Paul D. Jacobs – Freelance Web Programmer

If you’ve been a freelancer for a while, you’ve probably heard the advice that you need to select a niche. It’s much easier to stand out if you don’t try and be all things to everybody.

Many freelancers start off as generalists, and then narrow their focus down to one or two specialties. For example, if you’re a freelance copywriter, you might specialize in writing case studies for the B2B marketplace. Or a technical writer might specialize in user guides for networking-related products.

When you’re starting out, you often sell the skills you used in Corporate America as a service. Ideally, you find something you are good at that people will also pay you to do.

As you mature as a freelancer, however, you may find that you want to sell a different service. That’s perfectly okay. In this post, I’ll describe how I changed my niche and why. I’ll also list the steps you can take if you’re ready to change yours.

Read the rest of this post on Storeboard.com

Freelancers may have escaped office politics to pursue what we love from the comfort of their homes… or the nearest coffee shop. But that does not make us immune from stress.

In fact, if anything, life as a freelancer can be just as stressful–or even more so–than life as an employee.

When business is bad, we worry about bills, what we’ll feed our children next week, or where our next client is going to come from. When business is good, we struggle with deadlines and the fact that there are ONLY 24 hours in a day.

Whether our workload is heavy or light, we may have to contend with isolation (no more chats at the water cooler), lack of sunshine and exercise… all of which add up to one stressed out freelancer.

In this post, I’ll identify ten techniques you can use to zap your own stress.

Read the rest of this post on Storeboard.com