Just like most people with web access, my life is well documented. If a future grandchild idly wonders what I did last October 24 in the afternoon, some notebook, blog post, or social networking site will hold the answer.

I decided to take this a step further — what if I made a real effort to note down what I did every minute of my life? What if I recorded all the food I ate, the water I drank, exercises I did, and even my happiness? Not such an impossible feat, given that in this Web 2.0 world there’s an app for everything. So I decided to track my life for at least a week to see how feasible it was to do.

Gathering Tools for Life Tracking

Tracking every aspect of one’s life sounds like a daunting task, so I needed to automate as much of it as possible. I started with ManicTime, a downloadable app that tracks computer usage. Among the stats it gathers are the applications you use and the web sites you visit. You can also tag your timeline to better identify what you were doing at any given time. My tags included “digital fiddling,” “email,” “online reading,” “freelance writing work,” “design work,” and “personal writing.”

While ManicTime is tied to computer usage, I also used it to tag the time I spent away from the computer including “sleep,” “eating,” “chores” and “offline reading.” I simply tracked my offline time via pen and paper and tagged it in ManicTime at the end of the day. This was a handy way for me to compile all my time information in one place, as well as take advantage of ManicTime’s statistical features.

Remembering a previous post by Dawn Foster, I also signed up for DailyBurn to track my nutritional intake as well as my exercise. Its food database was quite extensive, so I rarely had to input nutritional information manually.

Next came the most difficult part: tracking my mood. After a bit of research, I found some specific methods over at Kevin Kelly’s Quantified Self blog. The only disadvantage of the proposed methods was that they were too specific. I wanted something simpler and more automated, so I signed up for Track Your Happiness instead.

Findings and Results

By just the second day of my experiment, I was already learning something. To my surprise, I spend most of my waking hours writing, whether paid (freelance work) or unpaid (personal projects). This came as a surprise because most days I feel like I don’t really do anything, so it’s comforting to know that I spend that much time focused on nothing else but putting one word after another.

Here are some other non-work stats, gathered throughout the entire experiment (daily averages):

• Digital fiddling — 0.54 hours
• Sleep — 7.67 hours
• Family time — 2.67 hours
• Time spent tracking and analyzing these things — 1.10 hours

I was also glad to discover that I always drank more than nine glasses of water per day. My average calorie count wass within the norm (1638 Calories), but I had the tendency to go over my carbohydrate limits per day.

As for my mood, it appears that I’m a generally happy person — except when I talk to children or work on things I neither want nor have to do. The big surprise, I suppose, is that I’m happiest when I’m planning my business.

Tracking Your Life: Should You Do It?

Here’s the thing I have to admit: except for getting my happiness report, I didn’t finish the experiment. I only lasted until the fifth day, and by then, doing all this tracking was taking its toll on me. I saw that as I tried to keep up with jotting down every fleeting moment, I was getting more stressed. Sure, it only took me roughly an hour a day to track and analyze data, but that’s an hour of my life I’d rather spend on something else.

Quantifying your time, nutrition, and mood can be a learning experience — but you need to know your limits. If tracking your life lessens your enjoyment of it, then either change your approach or only track what’s necessary.

What aspects of your life or work do you keep track of? How do you keep track of them?

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Although freelancers and corporate employees both have stages of moving on in their careers, it tends to happen more often in freelancing. Clients sometimes lose funding or focus. Other times we’re called in for short-term projects and aren’t hired again. But there are other times when you initiate the change yourself.

Here are some common reasons why we sometimes feel the need to move on:

• Rates. This is especially true for new freelancers who started out with low rates and eventually had to raise them. While clients are mostly understanding of you raising your rates over time, you might encounter the rare few who’ll insist on paying you low rates even after working with them consistently for several years. If the money is no longer worth your time, it’s understandable to want to move on.
• Culture. Sometimes, our attitude towards business changes and becomes different from what our client’s attitudes are. We “grow apart”, so to speak.
• Client. Although it rarely happens, it’s possible that your client changes and treats you differently. When it’s a negative change such as delayed or skipped payments, it’s a clear sign to at least change your strategy.
• Time. Since we can’t create more time, we might drop certain projects if we need extra hours in our workday. Your reasons for needing extra time may include family emergencies, the need for more leisure, or if there are other projects you want to pursue.
• Interest. Whether it’s the project itself or the particular field you’re working in, it’s possible that you just want to try something different.
• Results. It’s also possible you get different results from what you were expecting. A venture might not have been profitable, or you did not meet any of your objectives.

The urge to move on grows stronger when your reasons start adding up. For example, I rarely leave a project because of rates alone. But if unsatisfactory pay is coupled with an extremely needy client who’s suddenly using shady tricks to win new customers, then I move on as early as possible.

Also, you might value some reasons over others. I know of at least two freelancers whose quality time with their children is non-negotiable. Personally I value personal interest and passion over rates, while a friend of mine has it the other way around. Know which aspects of your work you value the most so that you can make decisions based on your own needs.

Once you’ve identified your reasons, there are some things you need to keep in mind before dropping a project completely.

• Explore alternatives first. If you’re hesitant to completely move on from a project, explore your options first. Sometimes your reasons for wanting to move on are just symptoms of fixable problems. Is it possible for you to hire extra help? Can you change the project scope to something more suitable? Find other solutions first before you decide that it’s really time to take the leap.
• Be part of the transition. Unless you were treated unfairly, leaving your client in an instant is never a good idea. You were part of their business and to leave them suddenly is unprofessional. If you can’t recommend a replacement outright, offer to be part of the hiring and training process until your replacement is completely ready. This will save your client from unnecessary expenses and from making any hiring mistakes. Also, you won’t be burning bridges that may be essential to your career later on.
• Know how to say goodbye. Doing this properly depends on your relationship with the client. There’s no cookie-cutter solution. Just be as honest and as fair as you can be. If your reasons for moving on are negative (such as poor working conditions), then it helps to make a mental note of how you can avoid this in the future.

Leaving a client or a project need not be dramatic. As long as you find the right balance between your own needs and theirs, the process is usually clean and straightforward.

What are your usual reasons for outgrowing clients and projects?

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The successive typhoons that recently came over the Philippines gave my roof and ceiling a complete beating. I thought I could ignore the rainwater dripping into every room in the house but, when I woke up one morning and found my head completely wet thanks to a new hole, I knew I couldn’t postpone the repairs any longer.

But working from home and having your home repaired can be a chaotic mix. It tends to destroy your routine, concentration and even the quality of your work. So what can we home office workers do to prevent that from happening?

Use noise canceling headphones or other protective gear. This is the most straightforward approach, particularly if noise is your biggest problem. In a previous post, WWD reader Mau recommended the earmuff hearing protectors typically found in shooting ranges. If the noise isn’t too loud, maybe ever a pair of earplugs is enough.

Play some music or other non-distracting background noise. I’ve also tried drowning out the noise with music, preferably something instrumental or with foreign language vocals so that I’m not distracted when I write. If you’re solving the noise issue this way, just stick to whatever kind of music allows you to work. Alternatively, you can play white noise or soothing nature sounds. (Here’s a good collection of nature sounds. The menu on the left also points to ambient sound downloads, including white noise.)

Watch out for more than just the noise. Apart from auditory distractions, there are a lot of other things you need to look out for to stay safe. It may depend on the types of repairs you’re having, but there’s usually a lot of dust particles flying around, especially if you’re working with wood. There may also be materials, tools and other equipment lying around your house during this time.

Change your location. The great thing about being a web worker is that we can take our work with us wherever we go. As much as possible, I would look for a room or area that won’t be repaired for that day. That room then becomes my temporary office.

But sometimes, this approach isn’t enough. If you can leave someone you trust to monitor the repairs, you can work outside your home. This is an important move if you need to be available via voice chatting or conference calls. Just make sure you can be easily contacted if you need to make certain decisions regarding the repairs.

Change your work hours. Another strategy that’s been successful for me is to change my working hours around the repair schedule. I take advantage of the handyman’s rest days by working more hours on those days. Also, during his workdays, I get up very early and start work before he does. Alternatively, you can work during the evenings.

Make the effort to do routine home maintenance tasks. It might also help to take preventive measures by performing home maintenance tasks regularly. This may help you spot most potential problems along the way rather than force you to deal with one big problem that requires several noisy days or weeks to fix.

Have you ever worked from home during extensive repairs? What did you to do make sure your work got done despite the distractions?

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As a freelancer, I get the chance to work with startup companies that are still too new or too small to have a lot of in-house staff. Because of this, I’ve become familiar with the common characteristics that many startups share. As I come to expect these characteristics with new clients, I become more efficient at avoiding problems and maximizing opportunities.

But first, a definition: What exactly is a startup? Although the term “startup” is usually associated with tech companies, it’s not necessarily that specific. As long as the business is young, usually still in development, then it can be considered a startup.

The first common trait that most startups have is their tight or unpredictable income. Usually they are bootstrapping (working without external funding) which leads them to minimize their expenses. Even if they have the benefit of external funding, startup founders still tend to keep a close eye at their cashflow. Some of them might be looking for low freelancer rates, or perhaps some prep work to justify your cost. You shouldn’t be selling your services as an added expense: talk about your fees as an investment.

To minimize any negative effects a startup client may have on my own finances, I tend to bill early and send reminders before the due date indicated on the invoice. This sometimes isn’t necessary, but it can be useful, especially if the people in charge of paying you are wearing too many hats or paying attention to several other aspects of the business –  a common situation in startups.

Also, if you’re working with a startup, you’ll be dealing with their growing pains firsthand. This means you’ll be part of an exciting and interesting stage in the development of their business. While this stage is typically filled with new ideas and innovation, there will also be a lot of mistakes, which will often affect your work. They might even be a bit disorganized, since they don’t have standard processes in place.

There might even be major changes when the founders get a better (or simply different) idea of what they want to do. One of my earliest freelancing jobs was writing web site copy for a tech startup. When they hired me they were developing a simple chat application. By the time I left them six months later, they had plans to turn their app into a full-featured social networking tool. Because of possible changes like this, it’s important to keep communication lines open so that you’re updated with the latest developments. Startups are flexible organizations, and you should also be equally flexible as you work for them — as long as you are treated and paid fairly.

There may be some exceptions, but I usually find that working with a startup is also like working with a small, close-knit family. They often don’t have a large staff since they’re just starting out. With few, if any, bureaucratic hoops and hierarchies to deal with, getting feedback and disseminating information is usually faster. In fact, you may be working directly with the founders.

Although working closely with the big bosses has its advantages, there are a few challenges you should expect. Sometimes, founders can be micromanagers. They tend to think of their startup as a baby whose every tiny step they should monitor and approve. While I appreciate this devotion to one’s business, too much of it can prevent growth through other people’s ideas, experience and perspective.

Working with a startup certainly has its own opportunities and disadvantages. We need to be expect both these things if we want the working relationship to go as smoothly as possible.

Have you ever worked with startups? What was your experience like?

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Recently, I’ve noticed that more new clients are coming my way with a single request: to help them revive or resurrect a project, web site, or product that has failed in the past. I’m also capable of creating failed projects myself — sometimes I look at my track record and try to fix my worst projects hoping that I can make them better.

How do you know if a project has failed? Although you can have specific quantifiers such as revenue or number of users, the simple way is to ask yourself this: “Did it meet any of its objectives?” If the answer is no, then that means you’ve got a failed project in your hands. Some of these projects can remain buried and forgotten, but there are others that you can’t stop thinking about even years down the road.

What do you do if there’s an old failed project that you want to bring back to life?

Why Try Again?

The first thing I do when I try to resurrect an old project, whether it’s mine or a client’s, is to evaluate why it should be done. The reason is sometimes simple. It could be that when the project started, the people working on it weren’t mature or skilled enough to give it the proper follow-through. Now that they know better, they think it’s time to try again.

This was the case with one of my new clients. When he started his blog, he bought into get-rich-quick schemes and short-term tips on how to boost traffic. As his blog’s advertising income diminished and he saw few returning visitors, he called the project a failure. After looking into his mistakes, he’s determined to try again. It’s the classic case of being passionate about a project but not knowing enough to execute it well.

There may be many reasons to revive a failed project, but there’s one you should avoid. Don’t bring it back to life just because you have nothing better to do. I have to admit that sometimes this is the justification I have, and every time I use it all I get is a new way to fail at an old project. “Well, I need something new to work on…” is not going to cut it if you want to rework an old mistake and turn it into something great.

Evaluate Your Past Efforts

The first things we need to look at are our mistakes. In “The Dip“, Seth Godin lists 7 different reasons why one might fail. This includes the lack of time, money, or enthusiasm. Other reasons include picking the wrong thing to try, getting scared, not being serious enough, or focusing too much on the short term. In the failed projects I’ve evaluated, I can see that all of them failed because of at least one of these reasons.

Many of my failed projects, and even some of my clients’ failed projects, were also the result of a lack of definition. Here are some of its common symptoms:

• Saying “Our target audience is everybody.”
• Adding all the possible features and widgets into the project, even when they are unnecessary.

Apart from looking at these past mistakes, we also need to celebrate our successes. In the midst of all the chaos, what worked for you? What went well before the project failed? By looking back at both our successes and our mistakes, we can be better prepared for our next attempt to make it work.

Starting Over

If you’ve realized that resurrecting your failed project is the best thing to do, there are some things you need to keep in mind:

• Remember to quantify. “What’s measured improves,” as Peter Drucker once wrote. If you can, quantify the hours, cost, and other resources used up by your project. Other necessary statistics such as sales, users, and bug reports should also be recorded. By keeping a close eye on the numbers, we can predict most incoming challenges and plan for them accordingly.
• Things to avoid. Instead of just writing a lengthy to-do list, why not factor in your previous mistakes and remind yourself what you shouldn’t do? It’s easy to fall back on bad habits, especially if new processes take longer to pay off.
• Keep it simple. Whether you’re relaunching an old product, service, community, or blog, start with the simplest version you can possibly think of. This allows your project to remain flexible when there are a lot of unpredictable and volatile factors that may affect your success.

The truth is that it takes a lot of planning, effort and passion to bring an old project back to life. If done right, the attempt is usually worth it.

Have you ever tried to revive a failed project such as a blog, online community or an app? What was your experience like?

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There’s more to Google Calendar (GCal) than meets the eye. At first glance, it seems no different from the printed desktop calendars that used to dominate employee desks. You input your tasks, appointments, and other commitments on their designated dates and refer to the calendar every day. The difference is that with Google Calendar, even the smallest tweak can change it from a simple list of appointments to a comprehensive business tool. Here are some ideas you can start with.

Customize Your Calendar

Like most apps, GCal isn’t “one size fits all”. You can customize several elements to make the calendar fit your needs. Here are some settings you can change:

• Custom views. By default, GCal gives you the following views: Day, Week, and Month. The day and week views can be too short for some, while the month view can be too long for others. You can create a custom calendar view by going to Settings > Custom View and select anything from two days to four weeks.
• Multiple timezones. Since most web workers have professional contacts all over the globe, it might be a good idea to include multiple timezones in your calendar. Just remember that you need to use the Day or Week views to see the timezones compared side-by-side.
• Aesthetics. Apart from the color of each calendar you set up, you can’t really change much of the visuals within GCal itself. Here are some alternative ways to change the calendar’s look and layout:
  • Helvetical. For a minimalist calendar design, you can install Ad Taylor’s Helvetical user script which gives GCal a simpler, cleaner look. If you’re working with a small monitor or a netbook, keep in mind that the large Helvetical header may lessen your usable screen area.
  • Better GCal. This add-on by Gina Trapani is handy for netbook users, as it allows you to collapse the header and the right sidebar, which is handy if you want to install some GCal gadgets but can’t afford to have them hog your screen. It also comes with a sleek gray skin for your GCal interface. I can’t seem to get some of the other features to work, though.

Use Your Calendar as a To-do List

This may seem like common sense — after all, many people use Google Calendar to record their tasks. But my approach helps to keep me organized and gives me a sense of accomplishment.

I created a new calendar and named it “Done”. Whenever I’m finished with an item on my list, I simply transfer it to the “Done” calendar. This calendar is hidden, so if I do all my assigned tasks for the day, my agenda for the day becomes clear and empty, giving me the same feeling of accomplishment when I achieve Inbox Zero.

To add a bit of fun, I uploaded a background image so that when my schedule clears, I can see the word “Done!” for that day (see screenshot below).You can upload your own image for this purpose via Settings > General > Calendar Background.

Use GCal an an Appointment Scheduler

It’s easy to book appointments with Google Calendar if your clients and colleagues have Google accounts, but what if they don’t? Some third-party tools can help:

• Darrell reviewed ScheduleOnce a few months ago, and the Firefox add-on can be found here.
• Earlier this month, Simon brought our attention to the Setster widget, which you can set up on your web site for appointment booking. You can integrate this with your Google Calendar.

Use GCal For Invoicing

If you want to use Google Calendar for invoicing, you can do so with Google Calendar Invoice Creator, a free Adobe Air application. To see how it works, check out the review and tutorial that Thursday wrote. gTime is a similar application, but you only need your web browser to use it.

GCal + Google Docs + Gmail = Collaboration

Apart from just scheduling meetings, you can also use a combination of GCal, Google Docs and Gmail for minimalist project management. The calendar sharing option makes this possible.

Here’s an example: When there’s a new design project for my team, I add a new event on our shared calendar and invite them all to it. I’ve enabled the “Attach Google Docs” feature from Google Calendar Labs, so I have the option of adding a design brief that everyone can refer to (see screenshot below). Unlike using Google Docs by itself, this allows you to attach group-wide email reminders and deadlines to your files. Just remember to share both the calendar and the file.

Also, if you need to add a calendar item while reading your email, simply click on the “More Actions” button, then “Create Event”. Gmail Labs also has Google Calendar and Google Docs gadgets for your sidebar if you need to refer to them often in one interface.

Integrating these three apps isn’t necessary if you already have existing, more robust collaboration software. But if your team is hesitant to use new tools or if you can’t afford to pay extra fees, this simple freebie approach is worth a try.

Search for Past Events

The search function is Google Calendar’s simplest and most overlooked feature. It comes in handy if you want to know the last time you did something, whether it’s a maintenance task for your car, cleaning up your hard drive, or sending greeting cards to your clients. Google’s own Matt Cutts uses this feature to keep track of his haircuts.

How do you use Google Calendar? Do you customize it in any way to suit your needs?

In the corporate world, it’s easy to track positive mobility in your career. You could get a promotion (a move upward to a position of higher rank or pay), or laterally to a position of similar rank, but with different tasks or projects. Advancement in a freelancing career is not so easy to track, possibly because we each have different definitions of what a freelance “promotion” consists of.

Here are some ways you can climb the freelance career ladder:

Rates. The most obvious way to climb your career ladder is to raise your rates as you gain more experience and skills. The quality of your work, client support, and even your online presence should reflect these changes. If you want some tips on how to raise your rates, check out the following resources:

• “How to Raise Your Rates Without Losing Clients” at Freelance Switch
• “How to Increase Your Rates for the New Year” from Men With Pens

Of course, just relying on increasing your rates has its limits. Just because you’re increasing your hourly rate by $5, it doesn’t mean that you’ll eventually get away with charging $1,000 per hour. The good news is that there are other ways to give yourself a “promotion.”

Projects and clients. One of the signs that you’re doing well as a freelancer is that you occasionally turn down projects. Still, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you should only take on projects with a bigger scope or work only with high-profile clients. What’s important is to look out for new projects that we’re passionate about. This could mean the following:

• Taking on projects that will allow you to learn and explore additional skills you’ve always wanted.
• Working with people in an industry or field that you’ve always wanted to get involved with.
• Choosing challenging projects that excite you and allow you to push your work quality a notch higher.
• Having the time and resources to work on passion projects that may not be financially rewarding, but are personally fulfilling.

Tasks. If you take a look at your daily tasks, which ones do you like the least? Out of these, which ones can you automate with an app, delegate to an assistant or subcontract to others? Sometimes, advancement in your career means focusing your time and energy on your preferred tasks.

Leisure. It seems like many freelancers work during the weekends or fail to take some time off. While we may be passionate about our work, it doesn’t mean we can’t professionally benefit from leisure time. In one of his TED talks, Stefan Sagmeister discussed the power of taking time off. The benefits include the following:

• We can pursue creative experiments that we don’t have the time or energy for during the regular work week.
• We get fresh ideas and innovate. This prevents repetition and keeps our work from becoming stagnant.

Learning opportunities. Career mobility should also involve learning new skills and becoming acquainted with developments in your field. You can do this via seminars, workshops, reading materials, and even attending conferences. On a smaller scale, you can subscribe to relevant blogs and sign up for online courses. By pushing ourselves to learn more, we improve the quality of our work, hear new ideas, and interact with other professionals.

Business building. For some people, being a lone freelancer isn’t enough. Sometimes we want our jobs to evolve into a business. This doesn’t necessarily mean renting an office or owning a building, but it can mean setting up our own teams, having dedicated staff for client support, or simply getting the right paperwork.

Getting a promotion as a freelancer may not be simple, but as I’ve illustrated with the points above, the freedom and options we have more than make up for that.

How are you climbing the freelance career ladder? Do you do this deliberately or do you find that your career path forges naturally with very little planning?

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Throughout my online career, I’ve been part of several web working teams. On most teams I am just a regular member, but there’s the rare occasion when I find myself the team leader. Like now, for example, when my former graphic design classmates asked me to lead their new studio.

Here’s the problem: we’ve never worked together before. How could we work together and have a united approach to design? What’s so unique about us? Can we figure this out even if we’re working remotely?

To address these questions, we had to figure out our team culture. But as Jason Fried of 37Signals pointed out, culture is not something you create. How do I, as the leader of the team, provide a working environment to foster the right culture? Here are some of the strategies I’m trying:

Deep Involvement

The way that I used to set up web working teams was that each member just kept to him or herself, not minding the work of others or the business as a whole. While this was good for productivity, it wasn’t a good environment for generating new ideas or making everyone feel invested in the team. They need not be involved in the daily minutiae, but they have to know the essential business processes. Getting them involved in research, planning and brainstorming sets up an environment where you can cultivate hidden or underdeveloped strengths. This also provides opportunities for new ideas, often with a fresh, external perspective on how to make the team work better.

But this doesn’t mean that you should hold virtual group meetings for every important business decision. In fact, deliberating on big decisions as a group isn’t a good idea. Those with strong personalities tend to be more expressive of their opinions, while others end up just following the herd. To get the most out of each person, talk to them individually before coming together as a group, so that everyone’s opinion is heard equally and you merely moderate or summarize their ideas.

Encourage Sharing

If your team uses collaboration or social media tools, don’t limit it to business use only. Encourage your team to share other things  – whether it’s inspiring quotes, interesting blog posts, or the odd personal photo. Although these may look like informational clutter, they create a good environment for deeper collaboration. Also, they allow you to peek at each member’s individual culture and background.

Freedom to Engage

When looking at one designer’s recent work, I asked him why his digitally rendered drawings didn’t have the detail and dynamic lines of his hand rendered ones. He said “I’m not used to starting a drawing digitally.”

“Why don’t you draw it by hand, polish it, and then digitally render it?”
“I thought you wanted me to do it this way.” he replied.

While the designer made the wrong assumption, I should have been clear about the flexibility of his workflow from the beginning. Officially giving your team the freedom to find and develop their own processes is important. Team leaders can give everyone tips on how they can do their job better, but nothing beats the strategies they come up with on their own.

Taking a cue from Google, I also encouraged my team to spend some time working on projects that they’re passionate about. To one, this was a comic strip, to another, it was his own typeface. These projects might not directly result in profitable endeavors, but it allows them to explore different ideas and gain new skills.

Postpone the mission/vision thing

It used to be that whenever I started a new venture, I always had a solid business plan written out, complete with mission and vision statements, SWOT analyses, etc. Now, I just make a mind map or a one-page overview. Here’s why: I realized that it’s rare (or impossible) to know exactly what the final result is going to be like. The same could be said about forming teams. Give your team a bit of time to play around and figure out where you want to go before officially launching anything. Only craft your working manifesto or mission statement when you’ve settled and formed a collective identity for yourselves. Even then, it should only serve as a reminder of the things you wanted to do anyway.

As for my team, I don’t know who we are — yet. But by involving them in the important aspects of the business and allowing them to engage freely in projects that move them, I’m hopeful that we’ll arrive at the definition together.

Do you work with an online team? What is your group culture like and what process did you go through to establish it?

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From our hardware and software, to our telecom subscriptions, there are many aspects of our web working lives that may require us to contact tech support at some point; sometimes you can’t be your own tech support. Since I have many friends that work as tech support agents, I hear many stories about customers who make the problem worse or blame everything on the agent. Frustrating as it may be sometimes, resolving a tech issue works both ways. The support staff has to provide you with solutions, but at the same time, you need to make it easy for them to do so. Here are some tips on how you can do that:

Read the manuals and related documents first. By referring beforehand to your manuals, warranty, receipts and other documents, you’ll be prepared when you contact tech support. You’ll know the scope of your warranty, and you can try suggested troubleshooting methods before asking for outside help.

Have a record of all your communication details. Make it a habit to note the time and means of contact, whether it’s through phone, email or an online support ticket. If you’ve made contact with an agent, ask for their name. Doing this makes previous communication easy to refer to if you’re talking to another agent or if you were promised certain solutions — such as equipment replacement, a technician coming to your home, cutting penalty fees, etc. — that had poor follow-through.

Be as specific and concise as you can be. This prevents you from wasting time with back-and-forth communication on something that can be fixed with one exchange. “It won’t work!” is vague and unhelpful to the person who’s trying to help you resolve the issue. Note the specific error messages you’ve received, as well as the solutions you’ve tried on your own.

Be fair to the person on the other end of the line. Unless the support agent is rude or obnoxious, it’s unfair to vent your frustrations by yelling or whining at them. The problem may lie in the equipment itself, or even in the communication methods implemented by the support team (I know that some people get impatient when they are asked to verify their identity before anyone tries to solve their issue). It’s rare that the problem is the agent per se. Also, you’re likely to get better service by being polite.

Make phone support your last option. If you can find the help you need through online forums, manuals, or by opening online support tickets, you should try these options first before using the phone. Phone support tends to be time consuming, and more often than not you’re forced into an inefficient phone tree, or are put on hold for an hour or so. When you do use the phone, make sure that you’re prepared before the call. Keep any relevant documents ready and know how to explain your issue in as few words as possible.

Give feedback on the service when you can. Any type of feedback, whether positive or negative, is helpful to the overall support process. Just make sure that you send it to the right person. If you have a problem with an inefficient billing staff, complaining about it to the sales department won’t help.

Communicating with tech support doesn’t always have to be a nightmare. By being well prepared, we can make the process as efficient and as painless as possible.

Do you have negative experiences calling tech support? What could you have done to prevent them?

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Including free or “freemium” elements in online software and products has become the norm. There are several existing discussions about this business model, some questioning its effects on the industry, others touting its success. Whatever opinion you may have, freemium is the model commonly adopted by web app software startups. In fact, most of their users probably expect it.

This trend is not exclusive to web app startups, however. Even freelancers seem to apply some aspects of this model to their services. Let’s take a look at how it’s done and how to make it pay off.

Starting With Free

In Charlie Hoehn’s e-book “Recession Proof Graduate,” he recommends that fresh graduates with no job experience offer to do web working projects for free to start their careers. Since the work is done remotely, they can manage this free project while searching for paid ones.

I see this idea reflected in my own career path. I was still a college freshman when I started freelancing, and I did a lot of spec work back then — both graphic design and writing. My experience is not unique; I often hear of new freelancers doing something similar.

Kristine Clarisse Cruz, who has only been a writer for two months, told me that she gives away sample articles to hook potential clients into a working relationship. When I asked why she did this, she replied “I [want to] establish a good first impression with my potential clients and leads, and allow them to see what kind of work I can do…” Kristine doesn’t have a portfolio yet, and this practice allows her to build it and gain clients at the same time. It seems to be paying off, because according to her “I’m actually earning more now than when I had a regular job.”

For beginners, working for free is an important part of the learning process. Fresh graduates and new talents are able to practice their craft and get hands-on business training, usually at low risk to themselves and the client. Through direct experience they learn about client communication, setting deadlines, and managing expectations (especially their own).

Like all first steps, we quickly move beyond this model. But do established freelancers also use free services in their practice?

Free as the Front End

Past the beginner stage, it’s common for freelancers to stop giving away their services unless they are doing pro bono work. But this doesn’t mean that they no longer perform professional tasks for free. Many of us leverage freebies for the purposes of promotion, marketing and gaining authority in our fields. We do this by giving away ideas and information via blogs, social media and case studies. Others work on open-source projects. While this brings us new opportunities, we are faced with new challenges as well.

One such challenge is that your potential clients might judge the value of your free work differently than you do. WWD blogger Nancy Nally is one of the many freelancers who uses her blog, Scrapbook Update, as an anchor for her paying projects. “First, my writing credits from my web site aren’t viewed as highly by many people looking at my writing credits because ‘it’s just a blog’ and I own it myself. That is despite the fact that the site is highly respected in its subject area.”

Lack of control is also an issue. Once you release your free ideas, services, or products into the world, you’re never sure what the results are going to be. According to Nancy, offering free content causes some copyright problems “I do have the common blogger’s problem of my work being stolen and republished by other sites fairly regularly.”

Making Money — Finally

As Kristine and Nancy have illustrated, it is possible to use free projects to induce income generating work. Doing this successfully, however, takes effort and thought. Here are some points to consider:

Remember what you are really selling. Even if you have free content, services, or products working on them does not mean you should lower your prices or devalue your other projects. It’s never just a press release, a logo, or an e-book — these things can be found somewhere for free, or at least close to it. Usually, what we’re really selling is talent, reliability, years of experience, or excellent customer support. Our real product is the value we provide.

Think small. If you’re producing some free blog posts, e-books, or reports, you don’t have to make all of them available for free. Writer and developer Nick Cernis suggests micropayments as an alternative. In his post, “The End of Free Content”, he elaborates on this idea:

“Continue to provide free content just as you are, but sell your more unique content for a small one-off fee or ‘micropayment’. You choose what you sell, your audience still gets a stream of free stuff, plus they get to support you by buying paid content if it’s relevant to them.”

Web cartoonists may be familiar with this idea, especially since it was one of Scott McCloud’s more controversial proposals regarding monetizing online comics almost a decade ago.

Set criteria. Establishing limitations and criteria allows you to work on free projects with less stress. What types of people or organizations are you willing to work with? How much free time do you have to devote to this project? Do you have to be given a non-monetary reward?

While it’s hard to imagine being a freelancer without doing at least one thing for free, we shouldn’t get carried away. Remember that: 1) Freelancers have clients. 2) Clients pay freelancers to do stuff. The rules of the business don’t get any simpler than that — no matter how complex and unpredictable this new “freeconomy” seems. At the end of the day, cash in your bank account is the only objective measure that business is going well.

Have you ever worked for free? How did it affect your freelance practice?

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Web working seems to blur the lines separating our professional and family lives. If you work from home, it’s common to find yourself switching back and forth from work to household tasks throughout the day. This isn’t an issue if your only problem with work-home balance is a growing pile of dirty laundry. But if you’re not eating well, your work tends to suffer. When that happens, you might be forced to exert some extra effort at work, which gives you less time to cook — turning into a vicious cycle.

The good news is that there are ways to break that cycle.

There seems to be many common challenges that we web workers face when it comes to food preparation. These include the following:

• Skipped or delayed meals. It’s common for web workers to have broken body clocks, which leads to skipped meals. I confess that there are many days where I can’t tell when I’m supposed to have lunch. This gets more difficult during hectic days, when my only indication of mealtime is the sudden pain in my stomach.
• Poor food choices. Since we’re busy juggling work and home tasks, it’s easy to resort to convenience foods when we don’t have the time to prepare healthy and nutritious meals.
• Lack of exercise. If we’re not careful, web working can lead to a sedentary lifestyle. Combined with the factors above, this can be detrimental to our health. Apart from keeping our bodies healthy, exercise also reduces stress while increasing productivity and creativity.

Given these challenges, there are some things we do to maintain productivity at work while feeding ourselves and our families right. Here are some tasks we can start with:

Cook in batches. If you’re a fan of batch processing your emails, it helps to apply the same principle with food. Batch cooking allows you to cook all your meals once or twice a week, freeze them, and reheat them when needed. In my experience, this saves a lot of time and stress — especially if you’re cooking for a family. To learn more about batch cooking, you can visit these resources:

• Organized Home’s freezer cooking guide
• Recipe quantity calculator for multiplying recipe ingredients for use in larger batches
• Wisebread also has two useful posts, “Assembly Cooking for Newbies”  and “The Five Day Freeze: Batch Cooking for the Rest of Us”

Have a designated space in your home office for nutritious food. I realized how important this was when I emptied out my office trash can and saw a collage of my sins. During long periods of work, I often made a quick trip to the kitchen, which led me to grab chips, sweets and other unhealthy snacks. We can avoid this by storing healthy snacks in the home office, such as oatmeal packets, nuts and fruits.

Apart from nutritious snacks, keep a jug of water nearby. It’s easy to forget proper hydration when you’re nearing a project deadline.

Don’t skip breakfast. One of my more recent unhealthy habits was discarding the “Never check email in the morning” rule. For several mornings in a row, checking my email was the first thing I did. Only an hour later would I eat breakfast. This usually happens when I’m expecting something urgent or dealing with a needy client. Regardless of how important our work is, it should not be more important than a good breakfast. Several studies claim that having breakfast improves concentration and cognitive performance. Also, it prevents you from feeling tired during the morning.

Take advantage of online tools. There are many sites and apps that can help you plan your meals more efficiently.  SuperCook is a handy reference if you have a few odd ingredients but don’t know what to do with them. If you need to organize and manage your recipes, our friends at OStatic have compiled a list of open-source apps that do just that. For those who like to count calories and track exercise, you might want to try DailyBurn or SparkPeople.

We don’t have to put up with a diet of instant microwaved meals just because we don’t have access to an office cafeteria or a strip of restaurants. All it takes is some initial effort in planning our meals in advance and learning a few efficient cooking techniques. It may sound like a lot of work at first, but the payoff — quick and healthy home-cooked meals — is worth it.

Do you have enough time to prepare home cooked meals throughout the day? What do you do to make this easier on your teleworking schedule?

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When a friend of mine heard that I was teleworking, she said “I can’t imagine doing my work without my boss watching my back. What motivates you to get anything done?”

I paused for a second, then replied, “I love doing it.”

Fast forward to a few hours later — one of my hosting accounts crashed, a delinquent client’s bill was two weeks overdue, and I received a long line of harsh comments on one of my blog posts post. Remembering what I said about loving my work, I felt tempted to take it back.

How do we stay motivated when crises come to us in groups? Or, to address a broader issue, how do we find the motivation to get things done when we’re feeling stuck?

What to Look For In Your Motivators

The majority of the existing research shows that our motivations can be separated into two categories — extrinsic and intrinsic,  although there are some studies contradicting this, pointing out that human behavior is more complex. For the sake of simplicity, let’s focus on the two main categories:

• Intrinsic motivation. You feel rewarded from performing the task itself. This is where enjoying your work comes in.
• Extrinsic motivation. Your motivation to perform a task comes from outside, including money, food, praise, etc.. Threats are also motivators, such as the threat of losing a client or being fired if you don’t perform your job well.

According to a study from the University of Alberta, extrinsic motivators are fine for short, low concentration tasks. Examples include replying to emails, interacting in social networks, or performing administrative tasks that we usually don’t feel “inspired” to do. To accomplish them, you might promise yourself a snack or a leisurely activity after you’ve finished.

But, as the study also points out, these external rewards prove to be ineffective for more long term, high concentration tasks, such as sketching logo ideas or writing a draft.

How do we get our important and creative projects done then, if we can’t rely on external rewards?

Career analyst Dan Pink recently gave a talk at TED about the science of motivation. In his talk, he noted three major motivators that were more effective than extrinsic motivators:

• Autonomy. Pink defines this as “the urge to direct our own lives.” Most web workers already experience this to some extent, given that we have more control over when, where and how we work.
• Mastery. “The desire to get better and better at something that matters.” How do you know you’re getting better at work? Do you quantify it?
• Purpose. “The yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.” This is a deeper, more personal aspect of motivation that we have to figure out. A good starting point is to consider how your work output affects the world, no matter how small that effect seems to be.

Other studies also show that the way we commit to goals can affect how effective we are at pursuing them. Here are the criteria we should consider:

• Active. Goals must be written on paper, your online calendar, or a planning tool. This is more effective than a mere mental note.
• Voluntary. We must commit to our own goals with the knowledge of why they matter, instead of just feeling forced to by others. This reflects the “Autonomy” point made above.
• Public. When we make our goals public, via our Twitter or Facebook updates for example, we have a higher chance of accomplishing them.

To make the most of what we know about motivation, we need to study our own habits. We can only be empowered if we know how to master our craft, commit to goals, and find our purpose. What rewards have worked well for you in the past? How did you manage to get through low-morale workdays?

Professional motivation isn’t a fixed point to aspire to — it’s an ongoing struggle. Some days we are easily motivated, while other days are more challenging. The key is to develop our own motivational processes so we can still get things done despite these challenges.

Are you good at sustaining motivation? How do you keep going when you’re not feeling motivated?

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During the past month, I’ve been busy redecorating and rearranging my home office. I spend most of my time there after all, so it needs to be conducive to productivity. For all my planning, there seems to be an aspect of my home office that I’ve largely ignored — the lighting.

According to a study from the Light Right Consortium, “People who are more satisfied with their lighting rate the space as more attractive, are happier, and are more comfortable and satisfied with their environment and work.” As far as home office improvements go, investing your time on proper lighting seems like it’s worth it.

Here are some pointers to get started on a well-lit office:

Increase amounts of natural light. The best way to light a home office is through natural light, not only because it’s brighter and more even than artificial lighting, but also because it’s free. I’m glad that my home office seems to do well in this area, because one wall is a glass sliding door to an open veranda, while another wall has a large window.

If you don’t have the benefit of natural light in your office, it seems like common sense to compensate for it by using bulbs that replicate daylight (full-spectrum bulbs). But research shows that such bulbs only make a difference if you’re performing tasks that require fine discrimination of color (if you do print design work, for example).

Opt for indirect lighting. Don’t imitate corporate cubicle farms by installing direct, parabolic lighting. Professors at Cornell University conducted a study (pictures here) that showed the negative effects of these lights in an office. These lights were bothersome and made the subjects’ eyes tire and lose focus more easily. Apparently, direct parabolic lights also lessens productivity (as self-reported by employees). For the effect on your eyes alone, it’s better to opt for lensed indirect lighting for your ceiling fixtures.

Plan your furniture layout well. The first thing you have to consider when rearranging furniture is preventing reflected glare on your monitor.

I mentioned above that I have a lot of natural light flowing into my office. This presents a disadvantage, too, because too much direct natural light produces reflected glare on the screen. This lessens my options for monitor placement. My solution to this is to place translucent blinds on the windows to diffuse the sunlight a bit.

Here are other things you need to consider for your layout:

• If you have other glossy or shiny surfaces in the office, make sure that any reflected glare they have is out of your line of sight.
• Use large furniture such as shelves and dividers to maximize or block bright sources of light, depending on your needs.
• For offices that are openly connected to other rooms (no wall), include the lighting in the other room in your plans since it affects the lighting quality in your office.
• Paint your walls in bright colors. Just make sure that they’re not too bright or glossy, producing glare.

Properly space your light fixtures. When planning your fixtures, remember that your entire office should be uniformly lit. Watch out for areas that might be too dark or too bright. Avoid placing fixtures within your usual line of sight, and don’t install them within three inches of a wall (they’ll create sharp areas of shadow and light).

Have as much control as you can. If you can afford it, install dimmers and other methods to control brightness. When used properly, these devices can conserve energy and allow you to adjust your lighting as natural light changes throughout the day. Also, if you’ll be using desk lamps, make sure that you can adjust them on three planes.

Although improving lighting quality in the home office sounds like a lot of work, it’s much better than having a building’s existing lights forced on you. I hope the points I’ve raised above have been — pardon the pun — enlightening.

How well did you plan for the lighting in your home office? What effect does it have on your work?

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Soon after I clicked the “Publish” button on my blog dashboard, I realized I had made a mistake.

I’d read my post through three times before hitting that button, but somehow missed adding a crucial word — the word “don’t”. Inadvertently, I had told my readers that they “have to sacrifice too much to lessen their cost of living,” . Furthermore, two of the hyperlinks I had added were broken.

I am a sloppy self‑editor, mostly because I am forgetful. I realized it was time to create a standard checklist to remind myself of all the steps I have to take before clicking “Publish”.

Since creating this checklist, I’ve made fewer mistakes and I haven’t had another “oops” moment. I created a similar list for my fiction, too. Anyone who does creative work should have a similar checklist to ensure that their projects are polished before submitting them.

Why Have a Standard Checklist?

Apart from remembering the small yet essential steps to finishing one’s work, there are other reasons why a standard checklist can be useful:

• Smoother workflow. Since all the steps to a polished project can be seen in a single page, you spend less time asking yourself “Is there anything I’m forgetting?” Once you’ve checked each item on the list, you can look at your project one more time and feel confident enough to send it.
• Objectivity. Ideal list items should be objective enough for you to check off each one without much thought; it’s hard to measure items like “Make the design pop” or “Write compelling copy”. Opt for quantifiable points, such as “Test design/copy with 10 different users and make sure that at least 8 take the preferred action”.
• Consistency. A standard checklist for major projects allows you to deliver a consistent output. Plus, it becomes a handy reference when you’re subcontracting work.

It helps to look at the project checklists of other knowledge workers for inspiration, so you might want to look at the following examples:

• A web site accessibility checklist by Aaron Cannon.
• A comprehensive content quality checklist by Colleen Jones from UXMatters.
• A list of essential checks before launching your web site by Lee Munroe from Smashing Magazine.

Making My Own List

For my blogging projects, I spent half an hour listing the important things I had to do before publishing a post. Some of the items I included were as follows:

• Print the article and read it. Spot all spelling, punctuation and grammar mistakes.
• Make the necessary corrections on the soft-copy.
• Read the revision backwards, sentence by sentence to check for overlooked mistakes.
• Add post tags.
• Use correct HTML for punctuation.
• Preview the post, click each hyperlink and make sure they work correctly.

To make the list reflect how I work, I also noted the gaps and weaknesses in my process for the last three posts I wrote. While I added an odd item from time to time, I had to remind myself that the goal was not to create a longer list. The goal is to make sure that each article I deliver is as clear, concise and as polished as it can be.

Which brings me to my final point: Know the reason why your checklist exists. By having a clear objective, you’ll know whether your list works or not. It’s supposed to streamline your process, rather than adding another step to an already saturated workflow.

Do you have a project checklist that you use before handing finished work to clients?

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It’s become almost commonplace to consider teleworking as a career move. From companies wanting to reduce costs to individuals looking for alternative income streams, there’s no shortage of people interested in this option. But no matter how easy it looks on paper, successful teleworking takes time and effort to establish. This is especially true if you have personal characteristics that might make it harder for you to telework.

What traits should you watch out for and how do you overcome them?

1. You are dependent on face-to-face interaction when acquiring information. A common problem I see with people who are new to teleworking is that they don’t know how to acquire information independently. This is a difficult problem to have, especially in the age of search engines. Not all information can be found online, but taking the initiative to look up solutions on your own can get you very far.
2. You are afraid of technology. While you don’t have to spend hours each day reading tech blogs and you don’t need to know the latest Gmail hacks, you need to be comfortable with technology. After all, you’ll be using it to perform your most important work tasks including collaboration and research. Don’t worry, though. There are both written and video tutorials for practically every application out there.
3. You need supervision to get things done. Whether you’re a freelancer or an employee doing remote work for a company, you need to get your major tasks done even when there’s no one to look over your shoulder. When it comes to your day-to-day accomplishments, your only supervisor is yourself.
4. You equate busy-ness with productivity. Ernest Hemingway once said “Never confuse movement with action.” To measure whether you’re accomplishing tasks throughout your workday, note your output rather than the hours you spend in front of the computer.
5. You are not organized. Being organized has nothing to do with how clean or neat your home office is. It’s about finding office supplies in a couple of seconds, knowing where you stashed each client file and scheduling your workday well. For some useful tips, refer to Leo Babauta’s WWD article on how to get organized.
6. Your work ethic is largely dependent on moods. If you keep waiting to work when you’re “inspired” or you “feel like it”, you’re likely to spend 80 percent of your time waiting around for the right mood to get started. Make the effort to develop sound working habits, especially while you’re just starting to telework. Of course, there will always be those moments where you can’t seem to focus. During these times, you can always take a break or perform other tasks that are indirectly related to your work. This allows you to come back to your work with a fresh perspective.
7. You can’t say no. Teleworking requires the ability to prioritize ruthlessly, to say “no” to requests that are neither important nor urgent. These requests can range from professional to personal. Since I work from home and have a flexible schedule, some of my relatives seem to think that it’s okay to ask me to run errands for them. Other teleworkers have told me that they also experience this problem. But if we agreed to do everything that was requested of us by our families or clients, we would have no time for the actual work.

Having these traits doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t attempt teleworking. I had at least a couple of these myself before I started out. We just need to be aware of the weaknesses that may be detrimental to our teleworking, and work towards overcoming them.

What traits or personality types prevent successful teleworking? Any suggestions on how to get over them?

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For any web worker with a blog, web site or online portfolio, knowing how to optimize it for search engines is a must. After all, what’s the point of having an online presence if no one can find it? By using some simple Search Engine Optimizations (SEO) techniques on your web site, you can increase the chances that your target visitors will find it through Yahoo, Google and other search engines.

In this post, I’ll discuss some basic SEO techniques and how to apply them.

Understanding the Jargon

The first thing we need to define is SEO itself. We already know what  the acronym stands for, but what does it mean? According to the SEOmoz dictionary, SEO is “the process of increasing the number of visitors to a web site by achieving high rank in the search results of a search engine.” So when you perform SEO on a site, you are making sure that when someone types in relevant keywords into Google (or other search engines), the site will appear in the results. Ideally it should appear within the first page or results, or even as the first result. Here are some other common SEO terms, together with definitions:

• Keyword: The word or phrase that users enter into search engines.
• Crawlers, bots and spiders: These are the names given to the programs that search engines use to browse, analyze, and index your site.
• Search volume: This is the number of people who search for a given keyword. Some tools measure this per day, per month, or per 100 days.
• Competition: These are the other sites that aim to rank well in the same keyword as you do.
• Search engine result pages (SERPS): The term itself is descriptive — these are the pages of results that appear when you type a keyword into a search engine.
• Back link: A link to your site from another site.
• On-page optimization. These are the SEO techniques you apply on your blog or site itself, and therefore have most control over. It doesn’t involve outside factors such as getting backlinks from other sites.

How Important is SEO?

Applying even the most basic on-page optimization can bring in better, more qualified traffic from search engines. Still, SEO is not the only way to draw new visitors to your site. Nothing beats creating quality content that people will want to share. SEO is just the polish that will make your site appear more accessible to search engine crawlers. Without solid content behind it, SEO by itself will not make a difference in the long run.

At the same time, there’s such a thing as overdoing it. Don’t apply short-sighted techniques, such as stuffing your site with unnecessary keywords, or getting hundreds of back links from irrelevant sites. Doing this will make your site seem like spam to visitors, ad could even be banned by the search engines from showing up in SERPS altogether (Google has some guidelines on techniques to avoid here).

Choosing Keywords

The first step is to come up with a “seed list.” Think about all the possible keywords (or phrases) your target audience will use when looking for a site like yours. If you’re providing a specific service, make sure to include keywords related to that service.

After that, check out the search metrics of the words in your seed list, to find out which to optimize your site’s copy for. You need to find out the search volume and level of competition for each keyword. You can do this with some free tools:

• WordTracker’s free version. (Doesn’t include competition data.)
• Keyword Discovery’s free version. (Doesn’t include competition data.)
• Nichebot Classic. It’s powered by WordTracker, but links to competition data (although you have to click to get the numbers).

Here’s a good rule of thumb to remember: apart from relevance, good keywords have high search volume but low competition. The mistake many beginners make is that they aim for the most popularly-searched keywords (those with high search volume). While there’s nothing wrong with that, competition for those terms is so strong that it’s hard to rank well for them in the SERPS. By adding a few modifiers (additional words to make a more specific phrase) to popular keywords, you have a better chance of ranking well.

Getting to Work

Performing on-page optimization throughout your web site is easy, especially if you are familiar with HTML. Even if you aren’t, there are dozens of online tutorials out there which can help you find and tweak the code on your web site with little difficulty.

URLs. The first thing you should look at is your URLs. Does your domain name contain an important keyword? If it does, that’s a bonus. If not, then channel your efforts into crafting SEO-friendly URLs for the pages of your site or the posts of your blog. For example, a page about hiring logo designers is better if given the following url: http://www.example.com/hiring-logo-designers. Avoid using only dates, numbers, and irrelevant words as the URLs of your pages. Note that descriptive “search engine friendly” URLs may not affect ranking themselves, but people will be more likely to click through a page with a descriptive URL from a SERP.

Page title. This line of text (in the <title> tag) appears on the title bar of your browser when you’re looking at a web site. It should contain your primary target keywords, but don’t overdo it. This title will appear in SERPs, and you don’t want it to look like keyword-stuffed spam.

Headings. The heading tags of your pages (<h1>, <h2>, etc.) serve a dual purpose. They show your readers the hierarchy of information on a page, and they are also useful for SEO. Use relevant keywords within these tags.

Content. Your content should contain a few of your choice keywords, but you should be careful that the added keywords aren’t detrimental to a visitor’s reading experience. Make sure the keywords are there when necessary, but don’t insert them in every other sentence just because you think the search engine bots will like it.

Additional Resources

If you want to learn more, here are some guides you can start with:

• I already linked to the SEOmoz dictionary above, but the entire site has a collection of good resources, particularly The Beginner’s Checklist for Learning SEO and Beginner’s Guide to SEO.
• WebsitePublisher.net has a clear and simple SEO guide.
• As for what you shouldn’t do, Lyndsay Walker wrote a two-part series on SEO tricks to avoid.

Have you ever tried optimizing your site? What were the results?

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