Thursday Tip Triad #13: Variety is the Spice of Life

As I've mentioned recently, I probably won't meet my income goals for the month again... Why?  Well, for one thing I'm not giving it my all, and two, a lot of my private clients have gone MIA over the past couple of months or have made severe cut backs.  I've also made some cut backs on the time that I'm willing to work for lower paying clients as well.  This is all fine and dandy, part of being a freelancer and part of pruning - however I've been so focused on private clients for the last five months that I haven't gathered up any high quality back up eggs!

My realization of this is what has brought about the creation of today's TTT topic on variety.  Private clients are great, content sites are great, survey and gpts are great - but to get the most security and the most money in the bank, you need to maintain variety!

Thursday Tip Triad #12: Fighting Off Distractions

One of the biggest pitfalls of legitimate work from home jobs is the fact that there is no easy way to avoid distractions.  Between family matters, household chores and the temptations of the internet, it's incredibly easy to get side tracked.  The good news is that there are a few things that you can do help fend off these distractions.

Thursday Tip Triad #11: The Three Steps to Freelancing

When it comes to freelancing and legitimate work from home jobs, you have to look at your work like it's a garden, or more specifically a rose bush.  To find jobs and succeed at them you have to possess several skills that are similar to those that you need to employ when taking care of your flowers, veggie gardens or fruit trees.  Today, for the Thursday Tip Triad, I am going to break freelancing down for you into three sections from start to finish, planting, nurturing and pruning.

Thursday Tip Triad #10: Keeping Your Sanity

As we all know, everyone needs a break sometime, and those of us in the legitimate work from home jobs world are no different from those who have brick and mortar occupations.  Sometimes you have to ease up or take a complete "vacation" to keep from going off the deep end.  Here are a few tips to keep in mind when you get close to the breaking point:

1.  Keep doing your easy and quick tasks if possible.  Unless you need a complete and total vacation from your work at home obligations, try to keep your simplest and quickest tasks going while easing up on the more stressful projects.  While a 100% work free week might completely refresh you, it also might put you in a situation where you find it hard to get started back up again when the work comes rolling in, especially if you haven't been working from home very long and enjoyed a long period of unemployment before that.

Thursday Tip Triad #9: Simple Organization Tips

After you get started in the legitimate work from home world one of the hardest things to master is organization.  I for one, have never been very organized... My desk is usually a pile of papers, notepads, writing utensils and so much more.  Luckily, there are a few simple things that can be done to help you keep organized and on top of your game without really requiring any sort of heavy time commitment or any sort of investment either.

1.  Make a special Gmail account.  I know this sounds annoying and silly, but honestly it's one of the best things you can do.  There have been one or two times where I've lost responses from legitimate work from home sites because they've gotten lost in the shuffle of my primary inbox.  Just last week I was trying to find my letter from a web site rating company that invited me to test with them, and couldn't.

Thursday Tip Triad #8: The More the Merrier

When it comes to freelancing and finding legitimate work from home jobs, the only way to get them, is to throw yourselves at them mercilessly.  A lot of people still want to believe that work from home jobs should fall out of the sky into their lap immediately, but that is not the case.  Finding a job that is legit, and can be done from home around your own schedule, takes time, patience and dedication.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when you're looking for legitimate work from home jobs...

1. Jump at every opportunity.  The more jobs you apply to and inquire about, the more chances you will have to be accepted... of course the opposite applies as well so you need to keep up a tough shell and remember that you won't always get hired.  If you do get offered the position and it turns out that the job isn't something you are interested in, or the pay is less than you want, you can always turn it down.

Thursday Tip Triad #7: Formatting Your Bid

So you've taken the plunge and jumped into the legitimate work from home jobs world and are now starting to search for private clients on sites like Elance, Guru or Odesk... So far we've talked about how to get past the bidding jitters, how to weed out some of the jobs that won't get awarded and how to form your proposal.  This week we're going to talk about how to actually format your bid.

1.  Break your pricing down.  Just like I said last week, you want to be as detailed as possible.  Don't just tell them "I'll do this project for $300" get elbow deep in your break down to make sure they understand exactly what you are doing for them.

I will provide you with 10 articles of approximately 300 words each for $30 each, or $300 total, which equates to about 10¢ per word within 10 days of accepting the project.

Thursday Tip Triad #6: How to Price Your Proposal

Here we are again, another Thursday means another set of tips for how to successfully find and land legitimate work from home jobs and freelance gigs.  Last week we discussed how to form the bulk of your proposal on freelance projects like those featured on Elance, but this week we'll be talking about the part that everyone cares about - the Bid.

Coming up with competitive pricing and knowing how to best present your offer is a key part of landing freelance jobs.  I am not claiming to be an expert, but here is what I do and it seems to work well for me.

1.  Don't be afraid to ask for what you are worth.  I do not

Thursday Tip Triad #5: Forming Proposals When Bidding

When it comes to finding legitimate work from home jobs, freelancing really seems to be a great option.  Unfortunately, it can take a while to get a grasp on what to do and what not to do.  Once you've signed up for a site (whether it's Elance, Guru, oDesk or something else) you have to start creating proposals and bidding, but that process can be intimidating.

Several people have asked me for tips on how to write a good proposal, so here are a few tips!

1.  Provide a brief introduction.  Use the prospective client's name (or user name if their name is unknown) and comment on the fact that you would like to be considered for (insert project name).

"Hello JohnnyRox451,
I'm incredibly interested in your Content writing about Valentine's Day project and would love to work with you...."

Thursday Tip Triad #4

So it's been brought to my attention by a number of folks that Elance is a bit hard to get the hang of, and to be quite honest, I agree completely! While it is a great way to find legitimate work from home jobs, it can also be really difficult to get the hang of. After two months I still find myself getting confused from time to time so here are a few tips for getting started with Elance.

1. Choose your category very carefully. One mistake that a lot of people make is that they pick a job category without really thinking about what it will contain and if it's the best option for them.

The Thursday Tip Traid: 3rd Edition - Motivation

"How do you stay motivated" is something that a lot of you have asked me so this weeks tips for freelancing will revolve around that very topic! Keeping your motivation and momentum as a freelancing work at home mom, or just a freelancer in general, can be a really trying effort. While not every motivation suggestion will work for everyone across the board, I have gone ahead and assembled a set of 3 tips that have helped me out personally when it comes to keeping my motivation up while doing freelance work from home.

The Thursday Tip Triad

Installment two in the new Thursday Tip column is a bit late again, in hindsight it also might have been better to dub it Freelance Friday - but I've already committed to making it a Thursday post!

Today's freelance job hunting tips will revolve around finding clients. I briefly touched on how to build a client base last week but this time I will focus fully on providing you with a few pieces of information that will help you build a freelance client base without any investment.

Freelance Work

Freelance work might sound like something you are incapable of, but I promise you that it's not. If I had known how simple it was I would have started doing it much sooner than I did. It has really been a great source of income for my family and I'm only getting started. There's not a day that goes by where I don't regret how long it took me to take the plunge and seriously start hunting down freelance work.
I had a bit of an ordeal today (accidentally locked myself out of the apartment!) so this is up later than I'd intended but I wanted to get this post up before I go to sleep.

Tips for Freelancing (The new Thursday tradition!)