Weekly Newsletter for The Freelancers: Here is the latest newsletter of the week starting on 18th of June 2018.
It does not matter whether you are digital savvy millennial or a retiree facing another 30 years of life, the ability to learn new things matters. If you can learn new skills and behaviours, it makes you more adaptable to change.
This often means to earn more money to help you pay expenses and enjoy your chosen lifestyle. Brian Herbert’s quote is right on target:
“The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn is a skill; the
willingness to learn is a choice.”
It is a common view that as you age your ability to remember things decreases, but the issue is really whether this impacts your ability to learn new skills. Richard C Mohs’ article How human memory works appears in science.howstuffworks.com. You can read Richard’s article here.
This is an important issue for those in their 50’s and retirees who are tempted to believe in the common fallacy that their memory declines and that they can’t learn new skills.
It is also important for millennials who should foster their ability to learn new skills that they will carry through life. The Harvard Business Review’s article Learning is a learned behaviour. Here’s how to get better at it was written by Ulrich Boser.
It supports the argument that learning to learn is a skill that needs to be enhanced. You can read Ulrich’s article here.
For retirees you can read about how to enhance your learning skills by clicking on the image below:
Motivate Yourself!
“I had a blog for many years. Once you develop your
readership on your blog, and you can put something out
there or direct traffic or get attention – it’s like a super
power.”
– Evan Williams
Why Freelancers In Business Should Understand Pinterest Traffic?
It is hard to believe that there are 200 million active users of Pinterest and that they can help drive traffic to your website or blog.
All of this helps to increase Pinterest users’ presence on the internet and that is where your customers come from. If you want to look at the statistics on Pinterest you can see them here.
If you run a freelancing business from home, you will find this article written from experience by Erin from freelancingmama.com, of great interest: How to use Pinterest to promote your freelancing business. You can read here.
We have found that this is too good a source of potential traffic to ignore and we are now using Pinterest and you can see one of our pins here.
I am currently undertaking a Udemy course on using Pinterest for marketing to help business growth which you can read about here (not an affiliate link).
I purchased the course when it was on special for US$12.00. However, if you would like to get look inside a Kindle eBook on Pinterest click on the link below:
Productivity Tip of the Week
Are you willing to share on our Facebook page what apps you use for productivity?
For all of us freelancing in the gig economy, productivity matters because it is about saving time and when you work for yourself, often from home that translates into money.
Anna Johansson has written 10 productivity apps that every freelancer needs to know about for the Upwork freelancing platform that you can read here.
With our Amazon Affiliate website case study BestSellersHourly.com a freelancer has done a lot of research on what are the best-selling Amazon apps in various categories and the link to the best-selling productivity apps is here.
At the last count, there were 240 categories. If you have a category in which you are interested, send us a message and we will feature it in the newsletter so that you and other readers can check it out.
If you are a freelancer who frequently uses social media because of your freelancing business, it is wise to look at using a management platform that will reduce the amount of time that it takes.
I use Hootsuite that costs US$6.59 per month. The Hootsuite platform gives you access to 150 apps that are integrated with the platform. The full list of the apps is here. This enables you to boost your productivity a lot. It is especially true if you manage the social media for clients.
This is our article: Hootsuite should be used by businesses and freelance social media managers – 11 reasons why. I suggest you read the article.
I have been a strong advocate for Hootsuite for years and an affiliate which means that they may pay me a commission one day, but it has not happened yet!
Work-Life Balance Tip of the Week
Do You Believe That There Should Be a Universal Basic Income?
My daughter-in-law and I had a very interesting discussion on the Mother’s Day about whether there should be a Universal Basic Income (UBI). My daughter-in-law is a very self-motivated and successful person who has an entrepreneurial spirit which I greatly admire.
There are views that a Universal Basic Income would help freelancers and those working in the gig economy because it would put a floor on their income to cover essential costs. This was the basis of our discussion.
There are now countries that believe it should be trialled. In fact, Finland has been the first country to trial it.
Michael Grothaus has written How universal basic income can rescue the freelance economy which appears in fastcompany.com and you can read here. It tells you what is happening in Finland.
One of the great stressors of the freelancing economy is that there is no foundation of income on which to build a certainty in the family budget. One of the alternatives of a Universal Basic Income is to look at an alternative to UBI.
It might be a family business which involves other family members, typically teenagers of a millennial family.
One of these alternatives is discussed by Christina Newberry in her article for the Hootsuite blog entitled Social listening: what it is, why you should care and how to do it well which you can read here. I will write further articles about Hootsuite as a social media platform in coming issues.
Financial Tip of the Week
What Would You Do If You Were An Engineer And Your Entire Department Was Made Redundant By Your Employer?
I have followed Andrea Vahl’s Facebook page for a number of years and have watched her build a thriving business while being a self- employed Mum to now being incorporated. I have seen her comeback from being an unemployed engineer to being successful in a completely different business.
This financial tip is by way of an inspirational story that shows that a millennial family can build a thriving business from scratch.
This is not an affiliate link although, as an affiliate, I helped promote Andrea’s vision of creating an online Social Media Manager School. Now it is her turn to help others build their business wherever in the world they may be.
It is worth reading Andrea’s story so that you know freelancing and being paid for your skills can open up an entirely new chapter in your life. The link to Andrea’s Facebook page is here and the post of her story is on 15th May as below:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2153139418248356
For freelancers this is one of the best financial tips that you can receive:
The best way to predict the future is to create it. – Peter Drucker
Amazon News
Amazon Alexa is leading in the race for smart homes, but it is a part of a broader home innovation revolution that is sweeping the world. For millennial families especially, keeping abreast with developments is important because it will lead to efficiencies. Eric Griffith has written The best smart home devices of 2018 which appears in au.pcmag.com which you can read here.
The weekly AWS news video link to acloud.guru is here. They are the leading trainers globally for AWS freelancers.
Amazon Associates Website Case Study
The history of the Case Study can be read at links to the previous newsletter issues. There is no change for this week as we are adjusting our articles to take into account their new offering of Amazon Home Services (AHS). Details of AHS can be read here.
We have stopped showing the links for new articles as we have discovered that it could be having adverse impacts on the search engine optimization of the website Best Sellers Hourly. We will advise you when new articles are added. They are currently being worked on.
By this time you can check our social media:
Freelancers And Cyber Security
We have gained approval from Robert Siciliano to bring you extracts from his books related to cyber security for freelancers. Robert Siciliano is an identity theft expert and consultant.
He also gives self defense and personal safety seminars. Robert provides safety and identity theft fraud prevention tips and advice on multimedia channels in the United States. We have his approval to bring you weekly extracts from his books:
What is Medical Identity Theft?
