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Advice on Setting Freelance Rates

Strong Advice on Setting Your Freelance Rates

Not sure what to charge for services like freelance writing, photography or web design? Have you been told that your rates are too low or too high? Are you considering branching out into other freelance areas, but have no idea what to charge for your services? Today, we want to share some resources to help you decide what to charge as a freelancer.

Examples of Freelance Writing Rates:

How Much Should I Charge?

Professional Copywriter Rates

Web Content Writing Rates

How to Earn $250 Per Hour as a Freelance Writer

How Much Are Freelancers Being Paid By Magazines and Other Publications?

Journalism and Photography Rates

Who Pays Writers?

Examples of Web Design Rates:

How Much Does a Website Cost in 2015?

How Much Does a Small Business Website Cost in 2014?

How Much Does a Website Cost?

Examples of Social Media Rates (Consultants, Strategists and Service Providers):

Online Marketing and PR

How Much Does Social Media Cost Companies in 2012? (A little dated, but good info)

So How Much Will a Social Media Strategy Cost? (A little dated, but good info)

What to Charge for Social Media

Share Your Advice

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received on setting freelance rates? Do you charge per project, per hour or per word? How much thought do you give to setting your freelance rates and what helps you arrive at a final decision? Your wisdom, advice and questions are welcome below.

(Photo Credit: Flickr, Oliver Hartmann)

Tune In to Podcasts While Working From Home

Do you use podcasts to learn about new ideas while working from home? If not, you’re missing out on a wealth of information being shared by some of the foremost leaders in the business world. From interviews with experts to hard and fast tips designed to help your business run at optimal levels, there are a ton of free podcasts available on-demand, which can help you be a better more productive work at home mom.

Where to Listen to Free Podcasts

Podcasts are available for just about every device imaginable…except, of course, television and radio. Made for new media distribution, you can find informative talk shows and entertainment on various apps made for your smartphone or tablet, as well as your personal computer. I even listen to podcasts on my Roku streaming device. Simply head to your favorite app store and select the podcast player that’s right for you. I actually have a few that I’m pretty fond of, such as:

Stitcher
TuneIn
Soundcloud

Really, Stitcher has just about everything I need, with the exception of one or two entertainment podcasts not yet available for that app. Also, there’s no Stitcher app for Roku, so I use TuneIn as a backup for times when I want to listen on my television, instead. There’s not too much that Stitcher doesn’t have in the way of business podcasts, though, so I highly recommend it for people listening outside of iTunes (sorry, I’m not an Apple user, so I can’t really speak to what’s on iTunes or not, but users tell me that all of the same programs are there, too).

Suggested Podcasts

I subscribe to a number of different podcasts, which I’ll list below. Some are just a few minutes in length while others run close to an hour or more. Needless to say, you probably won’t have time to keep up with them all on a regular basis, but they’re nice to have for those times when you need a little inspiration or even just “shop talk”. Working from home, especially online, can get a little lonely when few people in your personal circles really understand what it is that you do and how you keep it all together, which is why listening to conversations from people in the know can be a real boost when you need it.

So, without further delay, here’s a snapshot of the business podcasts on my station playlists:

  1. The Smart Passive Income Podcast
  2. AskPat
  3. Jay Today TV
  4. Biz Women Rock!
  5. Social Media Marketing
  6. The Social Media Examiner Show
  7. B2B Content Marketing Leaders
  8. The Self Publishing Podcast
  9. Tropical MBA
  10. SEO 101
  11. The Tim Ferriss Show
  12. Social Pros Podcast
  13. Rainmaker.FM
  14. 1 Day Business Breakthrough
  15. Maximize Your Social
  16. The Lede from Copyblogger
  17. Screw the Nine to Five Podcast
  18. Marketing Over Coffee
  19. Simply Measured
  20. Social Media Happy Hour
  21. The BeanCast Marketing Podcast
  22. Eventual Millionaire
  23. Marketing Access Pass
  24. Inside PR
  25. For Immediate Release Podcast
  26. Chris Ducker Startup & Small ‘New Business’ Strategies for Entrepreneurs
  27. The Podcast Answer Man
  28. The Audacity to Podcast
  29. The Podcasters’ Studio
  30. The Art of Podcasting
  31. Amy Porterfield
  32. The Digital Marketing Podcast
  33. Six Pixels of Separation
  34. Social Media Marketing Happy Hour
  35. Entrepreneur On Fire
  36. HBR IdeaCast
  37. The Growth Show
  38. The Marketing Champion
  39. The Content Champion
  40. The Chalene Show
  41. Build Your Tribe
  42. PNR: This Old Marketing
  43. One Minute Tip
  44. Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

Whew! Didn’t realize I had such a long list. And that’s just business podcasts! There are so many more for entertainment, news, parenting…you name it and there’s a podcast for it. And if you don’t find one you’re interested in, by all means start your own!

Other Podcasts for Work at Home Moms and Entrepreneurs

What are some of your favorites? Do you have a podcast that you’d like to recommend to our readers? The Work at Home Mom Center is all about sharing, so please leave your podcast suggestions in the comments section below.

Ever Considered Sponsored Blog Posts?

Sponsor is looking for work at home bloggers to publish posts for cash. By sharing personal experience stories, opinions and advice about home security, and including a link to the sponsor's site and products, bloggers can earn money online. Freelance writing and blogging are excellent work at home careers and crafting sponsored blog posts can lead to very good income streams.

Read more

Announcing Our Directory of Work at Home Jobs For Moms

We’re in the process of building a directory of companies, leads and websites offering work at home jobs for moms. Please visit the directory here and feel free to contact us if you know of other places where telecommuting jobs are offered. Our work at home jobs for moms directory is a work in progress, so remember to bookmark and check it frequently.

So far, we’re offering places to find call center and customer service jobs from home. As well, we offer leads on where you can make a few dollars as an online juror and find other assorted work at home jobs for moms. Moving forward, we hope to also share where you can find work at home attorney jobs, at home pharmacy jobs and more. Telecommuting jobs are gaining in popularity and, as we learn of new opportunities, we have every intention of sharing them with you.

If you’re new to the site or if you’re looking for specific information on work at home jobs for moms, be sure to visit our article archives for a vast selection of topics covering the world of telecommuting. We know that it’s easy to get discouraged when looking for work from home opportunities, but we want to encourage you that real work at home jobs for moms do exist and we’re here to help you find the one that’s perfect for you. If you ever have questions or comments, please contact us on our contact form.

So, what are you waiting for? There are legitimate work at home jobs for moms out there and the perfect position is waiting for you. Take a deep breath, focus and visit our growing list of possible work at home employers, now!

Work at Home Mom Time Management Skills During the Holidays ~ Guest Post by Maria Rainier

Time Management Skills During the Holidays

If you work from home, you know how challenging it can be to manage your time effectively. With so many work deliverables looming over your head, as well as the distractions of running a household, getting it all done can seem overwhelming. And now with the holidays quickly approaching, it probably seems more challenging than ever before. Fortunately, by putting tried and true time management skills to work, you can get it all done and still have time for that much needed glass of egg nog at the end of the night.

Designate office hours. The best way to make sure you stay focused on your work is to determine set hours for getting everything done. Therefore, if you plan to work from 9:00 to 5:00 make sure you have no other distractions during that time. This will give you a clear distinction between work and home life – and keep you focused and productive.

Tackle your biggest tasks in the morning. If you have a project that will require lots of research and focus, make sure you schedule it first thing in the morning when your mind is fresher. It will give you satisfaction to cross it off your list – and will leave the less brain-taxing tasks for that low-blood sugar time in the afternoon.

Give yourself a break. Whether you like to take an hour for lunch or prefer a late afternoon break, make sure you give yourself time to relax and recharge. Maybe it’s time to eat a sandwich and catch up with friends online, or a chance to fit in your workouts, stepping away from the office is essential too.

Set aside time for household chores. One good way to get things done around the house is to designate a few minutes to throw a load of laundry in or take out the trash. These may be good ways to catch a short break and can help you stay productive around the house too. Be warned that these should not cut into your work time so anything more than 5-10 minutes should be saved for the evening or weekends.

Schedule your holiday shopping. If you’re a working mom, you know it’s vital to get your holiday purchases made while the kids are at school. Therefore, plan to go out once or twice a week during your lunch hour to get your shopping done. If you put it on your calendar for the weeks leading up to the holidays, you won’t feel burdened and will be able to power shop when you know your time is limited.

Plan ahead. Whether you prefer to use a daily planner or you like to keep everything in your Smart Phone, the best way to make sure tasks get accomplished is by scheduling your priorities. At the end of each week, take some time to prepare your “to-dos” for the week ahead. That way when you sit down on Monday morning, you’ll have a plan in place for the entire week.

By creating a clear distinction between your work and home responsibilities, you’ll be better able to concentrate on the job at hand – which will free up time to get ready for the holiday festivities ahead!

Maria Rainier is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education, where recently she’s been researching kinesiology degrees and programs and blogging about student life. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

The 411 on the InfoBarrel Income Opportunity ~ A Guest Post by Chris Hinton

The Problem

Over the decade I’ve worked with dozens of friends and family in an attempt to help them build a passive income stream using the Internet.  Throughout these attempts I’ve noticed two common problems.

Problem #1

People are very optimistic with the idea of making money online, however when they don’t see instant gratification and coupled with the monetary and time investments required in maintaining and promoting a web site, most people tend to quit before they ever start seeing any income.

Problem #2

Because it is human nature to get instant gratification, people tend to spend less time on the things they don’t know much about and wind up producing something that provides no end value to their users.  The web site winds up being covered in ads essentially dragging down the overall quality of the Internet instead of making it better.

By not creating value for end users, regardless of how much time you spend marketing, it will be nearly impossible to create return visitors and even harder to get people talking about your web site or business.

The Solution

Create a space where users would not have to be burdened with the financial costs of owning, maintaining and marketing a website and could simply focus on producing quality content to share with the world while still earning a substantial passive income.  By removing these problems we hope to increase the quality of content found on the internet and making it once again a safe place to find information.

In July 2008, with these ideals in mind InfoBarrel was born.

How it Works

InfoBarrel is a shared revenue crowd sourced community.  Essentially what that means, is the content of the site is entirely created by the users who frequent the site.  To compensate writers, we provide them with a minimum of 75% of the advertising impressions from Google Adsense, Chitika and Amazon.  We also have an escalating revenue share percentage that allows writers to earn up to 90% revenue share if they hit certain criteria.

There is no cost to the writer, and the site has had extensive marketing time invested into it resulting in great organic search engine results.  To date we have many writers making over $100 a month and a few making over $1000.  InfoBarrel has become one of the top destinations to earn money writing on the Internet.  Because of our passionate users and extensive marketing plan InfoBarrel has grown from a small site consisting of a few users to a thriving community with 31,000+ members that is growing on a daily basis.  We are also very dedicated to supporting our writer community by allowing them to personally email us with any issues that they may have encountered while at the site.  With one of our goals being to improve the quality of material found on the internet InfoBarrel also manually approves all new article submissions checking them for article quality and duplicate content among many other factors. The site been touted as the next best revenue sharing site by popular web entrepreneur Pat Flynn.

Why it’s Great for Work at Home Moms

Because of the opportunity to generate money while working from home, we have had an enormous surge of WAHMs publishing on InfoBarrel.  Since InfoBarrel requires much less of a commitment than running your own website, mothers are able to sit down and write an article when they have a free moment before returning to their busy lives.  We have a number of successful WAHMs most notably MommyMommyMommy.

Community

One of the things that I am most proud of in terms on InfoBarrel is how supportive our community has become.  The InfoBarrel Writers’ Community is one of the most tight knit, friendly groups of people online.  If you need advice on how to do something, even extremely simple, the community is there to help and there is never a stupid question.

Success Stories

InfoBarrel has been around for just over two years now and has already garnered several success stories, with at least two members making over $1000 a month, and a number of users making over $100.

The following are  just a few success stories of members:

JCMayer ($1000+ /moth now)

Travis_Aitch ($1000+ /month now)

ChezFat ($500+ /month now)

A forum post talking about earnings

Assembly and Seamstress Gigs Are NOT Legitimate Work at Home Jobs!

If you’re looking for legitimate work at home jobs, please bypass assembly and seamstress jobs. They are among the oldest work from home opportunities advertised, but you can do a lot better. And, while each and every one of them may not be a scam, most of them are.

For decades, I’ve heard of people losing time and money with these types of gigs. Pretty much, people work for hours on end assembling products or sewing different pieces only to be told that their work is sub-par and that they won’t be paid for their efforts. Trust me, you’re better than this.

Instead, take the time to assess your skills and find work that’s more suitable for you, personally. This quiz on working from home may help. Legitimate work at home jobs abound and we list plenty of them for you here. There’s really no need for you to fall for one of the oldest work at home scams in the book!

If you’ve been suckered by one of these, or similar, scams in the past, don’t beat yourself up too badly about it. Instead, learn from your mistake and join the crusade to warn others about the dangers of working from home. Continue your search for legitimate work at home jobs and continue to believe that you can find one. We’re here to help you as much as we can, so we hope you’ll listen to our advice and visit often.

In case you’re wondering what kinds of legitimate work at home jobs are available, take a look at a couple of our posts on the subject:

Work From Home Opportunities and Ideas

Legitimate Work From Home Jobs DO Exist

Finding a Work at Home Job

And don’t forget to check out our latest job leads!

Can You Become a Virtual PBX Receptionist?

A virtual PBX receptionist is one who works remotely receiving incoming calls and routes them elsewhere. And, yes, these positions are available as work at home jobs for moms! Such are frequently advertised as call center positions or as virtual receptionist jobs. From time to time, you’ll find them in our job leads section, as well as advertised elsewhere on the web.

Virtual PBX Companies Are Changing the Game

Gone are the days of old-fashioned, costly call centers. Of course, some of these dinosaurs are still in operation, but the industry is definitely changing. Using special software, virtual PBX centers can now be established almost anywhere in the world. While traditionally the hardware used in PBX systems required workers to all be stationed in one location, virtual PBX software has now created more options for business owners who can save money and broaden their virtual PBX recruitment efforts by allowing receptionists to work virtually from home!

Things You Should Know About Virtual PBX Jobs

Be aware that many virtual PBX jobs hire virtual receptionists as independent contractors instead of as employees. As such, a virtual receptionist is expected to have her own equipment, such as a compatible computer system and a special quality headset. There are also no benefits offered if hired as an independent contractor.

Also, it should be noted that some virtual PBX companies and call centers even require workers to pay for their own training. We’ve shared our thoughts about this practice in a previous post, so we won’t repeat ourselves here, but it’s up to you whether or not you choose to go this route. One agency in particular, Arise, requires workers to pay for training. The request to pay for training or training materials is usually a red flag when searching for work at home jobs for moms, as most of these ads are work at home scams. Yet, Arise isn’t a scam and, in fact, they remain one of the most popular sources for work at home jobs for moms despite the fact that they charge for training.

Virtual PBX jobs also require a quiet environment and, often, rigid work hours. It’s not unusual for these hours to include evenings and weekends. Moms with small children may not find this too easy to juggle, but, for others, working at home as a virtual PBX receptionist can be a pretty steady, solid gig.

Do You Have Virtual PBX Experience?

Have you done virtual PBX work before? How would you rate this work against other types of work at home jobs for moms? If you are now or have ever been a virtual receptionist, we’d love to hear from you!

Learn More About Call Center Jobs

Guest Post: Misconceptions of Working From Home by Miranda Grimm

Working at home may not be what you expect. Although it may be an ideal fit for some, it takes a particular type of people to succeed at home.

It is very important work-at-home wannabes completely understand what it really means to work at home. Sometimes I get the impression the idea of a WAH career is clouded with glitter and music. While working at home has its many advantages, it is not always, what many expect. The following guide will help anyone thinking of turning down this path of home based work knows if it is genuinely for them.

Working from home means WORK

There have been a number of people approach me to help them get started working from home. As we go through the many options they have, I begin to realize they are becoming more and more dissatisfied by the fact they will actually have to work! Working at home often requires you to work harder than you would in a brick and mortar building! You will read more about this as you continue.

There is no job in cyberspace that will pay you a substantial amount of money while you turn on your computer, in your pajamas and play Farmville. Generally, the more money you expect to make, the more work you will have to do. If you are looking for a get rich quick scheme…please exit this page now…you will not find one here! And once you find this scheme and are required to have 100 people signed up by the end of the month…DO NOT come to me with your business ‘opportunity’. I am not interested and anyone looking for legitimate work should not be interested in any marketing schemes either. Expect to work!

Your Attention is Needed

While there are the random small jobs that allow you to do mindless work, if you are looking for substantial income, please realize your attention will be needed. You may sometimes need a babysitter, a spouse to watch the children or may have to use every minute of time you have while kids are sleeping to work. Even non-phone jobs that do not require background noise generally require you to be able to have some sort of concentration and focus to the task at hand. So either expect the rate at which you work to slow down substantially or choose to work when you are alone. The flexibility of working at home is the best part for most of us! However, it usually means the work I could have completed at a job-site in 8 hours, will now take a complete day in between caring for my children, house and husband.

You MUST Have Motivation

I think any WAHmer can agree with me here. The hardest thing about creating your own schedule is sticking to it! When you have no one to answer to but yourself, it is easy to let work sit or give up the shift you signed up for. Then when bills come due or those shoes you have been wanting go on sale, you feel like an idiot. We all have to work out our own ways of keeping up our motivation.

You Are Accountable For Yourself

Many work at home jobs hire agents as Independent Contractors versus Employees. This means you are responsible for your equipment (computer, phone, headset…), your quality of work, the amount of time spent and most importantly your TAXES. As an Independent Contractor, you may find yourself owing taxes come April! So be sure to get in touch with a professional accountant who can help you plan for the year and hold back a portion of each check.

Of course, there are many upsides to working at home, from the flexibility to not having a boss breathing down your neck. Some people simply need the structure of an on-site job. There is nothing wrong with that. I just hope before making any life changing choices you can look at yourself and decide if you have what it takes to depend solely on yourself!

More About Today’s Guest Blogger:

Miranda Grimm is the author of the Work at Home Adventures blog, a work at home mother of two and Full time college student. After spending many hours researching the multiple home based jobs available online, she now shares her compounded information freely through her blog.

EDITOR’S NOTE: If you would like to contribute a guest post, please contact us for details.