Summary: As a freelancer, you’ll probably want to increase your rates someday, if not already. How can do this without alienating your existing clients though? These tips will help you increase your freelance writing rates without potentially losing current clients who can’t account for the change in their budgets.

If you’re a freelance writer, it’s highly likely that you will have been faced with the difficult decision at some point in your career of wondering how to increase your freelance rates. One of the most difficult aspects of being a freelance writer is that there are so many possible effects of even suggesting that you are going to increase your rates that most writers spend years producing work for clients for the same rate that they did when they very first started working with them. It comes down to fear.

One of the most prominent reasons why writers do not increase their rates is that they are worried that not only will they be unable to find new clients who are willing to pay their new rate, but that their existing clients will abandon them completely, leaving them with no income whatsoever.

Fortunately, with the right preparation and proper implementation, this does not need to be the case. By abiding by the following four points you should be able to find new clients while continuing to work with your current clients at your increased rate.

1. Ensure your increase is justified

The first thing to keep in mind is that you should have a fully justifiable reason for increasing your freelance writing rates. Simply stating that it is a “sign of the times” or “because of the economic climate” will very rarely ensure that your existing clients remain with you and you should make sure that your clients will see, or have recently seen, some distinct benefits of working with you.

Although these benefits are varied, the most popular is that the quality of the work that is produced for the client is far greater than it was when you first started writing for them. This may be because of courses or workshops that you have attended or simply that you have gained a lot of experience in writing in recent years and this shows in the work that is now being produced.

2. Be truthful with your clients

Assuming that you can fully justify your increase, when you begin discussing the increase with your clients, you must remember to always be completely truthful. As tempting as it can be to add, for example, a heart-warming story to your reasoning for increasing your rates, it is generally considered that the vast majority of clients will be much more appreciative if you were to explain to them directly that your rates are increasing because, for example, the quality of your work has, and the rate increase is a direct reflection of this.

3. Be flexible

Put yourself in the position of your clients. They’re hiring a freelance writer for $0.50 per word and have been doing so for the past three years without any problems. Then, all of a sudden, the writer says that from next month their rates are going to be increasing to $1.00 per word. Whilst the writer’s reasoning is more than justifiable and the increase was, to a certain extent, expected, it’s not easy to find within a budget twice as much money to continue paying the writer, regardless of how much they are needed.

This is the point where a lot of freelance writers fall down when trying to retain their current clients after a rate increase, as they set their new rate and believe that they must stick to it rigidly. Whilst this may be the case when taking on new clients, it should not be for older clients and you must be willing to have some leeway, such as by having a staggered increase over a set amount of months or taking a new reduced rate if the volume of work was to increase.

4. Be appreciative

Whether they’re a pleasant client or not, if you want to keep them when you increase your rates you must be fully appreciative of them and put into perspective just how much work you complete for them. The old saying that you shouldn’t keep all of your eggs in one basket should be thought of regularly by freelance writers, but some are simply not fortunate enough to have ten or more individual clients who provide them with an income and they may rely heavily on only two or three.

If this is the case, it is important that you understand the implications for you personally if you were to lose a client as you did not appreciate the amount of work produced for them and were not flexible with them when increasing your rates, meaning that they decided not to continue working with you at your higher rate, which in turn substantially affects your turnover.

It may seem a simple procedure increasing your freelance writing rates, and for any new clients you begin working with after the increase, it is not a problem. However, for those that you have worked with for some time, it is important that your increase be justified, you are honest and flexible, and you are appreciative of the work that they offer to ensure that you can implement a rate increase without losing any of your existing clients.

Summary: Is it better to have a street address for your small business, or will a PO Box suffice? What about for entrepreneurs who work from home? What option is best for a small business business? What option is best for its customers?

The decision becomes even more complicated for home-based business owners, where the physical business address is also the entrepreneur’s home.

Here are some of the options available, and the pros and cons of each:

Physical Address

If customers actually frequent the business (such as a retail store), an actual physical address is a must. Those customers need to be able to look up the location for directions.

Using a physical address also offers added credibility, even in businesses where customers don’t traditionally visit the premises. Basically, it’s easier to trust a brick and mortar business than one with no real location (meaning it’s more likely the business might vanish from one day to the next).

The downside really comes when the entrepreneur doesn’t want the physical location known, possibly for security reasons. For example, a home-based business owner may not want potential clients showing up at their home, especially if they have children or are there alone.

PO Boxes

The primary benefit of a PO box is the privacy it affords. The business owner simply goes to the post office to pick up the company mail, and no one with the mailing address automatically knows the physical location of the business. They are also a good solution for businesses needing to sort certain types of mail. For example, they may have a PO box setup to specifically collect incoming bill payments, so those can be processed quickly and separately without being mixed in with regular daily mail.

The downside is that, if a PO Box is the business’ primary address, some customers may not immediately trust the business.

The Best of Both Worlds?

There is a third option, fortunately. Businesses can rent mailboxes with services such as the UPS store. They get a private box just like with a PO box, but that box has a physical address, which may appear more reputable to customers.

The key is thinking about the needs of your customers. Remember, if they need to be able to find your physical location in order to do business with you, a mailbox service with a physical address isn’t a substitute for your actual location.

Personally, I’m not a fan of mailbox services, but then again my business is run pretty much entirely virtually, meaning it would be a hassle to run out and get the mail on the rare occasion I’m dealing with physical documents or paper checks. What do you prefer for your business, and why?

Summary: Broken outgoing links on your company’s website can hurt search engine rankings and frustrate visitors who can’t access the page or resource they’re looking for. Xenu Link Sleuth is a free online link checker that will sniff out broken links for you quickly and easily, so you don’t have to dig for them yourself.

I used to hate going through my webmaster tools reports and server stats to find errors. Fortunately, there’s an easier way, and it’s free: Xenu’s Link Sleuth.

It’s a simple tool to use, and can look for broken links on your entire website or blog fairly quickly. Just download the software from the link above to get started. When you open the software, go to File > Check URL to check your website. An input box will pop up.

Type in your website’s URL and make sure the “check external links” box is checked, unless you only want to make sure your internal links are okay. Click “OK.”

Xenu’s Link Sleuth will start to work its magic. If you have a very small site, it should process everything rather quickly. When checking this blog, it took a few minutes, so I allowed it to run in the background while I worked on other things. How long it takes will greatly depend on the size of your site and how many links are present.

When all is said and done, you will have a results page that looks like this:

Links displayed in green are okay. Links displayed in red are broken links. For example, I found out that I had an old link to a former contact page at the bottom of this blog. Here’s a closer look at the error line:

As you can see, the tool gives you the broken URL, the type of error, type of link, and the anchor text of that link which makes it easier to find and fix.

You have the option to save your results for later viewing in Xenu, or you can export them if you prefer. You can even convert the results to a Google xml sitemap.

Xenu’s Link Sleuth is a free and easy-to-use tool that can help you identify problems with your company’s website. Download it today and stop returning errors to your visitors.

Summary: Are your employees constantly leaving on lights in storage rooms, restrooms, and other areas? They may be hurting both profits and the environment. A simple device can keep your energy use under control, even if no one is around to remember to turn off the lights.

There’s an easy way you can keep your company’s electric bill under control while being more environmentally friendly. Install timers on those lights often left on.

When you install light timers, you ensure lights are automatically turned off even if the staff forgets about it.

Summary: Are you more of an “ideas person?” Do you have great business ideas, but no time or funding to pursue all of them? A new service at SubmitBusinessIdeas.com allows you to submit business ideas and collect 15% profit if the idea is selected, developed, and proves to be profitable.

What is SubmitBusinessIdeas.com?

In short, the service allows you to submit business ideas via a simple online form. If your idea is chosen (they expect to develop 2 – 5 business ideas monthly), you’re idea will be contracted (which means you won’t be able to pursue it on your own at that point). When an idea is contracted, SubmitBusinessIdeas.com develops and runs the business. They take on all legal and financial risk and marketing responsibilities. You’re basically hands-off in the process–it’s not actually your business, and you have no ownership, management, or other role in the business. They may ask for your input during development, but you don’t have to make any kind of commitments. In exchange, you get a portion of the profits if it proves profitable.

What do You Get?

If your idea is developed and turns a profit, you earn 15% of profits for the life of the project.

What if They Don’t Choose Your Idea?

They estimate that you’ll know if your idea will be developed within about seven days. You’re still able to pursue your idea independently until contractually obligated not to (according to the site founder). That means if your idea doesn’t get chosen, you can still opt to pursue it on your own later.

Submitted business ideas are only published publicly on the site after they’ve been developed (so this isn’t a public ideas bank where others could see and pursue your idea because you submitted it).

What are They Looking For?

It’s important to note that, at this time, they’re only accepting business idea submissions from U.S. residents. While they’re open to considering business ideas of all kinds, online business ideas are preferable.

Who’s Behind SubmitBusinessIdeas.com?

One of the service’s founders has been a trusted client of mine for a few years now. In short, the folks behind SubmitBusinessIdeas.com are highly experienced in launching successful Web-based ventures, with a team at their disposal to get some business ideas up-and-running in as little as a week (depending on the idea of course). In addition to that, the founders collectively have over 40 years of business experience (online and off).

Suggestions / My Take

I submitted a business idea of my own today to test it out and make sure the form was working and everything before sharing it with you. I’m happy to say the process was smoothe and simple. My only suggestion would be this:

Before submitting a business idea, make sure it’s one you really aren’t likely to pursue on your own. If your idea is contracted, you can’t simply change your mind later, so don’t submit ideas you aren’t willing to give up independently. Other that that, give it a shot! Why not find a way to profit from those business ideas you can’t pursue on your own?

Summary: Check out this free e-book on green initiatives by employees from Dmitry Shestrin of Faronics (I was one of the many folks asked to contribute to its creation).

I contributed a segment on greening the social environment at work (anything from coffee breaks to the occasional employee birthday celebration in-office).

The official description of the e-book is as follows:

“A collection of stories, blog posts, and practical advice aimed at employees that are looking to start green initiatives within their companies.”

Check it out. You can download (.pdf) at the link below:

Insider’s Guide to Greening I.T.

Summary: Consider these three tips for better blogger relations before getting your company caught up in a negative blog storm (or missing out altogether).

1. Stick to Your Market – Look beyond bloggers with generic “influence” and instead focus on bloggers who have direct influence over your existing target market. Building relationships with bloggers takes time, and you should invest it wisely. Be selective. Remember that blogger relations is about more than simply pitching bloggers about your next product launch. (Check out the two small-scale examples of authors exercising excellent targeting and blogger outreach I recently highlighted at All Book Marketing.)
2. Target Brand Advocates – Search for bloggers who are not only relevant to your company, products, or services, but who are already talking about you! On the surface you may think it’s best to start off targeting bloggers not yet writing about you, in order to increase the numbers. However, those who already promote your company (like happy customers leaving great reviews) run less of a risk. Remember, bloggers don’t generally have an editor to answer to. They’ll share their opinions whether you like it or not – and if you annoy a blogger by pitching them something irrelevant or something they simply don’t care for, you may get coverage albeit not what you were hoping for. Also, your brand advocates (or fans) are the most likely bloggers to want to hear from you–in fact, they may be completely tickled that you even took the time to look at their blog. These are people that want to build a relationship with you. At the very least, this is a good place to start.
3. Give Them What They Want – Bloggers are about more than getting free stuff. In fact, there’s a large segment of the blogging community that strongly looks down on anything that could be construed as trying to “buy” bloggers or their attention. Solely taking that approach is another risky move that could lead to negative coverage. Instead, think about what’s often important to bloggers. For example, many niche bloggers work hard to build and maintain an image as an authority in their field. Allowing them to break a small news story is extremely appealing to them (it can give them a traffic boost in addition to more credibility). Having respected members of their industry participating on their blogs is another way they can achieve that goal–consider offering to do an interview or write a guest post for them, or if you enjoy the blog enough to read it regularly comment publicly as often as you can (and as often as you have something of value to add to the post). These things allow you to not only initiate a relationship with relevant bloggers, but directly engage with their readers.

Before jumping head-first into a blogger relations campaign, do what you’d do when preparing to launch any marketing, PR, or advertising campaign–think about who you’re ultimately targeting. Understand what the blogger’s readers want, and then work with bloggers in your industry to give them that. The best thing you can do to ensure a good blogger relations campaign is help bloggers give their readers what they want–then everyone’s happy.

Summary: Whether you run a small blog or a large corporate Web property, most site owners want to know where they rank among the competition. One of the most common metrics (both directly and through things like PageRank, Technorati rank, etc.) is incoming links. Do you know who’s linking to you, or how many incoming links your site has? It’s very possible that you think you do, when you don’t.

Here’s the big issue: Google and Yahoo! show very different results for the number of inlinks your site has. So, between those two biggest sources for inlink counts, who do you trust (especially when you’re getting those stats from a third party service)?

In this case, it’s not Google. Here’s why:

1. Google doesn’t make full link stats available to the public. No third party tool can pull up the number of links Google actually sees to your site or URL. What they see is what you get when you do a link:http://yoursite.com search in Google.This number is very inaccurate. Google’s admitted that for years, so anyone thinking it’s worth using is beyond behind the times. This statistic is entirely useless as any kind of metric.Why is it inaccurate? Because Google doesn’t want to make it easy for people to see who’s linking to sites other than their own. This search query is designed to return a sample of the links Google sees–nothing more.If you want to see more backlinks Google sees, you need to sign up for their Webmaster Tools. When you set your site up in there, you’ll be able to see all kinds of stats – your indexed pages, upload a sitemap, see pages returning errors, and yes, even see your backlinks.To find your total inlink count, click on your site name (after you’ve set it up). Then click “Links” in the left navigation. Click “Pages withe external links.” Where you see “All Pages,” you’ll see the total link count Google sees to the right (or not – in fact, Google admits this number isn’t complete, but is rather just a larger sample).

   Compare that to your link:http://yoursite.com query. Using my freelance writing blog as an example, that query returns 197 links, while Webmaster Tools shows 7699. Still not a complete picture (you can’t get one with Google), but a pretty significant difference, no?

   

2. Google is very slow to update. This is also very commonly known. Google doesn’t update their backlinks data very often, so the numbers you see (even in Webmaster Tools) can be outdated–your new linkbuilding efforts won’t be reflected in the counts.
3. Google doesn’t follow all links. They use the no-follow attribute, which means many of your “real” inlinks are ignored (such as those attached to comments you left on no-follow blogs, and most blogs have no-follow comments by default unless the blogger changed that).If all you’re thinking about is SEO and your placement specifically in Google, you may not care about those links. But if you want to get the full picture of where you stand against your competitors, you’ll want to know that. While those links might not add to your PageRank or contribute to your Google search placements, they do still bring in targeted traffic (and if you’re comparing yourself to the competition from an overall marketing or visibility position, you need to consider more than search engine traffic).

Google obviously has its problems when it comes to measuring incoming links. Those problems are big enough that I’d suggest putting more emphasis on Yahoo’s link count as a general metric when comparing two sites.

That said, Yahoo’s Site Explorer isn’t perfect either. But they’re an improvement. Here’s how to check your inlinks with Yahoo!

You don’t need to go through the main site explorer page linked above. You can instead just visit the Yahoo! search engine and type in a link:http://yoursite.com query. It will automatically redirect you to the inlinks page of site explorer for your site’s stats. (If you do go to site explorer directly, after searching for the site you’ll have to click the “inlinks” button for more details.)

Using my writing blog as an example again, I see 24,444 links. But wait–we need to tweak some things. This total only shows links to the actual URL I entered (the home page). So I go to the dropdown box on the far right and click “entire site.” My total is now 26,142.

Hold on. We’re still not done. this total includes not only links from external sites to my blog, but also internal links from one blog page to another. Uh oh. We don’t want that. No problem. Go to the left dropdown box and click “except from this domain” to rule those pesky links out. My total is now 23,805.

This is the number I care about–the number of external links I have pointing to pages on my blog. Better yet, the links are practically real-time–no waiting weeks or months to see updated link counts like with Big G. In fact, the first backlink showing in my results is to a post on another blog that only went live today.

Neat right? So what’s the problem with Yahoo!? Well, for getting a simple numerical look, very little. The problem is if you want to delve deeper and view all of these backlinks. Yahoo! only currently lets you view and export the first 1000. So the stats are useless for really comprehensive analysis beyond that.

Here’s something else you should consider: if you haven’t properly redirected your site’s URLs to a single version, your stats won’t be tracked with a single search. In other words, while I might type in http://yoursite.com or http://www.yoursite.com and get to the same page either way, search engines can view those as two different sites for tracking purposes. You should choose one format or the other, and have the other redirected to it (but that’s a post for another day – if you already run a blog on a service like Wordpress, you may already be redirecting without knowing). Any easy way to check is to do both searches in Yahoo’s site explorer. In my case, the www version only returns one indexed page with about 90 links–insignificant in the grand scheme of things, meaning things seem to be redirecting well stats-wise. If you have large numbers for both, it means you’re not properly redirecting, and your real stats are some combination of search options. (This isn’t just a Yahoo! thing by the way–in Google Webmaster Tools, you should also choose one version in your settings to avoid these issues.)

I suppose it would also be nice if you had the option to ignore no-follow links, but I don’t see that happening, as that’s more Google’s baby. Besides, you’re better off with more thorough information than outdated “samples” when trying to compare your visibility and potential traffic sources (not to mention links from social media sources which are often no-follow) with that of your competitors.

In this case, in Google we shouldn’t trust. While I’m not a huge fan of Google in general, I do use their webmaster tools as one resource in my arsenal to know where my sites and blogs stand. So I’ll be rooting for them to make further improvements on that front.

Keep these things in mind when we talk about the types of stats released by services like Review My Web later on.

Summary: Inc. will be hosting an event called GROWCO for entrepreneurs in Orlando from March 18th – March 20th. Find out how the event can teach you how to grow your business, even during a slow economy when budgets are tight.

GROWCO’s focus this year is on helping businesses grow when money is tight – “how to expand without overextending.”

The conference will also cover:

• Finding money you already have (learn how creative entrepreneurs found not-so-obvious cash in their companies, and how you can too).
• Poach talent (why investing in your workforce now is a great idea – the talent your competitors let go due to downsizing may be the talent to propel your business to the next level).
• Learn the “magic number” (speakers will teach you how to decipher the numbers in your financial statements, so you can avoid the worst).
• Find funding (in a time where banks and VCs may not be lending as readily, GROWCO shows you how to approach sources of capital for better chances of securing the funding your business needs to grow).

Speakers at GROWCO include:

• Ram Charan, an accomplished author, acclaimed consultant, and former professor. Ram can count Jack Welsh as one of his biggest fans.
• Jack Mitchell, recently celebrated his family business’s 50th anniversary. Warren Buffett said everyone would be better off if we followed Jack’s advice.
• Norm Brodsky, serial entrepreneur, author, and columnist for Inc. magazine. Norm is the founder of seven businesses, including a three-time Inc. 500 company.
• Tom Wujec, thought-leader and award-winning technology innovator, author of three books on creative thinking. Tom is also a regular speaker at TED.

See a full list of speakers and the GROWCO program at http://www.growcoconference.com/.

Summary: No matter what industry you’re in, freelancers and small business owners can learn a lot on the Web. Even well-respected colleges and universities are now offering free courses online (or course materials from their professors). While you won’t earn credentials with these free courses, you can learn a lot that you can implement in your business. Here are some of the best places to find free online courses for entrepreneurs.

Today I want to share a few of the top schools and organizations offering free business courses online, specific to the needs of business owners or other self-employed professionals, covering everything from startup issues to marketing and finances. Here are some of my top picks:

Schools / Organizations

The U.S. Small Business Association – I’d reckon most U.S. entrepreneurs are already aware of the SBA, but did you know they offer quite a few free courses with practical entrepreneurial advice?

MIT OpenCourseWare – Famous for their technology programs, MIT offers a variety of undergraduate and graduate course materials from the Sloan School of Management. MIT offers one of the most extensive collections of online course materials available.

The Open University – This UK school offers quite a few online business courses, on topics such as entrepreneurial behavior, managing relationships, and project planning. Do a lot of business traveling? Also take a peek at their online language courses.

Stanford University – Stanford goes beyond simply offering text-based course materials. They offer their free online courses through iTunes. You can listen to actual audio lectures from their professors in topic areas such as social entrepreneurship, finance, and economics. You’ll need the iTunes software installed to be able to access these.

UC Berkeley – Berkeley has some outstanding course materials available online. Their webcast courses allow you to listen in on audio lectures from their current and past semesters. In the current semester, you can even subscribe via RSS to be notified when new lectures are uploaded. This link takes you directly to the current Spring 2009 semester, which doesn’t feature much in the way of business courses. But browse through the semester drop-down in the upper right corner, and you can find a lot of hidden gems, including courses in economics, psychology (good to know in marketing), and information systems (better understanding search engines for example, which can play a role in your business’ online visibility).

Yale University – This ivy league school opens its virtual doors with Open Yale Courses, a selection of free online courses spanning several disciplines. While you won’t find a lot of basic courses of entrepreneurial interest here, there are a few departments to check out. For example, you can learn about financial markets from the economics department or their intro to psychology course. The courses themselves are some of the best available (with both audio and video lectures available for download) – they’d top the list actually if it weren’t for the extremely limited collection of courses currently available (only 15 across all departments as of the time of publication).

Later I’ll followup with a list of specific courses you can take online from these schools and organizations (and more). In the meantime, browse through some of the best free online business course offerings on the Web.