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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.

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.

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.