Photo by Sidi Guariach.

If you’ve ever thought about freelancing part-time but never done it, this post may help you. Most people never follow through on those thoughts because they are overwhelmed and confused by the process of starting a freelance business. The aim of this post is to provide a step-by-step guide to launching a part-time freelance business in 30 days, going from zero to taking on your first client.

The format for this challenge was inspired by the excellent 31 Days to Build a Better Blog program, which concluded recently. I really like this approach because it offers concrete, practical steps with a measurable result. Sometimes ‘do this, do that’ advice is more useful than theory. My hope is that you can follow the steps here, putting one foot ahead of the other, and find yourself with a little freelance business at the end of the process!

The program is designed to be completed while you are working full-time, either by dedicating a couple of hours in the evening or mornings, or working on the program over the weekend. It should be combined with daily hands-on practice in the skill you want to freelance in, particularly if you are a novice in that skill. If you are a novice, don’t delay the program until you feel you are ‘good’ enough. The emphasis is on selling a very specific skill that you can become good at in a short period of time. 30 days practicing one hour a day is more than enough time to develop a specific service that you are good enough at to sell.

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Photo by Dreamscape Photographs.

Viral articles are game-changing content that can fling your blog, website or portfolio into the stratosphere. Viral articles get links, retweets, social media votes, comments and lots of traffic. The success of a viral article is usually followed by a powerful subscriber jump. Once you learn the strategy to create viral content, things will never be the same.

In this post I want to show you how to create a viral-ready post, customized to your niche, in exactly two hours. This is a plan anyone can follow. If you have some spare time now I urge you to read this article and then set aside a couple of hours to follow the steps outlined here. If you’re short of time, bookmark this post and come back to it when you next sit down to write. I’m confident that the final result of this exercise will be one of the most popular content items you’ve ever created.

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Photo by muha...

The well-worn phrase “Do what you love and the money will follow” leaves a lot to be desired. Even if you could get paid to watch episodes of LOST (you can’t), you’d probably yearn for more rewarding work.

There is a marked difference between things you love that could make money and things you love that won’t. As a general rule, if it helps you enter a ‘Flow state’, it’s a winner. If it doesn’t, it won’t make for gratifying or lucrative work.

‘Flow’ (see Wikipedia page), a psychological phenomenon, is how you feel when performing a task that absorbs 100% of your focus. Time seems to run faster while in a flow state - hours can pass without notice because you are too focused to care about the passing of time. If you stop and think about it, I’m sure you can think of one activity that makes you feel this way, whether it’s writing a blog post, web design, exercising or developing new business ideas.

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Photo by A Chilling Soul.

Seriously. For 7 days, don’t do any link-building or guest-posting. Don’t leave comments on other blogs. Don’t tweet your stuff. Don’t do SEO. Don’t do a single action intended to bring a new reader to your blog.

You can keep posting as usual, but that should be the extent of your marketing.

Do I want to show you that writing good content is all you need to grow your blog’s readership? Nope, that’s not it. It’s also not true.

So what am I getting at?

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Photo by Tony Frissell, 1947.

When I’m in a healthy blogging mindset, I write long posts every few days. I’ve tried short and newsy in the past, but have realized I’m no Seth Godin. If I’m going to say something important and useful, I need plenty of words to do so. That’s the style that works for me, but it won’t work for everyone.

By studying some of the bloggers I admire I’ve realized that there are five dominant content ’strategies’ they use, and that each one is very different from the others. This is good news, because it means that there is (mostly) no right or wrong way to do content. I’ll talk more about that ‘mostly’ caveat later.

Despite the many differences, the similarities are more telling. I think I’ve been able to work-out some factors that are must-haves for your content. Without them, you simply can’t grow your blog into a niche leader.

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Photo by notsogoodphotography.

For a number of years bands have been using the web to create ’street-teams’ - exclusive groups that turn fans into promoters. In exchange for spreading the word about the band, fans in ’street-teams’ would get early notice about ticket sales, discounts on merchandise and other bonuses.

This might seem irrelevant to the usual scope of this blog, but I think the ’street-team’ concept can be powerfully adapted to building your own audience in areas far outside the music industry. By giving your biggest fans the tools to spread the word about you and rewarding them for doing so, you can create a powerful grassroots promotional machine for your work.

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Photo by Gaetan Lee.

If you have an online audience of any size you are often going to be asked for help and advice. You might be at the point where you can assist everyone who asks, but if your audience keeps growing this state will eventually pass you by.

Or, you might already be finding it difficult to help everyone and regularly forced to say the dreaded ‘No’ word. You worry: are you losing a potential customer or client in the process? More importantly, are you making someone feel crappy?

There is a way to turn the experience into a positive for both people. Next time you have to say ‘No’, recommend someone else to help.

Make this someone you know online (or offline) or someone you would like to get to know. Not only are you giving the person a helpful recommendation, you’re potentially sending a new client (or reader, or viewer) someone’s way. Do this enough and they will want to start repaying the favor.

Just remember: ask for a “tell him/her I sent you.”

It’s a neat form of networking and a good thing to do.

Photo by mikebaird.

The term ’social media expert’ has been the subject of a lot of talk and a lot of controversial articles lately. People have written about the different types of social media expert, whether it’s OK to call yourself a social media expert and outlined who they believe are (and are not) experts in social media.

The term has never been more commonly used. This is probably because an entire industry has bubbled up around people creating businesses and services springing from their claimed expertise in social media. There are a lot of good people in this industry and there is a lot of good work being done.

What I’d like to do in this post, though, is get people thinking about whether it is actually possible to be a ’social media expert’. As the title of this post suggest, I believe it isn’t. Here’s why.

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Photo by paintMonkey.

A ‘personal brand’ is in many ways synonymous with your reputation. It refers to the way other people see you. Are you a genius? An expert? Are you trustworthy? What do you represent? What do you stand for? What ideas and notions pop up as soon as someone hears your name?

If you’ve been around for a while you’ve probably already developed a personal brand. People recognize your name, what you’re working on, what you offer and what you’re about. That being said, your personal brand might be a little weak and disjointed. If you’d like to make it stronger, I’m going to help give you the tools by outlining what I believe to be the components of a strong personal brand.

If you don’t feel like you have a personal brand yet, this post will show you how to go about building one. But first, it might be worth talking a little about the value of your personal brand and why we might want to create one in the first place.

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Photo by ^riza^.

I had one of those days today where a few things coalesce to make you think about a particular topic. First was listening to John Gruber (DaringFireball.net) and Merlin Mann’s (43folders) SxSW talk on blogging. There are a lot of good tips buried in the talk if you don’t mind the two personalities, particularly on focusing on an obsession, adding value and differentiating your content. Most interestingly for me, they discussed the concept of an ‘ideal reader’ (which I’ve previously talked about as a ‘target audience’, but I like their term better!) This ideal reader is the person you would most want to enjoy your work. It could be another blogger you highly respect and admire, a friend, or another version of yourself. The key is that you’re crafting your work based around who you would most like to read it.

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