What does it mean to be a freelancer, a new episode

Once upon a time, when I did not have any idea that there is a word called 'freelancer', I was day dreaming about me spending my working day at a coffee table outside while making the last touches to my articles before sending to the newspaper, without the need to spend sunny hours in a cubicle. And thereafter, to fully enjoy my time with family and friends, before getting ready for a new article.

Now, my dream is real, and I can write how many articles I want from anywhere. After, I can spend a lot of time with the family, cook dinner, read and learn a new language.

For those who are not (yet) freelancers, such a daily schedule might look as a little corner of paradise. And it can be, as long as you consider that using your freedom is the most important thing that you can live. On the other hand, if someone might have a look at my schedule for today, would not have any intention to be a freelancer any more.

Just a little impression: woke up around 7.30 for coffee and some family chat, left on my own at 8am for: writing a couple of academic posts, answer another set of questions for another academic contribution, sending some pitches and CV for 2 possible new collaborations, answering some 5+ question for a company I am doing customer service consulting, checking every hour my Twitter and Facebook feed for getting in touch with interesting people and ideas, requesting some interviews, checking the results of a 21-page test I did at the beginning of January (with good results and this is by far, the best news of the day), thinking about new writing collaborations, finishing a children book that should be included on a longer post reviewing a couple of children books read recently. For a break, I went outside to pay a visit to the local library and some basic shopping for around 45 minutes. Returning back where I am set to prepare some cookies, listen for 2 hours to some online classes and finish another 4 blog posts. 

Discipline, an important key of success

Maybe this is one of the busiest day of the week, when I do not have too many meetings on the agenda, but this is how I usually work every day as a freelancer, except the Saturdays. But at least one day the week should be full time dedicated to updating my blogs and reading plus finding out important collaborations for the next days and weeks. As I am completely on my own, I am the one who is running after opportunities and the more I work the better for our daily life and the future travel plans. 

Especially at the beginning of your freelance life, there is not easy, not easy at all and having some healthy savings can avoid many dangers. If you don't have any contacts and experience in the area you want to be a freelancer, you better wait a bit and try to think about a transition time, when you still keep some connection with your previous work while building a new network for your new professional profile. 

As you are completely on your own, discipline is essential and a smart time management dramatic. Otherwise, if you plan to sleep till late and spend hours in bed or checking the funniest cat videos on Facebook, there is no chance that you will get some important revenues out of your freelancing work. 

I am very honest and will always say that freelancing is not for everyone, but if you really feel able to cope with all the challenges, there are many rewards waiting for you at the end of the road. Sometimes, it is really important for your self-esteem but also for keeping up the good work and continuing your work! Your one and only freelance work!

Sorry, I should be ready with some cookies for my beloved ones!

The challenge of the next 365 days

Yesterday, in less than 30 minutes, I was holding in a small paper box my new business cards. For the first time after many similar small paper boxes, I knew that these business cards will not need to be changed. Because this time, there is no way back to give up my little business plans and dreams.

One year ago, after some time of reflection and almost 12 months after I decided to give up my corporate business, I knew that travel and writing are the main things that make me happy, besides learning something new every day or learning how to cook or a new foreign language. 

The decision to start working for myself was not 100% selfish. Besides the guarantee of mental sanity, I was also giving myself the chance of being able to fully share everything I always wanted to share: ideas, encouragement, my passion. 

In the last 12 months, things moved steadily, although slowly and with not a few crisis moments. I am sure there will be more to come, as there are thousands of things to be learned in the next 10 days. But I know that whatever will happen, me and my travel blog, will be always around, trying to share experiences and cultural adventures. I also know that I will never give up writing and the work to my book projects. 

Is late in the night and although I should be up very early, I am contemplating tomorrow, one of the most important days of the year, when I should start - finally - behaving as a business woman responsible of her projects that should be presented, outlined and promoted. Meticulously, I set up my agenda and my main meetings, I have more or less ideas about the opportunities and I finally have my business cards to brand my blog. It is a new level and as for now, I have not the slightest idea how things will develop and what clear opportunities will arise. Persistence always helped me and not giving up my dreams and my true vocation brought me here, to this moment today, when I am fully responsible of my revenues and partly the future of my family. 

What will happen I cannot predict right now. Whatever the outcome, I am ready to learn and make corrections. In any case, I will keep doing what I enjoy, because there is no other way back. My black-and-white elegant business cards are the constant reminder of my future. Not yours, hers or other people's future. Mine, only mine. 

The lessons learned of a failed Indiegogo campaign

Almost one year ago, as my travel blogging started to get a very clear shape and was in the stage of brain storming for new writing projects, I discovered Indiegogo. The name was familiar to me from many of my friends working in the startups and NGOs domains, but never entered into the details of the platforms. 

For those for whom the name doesn't say too much, Indiegogo is one of the biggest crowdfunding websites aimed to help individuals and organizations to raise money for different causes. The causes are extremely diverse, from book writing to humanitarian projects. The registration is relatively easy once you have an official e-mail address. Thereafter, you can set up the details of your projects, a description, a short presentation of yourself, the financial aim and the banking details - not open to the public - where the eventual donations will be collected.

Before registering, I was familiar with a couple of successful and failed projects, and courageous enough, I decided that posting my own project, I can get the necessary founding for continuing an ambitious travel projects: 100 Places to See in Germany. The requested amount was not too high, around 5,000 Euro for what I estimated as a full 3-month time of travel around Germany. The estimation counted mostly the prices of the basic train transportation and other additional costs of the research, including some foodie expenses. 

To be honest, the idea of creating a crowdfunding campaign for my travels didn't look very good to me. As the issue was already approached in many instances on blogs and social media, such requests are not welcomed. 'If you want to travel, go to work instead of begging for money' many will recommend instead, and I half agree with this concern. As for me, besides intensive working and consulting, which I am doing all the time, I wanted to keep myself busy only with my travel projects not because I am selfish, but because I want to share about travel and inspire other people to do the same. 

Clear with myself and quite ready for a new adventure, I started to organize my moves for the next 3 months. I opened a Facebook account, I intensified my efforts on Twitter, where I was posting an information about the project at least once the day. I also wrote a post on my blog and tried to share the description of the campaign on travel platforms and other groups dedicated to such adventures. 

And optimistically, I continued to keep doing it till the end of the period assigned for the crowdfunding. The result: nil! Not a single $ was collected. 

Disappointed? After the first half, I already moved forward and succeeded to get enough funds for a successful first half of the 100 Places and thus, the pressure of 'now and never' was diminished. 

I did almost everything humanly possible to share and make enough buzz about the project. What is the reason why I was so bluntly unsuccessful then? A couple of months after, following an intensive observation of the trends and main development of the social media, I realized a basic truth: I was lacking the most important ingredient for a successful approach: the support basis! I did not have not even half of the followers I do have now and I was almost unknown in the world of travel blogging. 

As for my blog, it roughly has around 10 posts, and the pace of updating was of almost twice the month. I was still looking for my voice and was trying to organize a bit my plans and the travel information, but this was not necessarily the good context for a successful crowdfunding campaign.

Now, one year after, I am munching the lessons learned while trying to move forward with my projects. Most probably, will not launch a new Indiegogo campaign any time soon, but at least I know what to do for helping others to be more successful.

Special consulting offer to improve your customer service skills

February is (finally) the first busy month of the business year. After the long winter holidays, it is time to be back in the business. Most probably, your customers are thinking the same, waiting for you not only better products, but also higher standards of customer service excellence.

The last year, following my own direct experiences with good or bad customer service and my consulting work for a couple of years in this domain, I wrote a book dedicated to help those working in this very demanding domain. 

The book is available on Kindle and offers a couple of simple and useful advices for those looking to improve the quality of their customer service, in order to get more customers and better reviews. Regardless of how cheap and good quality products you are offering, as long as you don't answer the questions of your customers, or ignore to address their specific demands, your business will suffer a serious setback. As a job seeker in this domain, if you think that working in this domain is very easy, you might need to go through this book to find some better customer service job descriptions.

My book will help you:

- to improve the quality of your customer service that will lead to more sales and business branding;

- to learn what is the best strategy answering the needs of your company;

- to identify the mistakes and get a new boost into the new business year

What you will learn:

- practical tips about how to answer e-mails requests

- best introductions and basic communication for online businesses, regardless of the domain of activity

- how to manage communication crisis 

- basic information about successfully using social media

- how to create customer friendly websites

The main target includes small and medium sized online businesses, looking to improve the quality of their customer service. It also offers useful tips to those interested to go successfully through customer service interview questions.

In the next weeks, I am offering promotional prices for one-on-one consulting via Skype for those interested to improve and launch their professional customer service departments or careers.

I am waiting for your e-mails and feedback at 

findtherightwordblog (at) gmail (dot) com

Let's keep in touch with good news!

Book review: Public Speaking for Authors, Creatives and Other Introverts, by Joanna Penn

I am not an introvert - at least in more than 95% of the cases - and from time to time, I may enjoy the idea of public speaking, but in the majority of cases, I don't like it at all. I mostly enjoy the pleasure of writing, the spontaneity of putting my words on paper or MWord, eventually editing it from time to time, but without the pressure of being good and flawless, as the video or public speaking requires.

I remember more than one academic conferences when I was not interested at all to speak and almost failed to present in a clear way all my ideas and conclusions. Obviously, I have a problem and decided long ago to solve the problem before another serious public speaking presence.

Joanna Penn's book, Public speaking for authors, creatives and other introverts arrived on my Kindle at an interesting time when I not only will be back on the track of the academic conferences but also I consider some public speaking assignments on social media and PR. 

The book is an excellent handbook covering everything one should know about public speaking. Advanced or beginner, with experience of failures or with a successful record, we all need to learn more how to find a better positioning for being successful and being requested for more assignments. At the first sight, some may dare to say that everyone can speak for hours, but try to do it yourself and you will know what does it mean to feel helpful and scared to death. By the way, speaking in public is considered the second biggest humanity fears, after death.

As a professional challenge, public speaking, as in the case of the writing jobs, needs to be focused on sending a message and have a mission. It means usually going out of the comfort zone, but a successful journey implies that one knows his/her domain and is ready to use this knowledge to help others to succeed. "You have an opportunity to change lives", is the main mission of the speaker.

The main advantage of the book is the focus on the checking list that the public speaker should have in mind: from the preparation of the speech, the soft to be used, pre-speaking rituals, the necessary information about the structure of the audience and its expectations, all the technicalities that easily can ruin hours and even months of preparation. Joanna Penn not only shares her tips and experiences, but also interviewed people knowledgeable about this complicated yet fascinating type of business. 

I completely agree with the author that: "Speaking is about leading the audience through a journey". A good presentation is outlining the experience of the speaker, while keeping authentic and being ready to answer the needs and curiosities of the audience. I often went to public speaking events spending more than one hour listening over an over again the same things that were dear to the speaker but completely indifferent to the audience. 

This book is both for beginners or advanced speakers, people looking for a change in their career and not sure how they can start. Joanna Penn will help them not only to set up a good slideshare, but also how to pitch themselves, how to negotiate a contract - "To be considered a professional speaker, you need to be making money from actually speaking, so changing a fee for services is important" - and how to further do the online branding and marketing for getting more speaking opportunities. 

A very useful handbook that helped me to clarify some of my objectives and to organize my public speaking agenda. 

What is SEPA?

Those who have a bank account in the euro-zone received probably since the last half of 2013 several announcements from their bank regarding the changes to take place from 2014, once the introduction of SEPA. 

SEPA stands for the Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA) and is aimed to offer a simplified transfer between euro accounts in the most part of the European area. It includes the 28 EU member countries, plus the 4 EFTA members - Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, as well as Monaco and San Marino. 

The process of adjustment and building of the infrastructure started in 2008. With a single bank account used for transactions all over the European space, SEPA aims to turn the payments into domestic currency exchanges, one of the most important objectives of using euro as the main and finally, unique, European currency. The immediate advantage, besides simplicity, is the possibility to reduce the overall costs of transfer that usually used to be expensive. It also encourages inter-country businesses, that used to be deterred by the high costs of transactions.

As in the case of many other big European approaches, communication is key, but some companies, especially in the Eastern part of the continent, may complain that don't have enough information about what SEPA means. But most probably till the end of the year, the majority of European businesses will be fully aware of it, by using it on a regular basis. 

Saying 'good bye' to Freelancer.com (and to other online platforms too)

It was about time and the beginning of the year is the best opportunity for taking inspired decisions. After almost two interesting years of online freelancing, I decided that my profile on Freelancer.com is no more relevant for what I am interesting to build in the next months.

Yesterday, after checking the last job offers for my skills and even made the effort to submit my interest for two of them, I decided that it is about time to finish this relationship. 

To be honest, I am grateful to Freelancer.com for a couple of good projects that helped me to improve my writing skills, and also to set up some very good partnerships, one of them continuing for two years. I had good times, when editing, translating and writing contracts kept me busy for days till late in the night. I enjoyed working on different projects, challenging myself to know more about so different topics as IT industry, fashion or cooking. I discovered the pleasure of doing academic editing, that lead me to the idea of writing a new book and who knows, launching my own business one day. I also loved to do translations for a while and I learned as well how to sell myself properly in order to convince a client that I am the best out of a group of more than 20 persons that requested to be picked up.

On the other hand, I had enough more than once of working for customers that forgot to pay or simply deleted their profile after they received the work, of characters that refused to pay the convened price or that were unable to explain in a proper and simple language what they are looking for. 

From a year to another, the network improved considerable and new features were added in order to prevent scams, but the overall level of the project was kept under the average life standards of the poor Western world. A couple of weeks ago, I discussed with a potential client about an editing work that he wanted me to do for around $15. More than 3 hours of work, correcting the language and also adding eventually references for less than the price of a cleaning work! 

My decision to request the suspension of my account - you need to request for a support ticket as they need to check if you don't have debts or pending issues with the clients - was less spontaneous that it might look at the first time. It is the result of a lot of frustration and mediocre successes that from now on, I don't want to deal with.

I don't mean that I will continue to watch the jobs on other platforms. At the beginning of my online writing adventures, I also followed other platforms and the results were equally disappointing: a scam on the then oDesk, and a lot of time wasted on Elance. Too much ado for nothing!

However, for anyone at the beginning of the online career, including for young graduates and students looking to do some small jobs for some extra money for parties, trips or books, online marketplaces are strongly recommended. But, don't expect wonders and be ready to deal at least with one scam once in a while.

I am thankful for the great moment and learned a lot from the bad ones. Time to move to a different level of my career!