Archive for February 2011

Five conference coverage tips for freelancers

February 28, 2011 Working 2 comments
toolbox

Covering a conference or trade show can be a daunting task for freelancers. Here are five tips for getting the most value when covering events.

1. Preparation

Make sure you prepare before the event and plan what you’re going to do. Sure, the plan might change as circumstances dictate but having a plan means that you won’t be left doing nothing productive. Schedule your time, read conference material and talk to others that have been to similar events to make sure you’re ready for as many different scenarios as possible.

2. Power

If you’re taking a laptop, make sure it’s fully charged. If you can, have a spare battery as access to power outlets can be tricky at some events. For voice recorders, cameras and similar gadgets, try to buy gear that can either use standard AA or AAA batteries or can be charged over USB. This will reduce the number of chargers you need to carry.

3. Bags

We often buy bags based on their aesthetic value but that’s not a great criteria. Aside from comfort, bring a bag that is generously sized so you can easily carry the stacks of papers you’ll inevitably accumulate. Backpacks a re particularly

good as they won’t hurt your back as much as a shoulder satchel. However, they’re less convenient.

4. Business cards

It might sound silly but make sure you have a stock of business cards and make sure you give them out. We’ll talk about designing a great card in a future post but make sure your cards are current with a phone number, email address, your company name, website and a brief statement that describes you (what’s commonly called an “elevator pitch”). Lots of people hand out business cards so make your memorable. Given that cards can be purchased very cheaply it might even be worth producing event—specific cards.

5. Note-taking

My favourite note-taking application is Evernote. The beauty is that I can take notes on my laptop, iPad or phone and all the devices sync over the cloud. It’s easy and free. I know that I can use a paper and pen (I keep those

in my bag just in case of emergency) but as I need to convert my notes into stories, having them online makes that easy. It also means that my notes can be searched.

Also, with Twitter so common, most conferences have a hashtag – a code that starts with a “#” that can be used to identify tweets that relate to a common topic. Find out the hashtag for the event and then collate all of the related tweets. That will give you a stream of conference notes from lots of people and not just your own point of view.

Also, with Twitter so common, most conferences have a hashtag – a code that starts with a “#” that can be used to identify tweets that relate to a common topic. Find out the hashtag for the event and then collate all of the related tweets. That will give you a stream of conference notes from lots of people and not just your own point of view.

So, what are your tips?

To be considered a professional – act like one

February 21, 2011 Business Tips, Working No comments
freelance-folder-logo

Have you ever been referred to someone that does a great job but when you first contact them you’re left feeling that they’ve been oversold? It’s happened to me. First impressions do matter and the team at Freelance Folder have come up with a great list of 15 things you can do to be taken seriously.

You can read the full list here. My favourite item in the list is

Detail # 6. Have a Promotional Kit Prepared
When potential clients contact you requesting information about what you do, do you have anything professional you can send them? Or do you just type up a short, plain text e-mail with a couple links?

How do you stack up against the list? What about me? My business site is at Gestalt Communications. Am I walking the talk?

Let me know in the comments.

Bookstore closures to impact freelancers

February 19, 2011 Working One comment
bankrupt

Major bookstores Angus and Robertson and Borders, owned by REDgroup, are heading into receivership. There is significant impact not just to customers but the many freelance operators who write books and shoot images that are sold through these outlets. Although this offers challenges, there are great opportunities for freelancers as well.

While REDgroup accounted for about 20% of the Australian book market, as they added new stores, the independent bookstore business suffered. About 20% of this market closed as well, So, over a short time, the number of bookstores in Australia has collapsed by close to 40%.

An article by Richard Flanagan for the Fairfax papers summarises so of the problem:

In Australia, where 20,000 sales is a bestseller, the maths on 4 per cent [royalty] of an average UK-US price of $14 is sobering – $11,200 for two or three years’ work. That is, if you get published.

So, the economics of writing an publishing a book in Australia has always difficult. No one I know has managed to get rich writing and publishing books in Australia. But the collapse of REDgroup and the closure of so many independent stores has reduced the number of outlets for selling those books.

Freelancers need to review their business model. If you’re writing a book with the expectation of making real money then you need either re-evaluate your goal or re-evaluate your business model.

In case you’d missed it – the Interent is here to stay and there’s a huge opportunity. Self-publishing is now easier than ever and good operators that have learned about marketing and search engine optimisation have been able to publish their own books through Amazon, Apple and even the humble PDF.

There’s little doubt that the fall of REDgroup and independent booksellers will cause significant pain. However, this also represents an opportunity for enterprising freelancers.

What will you do about it?

How can freelancers survive?

February 17, 2011 Business Tips, Working One comment
survival

There’s an old Chinese curse the says “may you live in interesting times”. If you’re a self-employed writer, photographer or creative professional then your professional world has become a lot more interesting over the last few years. The proliferation of digital publishing tools, low cost digital cameras and simplification of graphic and video editing software has created a new generation of creators who are able to create and publish content more cheaply than ever before with an instant global distribution channel.

An interesting post at Flying Solo discusses the devaluation of some industries as a result of the digital revolution. It’s not dissimilar to the way the value of people changed during the Industrial Revolution. Or, as the post author Peter Crocker puts it

Location, money, education and experience no longer command the fat premium they once did.

If you’re a freelancer it’s easy to feel like your trade has become so democratised as to be worth almost nothing. Certainly, a look at the job boards at places like ProBlogger, eLance and Freelancer.com would make you feel that way. Many of the jobs that are advertised offer low rates. To get some idea of how low the offers are lets look at a couple of facts.

The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance – the union that represents journalists in Australia – suggests the following pay-rates.

$878.00 per day or  $585.00 per half day
$219.00 per hour
1000 words or less    $892.00 and then 89c per word

In comparison, where those sites list a pay-rate (something that is often skirted around), most offer around $20-$40 for between 500-600 words.  Most of the freelancers I talk to are appalled at this but seem, in many cases, unable to come up with ways to work in this changing economy. At the moment, the main way to maintain relatively high pay-rates is to work for established mastheads that haven’t cut back too much. Typically, this means working in the mainstream media rather than in the online economy.

So, what can be done

One of my favourite business quotes come from Henry Ford. He once said that he didn’t listen to his customers. If he did, all they’d want was faster horses. He saw a way to leapfrog the horse and cart through the mass production of cars. Similarly, while there are lots of changes afoot for creative professionals, there are also myriad opportunities.

The ability to self-publish gives creatives a chance to control the dissemination of their work and get it to a new, larger market. That means blogs and books are a new opportunity. If that seems like too big an undertaking, find a friend or two to make it work. A great example of how that can work is Hydrapinion. That blog has five contributors, each writing one post a week. Since its start, the lineup has changed a few times but its a way for a blog to run without it being dependent on one person.

If you prefer to create your own blog, then I’d encourage you to read ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income. It’s a great reference for those either starting a new blog or trying to get more from their existing blog.

Another option for the modern freelancer is to learn new skills. If you’re a photographer, then look to adding video shooting and editing skills. If you write, work on your photography. In an early Journo Advice post I said that the freelancers’s main job was to solve the client’s problems. If you can provide multiple services, then you’re making your client’s life easier.

Finally – there’s no point complaining about low rates, competition from amateurs and how the Internet is pulling standards down. Mass production resulted in a different type of craftsmanship. While lots of traditional industries either changed or disappeared, new opportunities appeared.

The trick is finding a way to adapt to the changes.

How a career started

February 16, 2011 Starting out One comment
How did you get started as a freelancer?
This is a guest post by David Hague, editor of AusCam Online. If you want your clients to remember you, this story will tell you what you need to do. You can follow David on Twitter  - he’s @vbthedog

How did you get started as a freelancer?

Like so many, my life as a journo initially started by accident. With a father and elder brother being pro photographers, it was inevitable I would follow this hobby, and allied with my passion for all things motor sport, this was a perfect pairing.

One weekend in the mid-70s, a mutual friend of my brother and I who happened to work at Agfa managed to get his hands on some early release and therefore very rare 1000 ASA black and white film. Perfect for low light, this coincided with the weekend of the Australian Rally Championships so we loaded up the trusty Torana hatchback and proceeded to bash through the scrub south west of Perth from checkpoint to checkpoint following the likes of Colin Bond, Ross Dunkerton and Greg Carr, rattling off as many shots as we could. Cameras used were a Leica M2, Pentax KX and a Minolta SRT 101! The flashes were Metz wet cell battery packs.

After we had run out of film, our mate, who had contacts in The West Australian newspaper, suggested we go back there and get the shots processed. It was about 2am. Back in Perth, the sports editor saw the photos, offered to buy them on the spot as his staff journo hadn’t been able to make it. We had the results of the rally in so there was now a story for the morning edition – except there were no words.

It was one of the moments like you see in the movies where I swear everyone was looking at me! One hundred people or more it seemed. So I picked up a small portable typewriter and bashed out 500 words or so, picked up $100 for my trouble (we already had $100 for the photos) and suddenly my name was in print.

Thinking this was a good lurk, I rewrote the story about five times and sold it to various motor sport magazines around the country and this ended up in me being the WA correspondent on motor sport for most of the major magazines for quite a few years.

Deciding some formal training might be apt, I applied for – and was accepted – as a trainee under Howard Sattler who at the time was the editor of a relatively short lived Saturday newspaper owned by Robert Holmes a Court.

My jump from motor sport to consumer IT based journalism (I still do motor sport as a hobby) is a little less convoluted, with my interest piqued when as a Tandy Computer Centre manager in the late 70s. The Sunday Independent newspaper was getting no coverage of the just starting home computer boom, and the Sunday Times had a full time person, so I volunteered as a freelancer.

The rest is history!

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