Linkswitch #80, Writing Work, Recycling Code, More Exposure

The Health Benefits of Having Pets in Your Home Office

Those of us with a cat or dog know that our pets are like a member of the family. And, like the important members of your family, you just feel better with them around.

My chihuahua is never far from me when I'm on my laptop. As I'm writing this post, he laying on my outstretched legs. In the U.S., three out of every five homes have a pet. And these pets are more than just camaraderie"pets have been shown to have health benefits for humans.

3 Places to Look for Freelance Writing Work

There are so many different job boards, websites, Facebook and Yahoo! groups and other places to look for freelance writing jobs online that it can be a little overwhelming for the beginner or for someone who hasn't needed to look for work for a while but is now looking to take on more projects (I'm in that second boat, for sure!). So here's a quick roundup of a few places I like to look for jobs on a regular basis that have consistently been helpful for me.

Why Can’t I Finish?

They can only hide it from me for so long: Sometimes it takes a day, a week, or maybe a month"but eventually it comes out. The Fear of Finishing. Here's a guide to diagnosing and treating what I've found to be four of the most common barriers to completion.

How to Be a Professional Freelancer

I get asked the question almost every day: "Just how does one become a freelancer?" While most sites will post a boring write-up on being on time, being nice and networking, I'm here to tell you the "real" nitty gritty of just what it takes to become a "real" professional freelancer. Here's your very own copy of the Professional Freelancer's Guide To Professional Freelancing.

Good Money Management Practices for a Profitable Illustration Business

If you are like many creative entrepreneurs, you may have a strained relationship with money. Obviously you'd like more of it but then again, you don't want to sell out as an artist or compromise your creativity to get it. And when you do have it, it never seems to go as far as you thought it would and before you know it, there you are again wanting more. You may even describe yourself as "bad with money". I have a theory that many creative people self sabotage when it comes to money

Utilizing The Power Of Recycling In Web Design

We will look at how we can recycle existing work (done by ourselves or others) in order to be more efficient. By doing so, we can finish projects more quickly and generate a better profit margin. The great thing about recycling is that we can all do it, whether we are a developer, designer or website owner. Let's begin our journey with the masters of recycling: developers.

The Heckler

It occurs to me, though, that most of us have to hassle with the heckler.

The heckler keeps a running critique going, amplifying its tone and anger as it goes on endlessly about all the things we shouldn’t do, all the things we’re not doing enough, and most of all, at our lack of entitlement to do much of anything new or important. The heckler cannot be eliminated. It’s been around since the beginning of our species, and we’re hard wired to have it. What can be done, though, is alter how the rest of the brain reacts or responds to the heckling.

17 Tips to Get More Exposure for Your Blog Posts

The most significant challenge that bloggers face is attracting visitors. For new bloggers nothing can be more frustrating than trying to figure out how to get people to see the content that you've spent time preparing.

Getting visitors to your blog is possible and quite realistic if you're willing to put in some effort to get the exposure that you need. If you're spending hours on blog posts and you feel like that work is being wasted because not enough people are seeing the posts, we'll take a look at some things that you can do to get the right exposure. Here are some things that you can do to get your blog posts in front of more people and to get more impact from each post.

Playing to Win: Turning Money Management into a Game

I am a gamer. I didn't know the other panel members before the conference started. Because we'd never met, we spent a couple of hours beforehand preparing our talking points. I was impressed by how my colleagues tied everything back to gaming. Over and over again, they talked about the "gamification of personal finance".

5 Tips About Freelance Work

Self-employment is not for everyone, but many publishing professionals thrive, or at least survive, in a freelance capacity. Before you decide whether to join them, however, keep these factors in mind:

You probably won't get rich from freelance writing or editing, but the qualitative rewards are manifest. Self-employed editorial professionals are hereby excused from useless, time-wasting, poorly run meetings. (Freelancers sometimes need to attend in-person or online meetings as part of a project they've been hired for, but such gatherings tend to be more efficient than the average company or department to-do.)…