Whenever someone tells us that the secret to a productive day for freelancers is getting ready in the morning, there’s always a school of thought that disagrees. What’s interesting is that no one ever comes up and says that working in your pajamas is productive and yields great results work wise.

I won’t be telling you that either. As a freelance writer who has done both, I can tell you that getting ready for work is much more productive than working in pjs.

Working in your Pj days are fun, there’s no denying it. The element of glee involved is just too good to pass up. An occasional day spent working in Pjs is a far cry from doing it every day though.

So Really, Just Get Dressed Already

The secret to having a productive work day is getting dressed.

There. I said it.

Look at yourself right now. Forget stepping into an office. Are you dressed to step out and meet a client for an informal meeting?

Didn’t think so.

While working from home gives us the freedom to be our selves, dress comfortably and work anywhere we want, it does not give us the liberty to become sloppy, unhygienic and unproductive by working in our pjs.

If you’re not getting dressed for work (which includes taking a morning shower by the way) then you’re bringing your bed to work instead of your brain.

You’re sabotaging your own productivity.

Routines are there for a reason. The simple act of waking up, taking a shower and pulling on clothes that had some thought go into their selection, prepares you for a work a day without the pressure of running late or looking good.

When you sit down to work, you’re already in work mode and your day is already halfway through to being productive.

Bottom Line: It’s fun to work in your pjs but it’s more productive to get dressed.

We’ll be talking about other well established work routines that we love to scoff at but are actually good for our mind, body and work in the coming days.

What’s your morning routine and how does it affect your productivity?

Image Credit: HazPhotos

Technorati Tags: Freelancing, Productivity

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Back in April when I took time off, I was shocked at how easy it was to come back and pick up where I left off. I’d taken the unconventional route and closed shop for the 10 days I was away. Projects were completed; clients were notified. I came back, notified my clients I was back and before I knew it I was freelancing again.

When I took my yearly 6 week break in October, I was confident I’ll be able to do the same. I’ll go home, soak in the sun and sand, hang out with friends, spend time with family etc. What I didn’t count on was getting lazy. I stopped thinking about work. A few family medical emergencies and my own flu and later bronchitis squashed any plans I had of working a few hours a week.

Then I made the biggest mistake. I came back and didn’t start working immediately. A week’s recuperating turned into three. Before I knew it, I decided to take it easy till the delivery and then go work part time after the baby came.

I contacted no clients, I didn’t search for work and I barely networked. Before long my unplanned sabbatical became an unwelcome sabbatical. And yet I couldn’t get myself to start work!

I landed an editing job out of the blue a few weeks which I didn’t turn down because it was insanely simple and I was actually interested in the work. As I worked, writing started to come alive again. My old drafts called at me and this neglected blog mocked me till finally, I started writing.

I’m writing again, getting back into freelancing again. If nothing else, this sabbatical has given me the time to think through my plans for the future. How will I handle a baby and work? Do I even want to work or become a full time mom?

The editing job gave me my answer. I’m a writer and will be a mother Insha’Allah. The two can co-exist. In order to make the co-existence harmonious, I’ll now be freelancing part time.

The decision to work part time made me realize that I no longer need to take projects that don’t hold my interest. I can pick and choose my work so that the time away from my child doesn’t feel like a time suck. I can pursue my own freelancing plans that kept being pushed back in favor of client work.

Best of all, I can have it all.

Image Credit: nsaplayer

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One of the most fascinating aspects of freelancing is the potential to earn in different currencies. I get a thrill every time I seal a deal that would mean earning in a different currency. It’s probably one of my crazier thrills but seriously, how cool is it?!

Thanks to PayPal, the fact that I have home base in two countries and siblings in others who can help me set up whatever’s needed, I’ve had an easier time working it out. Also the fact that I live in a tax free country makes the execution all the more hassle free!

So how many currencies am I earning in anyway? The answer to that would be four. Two of those are handled by PayPal. (Don’t you just love their feature which helps you maintain money in different currencies?), third currency is of the country of my residence and fourth one is of my home country.

There are aspects such as monthly withdrawals and international money transfers which need planning or else I’ll end up paying more in service charges than can be justified.

As a freelance writer, how many currencies have you earned in and how do you handle payments by international clients?

Photo Credit: Rene Ehrhardt

Technorati Tags: freelance business, Freelancing

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There’s really no excuse for disappearing off like this. There is however, a reason. [Hint: Look at the picture.]

I hope you’ve figured it out by now. The hand made card isn’t the most accurate but if you look closely… I take my words back. Everybody guessed right

Ever since I found out – and I found out relatively early , I’ve been waking up everyday praying I wouldn’t be sick and working as much as I can, wrapping up work for clients, not taking on anymore work than my current levels of sleep and energy permit.

I still haven’t figured out the etiquette for this. As a freelancer, who do I need to tell? Do I even need to tell my clients? The ones I’m letting go of or the one’s I’ll continue working with or both? Also, if I take on new clients, will they need to be told?

You can tell its my first time can’t you? If you’ve got advice, I’m all ears!

The Base will be quiet a little while longer till I work out the details and get back to a posting schedule. Till then I’ll  be aiming at once a week updates.

Don’t worry, the blog’s theme will not change. It’s still going to be about blogging, freelancing, social networking and whatever falls in between.

Oh and if you’d like to see this place updated more than once a week then I’m open to guest posts. Anyone up for it?

Technorati Tags: guest posting, personal

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Before you look at me like I’ve lost my mind – I haven’t. The competition is being hosted by Websites.com and they’re giving away $10k to the winner. To win this award you need to submit your small business website.

All you have to do is get a website design that kicks ass. The website can be hosted anywhere but you will have to become a member of websites.com to enter the contest which will take you 5 minutes tops. What’s more, websites.com is even giving you a chance to pair up with a web designer of your choice.

If you’re not sure which web designer to go for, they have their own directory of web designers that you can choose from.

Please note that you will have to pay the web designer their fee regardless of whether you win or not. Remember, its not the web designers who’re entering the contest, it’s you. So the designer needs to be paid. Think of it this way, there will no sharing required of the $10k if you win

The deadline to enter is July 29th. You just need to enter the competition to let them know you’re a contestant. The date for submitting the actual website design is in September which gives you more than a month to come up with a kick-ass website design. After the initial judging, the nominees will be put up for public voting and the winner will be announced on October 2nd 2009.

It’s a great competition to boost your business and get you moving in case you’ve been dragging your feet about designing your small business website.

Once you’ve entered the competition, don’t forget to check out the judging criteria. Let us know if you enter the competition (and win)!

P.S: The runner up get $3000.

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Things have been crazy in Samar-ville as of late. If I start writing about that, this post will turn into a rant. And I’m trying really really hard to not become an angry ranter.

Every freelancer at one time or another faces situations that are not ideal. Wait, who am I kidding. We face not-so-ideal situations every single day. The following scenarios/situations left me wondering how I would have dealt with them.

I also wondered if it would be easy to do what was so obviously the self respecting solution to them. I’ll let you guys decide.

1. A client stresses upon a deadline in every email but fails to send the required information on time to start/complete the project yet still demands that the work be submitted on the set deadline.
2. If you did a one off gig for someone, and they failed to pay you by the first of next month and still haven’t paid after 20 days. 2 gentle reminders later they’re treating you like you’re being cumbersome.
3. You’re in talks with a potential client. Everything has been sorted out; The number of hours, work involved, future possibilities, rates etc. The client asks you to confirm on the terms set so that they could sent you an NDA,  only to disappear on you after you send the confirmation.

What would you do if you were faced with the above situations? How would you deal with them?

Image credit: Partie Traumatic

Technorati Tags: freelance business, Freelance work, Freelancing

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When twitter changed its default setting disallowing users to see @ mentions of people they weren’t following, it became harder to meet and follow interesting conversations and people.

I for one got seriously mad. Twitter practically told me to stop snooping into other people’s conversations with people I wasn’t following. The nerve!

For a while, I was stuck with following back people who followed me. I was at a loss on how to follow new folks. I didn’t have the time to go through countless profiles and see who was following who.

Considering that twitter played the ‘We can’t undo it anytime soon’ card, there wasn’t much that I could do – except find other ways to find people to follow.

Here are two ways I accidentally stumbled upon to converse with people who normally would not have come in my twitter radar.

1. Blip your way to new conversations

As someone who routinely listens to music while working, I like to share it too. The need to share and tell the world about my music taste (cuz I’m a show off that way) made me want to do it on twitter too. After all, music makes you like, totally cool y’know?

Blip.FM is a great way to connect with new people. After spending a few weeks blipping songs for around one hour every couple of days or so, I realized that I was hearing from people who weren’t following me!

The reason was simple, they liked my choice of songs and wanted to share their opinion or recommend some more. Sometimes people would @ me out of the blue because I blipped UB40 and they got nostalgic. Or because they were living in their native town and thought I’d be interested in the trivia – which I was.

Another thing I noticed was that my current followers would RT a song I’d blipped if they liked it. Since RT’s can be seen by everyone, I started getting @ replies from people I couldn’t see them conversing with. (Ha! Take that you meddling twitter!)

Regardless to say, I’ve been conversing with new people regularly and I already know we have our taste in music in common. So not only do I find cool people to follow through twitter, I get an immediate ice breaker too.

For those of you who’re wondering about finding people to follow in your niche through blipping songs, that is taken care of when your followers RT your blip and their followers leave you a message. Half the time, the person is from the niche you’re interested in.

2. RT tweets without links

I tend to RT tweets that I’ve enjoyed for the opinion they express, laugh they gave me or because I identify with it.

It has been a great way to start a conversation with people I follow but don’t usually talk with and find new people to follow.

The key is to add your own two cents to the RT to get the conversation going. A lot of people reply back as they share their own opinions and conversations tend to get interconnected introducing a lot of tweeps to each other.

The IranElection hashtag was the perfect example. I’d RT differing opinions and the conversation flowed. That’s when I realized the impact of RT-ing linkless tweets. I don’t talk politics and/or religion as a general rule and I was not looking to start a conversation on the Iran elections at all.

My reason behind the RT was that I found the sentiment expressed in the tweet in question interesting. That’s where my interest in it ended. My personal thoughts and opinions were supposed to remain my own.

But suddenly people were replying and discussing and I learned some important lessons.

• Don’t RT stuff you’re not willing to discuss
• Linkless RT’s encourage people to talk to you.
• Tweet stuff (thoughts, opinions, sentiments) that will get you Retweeted

Since then, I’ve been RTing tweets that encourage an opinion from people. As a result, I’ve seen an increase in the RT ratio of my tweets, both the linkless tweets and the ones with links.

Everyone has their own story of how they find more people to follow. What’s yours? Have you found any unconventional ways to network on twitter?

Image credit: Respres

Technorati Tags: Social Networking, Twitter, Twitter tips, Twitter tricks

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Blogging is serious business. Whoever said blogging is fun didn’t know what they were talking about. Blogging is a seriously fun business

Studying Ali Hale’s Staff Blogging course is fun too. No mincing of words and no false promises. What else could I want? A paid blogging job perhaps? All in good time my friend.

Unit III of the Staff Blogging Course deals with applying for a job. Ali gives tip regarding your blogging job application. What to do, what not to do, how to stay in the blog editor’s notice and lists sample application and guest posting guidelines from various blogs.

The Staff Blogging Course also tells you

• Next steps for the three different application methods discussed in Unit II
• What to do if/when rejected for a blogging job you applied to
• How to form and maintain your portfolio and
• How to keep track of job applications

The course handouts include sample job applications that Ali herself have used and has also added footnotes with further details. There’s also a sample Excel file that helps you track your applications and submissions.

This Unit includes three simple exercises that won’t take much time if you’ve done the exercises in the previous units. Follow this unit, and who knows? By next week you just may have a staff blogging job!

Using the sample excel sheet

The Excel sheet keeps pushing me to apply to new places. I’ve added a new sheet to the file where I’ve listed the blogs I’d like to staff blog for and keep adding blog post ideas related to them as they come to me.

The best part about staff blogging jobs is that they open up every few months. So even if the blog in question isn’t looking for a staff blogger now, there’s no guarantee that they won’t want one four months from now.

If you like what you’ve seen of the staff blogging course so far, you can buy the course for $19 here.

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We’ve heard what Michael Martine of Remarkablogger, James Chartrand of Men with Pens and Naomi Dunford of Ittybiz have to say about being interesting to your audience. It’s time to find out what you guys have to say.

Before starting this series, I had my final post all drafted and was looking forward to typing it to perfection.

Then I published my first post of the series and Starliteve left a comment that bested my views in every sense of the word. She was matter of fact where I would have gotten er… emotional and to the point where I would have rambled.

So instead of my pearls of (very questionable) wisdom, I present to you Starliteve’s three points that make a blog interesting to her. Feel free to substitute blog with business, product,  services etc.

1. Your blog is interesting because it gives me information and a perspective that I can’t get anywhere else.
2. Your blog is interesting because you go out and find the best information and save me the time by linking me to it all at once (with your glowing commentary).
3. Your blog is interesting because you tell me intimate and interesting things about yourself that are entertaining or thought provoking.

Do you guys look for the same things? Or does something else hold your interest? The floor is now yours.

Image credit: Chris Owens

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Freelancing, Social Networking

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Naomi Dunford needs no introduction. She’s a force to reckon with and embodies everything Michael and James have said about being interesting.

Naomi is as real as they come and she has an equally helpful assistant Jess who got me this interview from Naomi.

If there’s one person I could voice my real question to, it’s Naomi.

Q. How the hell do I become interesting so that people like you will visit and read my blog? How do I catch and hold your interest? Tell me for God’s sake!!!

IttyBiz: If you’re not terrified 23 hours out of 24, you’re not doing it right. (You can take an hour to answer email if you like. That’s allowed.) Not sure if you’re terrified? Use a handy little post-it checklist. Check your offering — your blog post, your ad copy, your sales page, whatever — against this criteria:

Does it make you say, “Jesus fucking Christ, am I INSANE? There’s no way I can do this. I’ll be a laughing stock. I’ll lose everyone. I’ll be broke and homeless and live in a gutter”?

No? Then back to the drawing board go you, darling.

–

Nobody says it like IttyBiz. Thank you for the interview Naomi. You’re the (wo)man!

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Freelancing, Social Networking

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