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Work from Home: 10 Best Tips for Freelancers in 2021

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Image Source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-working-from-home-5198240/

Freelancing is considered an attractive option for those who desire to have enough control over their work. A freelancer is more of a self-employed individual because you get to work as a contract staff with the privilege of deciding what job(s) you want to take and what you wish to reject.

With the Covid-19 break in 2020, more attention has been drawn to freelancing jobs than in the previous years. We now have more people working from the comfort of their homes as freelancers. This means that there is increased competition. Therefore, it becomes exigent to step up the game.

Here are the ten best tips for freelancers in 2021, so get ready to do it better.

  1. Plan – Benjamin Franklin, the founding father of the United States, quotes that “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” Planning is a vital aspect of a process as a goal is nothing without a plan. For every one of the goals you write out, state your actions to achieve them. For example, your goal can be to get the number of your hires increased by 50%, and it will end up being a wish if you do not back it up with a plan.
  2. Find a Niche and Focus – As a freelancer, you need to be mission-driven. Find a niche to specialize in. “Jack of all trades, master of none,” goes the popular saying. Say, you have the idea of graphics designing, you can do article writing, and you like photography, too. It is good that you can do all of these, but you should stick to the one you are best at. Focusing on this alone allows you to become a master in that field.
  3. Do it smart – You need smart work and not hard work. In this age where we have technology within our reach and tools at little to no cost, it is smart to use them. They ease work stress and make work come out faster and better. For example, if you want to get smart at managing time, consultant time tracking is a useful tool.
  4. Fix your working hours – You need to have time under your control and decide if you want to work full time or part-time. Fix your working hours. It can be 6-hours a day or 36 hours in a week – only make sure to fix what suits you. You have that much flexibility.
  5. Decide on your service charge – The reason you seek to pursue the business of freelancing is so you can earn some fast cash. Therefore, there is no point running away from getting your service charge fixed at whatever rate you want it. You need to be reasonable with it, so you don’t scare your clients away with exorbitant charges.
  6. Understand the Pros and Cons – There is no job without Pros and Cons. As a freelancer, identifying and weighing the Pros and Cons is an advisable thing to do. One of the cons can be getting stuck with handling workloads. The earlier you know and are prepared, the better it is. The bossy feeling that comes with you realizing you have the flexibility and freedom to decide what job(s) you take can also be one of the Cons.
  7. Create a good rapport with clients – As a freelancer, the jobs you do are not about you or how you feel, but about your clients. Get yourself in the good books of your clients by creating an excellent first impression. Give them something to make them calling back. Ask them to drop their testimonials, request referrals, and engage them in rapport-building conversations when possible.
  8. Market yourself – Content marketing is a way of marketing yourself everywhere. It has to do with the content creation about services you offer targeted at platforms where your prospective clients are – Facebook, Twitter, and so on. By marketing yourself, you will be able to find paying clients.
  9. Keep Researching – The key to keeping up as a regular and trusted freelancer is to keep up with your researching skills. You don’t stop researching because you think you are doing well; you need to continue to pay close attention to your competitors. Educate yourself and make room for improvement.
  10. You need a mentor – In choosing a mentor, there is the need to be wise and intentional. A mentor in your niche is an influencer, someone who understands what success as a freelancer entails and is ready to guide you through. You could be lucky to get a freelance mentor who would not charge you, but you should know that some mentors require you to pay for their mentorship service. Whichever it is should be a win-win for you.

In conclusion, the year 2020 came with its lessons, and we have learned all we need to know. With the tips mentioned above, we are sure you will be freelancing smarter and better in the year 2021.

Feel free to drop your comments, suggestions, and feedback. We will be waiting to read them.

Author’s BIO: Lori Wade is a journalist from Louisville. She is a content writer who has experience in small editions, Lori is now engaged in news and conceptual articles on the topic of business. If you are interested in an entrepreneur or lifestyle, you can find her on Twitter & LinkedIn. She has good experience and knowledge in the field.

Tips On How You Can Use Alexa As Part Of Your Marketing

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Prior to 2014, virtual assistants were seen as cumbersome, inaccurate, and unfit for mainstream use. It certainly didn’t help that people didn’t really want to use voice activation. After all, talking to a gadget seemed fundamentally uncomfortable — and no one wanted to feel ridiculous.

The release and subsequent rise of Amazon’s Alexa system, however, changed the game for virtual assistants. Through providing robust and reliable functionality, giving a name to the device, and having enough market dominance to compel people to take the leap, Amazon managed to make its virtual assistant a household name.

Indeed, over the years since, Amazon has sold over 100 million Alexa-enabled devices. That affords the ecosystem a lot of reach, so it’s no surprise that marketers want to know how they can take advantage of it. What does Alexa offer for promoters? Is it something that can be used to bring attention to products, services, or brands — and if it is, how can it work?

Let’s look at some tips for how you can factor Alexa into your digital marketing strategy.

Smartly list your products on Amazon

The Amazon marketplace is vast and incredibly influential, and if you want to market products, then simply having them available for purchase through that system is a potent tactic. When someone asks Alexa to suggest some product of a particular type, your product (or products) can be selected: it’s far easier said than done, but it’s possible, and thus valuable.

Furthermore, you can increase your chance of getting chosen by providing as much information as you possibly can. Settling for minimalist descriptions simply won’t suffice. The more relevant search terms you work into your descriptions, the more likely it’ll become that your products are thought to be among the most worthy of inclusion.

Even as you expand the detail, however, you must be careful to keep things succinct. Wherever possible, Alexa will serve a short and punchy response (rather than expecting the listener to endure several minutes of recital). Stick to the best practices for Amazon descriptions, answer questions (more on that later), and you should do well.

Create a helpful Alexa Skill

Alexa Skills are essentially apps for the Alexa ecosystem, and any brand can create one. So why would you want to go through that time-consuming development process? Well, there are two main reasons for offering an Alexa Skill:

  • It builds your brand reputation. If you make your Skill extremely convenient, plenty of people will install it, ensuring that they’re consistently reminded of your brand. It can offer general value, or do something to enhance the usefulness of your regular business service: for example, Google Ads tool Optmyzr offers an Alexa integration (among others) that makes it possible for users to easily check how their ads are performing (something confirmed by co-founder Frederick Vallaeys on the Marketing Speak podcast).
  • It allows you to sell more easily. Having your products listed on Amazon is one thing, but if you provide a Skill, you can make it trivial for someone to re-order. Even if you save someone one or two seconds per order through not requiring the system to search for your product, it can make a substantial difference in the perceived convenience.

Optimize your content for voice search

In the early years of the internet’s popular ascendance, the SEO industry sprang into existence with vast quantities of keyword stuffing and artificial constructions. Everything was contrived, with the user experience left as a secondary (or even tertiary) concern. Thankfully, things have changed enormously since then — today, an excellent SEO strategy will primarily focus on making changes that work for search engines and the searchers themselves.

A huge driver of this change has been the marked improvement in NLP (natural language processing). The more easily search algorithms can figure out what content means, the less artificial the writers need to make it. Suppose you’re trying to sell shoes, for instance: instead of trying to force in as many keywords about footwear as possible, it’s best to just include the most valuable and relevant shoe-related content and trust that the algorithm will figure it out. The visitor gets a better experience, and the ranking doesn’t suffer.

So what does this have to do with voice search? Well, it lays the groundwork, because content optimized for voice search is built around questions and answers. People are now comfortable asking questions such as “Alexa, what types of shoe can I buy?” instead of typing in search terms such as “shoe types” — and “What types of shoe can you buy?” makes for a strong subheading in a long-form article about shoes.

If you want your content to be selected for Alexa’s response when someone asks a relevant question, you need to clearly and succinctly answer that specific question. Fully detail the types of shoe they can buy, keeping your bias to a minimum. Answer other questions from throughout the expected customer journey. The resulting content will stand a great chance of ranking in general, helping your business across the board — and whenever your answer is chosen by Alexa, your brand exposure and reputation will increase.

Can you take full advantage of the influence of Amazon’s Alexa ecosystem? No, of course not. It’s under Amazon’s total control, so as with regular SEO, all you can ever do is follow the recommendations and look for ways to stand out. But simply doing that will plausibly be enough to set you apart, because plenty of businesses haven’t even thought about targeting Alexa when marketing — so give it a try.

Amazon Launches New Developer Toolkit Custom Interfaces for Amazon Alexa

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Amazon’s Alexa is getting an exciting new update centered around new tools for developers to integrate its voice assistant technology into a broader range of smart gadgets and devices. The Custom Interfaces toolkit will allow for interactions beyond the standard smart speakers and TVs.

The main benefits of the new tools, according to Amazon, include:

  • Direct communication between your product and Alexa – no more device cloud or customer account management infrastructure required
  • Dynamic voice interactions for your product to extend the customer experience
  • Product adaptation and support for a wide range of capabilities
Image Credit: Amazon

With more than 100 million Alexa-enabled devices on the market currently, this new functionality could be a great opportunity for developers to further enhance their products, games, and toys. From creating an interactive basketball scoreboard that lights up when you score to a dog toy that counts how many times your dog plays fetch, the ability to be creative and design interactive products seems far more possible with Custom Interfaces.

To help developers get started using these new tools, Amazon has provided further example projects that can serve as a guide and be further built upon. These may be a good place to start if you’re just getting started with the Amazon Alexa Gadgets Toolkit and want to know what’s possible through the latest update.

Amazon also revealed that it’s launched a private beta for a Custom Interfaces project aimed at children. All Alexa products targeting children under the age of 13 must use an accompanying kid skill and require permission from a parent before it can be activated. The use of Custom Interfaces for children could unlock educational and interactive products for kids such as action figures, toys, role play games, and other smart gadgets. The beta is currently limited to commercial developers by invite only. Only time will tell when these additional features will be released to the public.

For help getting started with Custom Interfaces, check out Amazon’s resource library and included tech documentation. Stay up to date on the latest Amazon Alexa and other technology news on our website.

Will echo dot?

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Answer the public is a great site that shows the most common questions people are asking on the internet about a particular subject. There is no shortage of questions people have about echo dot. Here is a sample of the top “Will echo dot…” questions. Maybe some of these will inspire a google search on your part in the quest to learn something new about your echo dot.

will echo dot play spotify

will echo dot work in spain

will echo dot play apple music

will echo dot work abroad

will echo dot play music

will echo dot work in south africa

will echo dot work without wifi

will echo dot work without alexa

will echo dot play youtube music

will echo dot play spotify free

will echo dot be reduced again

will echo dot play music without a subscription

will echo dot work by itself

will echo dot call 911

will echo dot work without echo

will echo dot work with google home

will echo dot work with sonos

will echo dot work on its own

will echo dot work with firestick

will echo dot work with iphone

Do you know answers to some of these echo dot questions? What questions do you want to know the answer to?

Amazon Alexa for Optimal Fitness

Get Fit with A Voice Assistant

There are hundreds of millions of devices that offer voice assistants like Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Siri, and others. For the most part these voice personas help navigate simple tasks on phones or devices. Things like allowing you to stream music, ask about the weather, or complete simple searches but they can be so much more. With the right setup a Voice Assistant can turn into a trainer to help you complete your fitness and wellness goals.

In 2021 Google Assistant announced that they would be including wellness data into proactive display responses. Alexa has integrated fitness through the hundreds of skills available for the platform. The entry point for fitness on either device can be varied. Many users seem to ease into it either with one of the more simplistic “10 minute workout” type activities or thanks to one of their personal fitness trackers.

How do you use Alexa for fitness?

The easiest way to get started with Alexa is sometimes to just ask her. Trying something like “Alexa, start a workout” or “Alexa, begin a 5 minute workout” will usually allow her to resolve in a skill that delivers exactly that.

If you want to curate it a bit more you can check out the skill store and see which ones are rated highest. If you have a screen based device the opportunities are even broader as you will have access to both Prime Video as well as Youtube videos. This means you can search for your favorite workout routine and get moving.

Fitness is not just physical though, it is also mental. Because Voice assistants are so good at streaming audio, one of the great options is podcasts. There are many audio based experiences that help with mental wellness. Some popular meditation apps, like Headspace, offer a unique experience on voice assistants. If you want to try though, just work on asking for things like “Alexa, play a meditation podcast” or even something as simple as “Alexa, open calming sleep sounds” and you are on your way.

Fitness Devices that Work with Alexa

Amazon offers a program for device manufacturers, the Works with Alexa Program. It is designed to showcase products that integrate well with Alexa. For the most part this is smart home devices, lights and plugs. In the fitness world it includes things like the Withings line of sleep trackers, blood pressure cuffs and smart scales. These will also require the addition of an Alexa skill. The skill allows access to data and to get updates by asking things like ‘Alexa, ask Health Mate how much weight I’ve lost this year”.

This skill integration and bluetooth connection is in addition to the “Alexa Built-In” program. This program puts a call and response Alexa inside of the device. As it relates to fitness this mostly means wrist worn step and fitness trackers including Amazon’s Halo band. Also third party devices exist like the Amazfit Band and Wyze band. Sadly one of the biggest fitness devices, the Apple Watch, does not have a native integration with Alexa.

For any of these connected devices it is good to understand what Alexa can add, and where it is limited. For the most part Alexa is able to access the data that your fitness devices tracks, so you can get updates quickly. This avoids the need to navigate the random UI on your phone or device. What it can not do is ensure the accuracy of the device that it is linked to. This is important to understand since all of the devices will vary in accuracy. Even some of the biggest devices makers struggle on non-core metrics with things like the VO2 max accuracy on Apple Watch coming into question.

Outside of accuracy, the safety and security of your information is critical. Amazon has ensured that they provide fitness, health, and wellness companies the ability to build HIPPA compliant skills. This is critical as a customer to understand which data is shared. Something as sensitive as your blood pressure and pulse reading is not disclosed into the wrong hands.

Alexa Developers Zero to Hero, Part 3 Video: Slots, Slot Validation & Automatic Dialog Delegation

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This is an Alexa Skills training video tutorial from Alexa Developers. Here is the YouTube video description:

In this video we’ll introduce slots to capture variable data spoken by the user and we’ll show how to create validation rules for them. We’ll also show you how to offload the slot value capture mechanics to Alexa by using automatic dialog delegation.

Topics Covered:
1. Slots explanation
2. Built in and custom slot types
3. Synonyms (minimal, we’re not using synonyms, eg. January – first month)
4. Required Slots & Prompts
5. Slot Validation
6. Auto-Delegate, Dialog Delegation Strategy
7. Utterance Profiler
8. Intent Confirmation
9. Basic Intent Chaining

Links
Zero to Hero Github:
Zero to Hero Github Part 3: https://alexa.design/Z2H3

Need help? Engage with other developers and get questions answered by Amazon experts on our Developer Forum: https://forums.developer.amazon.com
For specific support: https://developer.amazon.com/support/contact-us?

Alexa Developers Zero to Hero, Part 7 Video: Accessing External APIs

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This is an Alexa Skills training video tutorial from Alexa Developers. Here is the YouTube video description:

In this video we’ll continue our course and explain a functionality that is used very frequently by Alexa skill developers: accessing external APIs. Alexa skills are not closed environments hence you can connect to external services from the skill back-end. We’ll show how to do this from a node.js based lambda using the Axios library.

Topics Covered:
1. Fetch external API (async/await, axios)
2. Progressive Response

Links:
Zero to Hero Github:
Zero to Hero Github Part 1: https://alexa.design/Z2H7

Need help? Engage with other developers and get questions answered by Amazon experts on our Developer Forum: https://forums.developer.amazon.com
For specific support: https://developer.amazon.com/support/contact-us?

Alexa Developers Zero to Hero, Part 6 Video: Reminders API

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This is an Alexa Skills training video tutorial from Alexa Developers. Here is the YouTube video description:

In this video we’ll be covering the Reminders API. This API allows you to set reminders in your skill so Alexa will say a message out loud at the time that you decide based on user input. In this case we’ll create a reminder for the user’s birthday.

Topics Covered:
1. Reminders API
2. AMAZON.SearchQuery
3. Intent Confirmation

Links:
Zero to Hero Github:
Zero to Hero Github Part 1: https://alexa.design/Z2H6

Need help? Engage with other developers and get questions answered by Amazon experts on our Developer Forum: https://forums.developer.amazon.com
For specific support: https://developer.amazon.com/support/contact-us?

Alexa Developers Zero to Hero, Part 2 Video: Skill Internationalization (i18n), Interceptors & Error Handling

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This is an Alexa Skills training video tutorial from Alexa Developers. Here is the YouTube video description:

In this video we’re going to continue on our Alexa skill building journey and focus on internationalization (i18n). We’ll depart from a simple hello world skill in English and add support for more than one language while keeping a single code base.

Topics Covered:
1. Multiple models per locale
2. Key/value string resources for i18n
3. Enriching handlerInput with t function via interceptor
4. Attribute manager as key/value store
5. High level attribute types (session(short term), persistent(long term))
6. Changing locale on Build tab and on Test tab (test both locales)

Links
Zero to Hero Github:
Zero to Hero Github Part 2: https://alexa.design/Z2H2

Need help? Engage with other developers and get questions answered by Amazon experts on our Developer Forum: https://forums.developer.amazon.com
For specific support: https://developer.amazon.com/support/contact-us?

Alexa Developers Zero to Hero, Part 10 Video: The ASK Command Line Interface (CLI)

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This is an Alexa Skills training video tutorial from Alexa Developers. Here is the YouTube video description:

In this video we’re going to move away from the web browser and go towards the command line. If you’re an advanced developer used to the command line you can leverage our ASK CLI (Command Line Interface) which allows you to access tons of APIs so you can effectively automate virtually any task that has todo with building Alexa skills. Overall we’ll show you how to configure and use the ASK CLI to do the most basic, but key operations.

Topics Covered:
1. Configuring the ASK-CLI with personal AWS account support
2. Cloning an Alexa Hosted Skill
3. Editing a skill in code and deploying the skill

Links:
Zero to Hero Github:
Zero to Hero Github Part 1: https://alexa.design/Z2H10

Need help? Engage with other developers and get questions answered by Amazon experts on our Developer Forum: https://forums.developer.amazon.com
For specific support: https://developer.amazon.com/support/contact-us?

Alexa Developers Zero to Hero, Part 1 Video: Alexa Skills Kit Overview

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This is an Alexa Skills training video tutorial from Alexa Developers. Here is the YouTube video description:

In this video we’ll cover the very basics of Alexa Skill building. From fundamentals and terminology to a functional hello world skill you’ll get everything you need to get started in your skill building journey!

Topics Covered:
1. Development and Production Lambda Stages (AHS branches)
2. Lambda Dependencies (package.json, requires in code)
3. Handler as processor of incoming requests. Handler structure
4. Request Types (LaunchRequest, IntentRequest, SessionEndedRequest)
5. Skill Builder (custom vs standard) and its functions
6. Reflector (catch all intent handler)
7. Out-of-domain utterances

Links
Zero to Hero Github:
Zero to Hero Github Part 1: https://alexa.design/Z2H1

Need help? Engage with other developers and get questions answered by Amazon experts on our Developer Forum: https://forums.developer.amazon.com
For specific support: https://developer.amazon.com/support/contact-us?

Alexa Developers Zero to Hero, Part 5 Video: Accessing ASK APIs

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This is an Alexa Skills training video tutorial from Alexa Developers. Here is the YouTube video description:

In this video we’ll look at accessing Alexa Skill Kit’s APIs. These are specific public APIs available to developers to access user and device information to tailor the skill experience to them. These APIs require user consent when user information is involved and help reduce friction (as account linking is not required). We’ll also be looking at SSML (Speech Synthesis Markup Language) which allows us to spice up Alexa’s responses.

Topics Covered:
1. Service API (User Profile API – given name)
2. Settings API (timezone)
3. SSML (speechcons and audio files)
4. Array capable localisation interceptor
5. String replacement with plurals support

Links
Zero to Hero Github:
Zero to Hero Github Part 1: https://alexa.design/Z2H5

Need help? Engage with other developers and get questions answered by Amazon experts on our Developer Forum: https://forums.developer.amazon.com
For specific support: https://developer.amazon.com/support/contact-us?

Alexa Developers Zero to Hero, Part 11 Video: Publishing

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This is an Alexa Skills training video tutorial from Alexa Developers. Here is the YouTube video description:

In this video we’ll take a look at the final step before our Alexa skill is available to everyone in the world and that is: publishing. We’ve been through coding and testing so now we’ll show you all the steps required to publish your Alexa skill.

Topics Covered:
1. Distribution tab in developer console
2. Skill metadata for publication
3. Submitting a skill for certification

Links:
Zero to Hero Github:
Zero to Hero Github Part 1: https://alexa.design/Z2H11

Need help? Engage with other developers and get questions answered by Amazon experts on our Developer Forum: https://forums.developer.amazon.com
For specific support: https://developer.amazon.com/support/contact-us?

Alexa Developers Zero to Hero, Part 4 Video: Persistence

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This is an Alexa Skills training video tutorial from Alexa Developers. Here is the YouTube video description:

We continue our skill building journey with persistence, a way to keep user information across sessions. We’ll show you short term and long term persistence which will allow you skill to remember things so when the users interact with it again we can offer a customized experience.

Topics Covered:
1. Session attributes
2. Persistent attributes
3. Persistence adapters (S3 and DynamoDB) / detect if lambda is Alexa hosted
4. Copy session attributes to and from persistent attributes via interceptors
5. Async/await
6. Session counter (to say eg. “welcome back”)

Links:
Zero to Hero Github:
Zero to Hero Github Part 4: https://alexa.design/Z2H4

Need help? Engage with other developers and get questions answered by Amazon experts on our Developer Forum: https://forums.developer.amazon.com
For specific support: https://developer.amazon.com/support/contact-us?