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Where to Find Freelance Jobs with Less Competition

If you try looking for a freelance job over the internet, you’ll soon find out that you’re faced with stiff competition. It’s especially the case with more popular websites such as Craigslist or eLance.

Let’s take eLance’s case, for example. When you look for a copywriting job there, you’re most likely to compete with around 15-25 providers for every job. That’s unless the job requires a highly-specialized skill such as the knowledge of a foreign language. Thus, your chances of actually winning a job goes down as more providers bid.

So where will you find freelance work with less competition? Here are a few:

1. The good old yellow pages

Using the yellow pages, you can find businesses who may need your services right now or in the near future.
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How To Have Something Like A Christmas Party If You’re A Freelancer

If you’re a freelancer who had a 9-5 job before, you probably know that this is the season for office Christmas parties.

And that’s what you’ll see in Facebook accounts of your former colleagues (or whatever website they upload it to): pictures taken during parties with their officemates.

Now as a freelancer, you don’t go to parties like that because you have no colleagues to speak of. And you probably work alone most of the time. Well unless you are willing to party alone and call that an office Christmas party, then that would do too.

But when you think of it, you didn’t really work alone after all.
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What Copywriters Should Tell Their Clients About Conversions

In your career as a copywriter, you will encounter at least one client who would expect you to perform miracles on his/her business.

It is of course normal for your clients to expect you to help them improve their conversions. That’s why they’re paying you good money in the first place. But watch out for those who expect you to turn around their business overnight.

So what would you do if you encounter one such client? You have some things to explain and a few other things to do to show what you can and cannot do as a copywriter.
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I’ll Give You $20 If You Read this Article

If I said that I’ll give you $20 just by reading this article, you probably would, right? Besides, you don’t have anything to lose by doing that.

Now what if I told you that I lied to you, that there’s no money waiting for you at the end? You’ll most definitely get mad at me, right?

You probably experienced this in some other form several times in your life. Companies selling products that only look good on paper but never deliver what you expected. And sometimes, you have no option of returning the product.

Because of this kind of experience, it’s no wonder a lot of people think of advertisers as liars. You probably do too (especially after how I wrote this post’s headline).

Indeed, some advertisers are guilty of this. However, this is a misconception about advertising in general. Advertising isn’t about lying to your customers. It is about persuading them to buy your product by telling them how they can benefit from your product.
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Thanksgiving Day Post: What Are You Thankful For?

I come from a country that doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving Day (I’m from the Philippines). However, since a lot of great things have happened this year, I might as well list them down here. They’re of course related to the work that I do.

1. I’m thankful for learning - more often than not, the hard way - of how it is to work as a real freelancer. How to deal with different clients, how to get the job done right and how to keep myself afloat during lean months.
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Tips on Making Money from Blogs Beaten to Death

It’s a sad day today in the blogging community as it mourns the passing of the Tips on Making Money from Blogs.

According to reports, the Tips suffered from heavy beating from bloggers who wanted to milk every penny out of it.
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The Barack Obama Guide to Winning a Campaign

By this time, you probably know that Barack Obama already won the US presidential election. And it wasn’t just by a small margin, but a decisive mile.

Now whether you are running a political campaign or a marketing one, there are things that you can learn from how Barack Obama’s campaign team helped him win the election. I’m listing a number of my observations here.

1. Know your audience/market and sell to them. Seth Godin is an advocate of this, that is, marketing aggressively to those people you know will buy your product. It’s actually an old marketing advice but it’s something that a lot of marketers tend to forget.

I observe this at local malls where real estate agents hand out brochures to random people, even young ones who most likely cannot afford to buy houses yet. It’s a waste of money and energy because these agents cannot be certain of the amount of response they will get.

Therefore, the key here is to know who your audience is – the people who you know will actually buy your product – and sell to them. It’s more effective in terms of costs and results.

Barack Obama knew that the majority of his audience comes from the younger crowd as well as those from ethnic minorities. So he sold himself to them and it worked.
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The Curse of the Unlucky Freelancer: How not to Find Success Working at Home

Howdy? The Halloween’s over and I hope all you guys had a great time. As for myself, I was contacted by spirits during the holiday and gave me the power to read other people’s minds. Want me to prove it? Alright, let’s get started.

I can see that you are an unlucky freelancer, looking to win some big projects and earn a lot of money. But unfortunately, you notice that some things are not working for you. You do not win the projects you bid on, your clients never call you back and you’re far from attaining your financial goals.

Let me tell you why.
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Information Overload? Compartmentalize!

When I was just starting to learn playing guitar solos, I was often stumped by the technicality of playing them and the amount of time I had to spend perfecting them.

But it was not until I came across a lesson from one of my most favorite guitarists, Paul Gilbert. He said that if you’re learning a particularly difficult musical passage, you must divide them into separate sections. It would be much easier to play the entire passage if you have perfected every section of it.

So how does writing figure into this? As a writer, it is your duty to help people understand what you’re trying to say. And by compartmentalizing your work into easily-to-digest sections, the easier it would be to achieve this.
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Working at Home and Alone

As a freelancer, you have your own reason for choosing to work at home and not in an office (well, unless it’s your own home office). Some of the most common reasons include being in control of your time, to spending more time with your family, to saving gas or money in commuting to the office.
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