New Freelancers Need to Learn It Until They Make It!

Weekly Newsletter for The Freelancers: Here is the latest newsletter of the week starting on 25th of June 2018.

When you are starting a new job requiring new skills with a new employer it often requires that you should learn it until you make it. This is because there is no substitute for experience.

Even though you might have had all the training in technical knowledge and even practice in dealing with “customers” in a staff training environment, your self-confidence and body language takes some time to adjust to your new role.

This also applies to freelancers because very often they can be in a situation of pitching for contracts where they will have to outsource some parts of the contact because they do not have the technical skills to complete the overall contract e.g. landing page design for a website.

New freelancers need to learn it until they make it!

However, you still have to be self- confident in your pitch for the contract whether it is verbally over an internet conference link or in writing.

Justine Clay has written Fake it ‘til you make it: How to take on work you can’t do (yet) for the Freelancers Union which you can read here.

Here are some tips to help you with your journey to being a self-confident freelancer:

Motivate Yourself!

“Value Proposition Design is a 'must have' for anyone creating a new venture. It captures the core issues around understanding and finding customer problems and designing and validating potential solutions.”
– Steve Blank

Why Should You Be Motivated To Develop Your Freelancing Value Proposition?

This is what a value proposition is according to Investopedia.com:

“Value proposition refers to a business or marketing statement that a company uses to summarize why a consumer should buy a product or use a service. This statement convinces a potential consumer that one particular product or service will add more value or better solve a problem than other similar offerings will.”

You can read more about value propositions at Investopedia.com by clicking here.

The importance of a value proposition cannot be overstated not only for companies and incorporated businesses but also for service providers like freelancers.

Dan Shewan from Wordstream.com has written 7 of the best value proposition examples we’ve ever seen which you can read here. I particularly like the one for Apple iPhone!

However, do not be misled into thinking that because you are a freelancer that it does not matter.

This ChunkofChange article explains: Where the freelance economy meets unique value proposition which you can read here.

If you have been trapped into doing the hourly work treadmill this CreativeClass.co article will help you break the cycle and get you being paid for your skills: How to formulate a value proposition and stop doing hourly work which you can read here.

If you want to read more about creating your own value proposition as a freelancer here is some help by looking inside this eBook by clicking on the icon:

Productivity Tip of the Week

Do You Know What Incognito Mode On Google Chrome Is And How To Use It?

Now that the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is in operation, the Google Chrome incognito mode will become more important. If you are not too sure about what this means you can read Daniel P. Howley’s article How to use incognito windows in Chrome.

It is not only good to know how to use incognito mode for privacy and security reasons, but also for very important productivity reasons:

so that you can reduce the time of doing some research tasks significantly. Here is an example from Dave Chesson of Kindelpreneur for those who do Amazon keyword research (which is becoming increasingly important).

We will be writing an article about Dave Chesson’s work to help the global Amazon kindle authors in the coming weeks because he has done some remarkable work in that area to help kindle authors.

Work-Life Balance Tip of the Week

When You Are Under Work-Life Balance Pressure What Do You Do?

As you would already know this newsletter relates to this website Freelance Work Guide.com and social media networks:

I have known for months that the front page of the website needs to be rewritten because it is out of date in relation, not only to our current environment but also our newsletters.

I have kept putting it off, even though it would be costing me traffic. Finally, I decided that I needed help to get it done if I was to keep my work life balance commitments to family activities.

Most freelancers would have experienced this situation. There are three main freelancing platforms that I use when I get caught in this time management trap, they are:

They are not affiliated links.

Most freelancers that have had reservations about outsourcing should be taking a careful look at outsourcing, as this article by Sarah Saker outlines for the Freeup.com blog which you can read here . If you want to look inside the Ultimate Guide to Outsourcing click on the icon below:

Financial Tip of the Week

If You Are A Millennial And Need A Hand With A Problem, More And More Are Turning To Amazon’s Alexa. This Is Why!

Artificial intelligence (AI) is going to change the world for the millennial generation and their children. These changes are already well underway.

This article from Ieee.org (Advanced Technology for Humanity) entitled Generation AI: A Study of Millennial Parents of Generation Alpha Kids.

Amazon Alexa is leading the race to help the millennial generation with AI and you can read Alexa, How Do I #Adult? Millennials may not be equipped with the skills they need, but the Echo is.

The article is written by Rachel Withers and you can read it here. Alexa will even help families in the kitchen. Kim Komando has written 9 ways Amazon’s Alexa can help you in the kitchen which appears in USAToday.com and you can read here.

All of these changes will enable millennial families to save time which is, of course, about money when work-life balance is under pressure.

Amazon News

Amazon Alexa is not only leading in the race for smart homes but has now started working with the banking industry. I have a bank account with National Australia Bank Limited.

It is now linked to Amazon Alexa. You can read what Amazon Alexa plans to do with my banker’s website here. Have you checked whether Amazon Alexa is working with your bank yet?

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.

Compliance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has slowed us down a lot and it will take us some time to catch up, but we are working on it.

If you also have been impacted you can read the most frequently asked questions related to GDPR 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: