Mommy Ginger
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Freelance Writing Side Gig (FWSG): Road to Success program

Not doing anything at home? I’ve already shared with you that I take courses at SkillShare (just click on this link for a two month free subscription). But to also help out our kababayans and to support locally made course, I have come across this course. You may want to try Freelance Writing. This course is called Freelance Writing Side Gig FWSG): Road to Success program.

Try Freelance Writing!

All you need to do is set aside one hour every day and learn about the freelance writing. The Freelance Writing Side Gig: Road to Success program is perfect for people who want to upskill while spending time at home during the quarantine period for Covid19.

If you are looking to be freelance writer, this course will help you check on what you already have and from there, Charlyn Awing, the creator of this course will teach you specific skills to level up and enhance your unique knowledge so that you can attract your dream clients.

Also, you will learn proven strategies on how to start a freelance writing side gig even if you are BUSY.

Discover Charlyn’s past failures and mistakes became an instrument for me to attract and get hired by my dream clients.

Get mentored also by a passionate and committed accountability partner who believes in your capability and keeps reminding you that YOU CAN while guiding you like a mom!

Charlyn Awing, the creator of this course, also mentioned that before she launched FWSG, she passionately trained 80 Beta Testers for a period of 2 weeks because she wanted to prove its effectiveness. She focused mainly on the Mindset and Focus part (which now comprises Module 1 of the full course), and here are just some of what the challengers said:

“My major problem was I didn’t know where or how to start Freelance writing. Now, there is more clarity to achieve my goal in Freelance writing. Before, I wanted to do a lot of things but this course helped me summarize and pinpoint my strengths and weakness. Overall, the time was well spent. The videos are informative and the activities help a lot by breaking down one’s strength in writing and makes you realize where you should focus on. Mother Ant’s video was engaging from start to finish. I made sure that the environment was less distracting so that I won’t miss any important advice. She’s also inspiring and encouraging especially to newbies that want to pursue a freelancing writing career.” – Dianne

“My major problem was insecurity and very little idea about freelance writing. I started researching about freelancing way back 2018 and I joined groups/network to help me get started. I kept trying until other opportunities came and I gave up freelancing. After the course, I realized that I’m actually cut to be a writer. Wow! I know now that I can be more than my experience of writing reports. More than that, I’m excited to go and start my dream. I know that along the way, I will encounter defeats, mistakes, and insecurities. But my courage will always be sourced from my humble beginning in our lesson 1. I will remember that “Mother Ant” rooted for me, and if she believed in me, why shouldn’t I? The course was personal! Like finding a jeans that fits you so well, it was almost tailored fit!” – Joanne

If you want to know more about the creator, you can check MotherAnt and follow here here: https://facebook.com/motherantcharlynjune

Please do check out her course at: https://motherant.com/freelance-writing-course/ The course will start this coming April 13 so hope you can read and consider this course.

If you have any questions about the course, just reach out to Charlyn Awing: https://motherant.com 🙂

Feel free to share this with other people who want to try this and to earn from home.

How Financial Tools Can Keep You Out of Trouble

Money is a difficult subject to talk about. But with the right financial tools, anyone can learn to manage their expenses and stay away from financial troubles later on.

Those who know me would know that I like automation. And, I also like looking for financial tools that can make my life easier and my business run smoothly.

Today, I’d like to share three financial tools that can help freelancers manage their finances better. I’ve personally used these, and I can attest that they definitely work.

Financial Tool #1 – Wally for Expense Tracking

I’ve been a fan of Wally for almost two years now and I’ve been using it to tracking and managing finances.

What I love about it is that it lets me compare my income versus expenses. It also gives me insights on my spending habits.

One of my guilty pleasures is online shopping. I just can’t help it! I get curious about a lot of stuff, especially when it comes to beauty products and Zeeka’s things. I’m also into checking out local brands. Just check out my Instagram and you’d know what I mean.

And sometimes, I can’t help but be a bit impulsive.

But with Wally, I get to see the expenses I’ve made and categorize them according to their purpose. It lets you create your own budget, add tags and categories, and even the location of your purchase.

It also lets you add reminders for recurring payments, attach images and pictures of receipts, and even keep track of all financial accounts in one place. You also even set goals for savings and investments.

Wally also has a feature where you can track the loans you’ve made and strategize on payments to avoid incurring penalties.

The most awesome thing about the app? It’s absolutely FREE!

You can get yours today by visiting the App Store or Google Play.

Financial Tool #2 – Paypal

I have used PayPal ever since I started writing for a living. And being a recognisable brand all over the world, Paypal made it easier for local and international clients to trust me with their business.

What I love about Paypal is its flexibility. I can send and receive funds from my clients without the fuss. I can also integrate other apps and automate processes like recurring payments with ease.

I have always prioritized automation in running my projects and businesses. As an entrepreneur, it’s important for me to free my time so I could focus on the tasks I need to do. And Paypal has given me the option to do just that.

Paypal has come in handy for online payment options, especially for Manila Workshops and Taxumo.

Those who avail of our workshops find it easier to make seat reservations through our website. It also gives them easier access to ongoing promotions and deals with just a click of a button. Taxumo users also get to enjoy seamless payments when they use their Paypal to pay for our services.

This service from Paypal is an awesome tool you can use for your freelance business. You can use it to get direct payments from anywhere in the world transferred to your local bank account.

You can also add it to your website and other profiles for clients to make payments any time.

Here’s a quick tutorial on how you can also add a Paypal button to your website:

Financial Tool #3 – GCash

I’m such a fan of GCash because it’s so convenient. Ever since I started using it, I didn’t have to carry as much cash anymore.

GCash is perfect for freelancers, especially those who don’t have time for long queues just to pay their bills. With just a tap of a button, you can get your phone bills, credit card bills, and other utilities paid at your convenience.

Here’s a cool feature from GCash. Did you know that you can just scan your electricity bill to pay it on your GCash app?

Yep, I used to type in the reference numbers when I started paying our electricity bill through the app. This process is a bit tedious and is prone to errors, but it definitely beats standing in line at the payment centers or banks.

Thankfully, GCash now added a feature where you can scan the code at the bottom of the bill and saves you from all the effort.

GCash also has other features that freelancers can take advantage of. There’s GCredit, where you can use it as a credit card for online payments. And there’s also GInvest, where you can start investing your hard earned cash and get access to various investment funds.

You can check out my post for more information about GCredit here.

If you’re interested in investing, you can learn more about GInvest here.

Freelancing can be difficult, especially if you’re starting out or if you don’t have a steady stream of clients. That’s why it’s important for every freelancer to learn how to manage their finances well.

Good thing that there are financial tools available today that can help you stay out of debt and financial troubles.

What tools do you use to manage your finances? Share your finance-related tips with us below.

Upgrade your Freelancing Career With 5 Awesome Tips

Yesterday, I was talking with a friend and we were talking about how the industry has changed over just a few years. It’s good that freelancing has provided Filipinos jobs, not only for people in Metro Manila but also in provincial areas. But, as the number of freelancers grow, the more competitive this landscape will be. Consider that there is a rapidly increasing number of gig workers all over the world.

To upgrade your freelancing career, you can’t just stay in your comfort zone. What do I mean by that? It means that you should be looking for ways to be relevant to your clientele. You should look for ways to stand out and at least attract a certain niche.

As a freelancer, there are two ways to “earn more”: 1) get more clients at the same price point or 2) increase your price and get quality clients. If you choose the second, understand that an increase in price should be equated to an increase in your brand value.

To increase your value though, you need to have skills that are in demand. You need to have a specific set of skills that not a lot of freelancers can offer.

As years go by, never stop evolving. Why? Because this fast paced world requires you to. As a freelancer, you need to catch up. You need to know what’s happening. The field of work along with the expertise in need changes every single day. What might be in trend today might be forgotten tomorrow.

Learn new skills that are required in your chosen vertical, but also be on the look-out, study and research on new technologies and new things that are being introduced in the market.

Life-long learning should be a priority. You need to be able to adapt to the changing needs of your clients and the world. Doing so will assure you of any job no matter what happens.

Today, I will be sharing with you some awesome tips on how to level up your freelancing journey. Some are absolutely free, while other strategies may need some investment. But all of them will contribute to your success as a freelancer.

Take Online Courses, Webinars, and Events

There are tons of free courses and webinars you can attend. Be careful though in choosing which ones to take.

While most experts launch courses to help others succeed, there are still those who do it for personal gain. It’s best to get to know the credentials of the person conducting the training. Also, look for practitioners. There is value in learning from another’s experiences (especially in this field). Doing so will help you learn and acquire new skills that you can use to level up your game.

Luckily, we have a lot of experts in the local industry that offers free online courses. There are also live events, like the PayPal Freelancer Community Workshops, you can attend to help you be a better freelancer.

I recently finished a workshop hosted by PayPal where I discussed how to become an “official” freelancer.

As freelancers, you should take advantage of these complementary events. Speakers in attendance are experts in their own rights. And they also have a lot of things to share that will help you upgrade your skills.

To know more about Paypal’s upcoming events, you can follow their Facebook page for details.

Maximize Online Quizzes and Worksheets

I’m a sucker for lists, worksheets and templates. I subscribe to newsletters just because they have a list or template that I’d love to have. The value though that you get from these online template, quizzes, worksheets, etc. is ONLY IF you actually use them.

Are you studying to be a copywriter? Check out this website for free copywriting worksheets.

Want to improve your social media marketing skills? Here are some downloadable worksheets to help you manage and plan your social media marketing strategies.

You can always go to Google and look for relevant quizzes and worksheets to test your conceptual knowledge of the topic or the skill.

Check out and use Web and Mobile Applications

Technology enables us to do whatever we want at the tip of our fingertips. When you put structure to what you do using technology, you will be more efficient. When you are more efficient, you never miss on any commitments that you have made to your client. You then become more trustworthy and credible.

One way you can professionalize your career is to prepare the needed documents of a client and submit it on time. Have proposals, contracts, project timelines, and invoices ready to be sent out. For invoices, create an online invoice already using your PayPal account. You can customize your invoices using your PayPal account / dashboard.

As freelancers, these documents are very important when it comes to winning a client. The more you inject professionalism in handling your freelancing business, the more clients will gravitate towards you.

What’s important is you keep up to date with the times and learn about the important updates related to your freelance business.

Here is a video on how to use the invoicing feature of PayPal.

Enroll in an Actual School or Class Setting

If you’re seriously considering to upgrade your skills, enrolling in a school or class setting would be the best to go.

Enrolling in a specialized course can give you all you need to get the proper training you need. But make sure that you will get the best out of it. After all, it’s your time that’s on the line.

Attend to all your classes and be punctual with your schedule. It’s also vital to do all the assignments and pass all the subjects. All of your efforts will be rewarded with a certificate that will signify your successful completion of the course.

This will also strengthen your expertise as a freelancer. It will also be beneficial for your career, since it will give you the credentials you need. It will also help you get better deals and better pricing for future projects.

Put Everything You Learn into Practice

As the famous Gary Vee says, “Ideas are sh*t without execution.”

This is so true! Learning about theories is good, but without practice, it wouldn’t mean anything. Those theories and concepts will just be put to waste if you don’t use it, and come up with concrete outputs.

Make sure to try out the things you learn. You don’t have to be an expert to get results. Plus, you get to learn more things when you start doing them.

In the vast world of freelancing where workers are coming from all over the world, what makes a freelancer successful most of the time is that he/she just starts acting on plans that they create.

Stop overthinking and start doing.

So, are you ready to upgrade your freelancing career?

Mad Hatter: Freelancing Demands Many Hats!

Few and far in between are the freelancers who do just one thing. Because we are essentially one-man (or one-woman!) companies, it means that whatever our specialty, we often are required to do other things, perhaps as additional services for customers, but also marketing our services to potential clients, making bids and proposals, doing our own bookkeeping and accounting, accepting payment for services rendered, and so on.

Previously, I talked about the importance of (and how to find) your niche market and the skill set to succeed in it, which forms the core of your business as a freelancer. But there are also other, auxiliary, aspects of your business that you can’t afford to ignore or neglect if you want to become a successful self-employed professional. And there are skill sets you need to develop to supplement that core business and make it more profitable.

Let’s take my life as a blogger for an example. Apart from MommyGinger.com, I also blog for ManilaReviews.com, so one way or another, I’ve been blogging for several years now. It’s all too easy to think that setting up a blog only requires that you be a good writer, but you’d be wrong about that. Here are a few basic skill sets every blogger should have:

  • Writing: You don’t have to have perfect grammar, but having the skill to effectively communicate what you want to say is vital to attracting and keeping readers. You also need to develop a particular voice and style for your blog, one that helps you connect not just with your readers’ minds but with their hearts as well.
  • Photography: In this day and age, not many people will read a solid block of text on a blog without any pictures to speak of, so you’ll have to know what attracts the eye so you can take or select good photos. This becomes even more important for food, travel, fashion, and other lifestyle blogs.
  • Technical: Yes, you can hire a designer or buy a template for your blog, but while you don’t need to learn to code, you still need to know enough to make small tweaks and adjustments to make your blog your own and troubleshoot when need be. It can be time consuming and expensive to go to a designer for every little change you want to make.
  • Marketing: If you want your blog to pay for itself, you’re probably going to be looking at advertisements and sponsorships; for personal blogs, endorsements are great too. If you want to maximize earnings and preserve the integrity of your blog, you need to have the marketing savvy to understand how the content you publish as well as the products and services you endorse fits your brand.

So just from this one example, you can see how I need to wear many hats as a blogger—and my blog is not my only business, so you can only imagine the madness that results if I don’t manage my time and my clients’ expectations properly!

Still, this multi-hatted nature of freelancing presents a two-layered challenge if you’re just starting out. First, you need to determine which skills to hone so they do you the most good and you earn the most money, and second, you’ll need to actually learn and sharpen those skills.

For the first, think of drawing a flower the way we learn it in kindergarten. The center is your core competency or specialization — your niche in the market place. Inside that “center” are the skills you absolutely need to keep your business robust. Then draw the petals around the center. Each can contain a skill set that attaches to that specialization and makes it more appealing to your clients. Now, you may need to focus on certain “petals” over others, but it’s still good to know what those other aspects are—and where to source people with those skill sets should you need them. One way to do that is to expand your network, to talk to people who are experts in those fields, join meet-ups (the Freelance Blend monthly meet-ups are great for these) or online groups.

To get a crash course in necessary skills, you can do your own research or look into workshops. In fact, you may want to check out the PayPal Freelancer Community Workshop series—more on this later. Apart from workshops like these, you can also join online courses such as those offered by Udemy, Coursera, and more. You can also find lots of video tutorials on YouTube as well as informative and inspiring information from TEDTalks and the many, many podcasts produced around different industries and interests. In this day and age, you don’t need to go back to school to go back to school, if you know what I mean!

I will always encourage exploration as a freelancer: Learn a little about a lot of things so that you can make an informed decision about the few things you want to learn a lot about. And you never know when those little bits of knowledge will come in handy when dealing with a new client or business opportunity.

And yes, you may find yourself feeling like the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland from time to time, especially if you’re a mom! We are constantly putting on and taking off different “hats” or roles, sometimes even wearing more than one at the same time.

But one of those skills you’ll have to learn is organization and time management—to find a method to the madness. In the same way you try on many different hats, then settle down with a collection of headgear that complements your looks and personal style, you should also explore the different skill sets that relate to your career, then develop the ones that you are comfortable with (or which you actually enjoy), as well as the ones that help you grow your business.

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Do you have any tips or resources you’d like to share with me and other Mad Hatters reading this? If you’re keen to learn more about things that you’ll need to flourish as a freelancer, i’ll be having another session on November 18, 2017 for the PayPal Freelancer Community Workshop series. The details are on this link: http://bit.ly/PayPal5thFreelancerWorkshop

Continue to follow also the other freelance experts Fitz Villafuerte, Abe Olandres, and Liz Lanuzo. Check out the full schedule below, and join the PayPal Philippines Freelancer Community group on Facebook for updates on the venues. Hope to see you there!

What I Learned from a Korean Drama

I’ve been too nice. I know that sounds chauvinistic, but just hold on for a bit.

If you know me, I will say yes to a lot of things. I will offer to meet up and coach a person for free. I will sometimes offer free advertisement on my blog for small business owners. I will offer financial resources for things to push through, even if I won’t exactly benefit from that thing. I will even offer brands free stuff from my blog and from my own time, if I want to help out.

And mind you, these things are things that are of value to me, whether it be because of the time spent or the financial resources that I spent. I know that these are valuable to many others, too.

And I did not build my brand overnight. It took blood, sweat and tears.

Where is this going, you may ask?

This is going to a lesson that is applicable in all of your freelancing careers (and entrepreneurship lives! haha!). And I was reminded of this lesson while I was watching White Nights, a korean drama on Netflix.

I was reminded that to keep a Client/Partner happy, the relationship that we have should be a “win-win” situation for both parties. Although, in that K-drama, they laid things out in a blunt manner.

But seriously, why do I NEED to keep giving if I feel that I don’t get anything out of a relationship. Why is it my fault that I have to step back when I feel that I’m no longer valued? Why do I always need to understand people around me, when it was I who was the one in the losing end all along?

So before you make decisions, or feel things, assess the situation. Ask yourself, were you fair to your client? Did you give it your all during the times that they needed you? Did they value you as much as you valued yourself?

If you did the best that you could, then that’s what matters.

And if you’re on the other side, before you judge, think. Did you really give as much value? Why do you feel that way? Is it the other party’s fault or was it a lapse on your end. What could you have done to keep the relationship alive?

Walang forever if walang effort para maging forever.