Freelancing With the Apple iPad

Transparency: Nobody at Freelance-Zone.com has gotten a hands-on with the new Apple iPad. The information we’re presenting here is based on other people’s hands-on experiences with the 10-inch tablet, not our own. But even secondhand information is most helpful in deciding whether to become an early adopter or to wait for the inevitable price cut and major upgrade of the next version.

Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad on Wednesday, showing off its web browsing, e-book and gaming potential. Rather than do a complete rehash of what’s already available at Wired.com, we’ll cut right to the chase and discuss the iPad’s impact on the freelance community.

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Thanks for a GREAT 2009

From all of us at Freelance-Zone.com, thank you VERY much for an excellent 2009. We’re really glad you’ve been with us this year, we appreciate your reading, your comments and support. 2010 is already shaping up to be an excellent year for Freelance-Zone.com and we hope you’ll be part of that. Stay tuned for more advice, editorial, gear and resources. HAPPY NEW YEAR! We’ll be back  on Monday January 4, 2010. Have a safe and fun New Year’s holiday.

Holiday Guilt?

Yo Prinzel wrote a great blog entry aimed at all of us who felt slightly guilty for taking a glorious four-day weekend off for the holidays. Adding my own two cents to this blog post, I’ll just say that one way you can offset the guilts for taking time off to stuff your face full of turkey is to pre-position some content or work for submission during your down time. If you’re running a blog or a for-pay website and have content that shows up over the holidays, you can feel confident that you’re feeding the audience while still giving yourself some much-needed down time.
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TweetMyJobs Changes the Game

Freelance job sites like eLance and other for-a-fee providers, quake in your boots. TweetMyJobs has just changed your landscape probably forever with what its marketing hype calls “the largest Twitter job board in the world”. Pretty bold stuff for a company that didn’t exist this time last year, but that’s how things move in the Twitter world–it wasn’t three years ago Twitter wasn’t even a player in the game, now they rule a massive chunk of the online market.

I used TweetMyJobs for the first time yesterday to see what the fuss was about, and I can tell you that the for-pay sites are in trouble. Subscriber-based job sites have reached the end of their usefulness thanks to TweetMyJobs, and unless this fails to catch on with the folks posting the jobs themselves, FREElance is about to be FREE once again. … Continue Reading

5 Steps to Guide an E-Mail Interview

E-mail interviews are, for many, something to be avoided at all costs. The answers frequently return with nothing but self-serving crap that nobody wants to read.

How do you avoid getting such responses? Sometimes it’s inevitable no matter what you do, but an interviewer can at least try to pass on some guidelines to keep them from going totally mad when fielding the answers:

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What I Learned About Freelance Marketing from Flashback Weekend

October means the harvest, Halloween season, and best of all there are a massive load of horror movie conventions all over the country celebrating the scariest time of the year. I’m attending Chicago’s legendary Flashback Weekend this weekend (Oct 23-25 ‘09) to promote my vinyl collector/DJ blog Turntabling.net, and wouldn’t you know it, I found a way to tie it in to Freelance-Zone.

I like to take lessons on the freelance game wherever I find ‘em, and this morning while Googling directions to the event (at the Wyndham Hotel in Rosemont) I noticed that the official site for Flashback didn’t have the hours listed in a prominent place. In fact, I wasted several minutes searching for the hours (I finally located them buried deep on the schedule page–it’s too early in the morning for such a bug-hunt).

Here’s a lesson in marketing freelancers can learn:

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Myspace 2.0 Customization Tutorial for Freelancers

by Joe Wallace

Do freelance writers actually USE MySpace? I gave up on it ages ago, but I am very curious about what others are doing and what the general (?) consensus is among freelance writers about the usefulness of Myspace.

The one thing Myspace has going for it is the Bulletin feature, but it’s so abused and overused that it would be tough to get a real message out there among all the clutter. But I digress. … Continue Reading

How to Deal With Unreasonable Freelance Clients

An interesting article at FreelanceFolder by Laura Spencer got me thinking about how to avoid getting stuck with what Spencer calls a “vampire client”. Spencer’s advice was sound, but how do you avoid getting to the stage where you need to take her advice at all?

What the article defines as a vampire client is someone who keeps demanding revisions and is seemingly unable to be pleased–and all that after demanding a reduction in your usual fee. Sounds unreasonable to us!

The first thing you can do to protect yourself from an unreasonable client is to build in some parameters into your work agreement. What’s that? You don’t have a work agreement with your clients? Change that immediately.

In your agreement, build in a standard fee (which you can change to offer discounts for your valuable clients). Don’t accept less than your standard fee without a good reason, but when you do, be sure you add some additional consideration for yourself into the deal. That consideration could come as a more forgiving (and convenient for you) deadline or other concessions. … Continue Reading

What You Might Not Know About Self Employment Taxes

by Joe Wallace

It’s nowhere near April 15th, so why am I writing about tax issues for freelancers now? Because if you track your figures all through the year, you’ll know when you might need to take a deduction or how much to contribute to your SEP IRA by the end of the contribution period to avoid a nasty surprise on your income taxes for next year.

Didn’t know you could do that? Then you probably don’t know about these little issues, either…lucky for you we’re watching your financial back, eh? Don’t take any of this as advice from US, this information comes directly from the IRS official site:

Self-employment taxes break down like this:  self-employed people pay 15.3% until your income pushes you into a higher bracket. The rate is in two parts–you pay 12.4% for social security plus 2.9% for Medicare.

Did you know you can deduct half your self-employment tax for the purpose of figuring your adjusted gross income? But you can ONLY take that deduction from your income tax, not your Self Employed tax. Are you confused yet?

Who pays Self Employment tax? Anybody who earns more than $400 from self employment activities. Also, any church employee who earned more than $108.28 must also pay SE tax.
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Twitter 101 Business Guide

by Joe Wallace

One of my favorite new media commentators is Dave Allen, of Gang of Four fame. In addition to a very busy speaking and traveling schedule, he’s got a few going concerns on the web, one of which is the ever-relevant Social Cache.  Check out the recent post on the Twitter 101 for Business guide, now available as a free download from Social Cache (hosted from Allen’s other site Pampelmoose.com).

If you’re still trying to figure out what this Twitter thing is all about and why you should be paying attention, try this free download courtesy of Social Cache and get yourself schooled. (Please note this is a link to the post, not the PDF itself–that’s located within the post itself.)

If you’re not familiar with Social Cache, have a look around the site…it’s definitely worth your time.

Even MORE Freelance Writing Secrets: Talking Back to Your Editor

by Joe Wallace

A lot of editors–myself included–write advice columns for writers talking about how you need to keep the editor happy, be dependable, on deadline, and essentially kiss the rings of the keepers of publishing power.

But we rarely write advice for freelancers about what to do when the editor is unreasonable, takes you for granted, or doesn’t respect what it takes to turn in a good piece.

I’m just as guilty as any other editor on both fronts–it’s easy to get caught up in the deadlines, forget what writers go through to get the stories in on time, and do quality work. We just assume stuff.

AND I’m guilty of not writing a lot about how to put an editor back in touch with reality, so here are a few secrets you can use to bring an editor back down to earth:

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3 Reasons Why You Should Read The News

by Catherine L. Tully

Do you check in on what is happening in the world from time to time? Do you read the newspaper or hit CNN on a daily basis? If not, perhaps you should. Here’s why: … Continue Reading

An Editor’s Advice For Writers

What could be more valuable to a writer than a book written from the editor’s perspective aimed right at those they must edit day to day? The Forest For the Trees: An Editor’s Advice For Writers is that book.

Betsy Lerner has a pedigree a mile long–Houghton-Mifflin, Ballantine, Simon & Schuster, and Doubleday, she’s worked for the best and has plenty of war stories to share. These are insider secrets and perspective you owe it to yourself to explore.

Lerner’s excellent advice includes some fun-but-right-on-the-money tips including letting your quirks and bizarre behaviors define you and inform your work. “I’ve come to look at neurotic behavior as a necessary component of a writer’s arsenal.” Lerner says. BRAVO!

She also adds “Too often the neurotic writer who still hasn’t learned to trust his own voice rushes to spill the beans…” Lerner was talking specifically here about story development and letting a piece unfold in its own time, but you get the idea that little aside can inform your work in any number of ways.

This is one book you should make the investment in. The perspective alone is worth a million.