Weekly Newsletter for The Freelancers: Here is the latest newsletter of the week starting on 13th of August 2018.


It does not matter whether you live in Australia, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom or many other countries, the millennial generation has a housing affordability and income crisis.

Tony Blair, the ex-British Prime Minister, has written Home Truths: a progressive vision of housing policy in the 21st century. You can read Tony’s article here.

What is clear from Tony’s comprehensive article is that there is the first issue of accumulating a deposit to get started with your loan and the second issue is better interest rate risk management for those already with a variable interest rate housing loan.

freelancing help millennial families overcome crisis

Elaine Pofeldt has written New Data: Six-Figure Freelancing Is On The Rise. The article was written for the forbes.com and you can read it here.

Elaine’s article is about the increasing trend of freelancers being able to earn a six figure income. If you are a freelance writer, you may care to have a look inside this eBook:


Motivate Yourself!

“We’re entering a new world in which data may be more
important than software.”

– Tim O’Reilly

Why You Should Be Motivated To Have A Data Backup Plan As Part Of Your Daily Routine?

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The data contained in your computer is critical to your success as an online freelancer. If you lose access to it, you invariably will lose income because you have to get operational again which costs time and money.

This article was prompted by the fact that my computer’s hard drive has started to make sounds like it is about to fail. I’m sure that many of you will know that grinding sound that causes great alarm to all desktop computer users.

I do not have the technical skills to replace a hard drive myself and it requires that I get technical assistance to investigate, repair or replace what is starting to cause the problem.

One of the first steps is to ensure that there is a mirror image of my hard drive. Rather than rely on my existing backup, I purchased an Amazon Prime Day special of a Seagate Backup Plus Portable Drive.

This has 1 terabyte storage capacity. However, I should have done some more research before the purchase as the best sellers are those with a higher capacity which you can see here.

This backup has the ability to add to the initial mirror image by incremental backups which are completed by the process outlined in this YouTube video here.

There is an important lesson to be learned here by my mistake, which is to make sure that your backup device has a capacity equal to or more than the best sellers that other consumers buy.

Carey Wodehouse has written The Importance of Data Backups—Plus Best Practices For Freelancers for the Upwork.com blog which you can read here.

It is interesting to notice what is first on the top 10 causes of losses of data by freelancers. It is probably the same for many small businesses. The issue for freelancers is not to fall for traps for the unwary.


Productivity Tip of the Week

Productivity For Millennials Can Be Improved By Focus And Process

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When we were researching work-life balance for this eBook How to be Self-Employed – A Freelance Work from How to be Self-Employed – A Freelance Work from Home Guide. Not only were millennials concerned about work-life balance and job security, but they were stressed.

This was borne out by subsequent official survey results. Michelle Castillo wrote Millennials are the most stressed generation, survey finds. Michelle’s article was written for the cbsnews.com and you can read it here.

The contracted freelancer who did the research was based in New Zealand. It was a very insightful piece of research. She devised not only a method of focusing and prioritizing work but also a work-life balance process. When you buy the eBook you get access to the printed sheets that were developed.

Lori Hill has written Millennials: Here’s How To Focus And Meet Your Goals for the forbes.com which you can read here.


Work-Life Balance Tip of the Week

When Is The Right Time To Consider The Ultimate Work-Life Balance Issue?

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It does not matter what is your working background there will come the time when you have to face the ultimate work-life balance issue. That issue is when you should retire and whether you should retire part-time

This is one of life’s most important questions for all of us, especially if your retirement savings appears inadequate to fund your retirement years. Governments are starting to realize that this is a critical issue for them also. It can reduce the burden on public pensions if people decide to retire part-time.

In the United States, the AARP has been encouraging people to retire part-time for some years, see here. In Australia, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) has also taken up the cause this month, see here

The reason is very simple: it makes your retirement money last longer and there are physical and mental health benefits. ASIC has produced a PDF booklet called Financial Decisions at Retirement – How to make the most of your money and avoid costly mistakes. You can download the booklet from here

If you wish to undertake a career change to work part-time to make your money last longer, Kerry Hannon has written an important book on this issue. Kerry is an international expert on retiring part-time. You can read her book Great Jobs for Everyone 50+ here


Financial Tip of the Week

Smart Home Devices Can Save Time And Money For Freelancers

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It does not matter whether you are a millennial family seeking better work-life balance or one seeking to accumulate funds for a home deposit, time is the new money.

Smart home devices can save you time and free you up to get on with enjoying life by having more family time or, alternatively, being more productive.

Being more productive as a freelancer whether moonlighting from your 9 to 5 job or as a fulltime freelancer requires time. Smart home devices have the ability to help you and your family. You can read 21 ways how this is possible here

Our Amazon trial website bestsellershourly.com has an article entitled Smart Choices matter to millennial families – 15 reasons why! which you can read here


Amazon News

The battle for smart homes for millennial families is only just starting. It will have a far-reaching impact on our daily lives.

Amazon has now started to help families transition with an expert home assessment of how they can transition to being a smart home. You can read about the service that is being offered here.

To my knowledge this service has not arrived in Australia as yet, but, in my opinion, it will not be long before it is. See 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

Website Case Study

We have produced a new article for the BestSellersHourly.com website entitled Amazon Prime Benefits Matter to Australian Families – 10 Reasons Why! which you can read here

We are currently looking at the operational link between the social media channel Pinterest and Amazon. We are looking at whether the links can go to BestSellersHourly.com. For those who are technically minded, you can read about this 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 the Differences Between HTTP and HTTPS?

difference between http and https

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