Web Worker Daily

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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As a freelance online community consultant, I spend a lot of time thinking about ways to stabilize my income to reduce the ups and downs that come with having my own business. The most obvious solution is to manage your pipeline to make sure that you have new projects to replace the ones that are completing, but it’s also a good idea to have alternative income streams to complement your main client work and fill in any gaps.

In an ideal world, you finish one project on Friday with your next project ready to start on Monday; however, we don’t live in an ideal world, and even our best planning efforts occasionally go awry. While my client base has been fairly steady, I’m always concerned that I might have gaps. I would rather have plans to fill those gaps rather than being caught off guard and unprepared, so recently, I have been experimenting with alternative income streams that will generate regular revenue without relying entirely on client work.

This isn’t a new topic on WebWorkerDaily. Georgina recently wrote a great post with some of her recession avoidance techniques: saving more, managing debt and spending, and strategies for finding new work and staying motivated, while Anne Zelenka wrote a great post with 10 new ways to make money online, and Mike and Aliza followed up with 10 more new ways to make money online. However, I wanted to write about my personal experiences with alternative income streams. Read the rest of this entry »

A lot of us who make our money working from home or telecommuting have our fingers in a number of different pots, so to speak. In fact, very few of the remotely employed depend on a single stream of income or project. The trouble is finding enough components to make up a financially and personally rewarding whole.

When I think about projects, I always separate them into two categories: revenue generating and non-revenue generating. A non-revenue generating project is almost always going to be a professional development activity, although revenue generating activities can be classified as professional development as well.

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I’ve recently been researching ways to promote my own site, at places like Facebook, among others.

The problem, as is always the problem with internet advertising, is finding a simple, cost effective way to bring my ads to potential customers who’re actually looking for my services. Google Ads are one way to try to insure you reach the people you intend to, but advertising networks are another.

Design Ads is a brand new network (doesn’t officially launch until 2009, in fact), which provides a targeted solution for those in the web design field. Ad network models are successful because they ensure a healthy cycle of targeted material that will remain fresh and relevant to viewers, so you’re ad won’t become stale or melt into the background by virtue of visitors seeing it every time they go to a specific site.

The people behind Design Ads clearly know their target market. They list among their discriminators for publishers the fact that the advertising is simple, and clutter free. Design blogs and online magazines will, after all, be more concerned than other outlets about the effect of advertising on their site’s layout. Revenue rates are reasonable, and are priced according to unique visitor statistics, not click-throughs.

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I’m a big fan of FreshBooks. I’ve written about and have used their easy Web-based accounting services site almost daily to manage my company’s invoicing.

Today, Freshbooks announced that it is releasing industry benchmark data as an added benefit to freelancers as well as micro and small business owners, arming them with information to better manage business revenue and growth. Based on the anonymous aggregation of data based on input from FreshBooks’ clients, the new reports illustrate billing trends.

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