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: Read the rest of this entry »
Just the sound of the word “publicity” can make some of us want to run for cover. It brings to mind uncomfortable and awkward times in the spotlight, and while many of us want our businesses to succeed, it may take a while to adjust to the idea of being center stage.
I recently spoke with Nancy Juetten of Main Street Media Savvy about how to overcome the fear of publicity. The great thing about the tips that she offered is that many of them are things you might already be doing to some extent, which makes the whole idea of publicity a little less daunting. By becoming comfortable with these tactics, you’ll start inching your way into the limelight, and you’ll gain more attention for your business in the process. Read the rest of this entry »
In my WebWorkerDaily post yesterday, I discussed an article in The Daily Beast in which Tina Brown talks about the gig economy and their research on the changing nature of freelancer jobs and the people found in them. The Daily Beast says that “as the recession worsens, more high-income workers are freelancing their way to wealth through multiple part-time gigs, changing the way we define a successful career.”
Brown herself puts it this way:
“Just as startling, these new alternative workers are not overwhelmingly low-income. They’re college-educated Americans who earn more than $75,000 a year.
Welcome to the age of Gigonomics.”
Read the rest of this entry »
In a recent Daily Beast post, Tina Brown talks about how everyone she knows is “hustling for gigs.” As I was reading the article, I noticed a few interesting things about the language in the post – mainly all of the words with “gig” in them: gig economy, gigonomics, and gigocracy. We seem to have our own language to describe what we do as web workers.
Over the holidays, I talked about how hard it is to explain what I do to family members, friends, and other people living in the regular world who find our web worker ways very foreign. This is complicated by my many side projects and diverse work that make it difficult to explain what I do in a concise way, which is another point that Tina Brown makes about how long it takes us to describe what we do in this new gig economy.
I usually respond with some variant of the rambling found below when someone asks me what I do. Read the rest of this entry »
As I’m writing this post, I’m in a small hut in the jungles of Bohol, a small island in the Philippines. The past week has been part of an experiment for me, trying to see how far I can take this digital nomad thing.
Here’s the truth so far: web working on the road is harder than it looks. Even with all the research and planning, some things are bound to be different from what you’re expecting.
Internet Access
In a previous post, I mentioned how internet access should be one of the things you look into when researching travel destinations. This is especially important for us web workers, since it’s hard to anticipate what client queries or work emergencies you’ll need to attend to.
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We are (obviously) fond of the term “web worker” to describe the WWD audience. But there are other terms that get thrown around a lot: “digital bedouin” is popular among the cutting-edge set, “telecommuter” seems to be the darling of the mainstream media, while “teleworker” gets heard in government circles. But as the folks over at Plantronics point out in launching their TeleWho? contest:
It’s 1973 — Elvis has popularized the sequin jumpsuit, the country is embroiled in Watergate, and the term “telecommuter” is first coined.
No doubt because it’s not catchy enough for advertising, the Plantronics folks want to replace “telecommuter” with some other term for “today’s always-connected-but-not-always-in-the-office worker.” Actually, they want you to come up with it for them.
Read the rest of this entry »
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.
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
