This is a guest post by Mariana Ashley. Learn more about her at the end of the post.
There are many aspects of freelance writing that make it an extremely enticing career to pursue. With the freedom to create your own work schedule, make a living from the comfort of your own home, and be your own boss, freelancing has several alluring perks. While freelance writers all love what they do, there is not a single one of them that would describe their career as easy. Many of the aspects of freelance writing that make it enticing also make it challenging. Being your own boss means managing your own time. For many this can be a difficult responsibility to completely master, but time management is essential to a successful freelance career. One of the first steps to optimizing your career as a freelancer is learning to effectively utilize your downtime. Use these tips to help maximize your success in-between projects.
Vary the Time Intensity of Your Projects
One of the easiest ways to mismanage your time as a freelance writer is by having an excessive amount of downtime between projects. Try to organize your projects so you have several going on at one time that are of varying time intensity. As a freelancer, you will get projects that will require more time than others. It is a good idea to try to take on a few projects that you know you can finish quickly and then maybe take on one or two that might be longer term endeavors. This way, when you have finished all of your short term projects, you can go on to work on your longer term projects in the downtime. As we all should have learned from our grade school teachers repeating it over and over again, procrastination always makes things much more difficult. Rather than put off longer projects until the last minute, use your downtime from other projects to put in a little time on the longer ones. This is a great way to utilize extra time and complete longer more labor intensive tasks on time and without much stress.
Organize Your Workspace and Computer
Another great way to effectively utilize your downtime is by doing a little spring cleaning. Because freelance writers work from home, it can be easy to overlook the importance of a tidy and put together home office. With a little time off, take a break to clean up your office and put things in order so that you have an environment that encourages productivity. Many people underestimate the importance that their physical work environment plays on their ability to work efficiently. Create a space that encourages focus and creativity. Make sure that your desk is not cluttered or difficult to maneuver on. Furthermore, as a freelancer much of our work is done on the computer. For this reason, it is important to thoroughly clean up your computer and to organize your files. Be sure to back up all of your important work information and projects. Also, be sure to keep up with your computer’s regular maintenance, so that you are not stuck with a slew of work and a broken computer.
Spend Time Surfing the Web
I know this may sound silly. You’re thinking: “but I waste time on the internet all the time. How is this going to make me more productive?” A great way to utilize your downtime effectively as a freelance writer is by doing a little research. So, by surf the internet, I do not exactly mean peruse Facebook and Twitter. Take a look around the web to see what is new in the area of blogging, freelancing, and anything else pertinent to your specific project fields. A huge part of blog writing or freelance writing involves understanding where your skills might be of use. By reading other people’s blogs or exploring various websites, you can find new place to seek for a job opportunity or new inspiration for other projects you have underway. Search the web to keep yourself active and motivated in the freelance world even when you are not actively working on a new project.
Lull periods are common in freelance careers. Very often we are completely swamped on day and searching for new things to do the next. Learning to use your in-between time wisely and effectively is a great way to perfect your craft and maximize your payout as a freelancer.
Mariana Ashley is a freelance writer who particularly enjoys writing about online degrees. She loves receiving reader feedback, which can be directed to mariana.ashley031 @gmail.com.
This is a guest post by Krisca Te. Details about Krisca Te at the end of the article.
Blogging is one of the hottest and most profitable online enterprises you can do on your own. You can start working and earning money right away without being caught up in the usual problems of running a business solo. Very little capital and equipment are necessary for you to become a reputable blogger.
A web master’s dilemma
If you want to start your own money-making blog, you have to pick a topic or niche that you feel confident about and interested in. Running a blog means constantly producing fresh, useful, relevant and updated content about the things that interest your reader. You have to know what to write about before you even set up the site’s domain.
Once you know what your blog will be about, you have to tweak the content so it will rank well on search engine listings. No one will find your site unless they know the URL, so you have to make sure that your content is search engine optimized for better site traffic.
But your job as a webmaster doesn’t begin and end with generating search engine friendly articles. After all, you are writing for a human audience, not an algorithm. Search engines can only do so much to promote your website, and at the end of the day you have to put in extra effort to attract human readers and make them stay with you, post after post.
Looking for something else?
Being a blogger means balancing your content so that it is both search engine and user friendly. Search engines like Google will stop recommending your blog if readers don’t appreciate the content that you have on your site, and that will spell the end of your site traffic heydays.
Moreover, you should also be able to convince your reader that you have other interesting and useful stuff elsewhere on your site. When a user clicks through to your blog from Google or Bing and views one page, that’s one cookie point for your site traffic. However, that same reader may also bounce off your blog to another site if he doesn’t like what he sees on your post. He clicks through to the other websites that turned up in his search listing instead.
Leaving your site after viewing just one page thus gives you a high bounce rate, which can be an important indicator that there is something lacking in your content. In a nutshell, a blog’s bounce rate is equivalent to the number of one-page-view visits over the total number of visits. High site traffic doesn’t necessarily mean that you blog is doing well overall-if you also have high bounce rate, that means that your readers don’t find your blog useful enough for their purposes.
Reduce your bounce rate today
You can’t control how your readers behave once they are in your website, but you can tweak your content so that they will want to spend more time viewing your other pages or even signing up for your RSS feeds or email newsletter. In short, you have to convince them to stick around for more of what you have to offer, be it more information or products or services.
The secret is in spicing up your content so that each and every article is informative, relevant, accurate and helpful. Apart from this, there are also a couple of other ways you can try to make sure that every visit to your website decreases the overall bounce rate and ensures that you get maximum exposure and readership for all your posts:
1. Create internal links. Ensuring that all your pages are sufficiently and properly interlinked can play a big role in how readers use your website. Include a list of relevant posts to every page so that they can explore other pages and topics further.
2. Have a clear and easy-to-use navigation scheme. An intuitive navigation allows your users to feel like they are following a well-organized train of thought. Make sure that all your buttons and tabs are working fine so that readers won’t be frustrated by not being able to view pages they’ve previously loaded.
3. Provide ample content on every page. Two sentences for every page is not enough to convince your reader that you actually have more to say about anything. On the flip side, large amounts of text on every page don’t automatically mean that you are an expert. Try having 300-500 words on every page so that your reader will not be discouraged by the length (or lack thereof) of the content.
4. Update your blog regularly. Readers don’t want to read stale, outdated content. They want fresh information and timely news. Get them to stay with you longer by offering new content on a regular basis, but don’t forget to link back to previous posts that may be relevant to the topic.
When not out building relationships with other bloggers, Krisca Te can be found reading blogs that tackle personal development. She is also a personal finance freak who is currently working with ACC, a personal finance blog. You can follow ACC on Twitter if you like to stay updated on their latest contents.
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