I’m reading Max Hastings Finest Yearsand there’s a lovely quote in there: “An Englishman’s mind works best when it is almost too late.” It’s the same for writers. But I wonder why? This is a slightly different problem from the one I discussed in November which involves doing stuff at the last minute because a [...]
Archive | How to freelance RSS feed for this section
Search engine marketing for beginners
Nearly every business has a website and we all know that Google (and to a much lesser extent Yahoo!, Bing and other search engines) help people find products and services they want. The challenge is to make sure that when people look for a business like yours, they actually find your business and not a [...]
The enduring mysteries of productivity
Why is it that when I am busy, I am also more productive? I mean that I get more done in an hour when I am busy than I do otherwise. How come you get more efficient at doing something the more you do it? Even creative tasks? Why does work always take longer than [...]
Fast, good or cheap. Choose two.
I used to make computer games and back then we had a saying about project management: ‘you can have any two of fast, cheap or good.’ It’s a choice that most people don’t want to make. Fast Most clients have a schedule: a campaign deadline, a business plan commitment, a product launch. Usually this is [...]
Lessons in customer service: email vs. phone response times
Isn’t it the most annoying thing. You go to a shop to buy something and when you get there, the assistant is on the phone. With someone who was too lazy to leave the house. You’re left kicking your heels. From the shop’s perspective, it’s a perverse incentive for uneconomic behaviour. It’s the same with [...]
Herding clients? Get a good contract.
I wrote a post two months back about when writers become lawyers. Sometimes writers are from Mars and clients are from Venus and we need some structure to the relationship. John McGarvey has produced a really nice plain English contract for copywriting. I do things a bit differently but we share the same objectives: Reducing [...]
Innovate or die slideshow
I really like this presentation from North Venture Partners. It works as a self-presenting presentation. The amount of text per slide is just right if you don’t have someone speaking over it and yet it still uses the kind of arresting images that I like to see on slides. (You’ll have to click the full [...]
When writers become lawyers – how to agree terms with a client
Every freelance writer has a story about the project from hell. Mine involves writing a 7,000-word in-house magazine in a month. By the third issue, thanks to unreasonableness from the client, it was 14,000 words in ten days. For the same money. There wasn’t a fourth issue. So how do you avoid situations where the [...]
We need this yesterday – how do you react?
Does this ever happen to you? Your client calls and says ‘we need this done immediately – right now – like, yesterday!’ And you’re up to your eyeballs in other work. You don’t want to let your client down because the relationship is important and you don’t want to say yes because you’re really manic. [...]
About
Matthew Stibbe is CEO of Articulate Marketing, Articulate Training and Turbine, the easy, online way to deal with office paperwork. He writes about flying on Golf Hotel Whiskey and Forbes.
