Articles Tagged with Freelancing

Advice for SEO Freelancers – My brightonSEO Oct 2020 Talk

Last Friday, I gave a talk at brightonSEO October 2020, the first time it’s been hosted online (as a result of lockdown). It was my third time speaking at bSEO (here are the links for the first two).

My talk – titled “Going Solo – The Survival Guide for Freelance SEOs (Present & Future)” – gave advice to aspiring, new, and established freelancers, which – during these difficult times – I’m hoping would’ve been useful to a lot of people.

If you missed it live, you’ll need a ticket in order to watch the talk back. However, I can share with you the slides and the talk’s transcript, which I’ll share below…

…But first:

Other freelancers give their tips

6 Freelance SEOs photo
To complement the talk, I asked six other SEO freelancers for their tips. The original plan was to include their tips within the presentation, but with a strict 20-minute timeframe, it just wasn’t doable. So what I did instead is published their tips in full over on the Anti-Sell blog.

Slides

So here are the slides:

Talk transcript

And here is the transcript (which I got by using Otter.ai):

Click to read more!

Online Networking (Anti-Sell Style)! My Cardiff Met Centre for Entrepreneurship Webinar Talk

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Anti-Sell now has its own dedicated website & blog! Check it out at Anti-Sell.com.

Hello! So… I was meant to give a networking workshop to a bunch of Cardiff Metropolitan University students around mid-to-late March, but then this whole Coronavirus/COVID-19 happened (you might’ve heard of it!), soo inevitably we had to cancel. But the lovely folks at Cardiff Met’s Centre for Entrepreneurship asked if I wanted to do a webinar instead – with (understandably) a focus on online networking tactics rather than offline/face-to-face ones. If you saw my Anti-Sell talks at either Freelance Heroes Day 2019, or Swansea Digital Marketing towards the end of last year, it’s an adapted version specific to the things we can do during our current situation – a ‘lockdown edition,’ if you will.

During the hour-ish-long webinar, I give tips on:

  • What types of online networking opportunities exist – some obvious, some less-so,
  • Why you should target ‘semi-related’ groups/communities instead of just directly-related groups/communities, and what I mean by that,
  • How to remove (or at least reduce) the nerves that can come with participating in something online for the first time, e.g. a webinar or Facebook group,
  • How running or creating your own thing (rather than just ‘attending’ things) puts you in so much more of a visible position – and takes things further,
  • How you should ask for testimonials (i.e. where and how you should try to acquire them),
  • Why you should always try to remain calm, professional and respectful towards others,
  • Aaand a bunch of other stuff.

The folks at the Centre for Entrepreneurship recorded it, passed the recording onto me, and gave me their blessing to publish it publicly on YouTube – big thanks to Hannah, Steve and Lyndsey!

Here are the slides on SlideShare as well:

As an aside, I’m eagerly looking to do more webinars, podcast interviews, written/blog interviews, etc. at the moment – so if you know anyone looking for a guest/speaker/whatever (delete as appropriate), please let them know about me. As thanks I’ll send a free copy of the book to whoever helps me to land something (a free PDF copy for now, and then a free paperback copy as well once the lockdown has been lifted). Check out my speaking page for info, testimonials, past speaking gigs and more.

The talk is in line with Anti-Sell, the ‘sales guide for people who hate sales’ which I self-published last year. Learn more about it here.

Anti-Sell now has its own dedicated website & blog! Check it out at Anti-Sell.com.

The Books that Inspired Anti-Sell

Anti-Sell alt cover - bookshelfAnti-Sell now has its own dedicated website & blog! Check it out at Anti-Sell.com.

At the end of Anti-Sell, there’s a ‘Further Reading’ section, recommending a bunch of books that the reader can check out beyond mine. And even though it might seem like a really lazy rather ingenious copy/paste job from the book (😉), I thought it made a lot of sense to share it on here, too.

Throughout the book I’ve mentioned numerous books and resources that can help you on your Anti-Selling journey. Here’s a list, with a bit more info about each of them, plus a few more for good measure.

A quick note: None of these authors paid me a fee to be included, nor do I get a commission if you buy any of them. I recommend these books 100% wholeheartedly – because I actually really like them.*

ReWork by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson

ReWork book coverReWork is probably my favourite business self-help book of all time, and a big influence on Anti-Sell. Why? Because ReWork is also quite rebellious in nature: it goes against the grain of traditional business advice but makes excellent recommendations in spite of that. It was recommended to me by a client (thank you Scott of TestLodge!) and on the first listen (I bought the audiobook), I fell in love with it. While listening to it in the car, I used to scream “YES!!!” after sentences I agreed with – which happened a lot. And probably sounded weird if I had my car window open. But there we go.

Some of its takeaways include:

  • Other people’s failures are other people’s failures, not yours. So when people talk about the survival rate of freelancers, small businesses and startups, just remember: if other people fail, that doesn’t mean you will too.
  • Plans should be called “guesses.” I remember freaking out when I had to put together a business ‘plan’ for some funding that I was seeking in the early days of freelancing (if I remember correctly, it was funding to cover my first year’s membership at my coworking space). How do I know how my business is going to do next year or the year after that? And that’s precisely the point. Call them guesses. To quote the book: “Start referring to your business plans as business guesses, your financial plans as financial guesses, and your strategic plans as strategic guesses. Now you can stop worrying about them as much.”
  • Everything you do is marketing. This ties in very closely to the message of the book you are currently reading. Marketing isn’t defined by adverts and promotional materials – it’s literally everything you do. Every. Single. Thing. You. Do. Every email you send is marketing. Every invoice you send is marketing. Just because you’ve won a client, it doesn’t mean that the marketing stops there for them. Every action you take can leave an impression on someone – good or bad.

I could go on and on, but I’ll stop there (not-in-the-book note: I actually wrote about my biggest takeaways from ReWork – including the above points plus more – on this very blog a few years ago: here’s the link). If Anti-Sell has resonated with you, and you haven’t yet read ReWork, pick up a copy. I’m sure it will resonate with you as well.

While writing this book, Fried and DHH released a new book: It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work, which – as you can probably guess from its title – addresses the sensitive subject of work-life balance. It’s worth checking out as well.

The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz

The Pumpkin Plan book coverThe Pumpkin Plan is a special book to me. Whether you’re just starting out, or you’ve been running a small business for a while and you’ve hit a rut, there are some great tips in it. As mentioned in earlier chapters of the book, it has advice on:

  • How to go niche when it comes to targeting clients.
  • Creating your own Assessment Chart, which can be used to score clients on certain criteria, in order to help you to detect which clients are the best-fit for you (not-in-the-book note: I’ve blogged about the Assessment Chart over on State of Digital).
  • Tactics for cutting bad-fit clients in a way that won’t cause any animosity, fallout or professional embarrassment.

Mike also has another good book called Profit First, where he recommends paying yourself first before paying bills, whereas typically we do the opposite (we pay our bills and then keep what’s left over as profit, however big or small that amount may be), so it’s worth checking out what he has to say on that as well.

Click to read more!

Anti-Sell – My Freelance Heroes Day Talk

Steve Morgan at FH Day 2019 photoAnti-Sell now has its own dedicated website & blog! Check it out at Anti-Sell.com.

On Thursday I spoke at the incredible Freelance Heroes Day in Wolverhampton, which is an annual one-day conference run by Annie & Ed of the amazing Freelance Heroes community.

My talk was in conjunction with my new book, Anti-Sell – essentially a condensed talk version of the book, giving sales and networking tips to freelancers and small business owners who struggle with (or simply downright hate) sales.

Here’s the link to the slides, plus they’re embedded below:

I was blown away from the feedback following on from my talk. Here’s just a few examples of some of the lovely things people said:

Incidentally, if you’d like me to speak at your event about small business sales/networking, then please do get in touch. You can see my list of past speaking gigs here.

Oh and if you’ve yet to buy the book, go here. It’s available in paperback, Kindle and self-narrated audiobook formats from Amazon, Audible and the iTunes Store.

[Image credit – Steve Folland]

Anti-Sell now has its own dedicated website & blog! Check it out at Anti-Sell.com.

Introducing… Anti-Sell: the Sales Book for Freelancers Who Hate Sales

Anti-Sell now has its own dedicated website & blog! Check it out at Anti-Sell.com.

I’ve been pretty quiet on the blog over the last six months or so – but for good reason. In addition to doing client work and organising Cardiff SEO Meet stuff, I’ve been writing a book. And now it’s here…

Introducing Anti-Sell: Marketing, Lead Generation & Networking Tips for Freelancers Who Hate Sales.

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Where to buy

Wanna just grab a copy? Go here for info & links!

Wanna learn more about how the book came to be? Read on…

The story of Anti-Sell

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Truth be told, I never thought I’d ever become an author. I love blogging (the fact that SEOno’s been going since 2011 is proof of that!) but I thought books were silly – after all, books can become obsolete (especially SEO books). But then…

A few years ago, I wrote a post on here titled 20 Ways That Freelancers Can Drum Up Sales During Quieter Times. Following on from that, I had a few more ideas of posts around the topic of sales and networking, aimed at freelancers specifically. Given that this is (mostly) an SEO blog, I wasn’t sure how best to proceed… That’s when I realised that the advice is pretty much timeless, and that each separate post idea I had could be a separate chapter in a book instead. That’s when the idea of writing a book – instead of lots of blog posts – became a plan.

Click to read more!