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Is Freelancing Worth It? How to Determine if Freelancing is Viable
Like many professionals, you might be wondering if you can make a living as a freelancer. After all, lots of people are trying it. A FlexJobs survey found that 36% of U.S. workers freelanced during the pandemic. That’s an increase of 2 million since 2019. According to a Fiverr study, 68% of remote workers are interested in freelancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
That isn’t to say that people are only freelancing because of the pandemic. Countless professionals are tired of traditional employment. They want work that’s satisfying, fulfilling, and adaptive to their life goals. It’s no surprise that the freelance/gig economy is more attractive than ever.
For some people, the switch to freelancing is forced. They lose their job (often due to the pandemic) and have to make ends meet by finding new ways to earn income. Others do it by choice. They choose to abandon a life of traditional work in search of something more fulfilling. You’ve probably witnessed friends and family attempt freelancing.
In this article, we help you decide if freelancing is right for you. We’ll cover the benefits and drawbacks of the freelance lifestyle. Then we offer some questions to ask yourself to help you decide if you’re ready to make the switch.
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RescueTime vs TimeCamp vs Timing: Which Time Tracking App is Better for Small Teams
Employee productivity is essential for any successful business, and in the 21st century, there’s a myriad of different distractions that can affect it negatively. The main culprits here are – of course – social media and the Internet. An average American spends around 1300 hours a year on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Long story short – wasting time on various portals when your team is supposed to be working can be a severe problem, and it can be pretty hard to pinpoint and identify by yourself.
From a manager’s perspective, knowing precisely how much time your team members spend on different parts of a project is incredibly valuable, especially in the case of smaller teams, where each person’s contribution matters much more. It’s also crucial to know how their workload affects their work-life balance and if it has a negative impact on their personal lives. Thankfully, there’s a category of software that helps you with all that and more – time tracking tools.
While improving the Timing app, our intelligent automatic time tracking solution, and a premium product for Mac users, we did extensive research to compare our product with other tools on the market. We learned that there are quite a few different solutions out there, but RescueTime, TimeCamp, and our Timing seem to be some of the most interesting right now.
In this blog post, we will cover and compare each of these three tools, similar at first glance but with a different set of features and approaches to pricing. So, if you want to learn how they stack up against each other, our in-depth RescueTime vs TimeCamp vs Timing comparison is an excellent place to start!
In the meantime, if you are new to the time tracking tools, we strongly recommend you sign up for a 14-day free trial and download our Timing app to test all available features. The process is fast and easy, and it takes only a minute to set everything up.
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Time Doctor vs. RescueTime: Which App Will Help You Achieve Your Goals the Most?
For a freelancer, time tracking is crucial for many reasons. Perhaps the most important one is that billing clients for the time you spend on a project is how you make your money. Time tracking tools also help you stay on top of your work and better manage your time.
Even though Time Doctor and RescueTime are some of the most commonly used time tracking software applications these days, there are also alternatives you should consider. Our Timing app is an excellent choice for Mac users looking for an intelligent automatic time tracking solution. It helps you quickly figure out how much time you spend on important projects with less effort, measuring your work activities and distractions simultaneously.
Today, we will compare Time Doctor, RescueTime and Timing to help you decide which one works best for you and your freelancing business. We strongly recommend you start a 14-day free trial and download Timing to try out all the available features if you need a fast start. It will help you save time and money and ensure you don’t leave any working hours accidentally unbilled.
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Toggl vs RescueTime: Which One Should You Use?
As a freelancer, it is up to you to be productive and work efficiently. You have your clients and the tasks on your plate that need taking care of every day, so it’s easy for days to go by without getting anything done because it’s just too tempting to put off hard work. The solution? Invest in a time tracking tool that helps track how much time you spent on specific activities throughout the day!
Both Toggl and RescueTime are popular tools on the market. However, they have different features which set them apart from one another. In today’s article, we’ll make a general overview of both apps and break down some key features you should know about to make it easier to decide which tool fits your needs better.
In addition to that, we’ll compare Toggl and RescueTime with Timing, our premium time tracking tool for Mac users, as an excellent alternative. It offers some unique features that freelancers enjoy. If you want to test it out right away, use the 14-day free trial and download it now.
Let’s start by covering the basics of time tracking.
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How to Use Time Tracking for Better Freelance Job Bidding
Bidding on new jobs is arguably one of the most complex parts of working freelance. You need to send proposals to secure more work, but you don’t get paid for sending bids. Plus, there is plenty of rejection involved, making bids feel like an arduous chore.
Producing accurate bids will ensure you get paid what you’re worth, but first, you need a clear understanding of your time. You need to know how long tasks take to complete to factor into your proposals. If you get this part wrong, you could make a lot less money than you intend, or worse; you could even lose money.
For instance, let’s say you expect it will take three hours to write an article for a new client. But when you get into the task, it actually takes five hours. That’s two hours of unpaid time. If you knew the article would take five hours, you might have asked for a higher rate. Getting the time estimate right is even more critical for those who bill by the hour.
So how do you get a firm understanding of how you spend your time? Guesses and estimates are not good enough. You need to create your proposals from a data-based perspective by looking at your history. To get this information, you need to track your own time using time tracking software to get this information.
In this article, we teach you how to produce accurate freelance job bids by using time tracking software. These tips will make sure you are getting paid for your work.
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Freelancing in a Post-Pandemic World
The COVID-19 pandemic changed countless industries in a myriad of ways. The concept of work is evolving. Where once work meant going all-in with a single employer, it is now more diversified and distributed. Freelancing is becoming a bigger part of our lives.
The pandemic’s damage to the workforce was quick. Millions of people were furloughed all over the world. Entire positions were eliminated, never to return. 40 million Americans were unemployed by May 2020. Millions were added to that number each week.
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Time Management Hacks for Self-Employed Professionals
Kayla Matthews, a productivity-obsessed writer from Pittsburgh, has been writing for nearly a decade about self-improvement and business efficiency. You can see her articles on sites like MakeUseOf, Inc.com, Information Age, and her blog, ProductivityTheory.com.
Are you managing your time in the best ways? Self-employment and remote work can come with an abundance of benefits. But they can also come with the pesky issue of time management.
Time management isn’t just about time, either. It overflows into productivity, profits, stress, planning and so much more. Finding a balance in it all is the most important thing you can do.
Whether you have been freelancing for years or just started working from home due to the current crisis, read on for hacks that will help you with time management!
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The Full-Time Employee’s Guide to Time-Tracking
As a full-time employee, your pay isn’t necessarily connected to the specific amount of hours you work. That being said, time-tracking – keeping careful track of how you spend your working hours – may not sound like a valuable use of your effort.
Time-tracking, however, has the potential to transform your job, help you meet your goals, and give you powerful leverage with your employer.
Knowing how many hours you’re spending at work, and what exactly you’re doing during those hours, can help you:
- Increase your productivity
- Take control of your work schedule
- Get richer insight into your in-office and out-of-office working hours
- Gain leverage to ask for a raise or change in position
- And more…
In the following article, we’ll look at specific ways time-tracking can help you achieve the above, and potentially more.
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How to Stay Productive When Your Home Life Feels Unstable
Life happens. Although most of us prefer it when our lives are smooth and unproblematic, the reality is that most of us will experience personal crises at some time or another. Death in the family, chronic illness, divorce, parenting issues, and financial burdens are just a handful of problems that might come at us unexpectedly. As if these situations weren’t difficult enough on their own, you’ll most likely face an additional challenge during seasons like these: Learning to stay productive in the midst of emotional and mental stress.
In this article, we’ll look at how to remain productive and on-task during your working hours, even when your home life feels unstable.
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10 Signs You Need to Start Tracking Your Time
Kayla Matthews, a productivity-obsessed writer from Pittsburgh, has been writing for nearly a decade about self-improvement and business efficiency. You can see her articles on sites like MakeUseOf, Inc.com, Information Age, and her blog, ProductivityTheory.com.
When you wake up every day, you know what you can expect based on your schedule. You might need to take notes at meetings or present to your team. Blocking off time for big events is easy, but how good are you when it comes to narrowing down what you’ll do in shorter periods?
Imagine you have two hours to work on assignments before your next meeting. You might tackle your duties by jumping in and not stopping for breaks, but then time slips by. Before you know it, you’ve barely accomplished anything and you have to leave.
This is one of the common ways people realize they aren’t as productive as they’d like to be. If you think that might be you, here are 10 signs that prove you need to start tracking your time. Once you try a few of these tips and start tracking time, you’ll breeze through your daily schedule and accomplish more than ever before.
