While not all web worker are freelancers, a good portion of them are — and a freelance lifestyle is part of the appeal of working from home. The fact is, working as an independent contractor is not all wine and roses. Personally, I wouldn’t have it any other way, but there are some key facts people should consider before leaving more permanent work situations for the freelance world.

I spend a lot of time on this site talking directly or indirectly about why I love freelancing, or what makes it so great, but in the interest of being fair and balanced, I want to take a break from my regularly scheduled gushing to point out some very serious pitfalls about working on your own. Many may seem like common sense, but it’s amazing how often it happens that people forget to consider these downsides when choosing to pursue this lifestyle.

Every Day Off Costs You Money

I remember paid vacation. I remember being irate at the fact that I’d only get two weeks out of the year, at best. And yet now, I’d love for someone to actually pay me money to take two weeks and not do any work. It seems like some kind of fantastical dream.

Now, when I want to take time off, I either have to do a lot of extra work before and after to make up for lost revenue, work while I’m away, or just write the time off as a loss. It’s not only a burden on finances, but it weighs on your mind, too, if you’re the conscientious type. As a result, letting go and truly relaxing can be harder when you’re responsible for every dime you take in.

Convincing People and Banks to Trust Your Money is Harder

Try getting a mortgage when you have to tell the bank that your income is wholly derived from contracts you have with various employers that range from temporary to semi-permanent, but all of which could potentially end without much warning. It’s not easy. Some institutions offer special considerations for freelancers, but for the most part, these deals come with strings attached.

Even negotiating with landlords in high-demand markets is a bit of a challenge. When the landlord or property management company holds all the cards, they choose tenants carefully, and getting an employment letter isn’t always possible for freelancers. Basically, be prepared for every one to second-guess your ability to generate income on a steady basis.

Taxation, Expenses and Insurance Are Completely DIY

If you’re not used to keeping track of your own finances and preparing for tax time completely on your own, it can be a huge surprise when the time does come. Most employers automatically deduct taxation from your wages, but with freelance work, you’re often paid the full amount with the expectation that you will pay taxes when they come due. That means it’s very rare to get a return on your taxes. Instead, you’ll usually end up owing a hefty sum.

Preparing for that is a simple matter of putting aside an amount in excess of what you estimate your taxes owed will be, but that’s easier said then done. Money on hand seems like it’s there to be spent, especially when unexpected costs arise. If you’re not careful, tax time could find you seriously lacking.

Add to that the fact that health insurance is pretty much up to you, and you can see how what seems like a sizable income can quickly become a subsistence wage. Factor in insurance, retirement savings, and tax when you’re calculating your overhead for freelancing before you embark upon a career as an independent.

Weigh the Good and the Bad

If you’re dissatisfied with your day job and thinking about leaving the rat race for freelancing, you may not want to hear about the downsides to making such a choice, but knowing just what you’re in for is key to making a sound decision you can live with. And if you have very good reasons for wanting to go it alone, chances are the cons won’t outweigh the pros anyway. They certainly don’t for me.

Have you considered the cons (as well as the pros) of taking on a freelance career?

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If you don’t have a professional blog or web site, you may think that you don’t need to worry about content strategy. Think again. Celine gave some great advice in her article “How to Develop a Content Strategy for Your Professional Blog,” but these days our blogs and web sites aren’t the only windows to our professional souls. If you use social media platforms for professional purposes, you should consider having a content strategy for the material you publish on them as well.

What is Content Strategy?

Kristina Halvorson sums it up nicely in her superb article “The Discipline of Content Strategy” on A List Apart:

“Content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content.”

If you’re tweeting or updating on Facebook or elsewhere, you’ve got creation and publication of content down. But what about all the other keywords in that definition?

Developing a Content Strategy For Your Social Media Presence

Putting together a content strategy for your social media presence can be a real challenge, especially when you mix business with pleasure; my Facebook friends include relatives, old friends, new pals and purely professional contacts, some of whom I’ve never met personally. You can’t please all the people all the time when you have such a mixed audience, and the privacy settings are too global to adequately address this issue. (My only strategy for Facebook is not to publish things that are too personal. Content strategy is as much about what you shouldn’t publish as it is about what you should.)

But Twitter, for example, is a different story. It’s easy to have separate “personal” and “pro” Twitter accounts. And if you have a pro Twitter account, it’s also easy to apply a content strategy to it. The same is true of professional networks like LinkedIn.

Planning and Governance of Useful, Usable Content

Here are some ideas that might help you get started on a strategy:

• Planning: Define your mission (what you want to achieve with your content). Define your audience. Define what you want your content to do for your audience (inform, persuade, entertain). Define the nature of your content (what it should consist of and the tone of the content). Decide how often to produce it. Decide how you will interact with your audience.
• Governance: In this context, I interpret this to mean managing and monitoring your content and its impact, as well as your own role. Are you meeting your audience’s needs? What’s working and what’s not, and why? Is the quality of your content consistently high? Are you responsive and available?
• Useful and usable: Most of the blogs and Twitter accounts of small businesses I see need a content strategy. They tend to be too inwardly focused, all about their own updates and services (boring), or else they are too much about the owner/founder. These businesses generally need to figure out how to provide some real value to their audiences in order to keep them coming back and turn them into real fans, or even evangelists.

Here’s an example: I discovered a nice app the other day called Memory-Life. It’s a site where you can store media and other files in a virtual “box of memories.” (It’s still only available in French, but hopefully not for long. You can see a demo by clicking “Voir la démo.“)

It has a Twitter account, but it could be doing a lot more. Its audience is interested in preserving memories, so in addition to the occasional updates about upgrades and features, it could share links to articles about repairing old photos, or compressing large video files. It could provide creative suggestions, like “Upload pictures of all your grandmother’s jewelry to your box of memories” or “Create your own art gallery with Memory-Life.” It could suggest alternative uses for the app; designers could use it to create inspiration boards, for example.

If you want to connect with and engage an audience, your content has to provoke thought and action. You know you’re adding value if your content is being retweeted, liked and shared. It takes work, but it’s worth it.

You Too Could Be a Content Strategist!

Content strayegy is a relatively new career field. Large corporations are beginning to have in-house content strategists, but there is no reason why this job shouldn’t be done by consultants, which is where you come in. It could be an ideal occupation for a web worker.

If you’d like to learn ore about content strategy, in April, several chapters of the Society for Technical Communication are putting on “Content Strategy Forum 2010,” a two-day conference on content strategy in Paris. The conference is intended for:

“…anyone who develops, manages, or delivers content within their own organization or for their clients: user experience designers, information architects, business analysts, technical writers, web project managers, documentation managers, translators, web marketers, practicing content strategists, and those looking to break into the field.”

Learn more about the conference program and register here (tickets are very affordable).

Here’s some additional recommended reading on content strategy:

• “Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data,” a great article by Rachel Lovinger
• There are several good articles on A List Apart about content strategy.

Have you implemented a content strategy for your social media presence?

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Just about every organization can use video to tell its story. Video producers tell that story by creating a product that entertains, educates, informs, promotes, captures or markets.

While video production may involve location-specific elements where you need to go out to capture visuals and sounds, you can still make it a career where you can work anywhere you want.

Is video production the career for you?

Video Production Careers

In video production, some stick to just one task, while others do several things, or even do all the jobs to take a video from start to finish. Here are a few video-related jobs:

Producer: Video businesses vary in the area of production based on the type of videos they create and the topics they cover. Producers may specialize in one or several different types of video. The title “producer” has many meanings, but a producer often oversees the entire video production process.

Post-production: Folks in post-production work with existing video to enhance it, edit it and add to it. These tasks could involve animation, audio, voice-overs, DVD menus, music and graphics.

Editor: Editors compile audio and video to create the final product that meets project requirements. “The editor is much like a cook. We take raw ingredients and combine them artfully into a video that meets the clients’ goals,” says Ed McNichol of EDcetera.

How to Qualify

Video producers and editors are a diverse lot when it comes to how they first entered the video business and gained experience. Tim Clark started on Ken Burns’ documentaries in the editing room. Jack Dever, director of post production at PACSAT,  literally started on the bottom floor by sweeping in a studio before and after shoots. After that, he climbed to assistant video editor, editor, producer, director and supervisor. Many folks in video started at the bottom and worked into jobs in the field.

Kim Brame, executive producer with creative illusions Productions, took every job available to her after college to build a network and learn the craft. Her coworkers have degrees and training in audio engineering, programming, graphic design and animation.

Steve Mann, owner of MannMade Digital Video, lost his job in the dot-com bust. “Over 50 and no higher degree made me virtually invisible in the collapsed high-tech job market. Since my passion was always photography and more recently videography, doing what I enjoy seemed like the best career move,” Mann says.

Vicky Poole didn’t start at the bottom. Rather, she started in a different job as a secretary working for a post-production company. Her boss gave her opportunities to work with equipment and on smaller projects.

A handful of folks say they received a college degree in mass communications, media, film production or something similar. But these same people say that job experience is what really matters. In terms of gaining skills, many say they just learned how to use the software and practice often. No matter where you are in your video career, everyone has benefited from attending seminars and trade shows. Jeff Davis of JD Savage Productions says, “Do what you love, and never stop learning new stuff.”

“There is a balance of technical aptitude and creativity,” says Tom Hinchey of HincheyStudios LLC. Not only do video producers need to know the technical side of things, but also how to create the message the video must communicate.

A person who knows how to use all the video production equipment and tools doesn’t always have the knowledge and skills to be a full-fledged video producer. “You need to first know how to be a storyteller. This is one of the key components that people don’t understand with video,” says David Spark of Spark Media Solutions.

Video Production Tools

Video production involves a long list of tools. After all, you can’t capture sound and visuals without cameras and microsphones, or put all the footage together to tell a good story without apps.

The following popular tools are a smattering of what the professionals use: Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, HD cameras (especially Sony and Canon), AVID, Adobe Creative Suite, Affect Effects and Premiere. Some also use mics, lighting, DVD authoring and scripting tools. Of course, many use a Mac computer to do their work. They often post their videos on web-based video services like YouTube and Vimeo.

Find Clients

Word-of-mouth and happy current clients rule the roost as the best way to get business. Networking both in person and on social network sites works well. Some do formal marketing or post on craigslist. Video producers create a portfolio for their web sites. “Gone are the days of DVD reels. If a client wants instant access to your portfolio, your website can help you lock in that client instantly,” says Kico Velarde.

Crystal Pyramid Productions’ Patty Mooney not only uses a web site and networks, but also finds clients through the Chamber of Commerce, search engine optimization (SEO) and advertising in online and print directories. Another way to break in the field is to volunteer to get experience and build your portfolio.

Thomas Hoebbel took the old fashioned approach by connecting with organizations that could benefit from his work, and they hired him. Some people like Clint Till of Parc Entertainment, Inc. hand out demo reels on DVD and make cold calls.

Would you consider a video production career?

A friend of mine who’s worked in a slew of web jobs that have sorely disappointed him has finally found a role he thinks will be fun, challenging and rewarding.

He knew of the company, met multiple times with different team members, had been taken on a tour of the office space, and was happy with the offer they’d negotiated. It all looked good. But before he jumped in and signed up, he made one final check that all web workers should undertake.

He called a friend of his who used to work for the company to get the inside story on what it’s like there.

His friend had left the company, but he trusted her opinion, so he spent an hour discussing the company culture, the attitude to various aspects of the work that were important to him, what she’d liked and disliked about working there, and so on. In some ways, this conversation was almost like a sort of reverse job interview. And it confirmed many of his thoughts on the organization while alerting him to other aspects of the place and people that he hadn’t been aware of.

By the end of the conversation, he felt he had a clearer, real-world view of his potential employer from someone who knew the company well, yet had no personal or business interest in whether or not he took the job. And he decided to accept the position.

How to Find Out What It’s Like On the Inside

Obviously it’s important to get to know the company you’re considering working for as best you can. But if you haven’t had any experience with the organization yourself (for example, as a customer or client), you may fear you’ll be left with its web site and your interviewer as your only sources of information.

There are a few other ways you can research your potential employer. The first is, of course, to ask someone who’s worked at the company how they enjoyed their time. Of course, their reasons for leaving the place may skew their answers to your questions, but this is a good starting point — if you know such a person. If not, don’t worry: there are other tactics you can use to get past the company sales pitch and find out what life’s like on the inside.

Speak to a Current Employee

Ask if you can speak to another person who works for the company about what it’s like there. You might suggest this to your potential employer as a way to get a feel for the company culture from an objective party who doesn’t care whether you join the organization or not. Of course, you’ll want to keep in mind that the details of your conversation may well be fed back to the staff that are considering hiring you.

But spending half an hour with someone who works in the organization can be a useful way to gain insight into the way the place functions, how it demonstrates that it respects and values staff and clients, and so on.

Speak to a Current or Past Client

If you were considering contracting your potential employer to do some work for you, you’d undoubtedly check their references. So why not do the same if you’re considering working for them? Most organizations will already have a few referees on hand for prospective clients to speak with, and they may be happy for you to speak to one of these individuals.

Speaking to a client can give you an insider’s view of how the company treats clients and delivers its services. You may gain insight into the processes the company uses to manage clients and complete projects, or the swiftness with which is responds to client complaints, inquiries, and reported technical issues. Again, keep in mind that the details of this conversation may well be reported back to your potential employer.

Review Community Discussions

Most company web sites have a blog, discussion forums, reader comments or a combination of these. Check these sources to see how the company deals with its audience, responds to their comments and thoughts, and deals with negative feedback.

The way a company interacts with its public online may give you rare insight into deeply-held attitudes that underlie the company culture, as well as things like complaint resolution procedures, how involved the broader team is with customers and clients, and how open the company is to new ideas, technology, and so on.

These are the methods I use to research potential employers. Have you used any of these approaches — or others — to get a clear view of what your life might be like if you worked for a given employer?

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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There are a lot of professions where continuing education is an absolute necessity. For professionals providing financial or legal services, for instance, it’s often a legal requirement to take a class every year or two. Even if it isn’t legally required, though, continuing education can be very useful. It allows you to stay up to speed in your field, which can be an important deciding factor if you’re trying to get hired by a new employer or want to take on a new type of project.

For web workers, though, finding opportunities to continue our educations can be a little harder. Where some employees have access to educational materials on-site or may even be required to attend classes at work, we’re a little more on our own. That doesn’t mean we’re out of luck, though.

Online Classes

If we work online, why can’t we study online? A number of organizations are offering online classes these days, from colleges to professional organizations, as well as thousands of free options. The real question is if you need a certificate or another method of proving that you actually attended the class. If you’re learning for the sake of knowledge, you can download lectures from iTunes or even find a curriculum you can follow on your own at Wikiversity.

If, however, you need that piece of paper, you will likely need to enroll in a course through an educational institution or professional organization. Depending on your profession, you may find that a professional organization already has a continuing education program in place; all you have to do is take the courses listed. Otherwise, you may find that you need to determine which classes are the most useful for you.

Conferences and Seminars

If you’re willing to devote a few days to attending a conference on the topic you’re interested in, it can get you up to speed on a topic — fast . Depending on where you’re living, you may be able to find a relevant conference nearby. There are also a growing number of conferences and seminars that you can attend virtually. In some cases, you can list these sorts of educational opportunities on your resume, but you can also discuss them in the context of a new project or job to win over a prospect.

Balancing Continuing Education

Even if you don’t have a set number of continuing education hours you must complete every few years, it’s often worthwhile to set your own goals for continuing to learn about your area of expertise. Not only will it make you a more valuable candidate for a project, but it can also make your own work easier to complete.

One of the biggest factors keeping web workers from furthering their education is the fact that classes and conferences have price tags. The fact of the matter is, though, that the cost may not be exactly what you expect. In many countries, you can deduct continuing education expenses on your taxes as long as they relate to your profession. You may also qualify for discounts or scholarships, depending on the professional organizations you belong to.

How are you continuing your education?

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So you’re well into your web working career (hopefully thanks, in part, to the posts featured in our just-released free “Web Work 101″ e-book), and you’ve gotten off to a great start, but after a certain amount of time (it will differ from person to person), things start to lose their zest. The honeymoon is over, so to speak, and it’s time to dig in and build a solid foundation upon which a long lasting career can be built.

To continue the relationship analogy, having a successful and rewarding long-lasting career depends upon more than just initial excitement and chemistry. You have to put work in, think about your goals and make conscious decisions that lead to continuous improvement. Here are some areas to concentrate on.

Focus

If you are starting to feel a little ennui with your decision to do your work remotely, take a look at what you’re doing and make sure the cause is, in fact, the method, and not the nature of the work you’re doing. You might be bored with your focus, not with working online.

You have a couple of options to gauge which is the case, and to find out if you can’t give your web working life a much-needed shot in the arm. First, you could try adding additional work to your existing load that isn’t something you’d normally pursue, but think you might enjoy. Introducing small work packets along with your usual things shouldn’t cause too much strain, and will allow you an exit strategy should you require it.

The other option is to stop doing your existing type of work entirely, and throw yourself fully into something new. This has the disadvantage of being risky, and also of possibly seeming like it fixed the problem when in fact it hasn’t, since you’re just experiencing the thrill of the novel once again.

Motivation

Another reason your web working career might be losing its luster is that you’re not sure what it is that’s driving you to continue. One of the benefits of working for a large company at an office is that HR departments take on motivation as part of their responsibility, and, at good workplaces, take the pulse of their employees and create incentive programs accordingly.

Motivation can be the biggest challenge facing a web worker. Working for bonuses isn’t always an option, nor is working for advancement, in the traditional sense. The best way to get yourself in gear is to identify what it was that drove you to pursue working online to begin with, and see if you can’t find ways to amplify that incentive, or to set goals for furthering it down the road.

Expectations

Finally, you may be experiencing frustration with your web working career because your results aren’t living up to your expectations. Maybe you aren’t making as much as you anticipated, or maybe you aren’t finding that you have as much free time as you thought you would as a result of working remotely.

If so, regaining your passion for your career might be as simple (or as difficult) as reassessing your situation and changing your expectations in order to bring them more in line with the reality you’re experiencing. Any new endeavor will probably seem much more lucrative than it turns out to be, and even when you know your starting salary at a more traditional job, you often don’t take into account taxes, pension, and other deductions. Try to focus more on the positive results you are seeing than on the ones you thought you’d see.

If you’ve hit a wall in your web working career, don’t panic; it’s a good sign. It means you got off on the right foot, and managed to hang in there long enough to become more or less established. As with a successful long term relationship, it’s only natural to get cold feet. Step back, take a breather, reevaluate your situation and continue on. You won’t regret it.

Is your web working honeymoon over? What are you doing to get the spark back?

Photo credit: Neil T

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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It’s easier to admit something to your computer screen than to a person’s face. The anonymous world out there behind the monitor can lead us to reveal much more about ourselves than we should. But how much is too much? As you might have guessed, the answer is “It depends.”

Look at Penelope Trunk. She talks about abortion, sex, divorce, bulimia, mental wards and dating on her blog, even though its primary focus is careers. She also says her blog is about her. “But each of you has a list of things in your life similar to that, it’s just a list you don’t want to talk about. I’m not special — I don’t have more stuff that is difficult to talk about. I just have more difficulty not talking about difficult stuff,” she says.

But she is special. She succeeds in revealing everything about herself because she has a solid brand and career that works for her. For most of us, being open and revealing such stories might not go as well. They could affect future jobs, gigs and relationships.

So how do you know what’s right for you? Review the following things about yourself:

Your job: Are you a freelancer? Are you planning a corporate career? Are you the owner of your business? Are you working for others, even as a independent contractor? If you’re looking for more gigs and clients, then you may need to step back and decide what those potential clients should and should not know about you.

Your brand: Some folks have built a brand for being brazen and can get away with cussing, revealing intimate details about their lives. For example, my brand is conservative, yet casual and personable. The conservative part overrules the casual, which means that cussing in public would be counter-intuitive. On the other hand, Mike “Toilet Paper Entrepreneur” Michalowicz has a potty mouth in his book, which fits his brand.

Your future: Where do you see yourself in one, five and ten years from now? I’m not a fan of this job interview question. But this isn’t a job interview. This simply looks at where you think you and your career will be. The information you post online today will still be around years from now even if you delete it.

Your personal life: What you say could affect your family. What if a college admissions person finds a negative story I tell about my daughter? (Not that I have one to tell, mind you.) I don’t want to impact any of her chances of getting into the right college. If anyone should affect her chances, it’s her. I wouldn’t talk about my husband looking for a job (no, I’m not hinting this either) because his current employer could find my statement and use it against him.

As for me, I talk openly about my being profoundly deaf and my family. However, I avoid mentioning their names, and telling stories of their bad days. It’s not that I’m a private person, but some things don’t belong out there for all to see. One of my kids has a challenge, which I talk about in person and leave it off the Internet.

I share my stories about being deaf to give people insight into what it’s like to lead a life without one of our five senses. It’s my hope it’ll educate them to be understanding when they meet people who are a little different from the norm. No matter what you see, I have the same hopes and wants as you do.

Remember Pandora’s box? It’s up to you to decide how much you want to reveal and what the consequences could be. Nancy Nally says it best in Personal Branding and Self-Censorship Online, “So, what you get from me online is 100 percent me…but you don’t get 100 percent of me.” That’s me, too.

How do you decide what to reveal and what to keep to yourself?

Photo credit: Ekaterina Boym-Medler

The down economy is making many workers realize that it is no longer safe to have just one source of income. On the flip side, employers are also making smaller jobs available to outside contractors, opening up more opportunities for people to have side projects outside of their regular day jobs.

Managed correctly from both sides, such working arrangements can be good for both parties. However, part-time web workers often need to do an even better job of managing client expectations and communications than full-time freelancers. Here are five tips for those considering web working outside of their day job for the first time:

1. Vet the side project thoroughly. Your success working remotely during off hours hinges on a number of things. First, there are some projects that lend themselves to such a working arrangement like technical writing, journalism, graphic design and web development, to name a few. It’s in your best interest to talk to the client and ask in-depth questions about the project, including quizzing them on access to stakeholders, technology and delivery dates. You may also run into potential clients who want full-time attention — even though it is supposed to be a part-time project — so take the time to thoroughly vet the project so you are absolutely comfortable with the working arrangement and can put together a statement of work that satisfies the client.
2. Respect Boundaries. One of the worst mistakes new part-time web workers make is to do their client work on their daytime employer’s time (and even use their daytime employer’s equipment to do it). This is unprofessional. Prior to taking on potential projects, you need to take stock of the boundaries you need to set between your day job, personal life and the side project(s). In regards to the day job, take advantage of a flexible work schedule — if available — for attending client conference calls and other activities. If you need to reschedule that lunch run off-site to call your client, so be it. The responsibilities of your day job and extracurricular projects should never affect each other. There might also be your day employer’s non-compete agreement to consider when taking side projects, so review any employment agreements carefully when considering taking on a side project.
3. Set Expectations Clearly. Too many times an outside contractor is brought in for a project that has already fallen off track. Coming in as a part-time off-site contractor puts you at a disadvantage in this scenario. It is prudent to be very upfront and honest about the time you have to put into the project and that you have a day job. If needed, establish times that you will check in via phone, IM, or email during the course of the project. Since you aren’t going to be in the same office as the other team members, it is up to you to maintain communications and not let the client slip into thinking they have full-time access to a part-time resource.
4. Schedule Work/Life Balance. It can be easy to drown yourself in work, especially if you’ve spent some time unemployed or underemployed. This means you have to run a tight calendar, including time for yourself. Just as you schedule time for deliverables and other work obligations, you should do the same for gym time, evenings off and much-needed personal time.
5. Embrace the Cloud. While the recent Gmail outage raised the ire of its users, as a part-time web worker you have no other option other than to embrace the cloud. While an email inbox serves as the document management tool of choice for way too many organizations, keeping your project artifacts online and available — even when you are not –  is paramount to the success of the project. There are services for all budgets from Google Sites and Zoho Projects, to BaseCamp to even hosted SharePoint sites. Keeping the project online means your client(s) will have full access to all project artifact,s even when you are fully ensconced in your day job.

If you have a day job, and freelance on the side, what tips do you have for managing side projects and clients?

Image by stock.xchng user Nintaro.

Editor’s note: With this post, we welcome Karen Leland, our new Productivity Superstar columnist, to the WebWorkerDaily team. Karen is the bestselling author of six books, including the recent “Time Management In An Instant: 60 Ways to Make the Most of Your Day,” and is the co-founder of Sterling Marketing Group. To find out more about Karen go to www.karenleland.com.

Some of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in my professional life have been personal ones. There have been times when I’ve jumped the gun and made an incorrect assumption about a person or situation, sent the occasional indelicate email written in haste, or gone into a meeting in a grumpy mood. It’s not a pretty story, but one that needs to be told.

“When we are upset, we’re stupid,” says Randy Martin, a long-time executive coach. “So as a general rule, it’s never a good idea to communicate by phone, email or in person when angry or frustrated.” No kidding.

But despite my occasional bad behavior (and let’s tell the truth — who among us has not fallen off the courteous co-worker wagon from time to time?), I’ve had enough training and practice to know how to recover when I slip and fall on the road to interpersonal excellence.

As a consultant, I’ve seen my share of bad bosses throwing hissy fits, co-workers engaged in desk rage and customers going crazy — usually in the name of “getting the job done.” But does this justification really hold up? Not according to recent research.

In one August 2009 study, Wayne Hochwarter of the Florida State University College of Business asked more than 1,200 employees to provide opinions regarding the narcissistic tendencies of their immediate supervisor. Of those, 31 percent reported that their boss is prone to exaggerating his or her accomplishments to look good in front of others; 27 percent reported that their boss brags to others to get praise; 24 percent reported that their boss was self-centered; and 20 percent reported that their boss will do a favor only if guaranteed one in return.

“Having a narcissistic boss creates a toxic environment for virtually everyone who must come in contact with this individual,” Hochwarter said. “The team perspective ceases to exist, and the work environment becomes increasingly stressful. Productivity typically plummets as well.”

And the negative impact of poor people skills is not just reserved for those in charge. One survey of 1,500 workers by Christine Pearson at UNC-Chapel Hill found that 12 percent of staff surveyed had quit a job at some point to avoid nasty people at work and 45 percent were thinking about doing so. Moreover, more than half of those interviewed reported losing time at work worrying about other people’s rude behavior toward them.

So if all these anti-people attitudes and actions have a negative impact on productivity, does it stand to reason that having good people skills can make you more productive? The answer is a resounding “Yes.”

As part of the research for the second edition of his upcoming book, “250 Best-Paying Jobs,” Laurence Shatkin identified the skills associated with occupations with higher income. They included:

• Active Listening: The ability to listen to what other people are saying and asking questions as appropriate.
• Persuasion: The ability to enlist others to see and approach things differently.
• Negotiation: The ability to bring others together to try and reconcile differences.
• Teaching: The ability to impart to others how to do something.
• Social Perceptiveness: Being aware of others’ reactions and understanding why they react the way they do.

These are people skills, one and all. But beyond the benefits of bringing home the bigger bucks, Ben Leichtling, PhD and author of “How to Stop Bullies in Their Tracks,” says that good personal skills have the power to make your job easier as well.

“Having the support of other good people you work with is part of what makes us productive,” says Leichtling. “In fact, the Department of Labor Statistics estimates that workers and managers spend half to two-thirds of their time dealing with people problems. The bottom line is that good people skills reduce the people crap you have to deal with,” he says.

An aptitude for working with others is so important that the month of September has officially been declared International People Skills Month. So make a commitment to hone your people skills and play nice with the other kids in the company or customer sandbox. You may just find that it makes you not only popular, but more productive.

Has improving your people skills aided your productivity?

So you’re a web worker, but you still meet people in meatspace that you want to network with, and making them type an email into their phone or handing them a plain jane business card either feels awkward or isn’t getting results.

There are other things you can do, things that are far more representative of your trade than a lifeless rectangular slip of paper with some contact information printed upon it. That’s not to say that all rectangular slips of paper are without merit, just that most traditional ones just aren’t getting the job done like they used to, following the demise of the Rolodex. Here are some alternatives you may want to consider.

Email/Blog Address Fortune

Maybe I just have a lot of superstitious friends with hoarding tendencies, but I, and people I know, tend to hang on to the fortunes we get from fortune cookies at Chinese restaurants. At least until the next time I wash the pants I’m wearing, at which point I empty out the pockets and re-read said fortune.

Lucky Brand jeans uses this as a marketing tactic, and includes a branded fortune in the pocket of a new pair of its product. You can do the same. Find a memorable quote or write an interesting fortune, print them on slips of paper with your logo if you have one, and put an email or blog address on the back. Handing these out will not only help you network, it should spark conversation, so long as the content you print on them is interesting enough. Try to come up with a variety so that you can hand them out in groups without doubling up.

QR Code

Depending on the crowd you’re mixing with, and whose attention you want to attract, you might want to riff on the traditional business card by handing out cards printed with QR codes. QR codes are a type of barcode that can be used to link to digital content via a scanned, printed symbol. Here’s an example:

QR codes can be scanned by software readers on smart phones with cameras (as long as there’s an app available for the phone, which there often is) and will process the information and launch the appropriate content. For example, the one above should open a link to WebWorkerDaily. You can generate your own QR codes here.

Obviously, you have to be careful who you give this kind of thing to. It works best with tech professionals who’ll either be familiar with QR codes, or with tech enthusiasts who’ll be interested enough to find out more about them.

Contact Info T-Shirt

If you’re going to a trade show or convention, and you aren’t afraid to do a little shameless self-promotion (which you really shouldn’t be if you’re in this line of business), then have a t-shirt printed up with either your email or web address on it.

Now that cell phone cameras are so prevalent it’s unlikely you’ll come across someone who doesn’t have one, all you have to do to share your info with someone is stand very still for a couple seconds while they snap a photo. It’s memorable, it’s environmentally-friendly, and you get to feel like a rock star for a day while getting your picture taken.

Business Rock

This isn’t mine, it’s something I found on Instructables, but it was so off-beat that I had to share. Basically, the idea is just that you find a well-worn lake or river stone, hand-write your details on it, and distribute that in lieu of a business card.

It’s time consuming, sure, but it doesn’t cost a thing, and it will help you stand out from the field, especially if you work in a creative line of business. You can pick up a relatively inexpensive customizable craft stamp if you’d rather simplify and save your hand some cramping, too.

It’s a little out of left field, but maybe in your line of work, that’s seen as a good place to be coming from.

Let’s face it. The business card isn’t useful. It’s a little like wearing a hat in public. An odd tradition left over from a bygone era that evokes some nostalgia, but that’s about it. You don’t have to start carrying around a sack of rocks, necessarily, but try and shake things up a bit, and your business relationships will benefit.

What business card alternatives do you use or have you come across and thought about using? Any tangible benefits to do doing things differently?

Photo credit: bargainmoose

Even in the best of times, a freelance web worker’s income can be spotty and irregular at times. Unlike salaried employees, contractors are subject to sudden and frequent variations in the amount of revenue they can generate at any given time. Those variances can be mitigated, however, by buttressing your revenue through a few out of the ordinary sources.

Before you get your hopes up, let me warn you that this post isn’t going to turn into an episode of “Weeds.” Instead, it’ll provide some much more tame (but workable) suggestions about how to make a little passive income on the side while you continue your main pursuit of a career on the web.

Write and Publish an e-Book

It may seem like a daunting task to write and distribute a full-length e-book, but look around. Just about everyone who works with social media seems to have managed to release at least one e-book. The reason it appears to be such a popular endeavor for those working in the social web is the multiplicity of angles there are on the subject. Your own specialized area is probably ripe with topics that would merit covering in a book-length work.

You may not even have to actually write a book to create a book. Check your existing IP to see if you have enough material to publish. It could be an archive of blog posts, or something much more technical, but if you think an audience may exist for it, go ahead and publish it. Actually creating an e-book and posting it for purchase requires almost no overhead, so any revenue you generate is profit, even it it’s only a small amount.

There are various services online that will publish and distribute your e-book. Take a look around and find one that’s right for you.

Rent Out Your Extra Space

This is definitely not a problem I have personally, but some web workers may find that they have tons of room at their home/office that they just aren’t doing anything with. You could fill that gaping hole with cats and/or flea market bric-a-brac, or you could offer it up to other, more space-challenged individuals in exchange for cash.

You can find renters yourself via an ad on craigslist or Kijiji, or you could use Sparefoot, a new web site specifically designed for the purpose. On Sparefoot, you can create an account and list for rent any space you’re not using, including rooms in your house, a garage, parking spot, empty lot, shed or whatever other square footage you might have.

On the other hand, if you’re like me and find your belongings need more nooks and crannies to be crammed into than you have available, Sparefoot also provides great search tools for finding space to rent. That doesn’t generate any income, but it might pay dividends in terms of peace of mind.

Rent Out Your Car

I suspect people will be far less inclined to rent out the use of their car than they would be to rent out extra space, but as long as you do it intelligently there’s no reason it can’t become a profitable way to get some income out of that depreciating investment sitting in your driveway.

I live in a major metropolitan area, so I don’t actually own a car myself. I used to, for the better part of my life, when I lived in a much quieter, less densely populated area. As a result, I got used to the immediacy of private transport. Not that I don’t like public transit, but sometimes you just want to be able to pick up and go somewhere, on your own schedule instead of on someone else’s.

That’s why I occasionally give a friend of mine $25 to rent the use of his car during the day (he uses transit to commute to work, and generally only needs the car on weekends), plus the cost of giving it back to him with a full tank. He doesn’t feel like the cost of maintaining a car in the city is wasted, and I get to experience the freedom of car ownership once in a while.

There are countless ways to generate so-called “passive revenue,” but those I’ve mentioned above are specifically tailored to people who work from home. They generally don’t require too much extra effort on your part, and they take advantage of your position as someone who doesn’t have to commute to an office for work, or who can be on site as a facility manager at your home during most hours of the day.

Do you have any other suggestions for generating additional revenue? What are some creative solutions you’ve come across for supplementing your income?

Photo credit: Monochrome

The digital world is changing rapidly. The explosion of social networking and the emergence of the real-time web are bringing many new challenges for businesses. With those challenges come new opportunities. The shifting landscape means that companies will need people with unique skills — whole new careers are being created. In “Career Opportunities in the NewNet,” my latest post for GigaOM Pro, our subscription research service, I take a look at five careers that could benefit from the growth of the NewNet (data analysts, community managers, social media marketers, sensor engineers and infrastructure experts), explaining why people in those fields should expect to see an increase in demand for their skills.

What career opportunities do you think will be driven by the real-time web?

You may come to web work through no choice of your own, either because you’ve been moved into a remote working position at your current job, or because your current gig is ending and finding a replacement full-time salaried job isn’t the easiest thing to do in this economic climate. If it is your choice, though, there are steps you can take well in advance to make your chosen path that much easier to follow.

It wasn’t that long ago that I was working full-time at a consulting firm, dressing in a suit and going in to a physical office five or six days a week. I knew about two months in advance that I would be leaving for sure to pursue working remotely from home as a freelancer. Unlike when you make the transition from one regular job to another, leaving to work for yourself actually requires a lot of preparation.

Test the Waters

Planning to work online from home is all well and good, but if you don’t actually have any work lined up, then you won’t really be doing much besides full-time web browsing.

Having an idea of what type of work you want to do when you start is a good beginning, but it isn’t enough. Because working remotely from home generally allows you considerable flexibility with your working hours, it’s a good idea to actually start before you take the plunge and go for it full-time.

Doing so will not only set you up with work for when you actually do start web working as a career, but it should also let you find out if you’re making the right move. In most cases, when you leave a day job, there aren’t any takebacks. Web work is one of the few situations where you can actually organize a trial period. Take advantage of that.

Pave the Way

Working online as a freelancer has a lot to do with the quality of your work, but it’s also half, or maybe even two-thirds self-promotion. That means significant attention must be paid to identity management, or personal branding, or whatever you want to call it.

Laying down that groundwork well ahead of time means you won’t be started with a blank slate once you hit the open waters of the web, a situation comparable to entering the job market fresh out of school.

That groundwork can consist of well-developed and complete social networking profiles, clips and publications at outlets, including your own personal blog, and relevant conference attendance and participation. If you’ve dabbled in online work part-time, something I mentioned was a good idea above, you’ll also be well prepared to show what you’ve done.

Evaluate Your Finances and Lifestyle

Transitioning to online work can be a lot like starting your own business, because in many ways, that’s exactly what you’re doing. Part of that means expecting and preparing for an unprofitable period while you get your footing. Even if you do line things up and you actually don’t experience any lag time between your old job and your new career, having the peace of mind that comes with making sure your finances can take a hit will help during dry spells.

You should also take a good look at your lifestyle and think about your goals in pursuing a remote career. If you want to do it to make your schedule more flexible and balanced, take some time off work and see if flexibility and balance is actually something you value. It may be that routine suits you best, which might change the type of web work you target.

Also beware the lure of distraction. I found it best to actually minimize the number of things that might cause my attention to stray during the day by keeping the video game consoles in the closet and eschewing a cable subscription altogether.

As with most things, with web working preparation is the key to success. It may be tempting to jump headfirst into something that seems new and exciting, but if you put it off for as long as possible and concentrate on getting your ducks in a row, you’ll be richly rewarded in your new life.

If you’re thinking about taking the plunge into web work, what steps are you taking to prepare yourself?

Photo credit: gill wildman

Distance learning has gone mainstream. The U.S. Department of Education report “Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning” states that “on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.” Consider the following:

• In the 2006–07 academic year, 66 percent of the 4,160 accredited US colleges offered college-level distance education courses. (Source: National Center for Education Statistics)
• In fall 2007, 22 percent of U.S. college students took at least one web-based class. (Source: Staying the Course: Online Education in the United States, 2008 from the Sloan Consortium)

Would you believe I have a B.A. in education? Though not a teacher by profession, I’m passionate about education. Perhaps, that’s why I’m a writer — to educate people. Being deaf, I knew I never wanted to teach in a classroom, but I’ve worked with online classes at a major university’s M.S. program. Distance education opens doors for many of us. You can develop expertise in any subject you want.

Online education might make teaching a possible career for those who wouldn’t consider working in a classroom. Is teaching the career for you, or perhaps something you can do on the side?

Types of Teaching Careers

Online programs don’t stop at postsecondary education. School districts offer online classes so students can make up failed classes, get ahead or take extra classes. Professional organizations, specialized schools and programs, community colleges and experts offer non-credit courses for people looking to learn new skills in their professions or hobbies.

I took a handful of online classes through my city’s community college affiliation with Education To Go. The price was right and it helped me conquer QuickBooks and do more with Photoshop.

As an example of the diversity of online learning options and opportunities for teaching posts available, here are some options for writing courses.

• Degree programs: Thomas Edison State College offers a B.A. in Journalism, all done online. Texas Tech has an M.A in Technical Communication.
• College-affiliated resources: Education To Go includes writing courses in its catalog.
• Experts: Professionals with teaching experience, like Christina Katz, conduct email classes. While you can go off and create your own courses to teach like Katz does, you still need to do marketing and earn credibility to encourage people to sign up with you when you’re not affiliated with a college or known organization.
• Online publications and resources: AbsoluteWrite, a popular resource for writers, gives instructors a space to teach their classes. While AbsoluteWrite and its staff don’t teach the classes, it allows credible professionals to affiliate themselves with the respected AbsoluteWrite name.
• High schools: My local independent school district offers English classes in its eSchool.

How to Qualify

For college programs, you typically need at least a Master’s degree and others require a PhD. Danielle McIntosh, White River Online teacher, teaches at a local district’s public online high school that serves students all over Washington State. Before working there, she had 10 years of teaching special education. “Boise State University offers a certificate program for online teaching. However, almost everything has been on-the-job training in my situation,” McIntosh says.

Author Christina Katz believes that credibility is the first qualification to becoming a teacher. “Credibility can come from degrees, experience, word-of-mouth and having been published on your topic of expertise. When it comes to credibility, I don’t think it comes from any one thing but the accumulation of many things — especially what others say about you,” she says.

Teaching Tools

Each online program has a preference as to what application or system it uses as the base for its courses. Some use a third party solution while others create their own system.

Tools of the trade include email, headsets for online lectures/webinars, Microsoft Word and Excel for reviewing student work and tracking grades. Depending on the course type you teach, you may need specific tools or applications. One course I worked with used a web-based simulator where students entered decisions and could see the results of their actions. Danielle McIntosh uses Moodle as well as APEX and PLATOWeb for content.

Find Opportunities

Margaret Garcia recommends looking for posts through the web sites of online colleges or programs. She points out that some schools have stringent hiring requirements while others don’t. “Most people break into online teaching through University of Phoenix — they have an easier hiring process and though they don’t pay well, they are willing to give a break to a possible good teacher. Cappella University, on the other hand, is one of the hardest,” Garcia says. She works with as many as five different online universities including National University and Kaplan University.

In “Get Known before the Book Deal,” Christina Katz recommends starting locally in the classroom with live students to gain experience before teaching online. She suggests looking into organizations, conferences, local meetings and events and adult education centers. While this takes away the web working aspect, it’s just for a short time with places near you. Not only research the sites of those offering online classes, but also remember to network and seek out other teachers who might have insight to offer and decision-makers behind the programs.

Would you consider a career in education?

Photo credit: LittleMan