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I’ve been freelancing for more than a decade. For the past 7 years, writing has been my main source of income, and Upwork one of the key resources I use for connecting with clients. I’ve held a good freelancer score (90% or higher) for years and a ‘top-rated’ badge since they were a thing. I was awarded ‘Top-Rated Plus’ early on in 2020 — before I even knew it was possible.
Whatever people may say about Upwork, I’ve found it to be an excellent platform for finding quality clients. It’s helped me build my freelancing business. Their commission rates are competitive, setting up a profile is fairly straightforward, and their resources are useful for both new and experienced freelancers. …
Reduce stress, find peace, improve your well-being with water
Finding peace of mind these days can be difficult. For me, being in or near water — swimming, surfing or just walking along the coast — is guaranteed to calm my thoughts. It turns out, I’m not unique in this. Multiple studies have shown that water — being in it, on it, near it, or listening to it — has a calming effect on our minds.
Considering that water covers around 71% of the earth’s surface and we are comprised of around 60% H2O (our brain even more so, it’s 73% water), our affinity with water and blue spaces shouldn’t be so much of a surprise. …
I love a New Year resolution. They give us something to aim for and help us maintain focus as we work toward them. As you start to tick them off, it builds your motivation to keep working towards the other resolutions you’ve made. At least that’s the idea.
But I hate setting my resolutions on New Year’s Eve along with the rest of the world.
The last day of the second full week in January is widely referred to as ‘Quitters Day’, and no, it’s not because this is when most people ditch smoking. …
About a year ago, I began regularly writing on Medium. I didn’t know a huge amount about the platform when I made my commitment. I learned as I went along. Committing to a weekly article for Medium when my week is already full of website content writing, blogging for clients, and creating other sales and marketing assets, hasn’t always been easy.
But it has been worth it.
Fortunately, I didn’t walk into Medium with my eyes closed. I know what it takes to create a good piece of writing. Nor did I expect to get rich quick. In fact, I wasn’t sure I’d make any money writing here. …
Every month I’m told how clients stall the development of their own websites. It’s usually a variation of the same story. The website content is waiting to be written by the company’s owner. On the face of it, it makes sense. Who knows a business better than the person who started it? The founder understands their market, their customer base and in all likelihood can string together comprehensible sentences fairly easily.
The problem is, they just don’t have the time for writing among all the other responsibilities of running their business. …
My mornings start with a 15-minute meditation. While I swear by this method for starting my day on the right foot, I recognise not everyone is the same. Some of us don’t find peace when focussing on our breath. Some get bored, frustrated or just feel like it’s a total waste of time.
I’m not going to try convincing you to give meditation another shot. You know who you are much better than I do. Instead, I’m going to tell you about a few alternatives. These alternatives stimulate a similar state in your brain and body. None will require you to sit still or om. …
Tips and Tricks for Staying Happy for Longer
For many of us, happiness is ephemeral, transient. This state of being is something that happens to us by accident. Sometimes a planned event helps it along. Most of the time happiness seems to be at the whim of the fates.
It doesn’t have to be this way. If we have control over nothing else, we still hold control over our thoughts and feelings. I can’t count the times I was told as a child: ‘Someone can’t make you feel something, Victoria.’ It annoyed me no end. But, it is true.
We are the masters of our feelings and thoughts. This includes happiness. …
Why Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is more of a process than a destination
Constantly evolving and led by the desire to deliver what web users want with as few clicks as possible, search engines are just delivering content. From the ‘keyword stuffing’ of the ‘90s to the ‘pillar pages’ and ‘searcher intent writing’ of today, SEO has seen many changes and evolved through multiple shades of meaning.
No doubt many more are yet to come.
Ultimately, SEO is about helping search engines do their job. So, what’s the best way to do that and stand out in a crowded internet? Read on for the detail.
Two Sides of the SEO Coin
SEO includes a bunch of different things. Attending to each incrementally raises your possible Search Engine Results Page (SERP) ranking. The idea is to do enough of them so your website, blog, or ecommerce store lands not only on page one of Google, Bing, or Baidu’s SERP but as close to the top of that page as possible. The lower you go, the less traffic you get. …
Making decisions can be hard. What’s more, the more choice we have the harder it becomes and the more likely we are to be overcome with ‘decision paralysis’. This is when we overanalyse and end up doing nothing. But not all decisions are hard, and not all decisions are well thought through. Some are automatic, based on gut feelings. Or chosen without any conscious thought at all. It turns out, we use two different systems of thinking for making decisions through our day: System 1 and System 2.
In Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman’s book, System 2 is described as the slow, deliberate thought we use for decision making. System 1, on the other hand, is our impulsive, automatic and emotional decision-maker. …
Being a writer means continually evolving into your craft. Each day improving a little more and learning new things. There’s lots of advice around about how to hone your skills. Most of it is helpful. Most of it regards actually writing — getting down to the keyboard and tapping those letters.
However, there are a bunch of things you can, and should, be doing to improve your skill and hone your talent that doesn’t involve writing at all. Because writing is more than just putting words on a page. It’s developing your creative muscles. It’s expanding your ideas and making new, interesting connections. It’s about seeing things afresh and describing them in interesting ways. …
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