Flexible Working Life

Can this really be called a blog any more?

Oh it’s been so, so long since I posted!

It’s not that I haven’t been thinking about posts, or spotting things on the web that I’ve wanted to write about, it’s just that I never seemed to get round to actually doing it.

What can I say?  Life has been busy.  It still is busy.
And I’m amazingly thankful for that, I’ve been busy doing wonderful, creative things and that has taken me away from this blog.  I plan to do more posts but can’t promise they’ll be regular, that would be a lie to both of us, so I’m afraid that my sporadic posts will have to do for now. Rubbish, I know.

But thank you for the lovely emails, to those readers who happen upon this site and take the time to write - thank you, it always make me smile

And that’s the reason for this post really, I had a lovely email from Carl Hansell of Carl Hansell Design.

He’s looking for a work space, in London, but not to rent.  What he’s after is a kind of environment where freelancers can join up and pop in to work in the whole creative atmosphere with other like minded people.
I think it sounds fab, but I don’t know if this kind of place exists, I only know of office space up for rent.  So if you’re reading this and you do know it happens and you know where it happens and how to join then get in touch! Carl’s email is carl@carlhanselldesign.com

Is it craiglist or craigslist?  Does it really matter when you are looking for work?  Nope, what does matter is being able to find gigs quickly and easily.

However, the one thing that drives me mad with criaglist is the way that you can’t search the entire database without going through each one separately.  Such a waste of time.

Now I know that may be useful if you want to buy a car or rent a flat, but if you are looking for on-line work through where location isn’t an issue, then it’s not so good.

I have just added a widget to this site that stops that.  It lets you search the entire database of criaglist and  It’s really simple to use.  It opens up a whole host of freelancing gigs that you may have not seen before. The only downside is that the widget asks for a zip code which, if you aren’t in the USA is hard to get.  If that’s the case go here and click on ‘rest of world’

This will then take you through the steps to search the whole of Europe or just selected countries.  Then select ‘jobs’ and under types of jobs you could put in the keyword ‘freelance.’

I just did a quick search and got over 200!

Happy hunting

I saw a job advert for a freelance technical writer the other day and wondered what it  entailed.  How is the job of a freelance technical writer different to a run of the mill freelance writer?  I’m guessing that freelance technical writers have a specialism, presumably technical, and stick to it.  Whereas freelance writers can be writing Jezebels and tout for work wherever.

After some initial research it seems [Read more]

Photo by Clurr

When I was writing the title to this post, I got really stuck on whether to call it an ‘introductory’ email.  Should it be sales letter?  Or an email pitch?
I’m not sure, but you know the kind of thing I mean, it’s the email that you send to someone whom you don’t know, asking for work and offering your services.  They are really tricky things to do because the temptation for the reader to press the delete key is huge.
Why should they open and read an email from someone they don’t know and give them work?

When I first started out in freelancing, this was my first hurdle.  I wanted to write for publications but I couldn’t get the editors attention at all.  All [Read more]

Photo by Carrot Creative

So I just joined twitter.
I’ve been avoiding it, mostly because
a) I didn’t see the point.  I mean, who cares if I’m cooking curry for dinner, or washing my socks?  I hate those things on Facebook and besides, I can never think of anything amusing to say.

And…

b) I didn’t understand how it worked. I know that’s a really lame excuse, but put it together with point a) above and the motivation for understanding the programme is none existent.

Then two things happened. [Read more]

Photo by Noel Zia Lee

I love the start of a new year.  All those possibilities, all that potential.  I love getting a new diary and filling up the first few pages with plans, ideas and dreams.

So what’s in store this year?

My plans are to build my passive and online income.  I’m totally in awe of those who are making over $1000 a month from previous online projects and I plan to investigate as much as possible into making that amount as well.
So far, I’ve set up another blog, started to submit articles to a content paying site and, well, that’s as far as I got.  I have made some money, but the truth is, I’m finding it hard to keep up the motivation for these kinds of things when the initial return is so little.

I only started with Bukisa in December, hoping to be part of the great eHow Experiment, but the second week into the month, I got a large project to complete and….. didn’t get chance to submit any more articles.
In my last update I had written 8 articles and earned $0.40.
Since then, I submitted one more article, and having just checked, my earnings are now at $2.00.
My articles are earning money for me.  So it’s passive income, even though it is in tiny, tiny, tiny amounts.  I’ll submit some more articles, and keep with it as much as possible keeping those wonderful few who earn $100 a month from content paying sites firmly in my mind.

My new blog has only been live a month, and just has a few posts on, but has earned $1.00 already from Adsense, and I love working on that, so I plan to continue with it, build up traffic, and perhaps launch some other niche blogs as well.

I’m told that the lack of initial return is the biggest stumbling block in trying to gain passive income and it’s where most people give up.  From my research, it seems that any kind of income made online seems to be a slow burner.  So, this year, I intend to embrace that concept and commit to it as best as I can.

If you are looking for ways to build up passive income, (and in this kind of financial climate, who isn’t?)  then here are a few sites to inspire and show that it can be done on a large scale.
I admire each one of these brave bloggers for showing their earnings online and if they are to believed then…    wow.

Caroline Middlebrook
Brilliant blog and made $1498 in December from various projects online

Work at Home Mom
Made $2654.18in November.  I can fully understand why she’s no longer posting monthly earnings reports, but had to point her out because she’s doing so well.

Tyler Cruz
$6,663.94 from his one blog in December.  I don’t know if it’s true, but it is very inspiring.

And Passive Family Income who is wonderful for giving and sharing ideas.

I think it was about two years ago, I was visiting a close friend who had moved to France and she was telling me about an idea for a book she had.
At the time, she’d moved to France to take a break from working so hard.
She was a very successful physiotherapist, treating millionaire clients with a long waiting list, working all hours, and with a young family (she has three children) it was getting to be too demanding.
She bravely recognized this and made the decision that it was time for a change, before she changed as a result of her stressful lifestyle.

It was whilst we were sitting in her new apartment, looking over the French countryside that she told me that many of her previous clients were still in contact with her for treatment.

‘How?’ I hear you ask as the English Channel was separating them.

She was treating them by giving advice over the telephone and it was working.
That was the idea for her book, all the stuff that she had in her head she was going to write it down so that people with bad backs, sore knees, headaches and all the other stuff that 99% of the population suffer from could treat themselves.

The result is her book, DIY Physiotherapy just launched and available at Amazon and I can not recommend it enough. Seriously.
If you are a regular reader of this blog (God love you) you’ll know that I stress quite a lot about being ill and not being able to work. Like most people I don’t like pain. And like most freelancers I suffer from the symptoms of long periods being sat hunched in front of a PC.

I get aches and pains and as I’m writing this, my lovely husband is suffering from a stiff neck. He is also a freelancer and is working despite walking around like he’s still got the hanger in his jacket.
But, we have the book.
We have the wise, wise words from my lovely friend and tonight I will be treating my husband and not getting stressed about my next head-ache/back-ache/arm-ache/fill-the-blank-ache, because we have this little gem of a book.

If you suffer from stuff like this, but are one of those freelancers who thinks, ‘It’ll work itself out, I’ll just work through the pain,’ then this book is for you.
At the moment it’s available for the ridiculously low price of £5.99 due to some kind funding that my friend got, but I don’t for a minute think it will stay at this price as word gets around.

I’m hoping to have an interview with her soon, so if you’ve any questions let me know.

A little while ago, I blogged about Yudu, a fantastic site that allows you to publish and promote your work.

You can use Yudu as a publishing tool giving you the opportunity to share your work be it in the form of text, videos, images or audio.  I thought I’d ask Brian Critchfield, Yudu expert more about the site and to explain exactly how the whole thing works and how freelancers can benefit.

Here’s his answers to some of my questions, but if you’ve anymore, check out the FAQ or email them directly.

How did YUDU come into creation – has it been years in the making?

 YUDU Media has been in existence for about 7 years now. It started out as a bureau service converting printed publications to digital publications. The company built a tool-set to help them with this digital conversion and saw an opportunity to share this tool-set with the general market to allow experts to self-publish their content digitally. In April, 2008, the company launched yudufreedom.com as a basic self publishing tool. Then in September, 2008, it relaunched as yudu.com with a much more feature rich application.

Can you give me an example of how a freelancer could take full advantage of YUDU and make money from it? [Read more]

Right now, with all the Christmas decorations everywhere and mess, I could really do with one of these.
I didn’t know they even existed, but of course, if there’s a market for it, then there’s a business to be had, and from what I can gather, quite a good business.
So what is a clutter consultant and how do you become one?

Obviously you have to be extremely organised and have the right kind of management and logistical  skills that’ll help you, help others to be organised.
You could either specialise in physical clutter, which is literally moving objects, sorting wardrobes and doing house clearances, or on the time management side, where you de-clutter a client’s life and help develop schedules and routines.

And in times like these, becoming a clutter consultant could be big business.
UK company Clutter Clearing explain on their site that the credit crunch has meant that more people are looking to de-clutter in order to save money.
They even have 11 ways of how you can do this,  including: making money out of the space you create by renting it out, managing your space so that you can shut off unused rooms and turn down heating and lighting and therefore reduce your bills.

They also hold training days and have free downloads, so if you fancy becoming a clutter consultant, it’s worth checking out.

It’s a little early to be reviewing my earnings on Buksia as I’ve only been on there a week, but I thought I would blog about it as I go, especially as I’m part of the great December experiment.
I also thought it would be a good time to talk about what I’ve learnt about how Bukisa operates so far and how I plan to optimize it to make more money.

Bukisa is a very easy site to navigate around.  Basically, you think of an article, write the content and hit publish then, hey presto, you’re in business.  The more people who read your articles, the more you earn, so it works in your favour to promote the site and your content.
You can write, or put up videos about anything, from ‘How To Make a Cup of Tea,’ to ‘What I Ate for Breakfast,’ to ‘Easy Ways to Look [Read more]