The Science, Art and Voodoo of Freelance Pricing and Getting Paid

I try to keep this blog from being too self promotional...but I'm a businessman and ya gotta do what ya gotta do. So, I'm happy to announce that my first book for freelancers has just been published: The Science, Art and Voodoo of Freelance Pricing and Getting Paid.

This freelance pricing guide covers a wide range of pricing and estimating strategies, including different formats in which to present your bid (and the #1 most persuasive strategy to get clients to buy without haggling on price); why you should never discount your price as a first step in negotiating, and what you should do instead; eight reasons to increase your prices—and four ways to do it without client pushback; and much more to negotiate better and to price your freelance services more profitably.

 You can find out more about this freelance pricing guide on my book publishing website, More Cowbell Books, or go straight to Amazon, where it's available in paperback and Kindle versions. Any blog links, tweets, Facebook or Google+ posts are much appreciated! And if you have specific questions pertaining to freelance pricing, head over to my Dr. Freelance freelancing advice blog any time and drop me a note.

Testing, testing, 1-2-3

Having some serious frustration with search engine issues. So, here are a couple of testing examples to see if I can spark some action.

Basically, it seems like Google is crawling my site, but the most recent cache in search results is a few weeks ago. Because Blogger is a Google property, I thought maybe by posting something here, I could get some juice. For example, when I Google Plus my blog posts, they show up in those results. 

Anyway.

If there's some SEO genius out there who has some ideas, I'm all ears. Please comment or contact me through my Dr. Freelance contact page. Here goes nothin'.

Some of my recent posts at Dr. Freelance have included:

• 4 basic questions a freelancer always needs to answer 
• The thicker the folder, the thicker the applicant 
• Why freelancing is like Wipeout 

 Can't believe it's been nearly 2 years since I posted anything here. Time flies...

Where can I find high paying writing freelance jobs?

I usually refrain from promoting my Dr. Freelance entries here, but I'm making an exception for a guest poster, All Freelance Writing's Jennifer Mattern: "Where can I find high paying freelance writing jobs?"

Her sage advice applies not only to freelancers who focus on writing and editing, but any creative field, as well as entrepreneurs of any stripe. If you hope to find gigs that pay well, you need to go beyond the publicly available listings of what's available out there — and Jenn's provided some excellent, practical thoughts on exactly how to do that.

New contributor at Freelance-Zone.com

Hey all, it's been a crazybusy couple of weeks, hence the intermittent posting regimen. Wanted to let everyone in on some great news, which is that I've made the leap from regular commenter to regular contributor at Freelance-Zone.com. They're one of Writer's Digest's Top 100 Blogs for Writers, so I am thrilled to become a part of their crew. My first post, "The 411 on new 1099-MISC rules for freelance writers," addresses a scary accounting change that comes to us self-employeds as a result of the new healthcare law. If it stands, it will mean a LOT more paperwork and research during tax time.

I'll still be posting my ruminations here, as well as at my Dr. Freelance blog--so please don't delete any bookmarks! In fact, you can make life easier for yourself by subscribing to the RSS feeds...and that way you'll be notified any time a new post comes up.

Paging Dr. Freelance

I've been populating content into a separate blogging project for a while, and it's high time to release it into the wild: DoctorFreelance.com.

I receive thought-provoking questions on a regular basis from a variety of colleagues, friends and over-the-transom folks, and I thought that an advice column for freelancers (or for clients with questions about working with their creative independent contractors) would be the ideal format to amplify that. The healthcare theme, ripe with metaphors of diagnosis, sickness, healing and wellness, seemed just goofy enough to be perfect for me.

And my parents always wanted me to be a doctor.

I'll still be posting regularly here at Jake's Takes, continuing to focus on my usual "business anecdotes with a moral" theme.