Imagine getting new clients all the time using old work you’ve done in the past. How easy would that be? Wouldn’t it be nice? You can do just that – by having a great portfolio. Do You Really Need to Show Off? Yes, you do. When you operate an online business, you need to provide potential clients with a portfolio of your past work to show your abilities and skills. A portfolio is the equivalent of a resume or CV. Your resume reflects your experience and work. Often, it represents a lifetime of your achievements.
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Blog Archives
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What You Need to Know Before You Start a Video Blog
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Love it or hate it, video is here to stay. Despite those who need to read and don’t like videos, there are others who think video is the next best thing. And it could be. In our human need to desire fulfilling all our senses, video blogging (or vlogging) seems the next natural step in the evolution of blogging. We could read posts, then we could listen to audio, and now we can see. A vlog might sound like a fun idea to start up. When done well, it can be a useful tool, too.
> Read MoreHow to Swipe Your Way to Faster Communication and Better Service
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Personalized communication is important these days. No one likes automated responses and canned communication, and we feel let down when we see those template replies. Your potential customers want to work with you. If you treat them like a number, you may lose sales. But new freelancers often go to extremes to avoid the problem of using cookie-cutter communication. They want to offer top-notch, all-personal attention to every potential customer, so they expend energy and time writing out brand-new replies to every contact. Those minutes add up, often into hours. Even a fast typer ends
> Read MoreAn Acting Lesson That Teaches You to Write Well
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I was at the Ashland Shakespeare Festival last week. You should all be warned that I will probably be having a lot of fun with play titles for awhile here. Also, should anyone happen to be out in Oregon for whatever reason (like, because I told you to), there’s a play called Equivocation by Bill Cain that will blow your mind. Titles aside, that was less of a completely random introduction than it seemed, because I’m about to discuss persistence. There is nothing that will remind you of persistence like really, really good acting. No
> Read MoreWordPress 2.8: It’s Time to Upgrade Your Site
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WordPress 2.8 has been released, and the platform has some pretty exciting stuff going on. Many of the improvements involve the scripting and style under the hood, which speeds up WordPress to make it much faster to load and less stressful on your web server. The real fun stuff is in the dashboard, though. You may not notice a difference at first glance, but once you start navigating through your dashboard, you’ll find some changes you’ll like. Drag-and-Drop Widgets One of the biggest changes in WordPress 2.8 involves the widget section. In version 2.7, widgets
> Read MoreYour Blog Readers Aren’t Buying
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If you own a blog, you probably stress out over increasing your readership. The authorities tell us big numbers means success, that you need to get a thriving blog community happening and you need more numbers on display. The message that numbers count comes across loud and clear. Bloggers stress over how many readers they have (or don’t have), feel discouraged at their low readership, long for bigger numbers and enviously wish they had the number 56,587 next to their RSS sign up. Blogging and a large following of readers certainly has its advantages. It
> Read MoreWhy Bloggers Should Be Paid More, Part III: Not Everyone Blogs Right
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This series covers common myths about blogging that contribute to the low-payment factor, to wit: that blogging is easier than writing other kinds of copy, that blogging takes less timethan other kinds of copy, and that bloggers are a dime a dozen. Click here to read about the first and second myths – that blogging isn’t hard work and that bloggers should be paid more. Or, read this: One of the arguments for bloggers being paid less is simply the fact that everyone (yes, yes, and their mother) has a blog these days. If everyone’s
> Read MoreDrive-by-Shooting Special: Start Being Your Best
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Harry pushed back the yellow construction helmet and tucked the clipboard under one arm. He squinted against the sun at the brand-new building. All around him, heavy machinery whirred. Off in the distance, he could see James trying to wheedle his way into operating the crane that was lifting a large billboard into the sky. The cast-off banner that had just come down not long before – the banner lay on the rubble, with the lettering ‘JasonBarr.com’ already peeling off. Today’s hit is for Start Being Your Best, the site of Jason D. Barr. Here’s
> Read MoreDo Your Videos Shut Out a Third of Your Audience?
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I don’t like watching videos. I don’t like listening to audio clips either. I know that this is the new face of web interaction and that more and more sites are beginning to dabble in new ways of reaching people. I also know that many people enjoy watching lively videos or hearing human voices over reading text… …but I don’t. I can’t learn this way. Well, I won’t say can’t. I dislike learning this way. I prefer having something written that I can refer to whenever I feel like it. I can’t pull out a
> Read MoreWhy Bloggers Should Be Paid More, Part II: Short Posts Do Not Equal Short Hours
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This three-part series covers three common myths about blogging that contribute to the low-payment factor, to wit: that blogging is easier than writing other kinds of copy, that blogging takes less time than other kinds of copy, and that bloggers are a dime a dozen. Click here to read about the first myth – that blogging isn’t hard work. Or, read this: A blog post doesn’t take me that long to write. A short one takes about fifteen minutes. A long one might take as much as forty-five, especially if I get particularly off-topic and
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