freelancer, an event like Sandy might give you pause. But there are resources that you can tap. Elaine sent me an email from iPhone saying that she’d finally found a lone Taco Bell with an outlet and Internet. I took refuge in a very crowded Panera, gave my kids, who were home from school, their Nooks, and got to work. Panera has a very reliable connection, power outlets, a forgiving staff and better food than Taco Bell.

See the opportunity. A natural disaster also can be a moment to remind clients of your value. People who work in offices naturally are thrown for a loop when that office is closed or they can’t reach it. Those of us who routinely work at home are off and running. It doesn’t hurt to send off the email that says: If you need me, I’m here. Work done in a crisis situation is doubly valued.

Prepare. Finally, Hurricane Sandy is a good reminder to prepare yourself for power outages. I made a great purchase over the weekend: A My-Fi from Verizon.  It was expensive: I had to sign  two-year contract for $60 a month, but figured that with travel and the extra data time the plan gives me on my phone, the cost was worth it. It certainly felt that way when my Internet service from Comcast went out. I turned on the My-Fi, which takes its signal from Verizon’s extensive mobile network, and was able to keep working for a day that I otherwise would have lost.

 

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Working without a Net

Guest post by Avery Elizabeth Hurt

French author Pierre-Jules Renard is supposed to have said, “Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.” That may be both true and occasionally a comfort, but even if no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money, they aren’t apt to sell you groceries.

I have been very fortunate to be able to earn a living from freelance writing for over thirty years. I call it “working without a net.” My writing hasn’t always kept me in high cotton. I’ve had good years and lousy years, but for the most part the good years have seen me through the lousy ones. Like most writers, I struggled at first, but work picked up considerably when I started specializing in health and science writing, mostly for magazines.

Freelance writing is a hard field to survive in, but it can be done. Here are some things I’ve learned along the way that might help you survive, too.

Take it seriously. Okay, I know one of the biggest appeals of freelancing is that you can work in your jammies, take breaks whenever you like, and slip out in the afternoon to weed the garden or go for a walk with the kids. You can do all these things and still put in a full and productive week. However, you do have to put in a productive week. If you aren’t willing to show up for work and stay there until the job is done, you won’t survive as a freelancer anymore than you’d survive in a regular job. And it is a job — even if you are eccentrically dressed. Think of it as a job, and you’ll be more likely to keep it.

Develop a specialty. I’ve written about a lot of things: baseball, higher education, lawn furniture, tequila (the research for that one was a kick). But most of the time I write about health and medical issues or science-related topics. Having a specialty helps in several ways. First, it narrows your focus when you send out proposals to editors. You pitch a certain kind of story and have the clips to show that you can write it. It also saves time when you get an assignment. If you have a specialty (what in journalism we call a “beat”) you will build up a collection of reference books, web links, sources, and contacts in your field. You will also develop a deeper knowledge of your chosen specialty.

Understand your editors’ needs. Always keep in mind what your editors are up against. When you get an assignment for an article, you’ll receive instructions (sometimes vague, but instructions nonetheless) about what the editor needs. And you’ll have a deadline. Missing a deadline or leaving out an essential part of the project (for example, the editor asked for a sidebar on a new drug, but you totally forgot that part) means that your editor will be behind on her schedule, may have to round up another writer, or do extra work herself — which I assure you she doesn’t have time for. You’ve not only made yourself look unprofessional, you’ve screwed up someone’s else’s life. Being aware of and considerate of the big picture will keep your editors coming back.

Be willing to adapt. It’s easy to get in a groove and get very comfortable there. But life changes fast — and  journalism seems to be bent on demonstrating that fact to anyone who may have missed the memo. For many years, I wrote only for print and liked it just fine that way. Then print, well, I don’t need to tell you what’s happening to print. So I learned to write for the web. Now I’m learning about blogging and maintaining websites. Who knows what will come next? Being willing to adapt when times change is essential to surviving in this business.

Keep at it. It sounds like a tautology and may be, but the fact is, if you want to survive as a freelancer you must not give up. Of course, surviving those lean years — especially in the early days before you have a savings cushion — can mean doing without some things. You may have to keep the old couch a few more years and learn to make your own pizza. But if you really want to freelance, it’s worth it.

Plenty of people will try to discourage you from working without a net, but don’t let them. If you really want to make a go of freelancing, you have to hang in there, even through difficult times. It’s not an easy career — especially not in today’s market. But it can be done.

 

 

 

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Young Americans Are Readers!

This falls into the category of good news for writers, editors and designers: Young Americans are readers, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project.

“More than eight in ten Americans between the ages of 16 and 29 read a book in the past year, and six in ten used their local public library. At the youngest end of the spectrum, high schoolers in their late teens (ages 16-17) and college-aged young adults (ages 18-24) are especially likely to have read a book or used the library in the past 12 months,” says the report.

That’s more than the average American.

Also of note is the number of Americans who’ve read e-books. According to the report, “72% of Americans read at least one print book in the past year; 16% read at least one e-book; 11% listened to at least one audiobook.”

I think that says that the e-book market has huge growth potential. So now is a smart time to figure out this publishing format and get in on it in the early days. Here’s our latest post offering some guidelines on how to do it: From Columnist to E-Book Author.

It’s true that greater readership among young Americans than the average may have a lot to do with fact that people under the age of 30 have more time than, say, those of us in the throes of the child-rearing years. Yet the results run directly counter to the fears of people who’ve said that the Internet would destroy people’s capacity to absorb long storylines. Not long ago, I downloaded the Gutenberg Elegies (on, what else, my e-reader, a Nook) to consider the validity of that viewpoint. I’ll let you know what I think!

 

 

 

http://www.npr.org/2012/10/23/163414069/americas-facebook-generation-is-reading-strong?sc=emaf

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Are You Undercharging?

Women freelancers can be their own worst enemies when it comes to pricing their work.

A recent, very candid post by business-to-business marketing expert Dianna Huff on the International Freelancers Academy blog offers a fascinating look at why many of us underprice our work–and how to break the cycle.

If you’re a freelancer who thinks you’re undercharging, one strategy that may help is to start talking with a few trusted freelancing buddies — who are at the same professional level — when you’re negotiating with clients. They can be a valuable sounding board. If they would not be willing to work for a price you’re thinking of charging because it’s too low, then that’s a good indication that you should ask for more.

As Huff points out, women often get underpaid in traditional jobs, so when they go freelance, their stunted salaries shape their perceptions of what they should charge. On top of this, we may undervalue our experience, feel like we’re “lucky” to be working in a flexible situation that gives us work-life balance, or don’t feel we “need” the money if we’re married to a high-earning spouse or are good at living frugally.

Huff suffered from some of the thinking that holds women back–and ultimately turned things around. She now charges more than $200 an hour.

Was raising her prices risky? Sure. When you raise your prices, some clients will not be able to afford your services or feel they are worth what you charge. However, others will value you.

As she puts it, “Instead of having six clients at your low fees, you’ll have two clients at your higher fees–clients who will VALUE you.”

I think this article is a great wake-up call for women freelancers, and it inspired me that Huff is finally getting what she feels her work is worth.

At the same time, I don’t know if focusing exclusively on the highest paying clients is the right strategy for everyone–male or female. For instance, having only two clients, albeit high paying ones, puts you at a lot of risk financially. What if one of these accounts dries up suddenly? I write about entrepreneurship most of the time, and many business owners have told me tales of woe that sprung from depending too heavily on one or two key clients. I’m a big believer in diversification, even if that means bringing on some clients who pay a decent rate that isn’t the top of your pay scale. Elizabeth and all of the other freelancers I know who make a good living use a similar approach.

I also think there’s room in every freelance practice for projects that don’t pay a top rate but are personally meaningful. Sometimes, I am so passionate about a journalism project that I am willing to write it for an outlet that offers so-so rates, rather than abandon it altogether because I can’t interest one of my higher paying clients in it. Does that mean I’m undervaluing my work? Maybe, but if my only goal in working was making money, I would not have chosen journalism.

It’s also important to realize that rates don’t tell the whole story of what you’re earning on a project. For instance, if you get paid $3 a word for an article at a leading magazine–but have to rewrite is three times because six editors are involved and none of them agree on what the focus should be, you may end up losing money on the project. At the same time, it may be very profitable to write an article for $1 a word for a publication where the editing process is very straightforward.

Nonetheless, I think Huff makes some excellent points.

 

 

 

 

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Prospects Improve for IT Contractors

Guest post by Gary Pollard, VP of Information Products, IQ Navigator

Contractor bill rates for most professional roles began to recover in the third quarter of 2009, shortly after the U.S. economy resumed growing, albeit slowly. Over the past three years, rates in the professional/managerial sector of contract labor are up 15% from their low point during the recession. Until recently, IT contractors had not enjoyed a similar rebound in bill rates. Limited corporate investment and offshore competition served to keep overall IT bill rates subdued. A gradual increase began in early 2011 and IT rates finally equaled pre-recession levels in January 2012. Since then, median IT contractor bill rates have risen 3.6%, and prospects seem good that the upward trend will continue.

Not all IT roles share the same outlook. Jobs that serve ongoing operations, such as data analyst, help desk or database administrator, have not enjoyed significant increases. The roles that are in demand are those touching the design and development of new applications. Corporate capital spending in software has strengthened; long deferred system upgrades are being addressed and investment is increasing in new capabilities. Frequently used job titles that have experienced notable growth in rates include:

Job Title

Quarter-Over-Quarter

Year-Over-Year

Software Architect

8%

5%

Specialized Technical Consultant*

3%

14%

Software Developer

3%

5%

Web Developer

1%

4%

*Specialized Technical Consultant is a broad collection of roles, but the common feature is that the consultant possesses demonstrable expertise in a niche technology, often components of larger systems. They are frequently engaged during design and debugging phases of a project.

Different parts of the U.S. have also experienced varying rates of IT bill rate change. While all regions have seen increases in 2012, the Midwest and West bill rates have risen roughly 2%, while median billing rates have increased more than 6% in the Northeast and the South. Metro areas that stand out include Charlotte, Minneapolis and New York for software architects and specialized technical consultants, and Denver, Los Angeles, Memphis and Washington, D.C. for software and web developers.

After a prolonged period of stagnation, IT contractor bill rates have gradually risen over the past seven quarters, though much of that movement was merely making up ground lost during the recession. Two factors suggest that this upward trend will continue. The first is that corporate capital spending on software has been rising for more than two years, generating demand for skilled individuals to implement these investments. The other consideration is the tightening supply of educated workers. At the end of 3Q 2012 the unemployment rate for workers with at least a four-year degree stood at 4% – not yet back to pre-recession levels but about half the rate for the working population as a whole. Basic economics suggests that rising demand and shrinking supply will further drive up IT contractor rates in the months ahead.

Sources:

US Dept. of Commerce – Bureau of Economic Analysis
Table 5.5.5U. Private Fixed Investment in Equipment and Software by Type

Labor Force Statistics (CPS) – Table A-4. Employment status of the civilian population 25 years and over by educational attainment, http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab4.htm

Uncategorized

You’re a Job Creator, Too

Sometimes, running a one-person business can be a bit isolating. While we hear a lot of buzz about fast-growth companies creating jobs,  one-person operations tend to get short shrift. The media tends to overlook the fact that most businesses are sole proprietorships, and they do create jobs–for the owners.

A new study, highlighted recently by the handy Journalist’s Resource site, may help to change that perception. It shows that we self-employed folks are a vital part of our local economies.

The Study “Self-Employment and Local Economic Performance: Evidence from U.S. Counties” shows that in both metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties, higher levels of self-employment fueled job creation and employment growth.

However, there was one downside. As Journalist’s Resource noted, self-employment was associated with lower income levels than traditional jobs were.

 

 

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When You Shouldn’t Be A Freelancer

Elaine and I spend a lot of time writing on 200kfreelancer about the benefits of a flexible work schedule. Yesterday, she blogged about what her ideal work day looks like — and though it is flexible, it’s clearly not short. She gets up at five a.m. and puts in a minimum 35-hour work week. I can attest to the fact that it’s often longer, based on our phone calls and what I know about her clients.

I work a fairly routine workday, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., with a break in the midafternoon to pick up my kids from school. Then I almost always return to work after the kids are in bed. On either Saturday or Sunday, I put in a solid four-hour stretch at some point — that’s when I tend to get my deepest writing done. What does it add up to? Probably something like a 50-hour work week.

Because I genuinely love so much of the work I do, putting thoughts onto pages and communicating with people, my 50 hours don’t feel like a burden. Ted Jablonski blogged about the fruits of rediscovering your passion for your work in this post about going back to graduate school.

What we’d all say, I think, is that you absolutely shouldn’t become a freelancer if all you’re looking for is a flexible schedule or you believe working for yourself means working less.

There are probably a handful of people with the discipline to work from home in a job that they hate. But your chances of success in the freelance lifestyle are much higher if you can look within yourself and confidently say that you love what you do.

If the answer to that question is “No,” stick with your corporate job and keep looking for what will motivate you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Liberate 10 Hours a Week and Other Tips for Finding Time to Freelance

Many of us freelance in order to juggle other responsibilities. But sometimes, those other things we need to do can get in the way of work. In freelancing for five years while raising four small children, I’ve experimented with my schedule and other work habits to find out how best to carve out enough time to get my work done and also manage the rest of my life. Here are some time-management strategies that are working for me now. (We’d love for you to post some of your own).

Know what your ideal day looks like. Through trial and a lot of error, I’ve figured out that a great workday is one where I have time to concentrate on–and enjoy–the projects I’ve planned and still have time to do things with my kids in a relaxed way. A bad day is one where I allow myself to lose control over my work time to the point that it spirals to 12 hours–or one where I’ve let myself get talked into volunteering for outside projects I don’t really have time to do. I try to keep this in mind when deciding what I can and can’t do. Saying no, while hard to do, is important if you want to enjoy your life and get meaningful things done.

Plan your work load to maximize your good days. Because commuting to freelance gigs takes time from my other responsibilities,. I have turned down a couple of lucrative assignments that would have required me to work on site. While it was hard for me to say no–I never like to turn away work–I was happy to discover that those same clients still offered me future projects.

Start work early. My day goes best if I get up at 5 am and can fit in two-and-a-half hours of work before I wake my kids up for school–giving me more than 10 hours a week of uninterrupted writing time. I usually work through noon, with the idea that I will be available to clients as needed after that. This gives me about 35 hours a week of work time that I can count on, no matter what. After noon, I check my iPhone frequently so I can respond right away if a client needs me to check one last fact before a page in a magazine ships off to the printer. That gives me time to spend with my kids in the afternoon.

I should add that it helps that my husband a real estate appraiser, works from home, too. He often takes care of our two year old son in the mornings, so I can get my work done before he heads out to his appointments in the afternoon.

Take control of your phone time. If clients need me, I will always make myself available to talk by phone at a time that is convenient for them. However, I generally try to schedule calls for the mornings, so I can avoid having to jump off a conference call early to, for instance, pick up my children from school. I generally don’t schedule non-essential calls for the afternoon anymore. By proactively suggesting times that work for me, instead of waiting for the other party to suggest available times, I’ve been able to keep a lot of time free for my children, which, in turn, lowers my overall stress level.

Share the load. While I do a lot of household stuff like cleaning and laundry–often, I find that it’s during these “mindless” tasks that my best ideas come–cooking dinner really drains my energy. My husband, who comes from a long line of men who love cooking, enjoys it. He’s taken over that task, and it’s helped me free up a lot of energy to do other things that are higher priorities for me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Becoming A Freelancer Led To Life 101

by Ted Jablonski

“Life is a shuttle” — William Shakespeare

Few of us adhere to an unyielding blueprint for achieving personal happiness and professional success in our lives. In fact, most of our journeys are not straight paths — and I think most of us would have it no other way.

Ted Jablonski

I should know. I spent 25 years working for large financial firms until four years ago, when I became a freelance marketing consultant.

This process opened a range of options for me. It gave me a refreshingly new outlook and provided a completely different set of life experiences. I not only started a business but began looking at my life differently. Now, I’m returning to graduate school at the age of 53, a development I did not envision even a few short years ago.

“Professional reinvention” at 50 is simultaneously exhilarating and nerve-wracking, especially for those who opted for more “structured” careers. But even given the long days, exhausting travel and endless list of to-dos, establishing an independent business has been transformative for me on many levels.

You see, moving away from my big company routine after 25 years allowed me to take a metaphorical exit off the corporate interstate  – right at life’s midpoint (when you start to ask yourself all kinds of questions). I stopped, took stock of my accomplishments, and, assessed professionally and personally fulfilling options for the second half of my career.

For me, that act of breaking what was not broken, of creating something new and starting over was highly personal, deeply reflective and incredibly enlightening. It altered the prism through which I viewed my past and my future, my personal and professional accomplishments, my successes and my failures. And it fueled a tremendous untapped internal energy and focus on future goals and aspirations. For the first time in 25 years, I felt like I was looking at the blank screen of my Mac, with that blinking cursor just waiting for me to write the next chapter.

Given the structure of my time and schedule as a freelancer, I now had the flexibility and the control to define the what, where and how of my work. On a practical level, being a consultant allowed me to explore a wide scope of life and career options while I continued to do my job.

The most surprising part of this evolution was that as I assessed my professional options, I also challenged myself on defining other fulfilling life experiences as well. What would continue to energize me and challenge me intellectually above and beyond my work?

For me, the answer was education. I hold a BA and an MBA, which have served me well throughout my life and career. But I desired more. Educational can be transformational, a catalyst for change regardless of age. It can lead to new career opportunities, and a richer, more fulfilling and rewarding life.

Working as a consultant allowed me to consider different educational options. I visited schools, met with professors, administrators and students, and realized just how many more individuals there are out there who are just like me. Individuals at similar points in their lives, with shared goals, looking for new options and seeking out interesting experiences.

I’ve recently been accepted to Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C. to study government and public policy part-time. Like other mid-career programs, it offers evening classes, a speaker/symposium series, and flexibility for students who live in different geographic areas and who might not be in Washington on a daily basis.

And I am thrilled at the prospect. This decision really reflects who I am when viewed in the context of my lifelong passion for politics and public affairs, my innate intellectual curiosity and diverse range of interests, my opinions, my willingness to participate, contribute and share in shaping ideas and my passion for lifelong learning.

I certainly didn’t see myself here a few short years ago. And I might have gotten to the same place had I stayed in corporate life. But allowing the entrepreneur in me to drive not only the creation of my business but also the re-engineering of my life has been amazing and eye opening.

Ted’s firm is the Marketing Consortium LLC.

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