It’s been a good month and as always, there were ups and down.

Triumph:

• I got  my first taste of affiliate sales this month. Felt good!
• I did website copywriting for a client who was willing to take a chance with me.

Trials:

• I’ve been so busy with work, I’ve barely had any time to study. Going to take on less work the next few weeks and concentrate on giving a couple of exams.
• An invoice of mine is stuck. I got paid half, but the rest is yet to come with a promise that it will be paid. Not quite sure what to do. Let’s see how it plays out this month.

News:

Not much news except that my 6 week trip back home got delayed. I will now be going home in late September. As fast as the time is going, I keep wishing it would go faster. 

In other news, my personal blog has reawakened with a new look and an old feel. If you’re interested in blog posts by me that all start with the word ‘I’ – head on over to Cuppa Life

P.S: Don’t kill me if you see a new look over at The Base again soon. I promise this will the absolute last for at least a year. The colors won’t change. Just the lay out.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

April has been a month of ample triumphs and trials. Without any further ado:

Triumphs

My first post for another blog “12 Places To Get Business Cards Online” got syndicated by ComputerShopper.com which receives around 200k visitors per month! Many thanks to Chris Cairns of Smart Life Blog for telling me about it.

It may be unprofessional and weird to write about, but this is my highest earning month so far. This is the first month I was able to meet my original, modest earning goals. The fact that i also took a 2 week break this month makes it incredible!

Work wise, I learned countless new things this month. I’m also gaining experience as a ghost writer. Surprising, but inevitable I suppose. So if you want blog posts, articles or e-books ghost written, you know where to find me

Trials

Work wise things are fine Alhamdolillah. The only problem I seem to have is with The Base. I’m struggling to find a balance between the kind and frequency of posts. I’ve tried scheduling posts and maintaining weekly blog columns. So far doesn’t feel right.

I’m adding another subheading to this report titled:

News

Things seem to be picking up speed in both my personal and professional life (knocks wood). 

I finally got a work table!!! It’s nothing fancy – just a flat surface. A very cool, smooth flat surface. I’m off the dining table and into my own corner which I’ve set up in my bedroom. 

I went to India for my break this month and had a blast! My husband has family there and a couple of cousins were getting married so I got to attend an Indian wedding as well. Cool huh? I was the typical tourist and took pictures of EVERYTHING. Got about 1k pictures in all. 

I’ve enrolled myself into a writing course. Since education is beyond expensive in UAE and considering the current financial climate, we decided it would be unwise to invest a substantive amount of money in my Masters. Therefore, I enrolled in a diploma course. I’m hoping this will help me in my career.

Can’t remember anything else at the moment. Until next month!

Technorati Tags: Blogging, news, Triumph & Trial Report, Writing

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

This picture was taken by me on my  first visit to Al Qasba, Sharjah last year. The fountain is just one part of an area that is described as the cultural hub of Sharjah.

There are countless resturants and cafes along with an amusement park area for kids and boat rides for anyone who’d like a trip around the canal.. Al Qasba also boasts of Sharjah’s tallest ferris wheel (which isn’t all that tall) and is called the Eye of the Emirates.

The place is lively, colorful and always bustling. It’s one of my favourite place to hang out in the evening.

Interesting trivia: Al Qasba is built around a canal.

Technorati Tags: Al Qasba, Eye of Emirates, Sharjah, UAE

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Trials:

The past two months have seen me at two ends of the spectrum. February was the driest month work wise I’ve had so far. So much so, that I was pretty down in the dumps for a while. That’s pretty much all that happened in February.

In March, the only trial I faced was a lack of a proper workspace. Sometimes, in search for perfection, I come in my own way. So for now I’m still working off my dining table till I find the perfect desk.

The toughest part however was setting up this new place and scheduling a month’s worth of posts. I’ll be leaving for India on the 8th and won’t be back for three weeks. Combine it with the regular work I was getting, along with my idiosyncrasies related to The Base’s maintenance in my absense and I was a bundle of nerves!

Triumphs:

Even though February was bad work wise, somehow I was able to keep my chin up. Yes, I count that as a triumph. In March, the freelancing gods smiled on me. I got regular work thanks to a fellow freelancer. I also got my first post published for another blog and got a bunch of work inquiries.

Even though they didn’t work out, I knew people were noticing me as a freelancer and considering me enough to contact me. That’s a triumph in my book.

It’s been uphill ever since and I couldn’t be more thankful. 

The important thing to remember is that dry spells will come again. Next time however, I’ll be prepared.

Technorati Tags: freelance business, Freelancing, Freelancing report

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Every now and then I get ideas – big, lofty, ambitious ideas. Unfortunately, my mama instilled in me an inherent (and apparently false) belief that if I put my mind to it, I can learn and do anything.

After a week of pure torture, in which I pretty much gave up on everything except twitter, I’ve come to the conclusion that I have no head for web designing. I do not have the stomach for the hair pulling frustration that comes after trying something for four hours and continuously screwing it up with no idea as to what I’m doing wrong.

I have also swallowed the bitter pill and accepted that as far as designing goes – I have no imagination. Give me words and I can spin a tale that have put my youngest sibling to sleep many a nights but hand me a designing software and I can’t even design myself a blog header.

The urge to list all the things I’ve tried to master (and failed at) over the years is strong. But there’s only so much butchering I can do of my own esteem. Hence, I’m going off to mope in a corner for a while.

Ever gone through a time when you want to learn something so much (!) yet you have no talent for it? Please tell me you have and share it with me and help make me feel a little less dumb.

Update: You didn’t think I’d give up so easily did you? A good night’s sleep restored my faith in my abilities. I may lack imagination but it’s not something that I can’t overcome. I’ll learn enough to satisfactorily design a little for my own projects. I’ve set aside 5 hours every Tuesday to work on it. It will take me time, but I will learn and make that blog header I’ve been meaning to.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Starting out, we all struggle to find work. Whether it’s giving up a job to freelance or being fresh out of college desperate for our first break – paying jobs are hard to find. Which is why the saga unfolding at the My Punch Bowl blog piqued my interest and reminded me of how it feels to be desperate for work.

Background:

My Punch Bowl posted an ad on Craigslist for a marketing intern. They received dozens of applications. Matt Douglas, founder and CEO, was going through the applications when the subject line of an application caught his attention. As he opened it, he realized that there was a typo in the in it. On principle, he could not consider the candidate but she had a great resume. On a whim decided to send the applicant an email telling her why he was rejecting her as he wanted to see what her response would be.

The Applicant’s Response

The reply he got to his email was something he probably wouldn’t even have dreamed of. The hopeful applicant sent him a scathing reply and blasted him for ruining her chances because of a typo.

Matt instead of getting up on his high horse, liked the spunk of the girl. Even though she’d been rude, disrespectful and downright unprofessional, something in her email resonated with him and he emailed back inviting her for an interview.

The Interview

The interview went well but she had to do a 24-hour test and send in a blog post response explaining her side of the story and respond to the numerous comments that had come in when Matt posted about the incident.

The Decision

The jury is still out on the decision but Matt posted the applicant’s response.

Regardless of how this story ends, as struggling freelancers, this incident has brought home a few things.

What are your view on this? What lessons have you derived from the incident?

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Now that January is over, I can safely say that this month has been great! Of course, this was also the month I was ready to pull my hair out and bang my head against the wall – neither of which I did by the way.

Trials:

I’ll begin with the trials. It was a strange month to say the least.

Blogging everyday: Yes, it’s a trial. I attempted NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) back in November. The idea was to post every single day. I attempted it along with Sal, and managed to do great. Then for some god forsaken reason, I wondered out loud about attempting it again in January on my personal blog and before I knew it I was posting everyday along with a friend. I had no inspiration and absolutely no wish to blog everyday after the first week. I had too much work and what used to be an outlet became a frustration.

Sal warned me against it but I’d already given my word. I stopped after day 28th. Completely. I know it was just three days short but I couldn’t bring myself to spew dribble on a blog that used to be my haven.

Deadlines: I had trouble meeting deadlines this month. Not that I was late. But meeting a deadlines was a trial. I had to push myself really hard to complete the work on time. Has it ever happened to you guys?

Working on side projects: Because my work wasn’t on schedule, I felt guilty even thinking about my personal side projects. Yet they seemed so much more interesting! They still do! I can’t wait take them live!

Triumphs:

Payday: In my short freelancing careers, this month has been the biggest earner. And no I’m not earning anything substantial but its still more than I’ve earned in the past months so I’m feeling very proud!

CSS: I couldn’t make head or tails of it. Then I decided to just do it. I bought a domain, hosted the blog with the guidance of a friend and uploaded a theme. Another friend made me a header which made it look uber cool and suddenly everything just had to be perfect even if it meant I had to learn it from scratch. I read countless tutorials. Bugged designer or CSS savvy friends till I learned enough to tweak/customize a template on my own.

Learning SEO: January has been a month of learning and pushing myself. I took a risk and bought Remarkablogger’s WordPress SEO Secrets. And have to say – so far I haven’t been disappointed. It’s money well invested.

Got rejected: I applied for a gig for an e-learning blog. Since it’s something I’m interested in and felt I was qualified for. Outside of school and college, my learning has all been online and I’ll also be taking a few courses online, so I knew I could do a good job of it. I sent them an email pitch and haven’t heard back. But thanks to Google Analytics I know they checked me out. That  feels like a triumph. It tells me I made it past the initial stage. They decided to check me out. The fact that I didn’t get chosen is of no consequence. There is a huge chance of someone applying who had a lot more experienced than me.

But they checked me out! Why am I taking it as a triumph? Something in my pitch must have been interesting to them for them to not just delete it. I now have some idea of how to write an email application that would attract potential clients.

That’s the summary of my month. How’s yours been?

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Since SLOD was off celebrating the holidays last Sunday, there’ll be double the links there would have been today. And it’s a good thing too! I found quite a few gems in all the yearly round ups everyone was doing! Not to mention the few I discovered through my own lazy browsing.

Write Better Content

• First up is Chris Brogan’s ‘100 Blog Topics I Hope You Write’. Face book was at number 1. Going with the current craze though, I’d think it should be replaced with twitter.

• These past few weeks I’ve gone crazy looking into ways to improve my blog writing. I’m a good writer, that I know. But am I a good blogger? Problogger’s ‘7 types of Blog Posts Which Always Seem to Get Links and Traffic’ was definitely helpful in getting me thinking.

• Dumb Little Man has ‘21 Must Read Tips to Write Better Web Content’. Its a collection of posts by other blogs. Excellent compilation.

Improve Your Blog

• Quick Sprout listed ‘5 Ways You Can Improve Your Blog’. They’re simple and easy to implement.

• Grokdotcom has ‘33 Free Tools to Make Your Website Better’. This list of tools is for the web savvy ones.

• Problogger talks about reviewing your blog before making any changes. Check out the ‘69 Questions to Ask to Review Your Blog’.

• Quick Online Tips mentioned ‘7 Ways of Making a Blog Look Professional’. While I may not understand the technical aspects of it. There are 3 points worth looking into.

• Freelance Folder had a great article about ‘15 Key Elements All Top Websites Should Have’. If you’re starting a website, this is a must read to help give your site that added boost.

For the Fun of Reading

• I discovered this through B J Keltz blog. But ‘My Kingdom for a Toothbrush’ is hilarious! Having read enough historicals during my school and college days, I fully appreciated the questions raised by Angela. Heck, I don’t even speak in the morning before brushing my teeth!

• Tazeen from A Reluctant Mind has sketched a horrifyingly accurate (not to mention funny!) picture in ‘Updating Your Life – Online’ about status updates on social networking sites like Facebook. Some of it might not make much sense due to cultural and political references but most of it is bound to hit its mark.

That’s my link line up for the two weeks. I went through dozens more. But these were the ones that I though you guys would like most.

I’d love to know what you read. Found a post or a picture you laughed out loud at? Or felt passionate about?

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.