Working as a freelancer is great ways to start your own home based business and earn a residual income for a better living.

As a freelancer myself and having employed for a few times, I’ve experience with many issues that you should know to build up your freelance career. But before going in depth, I’ve to outline some basic things. So, let’s start:

What is freelancing?

A freelancer or freelance worker is somebody who is self employed and offer their services to employer without a long term commitment. This day’s freelancer refers to copywriters, proofreaders, programmers, designers and so on. They often charged by hour, day or job. Working as a freelancer is called freelancing.

Here is the startup guide:

Quality First!

The main requirement to becoming a freelancer is to have a high skill and expertise in your field. It’s not matter whether you’re working as a programmer or designer. Because, there is no senior employee to correct your mistakes. So, you must have to be proficient.

Create a Showcase:

You’ve a great working skill in your field, but nobody will trust you unless you show them what you can!

Yes, every employer wants to see some of their work examples before hiring someone else. So, it’s better to put your work examples together.

So, where to put your work examples?

In your showcase! I mean your online portfolio. So that anyone can view your work examples anytime from anywhere.

Having your website is a bonus!

If you’ve a website, you’re one step ahead than those who don’t have. For instance, you’re a great writer and want to do copywriting jobs as freelancer, if you’ve a website (or blog) where you can write and show the world your writing skill.

Again, think you’re a seo expert; so rank your website up for a specific keyword(s) and then let employer know that you’ve ranked your website up for this keyword. I bet you, you’ll get many (at least few) potential clients.
Checkout my portfolio and see how I’m shoeing my work skills.

Important: If you’re going to have a website, make sure that you’ve a top-level domain (no sub-domain). The top-level domain indicates that you’re professional and make sure you’ve created service or portfolio page.

Where to find the work?

Sure, getting the work is the key to start your freelance career. Okay, let me ask you question; what do you do when you need to buy a product?

Of course, you enter the market and look for the product you need. So you’ve to go to the marketplace to start working.

Wait! Have you ever heard about oDesk? The biggest marketplace for freelancers. Hundreds of jobs are being posted there every single day!

I’ve been working for a while at odesk and I’m getting enough job and getting paid to quit my day time job.

Go to oDesk.com and crate your free account. Creating account on oDesk is so easy, just like creating an email address.

So, get registered there and start working.

Cheers!

P.S. This is an ongoing series to help people to build up their freelance career. There are more articles to be published about how to get work on oDesk, being paid and so on. So, make sure you won’t miss it. Subscribe to my feed or get our next post by email, so that you can get it delivered to your inbox.

Let me apologize for the absence here for a long time. I was pretty busy with some of my other projects, so I couldn’t write here for a long time. In the meantime, I’ve developed my home based internet business which is paying me more than double than my day time job. But interesting thing is that I’m working for 3 hours per day for that. And now it is enough to quit my day time job.

But money is not only the reason I’ve quit my job. There are few more reasons to quit the job.

Time is the fact:

There’s no doubt that Time is more precious than money. But how much? Here’s a quote from one of my facebook buddy:

“You can earn money by investing your time, but you never can get back your time with all of your money” – Trivuz Alam

Hm……….. So true! So while I’ve a good chance to make more money by investing less time, why I won’t grab the chance?

If you’re living a country like mine (Bangladesh), you’ve to waste your valuable time by sitting on car for traffic jam! Everyday, I had to waste almost 2 hours per day for going to office and coming back to home. But the damn thing is that I’m not being paid for this 2 hours But if I’d work for this two hours, I’d be paid $20 ($10 per hour).

Getting my own time schedule:

In case of my day job, I had to attend office within 8:00 am. and had to stay there, till the office close. Too boring! I’d no choice but had to stay there

But while I’m working from home sitting before my computer, I can choose my own time schedule and I can choose what things to do and when to do.

Getting more time with family:

While working at my office, I had to stay out for almost 14 hours a day (2 hours journey included). I was not getting time for my family But while working from home, I get all day long to stay with my family.

There are more reasons to outline. If I keep writing about it, it’ll be few thousands word long. But I don’t want to waste your time

Oh, how about the earnings?

Sure, I know it’s not 2001, it’s 2010. Many of you want to see the proof of my earnings. Yeah! won’t make you sad. Here is a screen-shot of my recent earnings.


Raise your voice:

Are you an online entrepreneur? Do you’ve experience about working from home? or Do you want to work from home? Please share your thoughts in comments.

Cheers!

P.S. If you want to know how I’m making this residual income or if you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to our RSS Feed or enter your email address bellow to get the next article delivered to your inbox (No Spam, Guaranteed!).

Hello Everyone,

Welcome back! After a long time I’m going to talk about an important tactics for bloggers. Yeah! I’m going to talk about how to increase the number of pageviews of your blog. But before starting I want to clear the sense of pageview.

What is pageview?

A pageview is an instance of a page being loaded by browser. Google Analytics

Every time a page been loaded by visitors browsers request are counted as each pageview. So pageview means how many times it has been loaded by browsers request.

Why pageview is an important tactics?

The more times a visitor spends on your blog, the better. It helps the visitor to be engaged closely with you (or your blog).

CASE #1:
If search engines (specially Google) are the biggest source of your visitor, page view is very important for you.

Why?

Here is an example:
Think that a visitor comes to your blog from Google. After getting the information, he hits the back button of his browser. It’s OK. But it’s not okay for the big G (Google). Yeah! Google will think that the searcher didn’t get the right information he need. So that he came back to google again. If it continues, Google will punish you. It’ll remove your blog from the SERP (Search Engine Result Page) for the keyword(s).

So, what to do?

CASE #2:
If you’re monetizing your blog with CPM (Cost Per Mile or Cost Per 1000 views) ads, it is far more important for you to earn more money. Because the more pageviews, the more money you’ll earn.

CASE #3:
Better Alexa Ranking: Although alexa doesn’t provide the exact information, but still it is a big factor to get direct advertisement offer or to sell ads through ad agency like BuySellAds. The more pageview you’ve, the better alexa ranking.

Before continuing to the point, we should know about bounce rate because it is tightly engaged with pageview.

What is bounce rate?

Simply, bounce rate is the opposite metrics of page view. Yeah! That’s right. Bounce rate is the percentages of your visitors are “bouncing” without viewing the other page of your blog. The lower your bounce rate, the better.

So if you can increase the number of pageview, ultimately the bounce rate will decrease.

How to calculate Bounce rate?

Bounce rate = (visit that left after one pageview / Total number of visits) ×100

Now come to the point:

How to increase the number of pageview and reduce bounce rate?

Show related post:
When a visitor find your post useful, he will search for more related posts. So, it is a wise dicision to show the related post and help the visitor to get it easily. It will boost your pageview. Checkout the bottom of this post and see the related post of my blog.

Create ‘About’ Page:
My traffic data shows that ‘About’ page is the second most visited page by the first time visitor, just after home page. So you should create it, if you don’t have it yet.

Place popular post widget:
It is another smart idea to show your best contents. Check the right of this post under recommended post widget where you can see some of my best posts of my blog.

Featured content gallery:
Featured content gallery is another way to show your best contents and people’s are willing to read those stuff.

Persuade your visitors to leave comment:
There are many people out there who like to read the comments. So if you’ve comment on a post, people will go through the page to read comment.

Again, if someone leave comment on your blog, I’m sure he will revisit your blog to see the reply of the comment.

Then, you should reply the comment to keep the conversation going on.

For example, when you reply the comment, other visitors will notice this and they’ll also leave a comment and will revisit. So to boost your pageview converting random visitors to commenter is a must.

Remove outgoing links:
Sounds like crazy? Yeah! It’s enough. But if you extremely keen this, you should reduce the outgoing links. Here’s why?

Do you know how people leave your blog?

• By hitting the back button
• By typing new address on their browser’s address bar
• By typing something on their browsers search bar
• By closing their browsers
• By clicking one of your ads or affiliate link
• By clicking one of your outgoing link

The first 4 things, you can’t control but you can control the rest 2. So reducing ads, affiliate links and outgoing links are the best practices to increase pageviews and reduce bounce rate.

Show excerpt on the home page:
Most of the visitors land in your blog home page. So if you’re showing excerpt in your home page, the visitors must have to click on the read more link to view the full post. So, it will increase the number of pageview.

Update your blog regularly:
For a long time (more than one month) I was not updating this blog and noticed that most of my blog readers mailed me to know that why I was not updating the blog.

“Thanks all of you guys who mailed me, thanks for your support and sorry for that”

Actually people don’t like to see the same thing again and again, it annoys them. So, they just left my blog after seeing the same content.

Learn from my mistake; to reduce the bounce rate you should keep updating your blog regularly.

Have your say?

Have you any more idea to increase pageview? Please feel free to share your thoughts. If you enjoyed this post, please share it with your friends and help to grow me up.

Have a Happy Blogging
Eunus Hosen

Out of the millions of blogs on the Internet, there are very few which stand out above the crowd. The ones who stand out are usually known as authorities within their specific niche. That expertise will stand out and draw others close. Here are ten ways to make your blog stand out as an authority blog.

1. Post frequently

At the very least, you should have a post every few days. Your audience has a short attention span, and you need to remind them of the services that you offer on a regular basis. When you get on a writing binge, you can develop a backlog.

2. Filter information

Filter out all of the junk that is available and give your readers the best news articles and resources available. Your readers will start turning to you for the content and news within the niche. Your readers will start to refer more readers to you, raising your level of authority.

3. Be persistent

Your authority status is not going to be built in a day. Keep posting even though you have four readers. Keep posting and continue working on your niche blog. You do not know when something amazing will happen.

4. Read and Research

Know about the latest trends that are happening within your specific industry. As you develop your authority, people will ask you questions about the latest and greatest things that are happening within your field. Take the time to read and absorb all of the available information about your niche.

5. Analyze

Look at the trends and perform analysis. Do research in your niche. Come up with different conclusions. Write about items and events in your field from a scientific point of view. Provide content that cannot be found anywhere else.

6. Teach

An expert is able to take their reading and make it relevant to their audience. If you are able to take difficult concepts and make them accessible to your readers, then you are well on your way to becoming an expert. Explain why an obscure concept is relevant.

7. Communicate

Look around at the other blogs that are in your niche. If an author offers some great insights, take the time to make a comment. Offer useful and helpful information to the readers of the other blog as well as providing a link so they can come back to you.

8. Write a book

Very few people will take the time to write a book about their field. It requires a lot of hours as well as a lot of research. This is an opportunity to share the more in-depth knowledge that you have about a niche. This is also something that you can monetize to gain more readers.

9. Dig deeper

Take the information that you have and build on it. If there are loose ends that you did not discuss in the previous post, write another post. Develop a series about something within your niche. Start with a broad angle and narrow your topic down.

10. Be unique

The way to standing out in your niche is not through rehashing the same old articles with the same old points. You have opinions about your niche and your blog is the perfect space for sharing those opinions. Leave the rehashing to the ordinary.

It takes time to make people recognize that your blog is a step above the rest. Good things come to those who wait. The best thing that you can do to stand out is to show your passion about the field. People read about that passion and tell their friends.

This post was written by James Adams, a tech writer covering the latest developments and tech news for a specialist in ink cartridges in the UK. Much of James’ day is taken up with analysing and reviewing products like HP 901XL ink as well as posting on their design blog.

“A Name Never Makes Anyone Famous; But The Man Does”

Yeah! That’s right and it goes to any kind of name (i.e. human name, product name, brand name). A brand becomes famous for their products and services not for their name.

After choosing the right niche for your blog, you have to pick up the right domain name for the blog. The right domain name is more valuable than its cost.

“A good name is better than riches.” – Miguel de Cervantes

In case of domain name, this saying suits very well. You might know, the domain name BUSINESS.COM has been sold for $8 million! Yeah; for $8 million!!! and it is the highest rate (till now) of a single domain name. Although  it was registered with only $8 dollar.

So it can be a very much profitable business, registering it with a low rate and selling it with high profit afterwords.

OK…………. I’m not talking about the buy-sell domain trade, I’m talking about how to choose the right domain. Let me introduce:

While you’re going to choose a domain name for a blog, you may consider three things:

i) Brand Name

ii) Your Name

ii) Keyword

• Brand Name: It is the most considerable thing for choosing a domain name. If you want to build a brand online, you should choose the brand name as domain name.

Example of Brand Name as Domain:

i) Problogger: Darren Rowse built it.

ii) Copyblogger: Brian Clark built it.

Please keep in mind; brand name can never make famous itself. For instance, Google is the current King in internet world; but if Google were named as Bing and Bing were named as Google. Who would be the King?

• Your Name as Domain: If you’re like me; want to turn your name into a brand, you should choose your name as domain name. So when people will link your blog, they will link your blog with your name and it is an opportunity to turn your name into Brand.

Example of Name as Domain:

i) John Chow: You know JC is a brand;  most successful and most influential internet marketer.

ii) Chris Brogan: Chris Brogan is another most successful internet marketer who makes his name a brand.

iii) Dean Hunt: Dean is another most successful internet marketer and he is more famous for buzz marketing.

So, Darren, Brian and others who didn’t choose their name as domain, made a great mistake?

No…………. Absolutely not. Although they haven’t chosen as domain name, they built the brand and authority. Now people know them as the author of the brand.

• Keyword as domain name: It’s a smart idea, which makes easy to rank well in search engine for specific keyword(s). People like to link other blogs or websites with their domain name. So when people will link these blogs they will link with their respective domain name and as it is the desired keyword, so the blog will get some anchor text value.

Example of Keyword on Domain Name:

i) HowToMakeMyBlog: Marko Saric own this and it is on the top position for the keyword phrase: “how to make my blog.” A great blog which contains most valuable information about blogging.

ii) EarnByBlog: My buddy Alamin own this. He is using keyword as domain name. I hope it will get the top position for the keyword.

OK……………….. It’s your choice  which you want to use as domain name; Brand name, Your name or the Keyword. But here are few tips to choose effectively.

Keep It Short and Memorable:

Look at this: It-is-the-largest-domain-name-in-the-world.com

It is easy to remember, but you shouldn’t use it as domain name. Why?

Because, today’s people are too busy (or lazy), they’ll never type this largest domain name. So if you own such kind of domain, you’re going to lose many visitors. Look at my domain name; it is short and easy to remember. If you can remember my name, you can remember my blog. It is EunusAt.com, that means Eunus(me) At Dot Com.

I could choose my full name EunusHosen.com, but I didn’t just I want to make it short.

Again, Chris Garrett (The co-author of ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income with Darren Rowse), owns ChrisG.com instead of ChrisGarret.com. So making your domain name short and easy to remember will be wise decision.

Should I use hyphen (-) on domain name?

Many people want to choose it to get some SEO advantage. Look at the following example:

Marco Saric’s blog is HowToMakeMyBlog.com, but if it would How-to-make-my-blog.com; what would happened?

Would you tell someone about the hyphen (-)? Would you tell something like that “how hyphen to hyphen make hyphen my hyphen blog.com”?

Might not. So always avoid the hyphens in domain name.

Should I Use Number (i.e. 1,2,3) on Domain Name?

Many people may argue about it, but I suggest to use number on domain only if it makes sense.

I’ve a blog which contain number on domain name. It is BlogAt21.com. The domain name makes sense that this blog at 21. Yeah! I’ve created this blog on 21st birth anniversary. That’s why it’s name: BlogAt21.com

Which Domain Extension (.com, .net, .org) should I Choose?

It is the most important thing to consider while choosing the domain name. Here is a statistics:

Out of the 32 million or so domain names registered worldwide over 22 million of them are .coms. The second most popular is .net, with a paltry 5 million domains registered. Source: Active-Domain

Yeah dot com (.com) is widely used domain name in the world and you should do so. You should jump to other extension only if .com is not available for the domain.

Should I use Country Specific extension?

Many people choose this kind of domain name; something.com.uk or something.com.ca. But I suggest you to choose this kind of extension only if the website contains country specific information. Otherwise, just leave it; as it makes your domain name unusual longer.

Should I Choose Modified Popular Domain Name?

There are many people want to use a modified domain name. For instance, JohnChow.com is a popular domain name. Back in 2007 when Google banned JohnChow.com from Google search result, there are some clever mans tried to grab the chance. Domain names like NotJohnChow.com, JohnCow.com has been registered. Because John Chow was a hot keyword then. Till Now JohnCow.com is most successful blog owned by Jason Katzenback.

Caution: Although some people gotten some worms for having similar domain name, you shouldn’t do that. If you seriously want to get such kind of domain; at least look at the name and make sure that it is not a registered trademark. If so, you may have to go to jail.

Have a Happy Blogging

Eunus Hosen