Welcome to The Base! We finally have our own place!

Before we get to the important stuff, I’ll bore you with a few basics. I’m a freelance writer/blogger and have been writing since I was an anguished teenager pouring my misery in a diary.

But we’ll save the rest of my life story for later. Till then, enjoy the other, hopefully useful content and stay tuned!

Of course this place is nowhere near complete. The header and footer are dismal, I probably made a mistake in uploading the favicon (if you’re seeing a {p}, that’s not my favicon, it came with the theme) and I need to clean up the copy of the blog too. All this will take time and I was too eager to get this place live.

Feel free to leave encouraging comments!

Without further ado, here’s a round up for new and up coming changes.

Weekly Features:

Photo Friday:

In addition to Sunday Link Overdose, I’ll be introducing Photo Friday. You’ll find out what it is on 3rd April ‘09 when the first one will go live. I hope you like it! Feedback will be extremely appreciated.

Pages:

The other change is that of additional pages. You see the 125×125 banners on the right? Those are products and services I endorse because of my experience with them. The added benefit of being an endorsement is that they get a page all to themselves. My Endorsements will be like a sales page – only with a user’s view.

Then there’s the FAQs page. I read this awesome post on Freelance Switch about the benefits of having an FAQs page on your website. It’s one of those insanely useful things to have on your website that just offer a ton of information to anyone looking for it – particularly people who may hire you.

Changes in the works:

Here are a few things that will be introduced in the following months:

Website Reviews – Probably once a month. There are no bounds to the kind of websites I’ll review. If it’s interesting and useful, I’ll review it. I will be concentrating on blogs and websites that are new and have a relatively small readership. As or if the request for reviews grow, I may be doing them more frequently.

Freelancer Gold – Possibly a once a month feature, highlighting freelancer(s) who go out of their way to help other freelancers. They won’t always be mad successful or famous. The only criteria to be featured in is that they help. 

What you can do:

Here’s the ‘call to action’ that all successful bloggers keep saying must be in a blog post to make it work.

1. Submit your websites for review

It can be a personal blog or professional blog. If you want to improve or want to know how your visitors see and perceive your virtual real estate, send it in for a review! I will be preferring lesser known blogs that really need the review for technical and promotional purposes.

I will be pointing out areas they can improve in (design and content both) and suggest places they can learn how to fix them. If it’s out of my league, I’ll be recommending someone who could help them.

2. Nominate people for freelancer gold

Unfortunately, you can’t nominate yourself. Spread some freelancer goodwill and nominate others. Those who send in a nomination will get a mention and a link to their website when their nominated freelancer is featured at The Base.

Tell us why you think your nomination should be featured. How do they help individuals? State an example of them going out of their way to help. Anything that sets them apart.

Just dropping in for a quick hello. Well actually, I just wanted to toot my horn. My first post (ever!) for another blog got published a few days ago.

Major cool moment I tell you!

Check out ‘12 Places to Get Business Cards Online’ over at SmartLifeBlog. I even got my own bio! Cool huh?

In related news, Chris Cairns is great to work with!

Out of curiosity, how many of you budding freelancers have business cards? And where’d you get them designed from?

Technorati Tags: Business cards, Freelancing, Social Networking

I should have done it before. At the very least, I should have mentioned it. Unfortunately, housekeeping is not my strongest point.

I’m moving the base to it’s own .com. I had hoped to do the transition without stopping writing here but it seems I don’t have enough super powers to do both things together.

I’m also in the process of sorting out my 2 week trip to India next month. Aside from the fact that it takes me four tries and one week to pack everything, I want to move to the new .com before I leave, set up a blog-content calender for the entire month, then write that content, put a call out for guests posts on both my blogs (I haven’t told you about my other blog have I? I will soon, I promise.) and figure out work details.

Now the kicker is that getting a visa to India is difficult considering which country I’m from and since the political relations are tense between the two countries (to put it mildly), there’s going to be a lot of wheedling, talking to the right people and general waiting around to be done. Sometimes I wonder if anything in South Asia gets done without “talking to the right people”. It also means that there’s a chance I may not be going at all if I don’t get the visa.

This will be my first trip to India so I’m super excited and can’t wait to get there! Of course the drawback is that I won’t have an Internet connection. At least not a reliable one through which I could reply to comments and emails. I was looking into buying a local cell phone connection there to check email through GPRS. For two weeks only though, it doesn’t seem feasible especially since I probably won’t be going back for a number of years. I’ll also be busy attending two weddings, taking care of the long ‘from India’ wish list my sisters have emailed me – not to mention my own(!) and sight seeing, so I doubt if I’ll want to. Plus, I’m not taking my laptop with me.

A two week cut off from the internet and work- eek! But oh-my-god, India!
(You see my dilemma?)

I’ll be back on April 1st with the happy news that the new place is set up. Till then, I really really hope you’ll stick around.

I will of course be keeping an eye here, so don’t hesitate to contact me or leave a comment!

Photo Credit: Image Source

Every freelance is the new fish in the pond at some point. We all go through the first few rocky months and confusions of setting our rates, how to deal with clients, and the worst – getting paid.

This week I’m posting a few excellent resources for the two. In the coming weeks I’ll be doing a post on freelancers who are pure gold in terms of helping other freelancers out.

Freelance Switch has done an overview of How To Set Your Freelance Rates.

My favourite trio who fell in love with a girl and broke their pact to each other, posted The Last Ditch Letter That Might Help You Get Paid. The men have used it twice themselves and according to them, they got paid both times!

They also discuss The Big Secret No One Talks About. Yeah, you guessed it. Freelancer rates.

Chris Bibey of Freelance Writing talks about  Managing Invoices and Payments as a Freelance Writer.

Before you accept a Freelance Writing Job, its important to do these four things to save you future problems.

Got any posts you came across related to setting your rates and getting paid? Do share!

Technorati Tags: Freelancing, freelancing rates, link love

Freelancing is a lonely business. You work alone, probably eat alone, and on a typical day, you clear your throat before answering your phone. If you’ve just started out, it’s possible that you’re working in your kitchen perched on stool or chair. No matter where you work, in your home office, in your bed or your kitchen, we all get accustomed and dependant to a few factors that make up our work environment.

Sounds – or Lack Thereof

There are those of us who enjoy working in silence, then there are those who can’t work without some music playing. A lot of web worker play music while working. It’s our companion of choice and head phones are as important to us as our printer. For the silent workers – the headphones are for VOIP.

Background Noises

Background noise doesn’t register until it goes missing. The chirping of the birds nesting in the tree outside your window. A fan whirring. The radio playing on low volume. Your neighbour’s lawn being mowed at 10 am. All these sounds are registered but not recognized. Until the birds fly away or you close the window and can’t figure out why it doesn’t sound right anymore or the lawn mower is turned off abruptly

Visuals

When you’re starting your work day, you only have eyes for your work space. There are all kinds of freelancers. The neat freaks, the unorganised and those who call their mess organized chaos. Whichever category you fall into, things around the place you work have to be the way you’re used to before you can focus on your work.

If you’re a neat freak, cluttered stationary would distract you. Messy? The table which you, in a moment of madness cleared out, would irritate you. Believer of organized chaos? God help you if you actually put something in its rightful place!

Space

We boast of having the ability to work from anywhere as long as we have a laptop and Internet. The truth however is that we’re happier working in our own space and place. One that we call our own even if it’s just our bed, sofa or kitchen table. It is ‘ours’. We know ever nook and cranny of it. We’re comfortable in it. We can conquer the world from it.

So I’m curious. What is your workplace like and how would describe them in terms of sounds, background noises, visuals and space?

Me? I don’t have a formal workplace. It’s coming in next week – I finally placed an order today [pumps fist up in the air].

Photo Credit: ishane

Technorati Tags: Freelance work, Freelancing, Work environment