For starters, join sites like iFreelance, Guru, Elance, and sites like that. If they allow uploading a portfolio, upload that portfolio. Start bidding on projects on sites like this and get moving! Keep your bid low and write a killer proposal.

There are several classified ads sites that kind of work. Craigslist has some freelance related classified ads. However, we just started one that will hopefully have a decent reach and provide a variety of quality ads, Freelance Classifieds. If you find any others, please comment and let us know.

Contact former and current clients. Being proactive can go a long way. Make some calls (or e-mails), and say something like, “Good morning, Mr. Johnson. This is Larry Peterman. I did that online advertising campaign for you a while back. How are you? Oh, I’m great. Thanks for asking!” (Hint: When a client asks how you are, you’re always doing well. It is not good business practice to complain to a client, and they likely do not care how you are.) I just thought I would call to see if that advertising campaign is still going well for you. It is? Great. I am so glad to hear that. Well, I also want you to know that if there’s anything else you need, I would love to work with you again. I can provide written copy, alternate advertising methods, expand your website, or design new ad graphics if you need any of that done. Okay, that sounds great. You are welcome to call anytime if you need anything. Thanks for your time, Mr. Johnson. Okay, have a good day now. Goodbye.” If that call does not pan out, do not get discouraged. Make the next call. You are keeping yourself in mind. That call may not have panned out today, but tomorrow Mr. Johnson may decide he wants a 300×250 ad graphic designed, and you may be just the person to do it.

Along with calling former clients, periodically send them discount offers with their invoices or promotional offers by e-mail. Repeat business is the key to the creative service industry.

If you are not already doing it, consider networking on forums. Do not just focus on freelance related forums or forums related to your niche. Focus on forums related to any commerce sectors that your niche caters to. Think outside the box.

Find companies, especially small businesses, that could use your services and send them a promotional e-mail or press release. You might consider cold calling them too. Being proactive goes a long way.

Enlist word of mouth exposure. Ask friends, family, satisfied clients, or other business contacts to spread the word. Send out press releases to everyone you know by e-mail that they can print or forward. Give out business cards like they are money. In essence, they could be money… for you.

Start a newsletter, especially by e-mail, and ask your past and present clients if they would like to join it. It makes the cold calling situation easier, clients can forward it to other people, and if you add a registration widget on your website, potential clients can sign up, giving you more potential reach in one place.

Get involved corporately. Participate in trade shows, sponsor events, attend seminars or workshops, volunteer your services to local charities, join the local Chamber of Commerce, attend events with groups you are already connected to, participate in job fairs at local schools, and comment or guest blog on different blogs and websites that could produce leads for you.

Work on low cost advertising. Do location based Google Adwords, get a car magnet or sign, produce a polo shirt with your logo and tagline on it to wear when out during the day, especially at such events, advertise in trade publications, newspapers, and get listed in the local yellow pages.

Be proactive as the expert you are. Pitch an article to an industry publication, blog, or resource site, speak at industry and networking events and locations, start a blog, submit tutorials to sites like this one, send a press release to local talk stations and provide yourself for a guest spot on the radio or to newspapers to possibly get guest article spots or become a preferred freelancer for periodic work, and write and distribute e-books.

There are so many ideas, many of which take time. Just get started on them as soon as possible. Make a list of ideas, go down each one from start to finish, and keep moving. If you have any ideas that have not been mentioned here, please feel free to comment and share it with the other readers.

Related posts:

1. Freelance Success in 2011

Keep your prices low, especially if you are new or your portfolio is small. You have yet to fully prove yourself and we are in a bad economy. Do not charge too much right now. Quantity is better than quality right now. It literally pays to stay competitive. Try to keep your prices lower than that of the competition.

That brings up the next point. Spy on the competition. Look at the websites of freelancers who do what you do, especially those that seem successful. Look at their price lists or anonymously contact them for pricing information. Take their quote, learn from it, drop 20% from it, and call that your price. If you seem to be lower than everyone else, advertise that. Advertise your low prices as compared to competitors.

Look up estimated 2009 and 2010 freelance average rates. Also be specific in your search engine queries, like, “2010 freelance web designer rates” or “2009 freelance blog writer rates”. The average will be higher than your research. Drop it by 30% or 40% and brag that you are significantly below the average.

If you are a writer, try to bill small projects by the word and give bulk pricing (i.e. $10 per 12 point font Times New Roman page) for larger projects. It is so much easier and makes you more reliable and believeable. The best overall rate I have seen is charging four cents per word. It is low enough that the work will come in, yet high enough that you will not starve in the meantime. I find that to be a happy medium.

Now look at the tentative prices you have listed. Could you see yourself working for that price to start? Remember not every hour you work will be billable. Just look it over, do the math, and see if the pricing you have come up with can work for you. If not, back to the drawing board. Questions? Use the contact form. We are here to help.

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1. Reduce load intensive images. Use less images and make the ones you do use smaller. Instead of using HTML to reduce image sizes, alter the file to be the size you want displayed. Your site will speed up with less image bandwidth used.

2. Use CSS instead of coding every detail. If you are running a blog, you likely use WordPress or Moveable Type, which naturally rely on CSS for coding and design. Your site will speed up if you have compressed your coding using CSS, so you define certain styles and division properties.

3. Host as much as you can yourself. If you are using banner based advertising, try to host the images on your own server. Host everything you can yourself without drawing from another host. You are also relying on their bandwidth and speed to load your page.

4. Use GZip compression to speed up your site by caching pages and speeding up processes. All of my sites have GZip compression. If you are running a PHP related site, like a WordPress blog, there is a simple code you can use, especially if you use a Linux-based Apache 2 server. It was provided to me by GoDaddy here: Compressing Web Pages for Faster Load Times. I use it on every site I can, including this one. If you use WordPress, another good option is the W3 Total Cache plugin. I also use that on every site I can, including this one.

5. Use less code. You can do the same things with less code. Do everything you can do reduce the amount of coding you need to do the same thing. If there is less code, it loads quicker. Imagine reading a three word sentence as opposed to a five sentence paragraph. Computers, in essence, do the same thing. If they read less code, they finish reading sooner and load the page.

I hope this helps. For more tips on how to search engine optimize your blog, see the original post referring to the many ways you can get Google and Bing to like your site.

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1. Search Engine Optimization for Your Blog
2. You Need a Blog

This is a bit of a beginner course or refresher lesson for search engine optimization (or SEO) for those who can use it. Websites and blogs have slightly different SEO methods. SEO for blogs is very simple but can also be very complex.

First of all, it is all about the material you present in your content. Let me give you an example. Throughout this post, you will see the words, ‘freelancer’, ‘freelance writer’, ‘search engine optimization’, ‘blog’, ‘SEO’, and other important keywords several times in this blog post. This is severely important in search engine optimization. Pick keywords that relate to your niche and make sure to use them as frequently as possible. Most of my writing as a freelancer for myself, my blog, and for clients, is web content: blog articles, news articles, and even real estate page web content. In the advent of the internet, unless you are writing a book, all of it is for SEO purposes. Honestly, I shoot for around 2-4% of broad keyword saturation. I have been asked two write 5% keyword saturation for ONE simple keyword before, and it is not only difficult, but the article turns out disgusting. Just one sentence from any given paragraph turns out something like this:

The job of any freelancer is so versatile and demanding that the average freelancer offers multiple services because clients require a multitude of services from the freelancer they have hired.

That sentence was not only disgusting, but it was so obviously packed full of the keyword ‘freelancer’ that the reader cannot get by the SEO methods to actually read it. I have a better example, but for starters, I am not ready to promote myself on this site until it is promoting other freelancers equally too, and second, I do not want the client finding this, and my having insulted his project. He is a good client and a great man, but I just thought that particular project was over the top. I prefer to write for the reader. The reader will come. I would rather run cheap PPC ads for my blog and work six times as hard to get links if it allows me to write for the reader, which I have done and will be doing again. At the end of the day, I would rather attract less readers through shady SEO techniques and hold onto more of the ones I do get.

Okay, so we figured out that keywords are important, but now we need to work on the site itself. The design is not very important, but the intricacies of the layout can be. For starters, use the meta tags. They are your friend. Use the meta tag class “keywords” and stuff related keywords in there. If you have a Google Adwords account, log in and use their keyword tool to find keywords. Also use the meta tag class “description” to type your desired search engine description. Here is an example of these meta tag uses, directly from my source code:

<*meta name="keywords" content="google, yahoo, msn, freelance, freelancer, freelance writer, freelance writers, freelance web designers, freelance forums, freelance help, freelance jobs, freelance classifieds, freelance gigs, elance, guru, ifreelance, freelancer.com, freelance networking, freelance ads, freelance website, freelance blog, blogging, blogger, writer, author, freelance jobs, freelance writing, freelance star, hollister freelance, freelance web designer, freelance graphic design, freelance work, freelance photography, freelance photographer, sluggy freelance, over freelancers, freelance jobs hiring, seo, search engine optimization, PageRank, websites, website design, wordpress"/>

<*meta name="description" content="The best resource for freelancers of all types."/>

Note: In each code, take out the asterisk (*) next to each left angle bracket (<). I had to put them in so the code would be visible.

This is a legal way of hiding keywords on your site that do not affect readers. Also, you can take advantage of keywords with a few WordPress plugins. Frankly, we should discuss SEO friendly WordPress plugins as a whole. That is our next tip: SEO WordPress plugins.

First on the list, we have your choice of any “related posts” plugin. We have Efficient Related Posts installed. It not only directs traffic to other related posts, but it also adds a few extra keywords to your post. Next, we have Optimal Title. Freelance Water Cooler does not need Optimal Title, as we do not list the site name on each post’s title code. However, if you want your title up there, Optimal Title mirrors the title code so the blog post name goes first and then the name of the site, making the title of the post even more search engine friendly than it already was. Remember to use keywords in your post if possible. Next, we have Simple SEO. This plugin integrates really well with WordPress and helps to automate the SEO process on each post and adds keyword importance.  Also, there is the All-in-One SEO Pack, which automates a lot of the tips we have here. All-in-One also works with Scribe SEO, which you should also install, which is more of an SEO advice and analysis plugin. However, Scribe SEO costs money.

Next, remember to update frequently. More content can mean more readers, and most search engines give more credence to more frequently updated sites. Lastly, try to get likeminded bloggers to link to you. Remember that the anchor text of the link is important. Anchor text of ” Talented freelance writer” is much more weighty than “Jane Grasmick’s site”. (Note: I do not know a Jane Grasmick. I just made her up.)

These are just a few tips. We will discuss SEO more in the coming weeks, so stay tuned and feel free to give your input. If you have any other preferred SEO related WordPress plugins, please do not hesitate to let us know in the comments or contact form and we will pass them along.

Related posts:

1. You Need a Blog
2. Attention Blog Readers!

Why Should I?

A blog is so important to a freelancer. You do not understand. For starters, especially if you are a freelance writer, every post adds a little something to your  resume. After 250 blog posts, you have a major resume piece, and all you did was speak your mind once a day for eight months. Secondly, search engine rankings will begin to explode, and you will have readers that will either turn into clients or word of mouth marketing tools and link juice. Freelance writers need to be constantly writing. The most successful freelancers are the freelancers that work to get paid, but would do it for free because they love what they do. Even if you are not a freelance writer, you should have a blog, because it still gets your information out there and gets you noticed.

If You Build It, They Will Come

That is not entirely true. First of all, that is a very poorly misquoted line from the classic movie Field of Dreams, and second, that is never true. However, here is what is true: If you don’t build it, they cannot come. That’s right: the search engine rankings bringing you potential clients, the link juice, and the free marketing will not be there. Search engines love blogs. Dedicated bloggers update their sites all the time, giving them new content and things to “crawl”. Search engines are so geared toward blogs that websites without new content get disregarded slowly over time. If your website does not have a blog, it will slowly fade into search engine oblivion and all that SEO work you did could have been for naught. You can help preserve your website and your content with a blog.

Now, one more thing is true. If you build it and keep working on it, they might come. Nobody can guarantee you a certain amount of traffic to your site, not even your own traffic building model. It is simply the luck of the draw. However, more content and more links will equal more traffic, thanks to the current model of the internet that says more content gets indexed with search engines, allowing for the search engines to rank you higher. Links do the same thing, as well as sending you free traffic.

The most important aspect, however, is the fact that you are constantly building a portfolio: one that is currently published on the internet, you have full control over, and has your name all over it. As a freelancer, you need to constantly be working, and if you are a freelance writer, you need to be constantly writing. I believe every freelancer should have a blog, and if you implement what I am saying, you will too.

This is the first of three parts of a blog related blog post series. Stay tuned for parts two and three.

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The first version of the PageRank technology was created while Larry and Sergey attended Stanford University, which owns a patent to PageRank. The PageRank patent expires in 2017. We hold a perpetual license to this patent. In October 2003, we extended our exclusivity period to this patent through 2011, at which point our license will become non-exclusive.

Interesting… let’s read a little further, shall we?

Circumstances outside our control could pose a threat to our intellectual property rights. For example, effective intellectual property protection may not be available in every country in which our products and services are distributed. Also, the efforts we have taken to protect our proprietary rights may not be sufficient or effective. Any significant impairment of our intellectual property rights could harm our business or our ability to compete. Also, protecting our intellectual property rights is costly and time consuming. Any increase in the unauthorized use of our intellectual property could make it more expensive to do business and harm our operating results.

Companies in the internet, technology and media industries own large numbers of patents, copyrights and trademarks and frequently enter into litigation based on allegations of infringement or other violations of intellectual property rights. As we face increasing competition, the possibility of intellectual property claims against us grows. Our technologies may not be able to withstand any third-party claims or rights against their use.

Weird… so the industry standard website ranking algorithm will pretty much become null and void in the near future. My apologies, but I have to be cynical and full of criticism right now. Google, as far as I am concerned, is a necessary evil. I do not like Google by any stretch of the imagination, and here is why: Google is completely full of itself. It has successfully created an industry standard in many ways. Google PageRank is the sole concern for many webmasters and bloggers. Some bloggers and webmasters will not link to you if you do not have their desired PageRank. For instance, this site, since it is still just beginning, does not have many links out there, and as of the writing of this article, is a PageRank of zero, which it does not deserve, simply because I am currently building it. Google Analytics is complete garbage, but I have to use it, because it is the industry standard. I also use StatCounter on all my sites, including this one, because StatCounter is better. StatCounter is a more accurate counter, shows you where visitors are from by using a map interface, where they came from, what they did, how long they were there, and if they are a repeat visitor. It also gives you IP addresses, server information, the specifications of the system they used to access your site… all information useful for creating a better experience for your visitors, and, might I add, information Google does not give you in Analytics.

To continue ranting about PageRank, I have been out there marketing this site and getting links for months now, but you would not know it, because, from best estimate, the last PageRank update was in April 2010. That means that this site has the same PageRank it had when it began, which is not fair. I started sites for clients in the summer that still do not have a PageRank at all, and they are getting discouraged. If Google is going to publicize a ranking algorithm that has been hailed as an industry standard for no reason, they should at least feel the responsibility not to step on our toes in the process. It would be much more responsible to update PageRank more frequently, or at least throw us a bone now and then. When asked, Google executives tell us that PageRank details are none of our business, and basically do what they want. I am not in favor of this Wizard of Oz style pattern.

PageRank does no good for anyone, and is just another thing for us to worry about and be paranoid over. I am not even sure if Google even knows how they operate PageRank. PageRank further undermines their entire plan for the effect they plan to have on the internet. They plan to encourage good faith linking while getting rid of dirty web development practices, link exchanges, and the like. Conversely, PageRank practices encourage that type of behavior and makes people hang onto links like they are gold, effectively discouraging good faith linking. They penalize websites for horrid reasons, regulate the internet, and manipulate business practices as though they think they are God, and I am tired of it. I abhor Google and everything they stand for, and I reject Google’s “holier than thou”, irresponsible practices.

I think Google will survive the experience. According to their own data and the data of several reporting companies like Alexa, they are the number one website in the world. However, I would like to see this new revelation about the future of PageRank completely do away with PageRank. It is the most useless thing ever shoved down the throats of the general public, and I think the riddance of PageRank would be very beneficial for webmasters and the internet at large. That is what I am hoping and predicting will come to pass: the end of PageRank.

Credit to Search Engine Roundtable for the original story and some of the information presented.

Related posts:

1. Impending Google PageRank Update: September 2010
2. Microsoft Partners With Facebook: Trouble for Google?

For self-employed people and small business owners, it is a time to start working on taxes and to try their best to succeed, and I am not exempt from this feeling. If you are a freelancer, you probably are not exempt from it either. 2010 was a year where most people in business just resolved to get by. There was little economic growth globally in 2010 and small businesses and self-employed individuals were hit rather hard, especially freelancers. We are the backbone of the domestic and global economy, but we constantly get the short end of the stick. It is hard for us to find work at times, and even when we get that work, collecting on it can be a challenge. Again, if you are anything like me, you made some resolutions financially that you intend to keep. Costs are high right now as opposed to low profits, and it is hard just to get by. Here are some tips to make the best of 2011 as a freelancer:

1. Try to tie up 2010 loose ends. What do I mean by that? It is simple. Finish all projects you left unfinished in 2010 and follow through with them. I am currently doing that. Also, if you had any clients that still owe you money, do your best to collect on it. If clients owe you money, you are not alone. Many freelancers have uncollected money. Send them a follow-up PayPal invoice. If you have their mailing address, send them a paper invoice and keep a copy of it. Send them a friendly reminder that in 2010 they ordered more services than they paid for and that they can take care of the past due balance at their “earliest convenience”. Be friendly but stern. Read over some bills you have received and look at the language they use. They do not suggest that you pay them. They do not respectfully ask you to send them some money. They require it kindly, reminding you that nonpayment can result in negative consequences, so they would like to work with you to get it taken care of. They realize that this is money they are owed, that you have an obligation to pay, and they do not mind reminding you of this fact, even preemptively.

2. Open your horizons to find more work. I understand that every freelancer gets into a groove and starts trying to find work at different freelance related websites. Do not be afraid to try out new places and get new memberships. You are doomed to inadequacy as a freelancer if you only pick one place and stay with it.

3. Try to get more work from your existing clients. E-mail them with exclusive offers and suggestions to boost their business. Clients often need work done or have needs they do not realize or do not think of offering to you. Sometimes they forget they have a versatile freelancer at their fingertips. Keep yourself in their mind and they might order more from you. “Out of sight, out of mind,” as I always say.

4. Compare prices: If you are charging high prices, you will get less work. Check on the prices of other freelancers and see what you can do to lower your prices. Lower prices means more work.

5. Cold call: Call, e-mail, or send a promotional letter to potential clients. Send an e-mail to everyone from Yahoo.com to the muffler shop down the street… anyone who might be able to utilize your services. Everyone has needs a freelancer can fill. Your business is not helpful to anyone if nobody knows you are there.

6. Press releases: Send press releases out. Send them to everyone from PRweb.com to freelance organizations and anywhere else that can get you exposed.

7. Get a website: If you don’t have a website, you are behind on the game. A website opens up the whole world to your clientele base. It does not need to be extensive. Just promote your services, list your prices, and tell everyone what they need to know. Clients can find you just as easy as you found this site, whether you fund this site by clicking an ad or through search engines or link marketing. I would also suggest opening up to a blog. Many freelancers have a blog, and it is unusual for a freelancer not to have one. Some get their name domain, like Ramona Iftode. That is not the site for her business, just for her blog. Some use a subdomain or offshoot page from their business domain like Michael Bowler. A blog means that you are constantly putting content out there, constantly noticeable, search engine friendly, and building your portfolio every day.

8. Offer more services to your clients. If you can do it, offer it. More services open up more client potential, allowing for more work and more revenue.

9. Join forums and networking sites like this one. I know they are scarce, which is why FWC was started in the first place, but you can get links out there to your site, start networking with freelancers, and soon get work from it.

10. Lastly, Set goals for 2011. If you have no goals, you have no success. Success is the meeting or exceeding of goals. If you need help setting goals, either build a business plan, hire someone to put it together, or follow the SMART goal system. In this case, SMART stands for: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timed. It needs to be specific or you cannot meet it. It needs to be measurable, or you will never know when you have met it. It needs to be attainable, or you will never succeed. It needs to be realistic, or you are setting yourself up for failure. It also needs to be timed, or you will work toward that goal indefinitely, and never actually achieve anything. An example of a SMART goal is: “By December 31, 2011, I expect to be making $3500 a month freelancing,” or “By June 2011, I want to average $200 a day freelancing.”

Good luck, and if you have any tips I did not think to share, please leave them in the comments.

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Is this trouble for Google? Right now, Google is the top search engine and a household name. Heck, it’s a verb! Count how many times you ever heard someone say, “I’m going to go Google that when I get home!” Even better, you have probably seen someone pull out their internet capable cell phone and say, “I’m going to Google that NOW!” Better than that, Bing is not a verb, at least not to anyone but myself. I personally say I will “bing” something, contrary to the Google frenzy, simply because I am doing my part to try to release the masses from the Google frenzy. I am not a fan of Google, but we will not get into that right now.

Could this new partnership between Microsoft and Facebook be such an issue for Google that Bing makes Google puts its money where its overly inflated, internet monopolizing, mediocre algorithm, smooth-talking mouth is?

Related posts:

1. Impending Google PageRank Update: September 2010

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1. The Love Affair With WordPress