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

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]

Photo by Gaetan Lee

Have you ever thought about it?

I do.  In fact, I do it quite often.  I think about where I expect to be financially next week, next month, next year and then I think about how I can make it happen.

I work as a freelance writer.  I love it.  It’s scary but I love it.
I love it because I get to be the boss of my own day, I get to decide what jobs to work on and what to turn down and I get to have the liberating and wonderful feeling of being in charge of my future.  But, and it’s a bit but (‘scuse the pun) it’s scary because if I’m ill or need to take time off, then there’s no money coming in.  Even worse there’s no networking or approaching potential new clients and that’s really frightening.  That’s the reason why I’m determined to diversify and put my eggs in a whole load of different baskets instead of just the one or two.

I was sat writing an article for Bukisa last night and realised that this was not going to make me any money, fast.  As I typed out the short and sweet little article, I reminded myself of how much I normally charge for my freelance writing and how much these few paragraphs were going to make me.  It’s not even comparable.  But then I remembered my vision, to have a passive income, and I kept typing.
These articles won’t make me much in the short term (although they might, and that would be very nice) but they will continue to make money for a long time to come, hopefully.  So, I’m keeping with the challenge and building up a bank of content that can continue to bring in the pennies.

I’m also going to start [Read more]

A few days ago, I blogged about feeling overwhelmed and generally busy in all areas of my life.

Since posting that I’m glad to say that it’s mostly under control - I worked like a demon, installed some much needed shelves and storage units around the house and generally got on top of it.  It’s  funny, but just sorting out some of the stuff has really made a difference to my general well being. It’s not completely organised, but I can recognise that I’m half way there and that feels good.

But one thing that’s been bugging me is what to eat when you work from home.

Now, I appreciate that can sound like a silly question, but y’know, lately for some reason it’s been a big issue for me.  Having to break from work is important, [Read more]

Photo by Pvera

I’ve recently been doing a lot in the  many different areas of my life, and this had left me feeling overwhelmed.
For instance, we moved office recently (from upstairs small spare bedroom, to downstairs big living room) and in the move from upstairs to downstairs, I seem to have not only moved into another room, but taken over small areas of the whole house.  The business seems to have left  debris in it’s wake and is now sprawling in the hallway, dining area and bedroom.  Which is NOT GOOD.  I can’t seem to shift any of it, as I don’t seem to have a sensible place for it.

As well as this, I thought started a craft project with my son as [Read more]

I need a lot of sleep.

I’ve always been like this and sometimes, I do feel a bit resentful about it.  It can be a pain needing so much sleep; it gets in the way when there’s so much to do.
When I was at college and had no children, I had the luxury of being able to snooze the morning away.  At weekends I could easily get up in the early afternoon feeling great.  Thinking back, it seems that I hardly ever suffered with hangovers like I do now, and I used to get just as much work done.  I was able to work till late at night, and catch up [Read more]

I always find I work better if I have a list of goals to work towards.
I decide what I want to achieve, pick a time when the goal will be completed and I write it down.
For a long time my goals were done at the beginning of a New Year or on my birthday, they were ‘lifetime goals,’ but I’ve found that if I create goals [Read more]