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Your Freelance Career: Is Freelancing Right for You?

Freelancing is a lucrative prospect for almost every professional at some stage of their lives or other. Who would not like a chance to work from home, set their own work timings, spend time with their family and basically make a name for themselves? However, one should keep in mind that though anyone can freelance, pursing a freelancing career is not the right step for everyone. before you take the big step of pursuing a freelance career, here are some aspects that you have to keep in mind.

Freelancing is a Business: As a freelance worker, you are more or less a businessman who is providing services or products to companies or other organizations. And like any business, you will have to take into consideration a about peak markets, low markets, paying clients, non paying clients, days when you have ample work and days when you do not have work, etc. of course, freelancing is lucrative and even more comfortable than a day job, but it is quite difficult to actually set up a freelancing gig all by yourself. if you are all right with the initial teething problems, freelancing may actually be a good idea for you.

Freelancing means getting your own resources: Remember that day in office when your hard disk conked out and you used all your weight in the company to get a new one installed on the machine within a few hours, all free of cost? Well, that scenarios can exist in your Work at Home atmosphere only when you have cold hard cash in your wallet, and know which shop can do it for you at the earliest.

This is true not only for such services like resources maintenance etc, you will even have to forget that very helpful colleague who would help you with completing your projects if you were caught up with something else. If you have your own freelance gig, getting help from someone would mean paying from your own pocket.

Of course, this is good if you finally decide to move from a freelancer to a person who manages freelancers, but this might come up as a problem in the beginning parts of your freelance career, because not all freelancers will have cash upfront to take help from other freelancers.

You are Your Own Boss: You will hear this as a cliche in many work at home ads and offers, but consider this sentence in its true meaning. This sentence is as dangerous as it is lucrative. If you are your own boss, you have to make sure that you can pay for yourself, you can get home the money, without anybody's help to get the groceries, and much, much more.

Think about setting up a freelancing career only if you are completely ready to take up these points.

Top Freemium Tools for Freelancers: Curdbee

With freelancing getting into the mainstream scenario, there are several tools and software that is available for freelancers. Today, one can get software and tools for any aspect of freelancing, be it time management, accounting, or invoicing. one such freemium software is Curdbee.

One of the biggest hassles that freelancers face is the act of sending invoices. Most of the times, the invoices do not reach on time, or are made so shabbily that the client never takes notice of them until it become extremely urgent to pay them.

What is Freemium?

Freemium software is software is available free of cost, and paying a token amount will give the user more premium features. Curdbee is a freemium software that allows the user to create professional looking invoices which can be sent directly to the client. the software also has integration with several online paying systems which enable the invoice to be sent directly to the client.

How to use Curdbee?

To use Curdbee, the user will have to create an account on the website. To make the account, the user has to provide a email id and make the account. Once the account is made, they are provided with a tab where they can add a client. Once the list of clients is made, they can easily select the client, input the type of work they have done and create a customized invoice that can be sent to the client via the website itself.

Home Office: Software Requirements

Working as a freelancer and working from home is more often than not one and the same. When you are working from home, there are chances that you might be having a telecommuting position with a company and therefore are an employee of the company. If you are someone who takes assignments from various clients and works with one or more employers on a consultancy basis, you are not employed with any of them, but are just working on a 'work for hire' position.Though the two concepts may be different, the requirements will be the same. Here are some of the software requirements of a Home Office:

Word Processor: Provided that you have a compute in working order, you would require a word processing software. Word processing software is quite important for any office, even the home office, because the Word Processor software helps you in creating all the documents that you would need in a typical work day. Whether they are letters, reports, presentations or even email - a word processor can do it all. There are several word processors available in the market, with some of the open source word processors available for free.

Open Office is a open source word processor that has risen in fame since the past few years. It is a direct option if you do not wish to use any of the mainstream products for your word processing needs.

Accounting Software: Freelancing is a business, therefore it is evident that there will be some monetary transactions on which one has to keep their eye on. This calls for an accounting software,or else come tax day sand you will not know what happened with all your money. Having a tax software or an accounting software does not mean that you have done away with the accountant. The accounting software will just allow your expenses and earnings to be presented in a practical and systematic manner to the accountant when the right time comes.

Like word processing, there are some open source accounting software that are available. One has to be a bit careful while using accounting software because these software are according to the country that one is in.

TurboCash is one such Open source Accounting Software.

Anti virus/Malware: If you are working in a profession where the computers are the central force, you simply cannot afford to have a computer that has been clunking along with virus and malware. To prevent any damage to the computer at a later stage, you should ensure that the computer has a good antivirus system and malware system installed in it. There are some free antivirus software that are available, but they are only for home use.

Avira Anti Virus is a free anti virus that is quite popular.

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The Freelancers Free Time: What to do with it.

A freelancer will have several things in abundance if he or she is systematic and consistent in delivering their assignments to their clients. One of these things is time. In fact, after some time, you will be worried and wondering as to what to do with the empty afternoons and the quick to come evenings. Here are some tips on how a Freelancer can send their free time:

Blog: Freelancing is all about networking. Blogging is considered to be, and actually is one of the best ways to network in the world of Web 2.0. You do not have to be completely professional like when you are blogging, and the blog can be about anything. Your paintings, your poems, your pet projects, your family photographs anything that your little heart desires.

Hobbies: We all had hobbies when we were young, such hobbies that had the potential to become our professions. Sadly, due to some reason or the other, we could never continue our hobbies into our adult life, leave alone making it a profession. The freetime that freelancing affords you is the best resource you can use for the enhancement and growth of your hobby. All you have to do is to d what you liked the best!

Family Time: What profession does not have the employee ignore the family? Well, if you are freelancing or working from home, you are more often than not at home, and thats the best time of your life. You can use the free time that freelancing offers you to spend time with your family and reconnect withb them, bringing back to life your own family life.

Health: Nine out of ten people in the world are unhealthy. The medical condition may be anything, but the truth stands for that most people are unhealthy, simply because they do not have the time to look after their health, or carry out the steps that are suggested by the doctor. With freelancing, you have the time - all you need is the will to look after your health.

What is oDesk?

There are several sites that act as a intermediate between freelancers and people who are looking to outsource their work to others. oDesk is one such site. Though Odesk is quite similar to Scriptlance or GetaFreelancer, it has a significant difference.

While SL and GAF restrict themselves to acting as a intermediary between the freelancer and the employer till the time the project is done, oDesk goes a step ahead and actually tries to create a virtual workspace.

Once you make an account on oDesk, you will be able to access the number of projects that are available. You can then apply for these candidacies and then you will be interviewed by the employer. The interview can be carried out via oDesk as well as Skype, Gtalk or other internet messengers.

Another significant aspect of oDesk is that it actually allows the project owner to monitor the work timings of the freelancer, with the help of software and a webcam, if the employee agrees to the same.

Click here to visit Odesk.