Tag: Freelancing

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The Gig Economy Data Hub

This looks interesting and useful.

The Gig Economy Data Hub aims to provide comprehensive information on all aspects of the gig economy.

The home page gets off to a great start:

A freelance graphic designer earns $25,000 for an ad campaign. A teacher drives for Uber on the weekends. An electrician owns and operates a successful small business. A stay-at-home mom sells Mary Kay cosmetics on Facebook. A recent immigrant cleans houses under the table. A retired woman knits hats to sell at craft fairs. What do these workers have in common?

There is more to what is currently called the gig economy than flavour-of-the-month media stories suggest.

The Data Hub is a collaboration between the Aspen Institute’s Future of Work Initiative and Cornell University’s ILR School. The data appears to be all US-focused, but the lessons and many of the findings will doubtless translate at least to the UK and possibly beyond.

 

Photo by Lucian Novosel on Unsplash

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A place to live and work

Back in the century of 9 to 5, there was Home, there was the Commute and there was the Office.

In the age of the sovereign professional, the Commute often disappears. Home and Office become one.

According to the UK’s Office of National Statistics, 4.3 million people now work from home. That’s 13.6% of the total workforce (both employed and self-employed). However, the data suggests that half (50.3%) of all self-employed people work from home, either wholly or using home as a base from which to visit clients.

That’s a lot of home-offices.

Continue reading “A place to live and work” →

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Serfs up – The Economist on the gig economy

The Economist has an article on freelancing: Serfs up – Worries about the rise of the gig economy are mostly overblown.

I have a couple of thoughts whenever this comes up.

‘Twas always thus

There has always been a freelance / independent / gig economy / zero-hours sector. Indeed, if you take a long view, it’s the 40 hour nine-to-five that’s the exception. Continue reading “Serfs up – The Economist on the gig economy” →

Work

Don’t charge by the day … or, worse, per word

About a year ago, I had a long discussion with a prospective client about this. The simple fact is that charging by the day, or per word, creates an immediate conflict of interest: the client is motivated to go short while you are motivated to go long.

I was reminded of this by a marketing mail from John Niland’s VCO Global:

Charging for time is easy. It’s familiar in many sectors: from the oldest profession to the newest. However, there are three problems with hour/day rates:

1: While on the surface, a day-rate is easy to agree with your client, it creates a fundamental conflict of interestin most relationships. Your client wants the fewest days possible: you often need more time to do a quality job. Furthermore, the client is likely to involve you later rather than earlier, in order to save cost…

The webinar being promoted looks interesting.

 

Image: Photo by Aron on Unsplash

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Something for the weekend – Jordan Peterson

These are really good: two (different) lectures by Jordan Peterson in Iceland. As I recall, the second lecture starts with some background on how he came to write 12 Rules for Life.

The book made its way to the top of the Must-Read pile and I’m currently half-way through. Exceptionally lucid.

And, as Stoic Week nears its end, I see a lot of commonality between Peterson’s responsibility-over-rights perspective and the Stoic perspective.

Set aside a few (well, five) hours to feed the mind…

 

Work

Seth on Trust

Seth Godin on trust … and how easily it’s lost.

 I’ve wasted many hours over the last few months trying to work my way through some significant bugs (workflow and data loss) with them, and each of the many customer service people I’ve worked with have pushed me to do more testing, and they’ve clearly stated that my problem is unique. This ‘bluff, stall and get used to it’ strategy is the sort of thing one might expect from a traveling salesman. Yesterday they finally let me know that in fact it’s a known issue, that it affects many people with hardware and software like mine, and I’m stuck with it. I can’t easily rip it out, and I can’t happily work with it either.

Interestingly, I recently had a similar issue with Sonos. They were, admittedly, a little slow to respond, but worked hard to resolve my issue (album tracks losing their correct order and appearing alphabetically under each album). And, as a result, they’ve retained trust and an advocate.

 

Photo by Bonnie Kittle on Unsplash

Work

1,000 True Fans

All you need is 1,000 true fans.

I originally posted this ten years ago, over on BurningPine.com, but came across it again, today. I think it’s still relevant for creators and sovereign professionals, especially with regard to the discussion on passive income streams. The original posted (as linked) has also been updated  …

1,000 True Fans

What a beautiful concept from Kevin Kelly.  A consequence of all that Chris Anderson talked about in The Long Tail is that it is easier for creators (photographers, musicians, writers, whatever) to reach directly to their audience, their market, their fans.  Cutting out the middle-man, and the middle-man’s filters, has never been easier.  What Kelly offers in this insightful post is something of a bridge or staging post between impoverished artist and mega-star.  Simplistically put, all an artist needs in order to provide a living is “1,000 true fans”.  Kelly defines these as follows:

“someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.”

Crucially, Kelly suggests that the true fan will spend one day’s wage per year on your product, nominally pitched at $100.  Thus, 1,000 x $100 = $100,000 = a reasonable living.  Of course, the real figures will vary by geography, by muse and by the size of the artistic unit: a six-piece rock band will require a higher income (= a bigger number of true fans) than, say, a poet.  However, it’s a great concept.  Simple, elegant and worth pondering.

Kevin Kelly — The Technium

 

Photo by Eric Ward on Unsplash

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Work to be one in a hundred

You don’t need to be one in a million to succeed, but you should aim for one in a hundred.

One hundred is an interesting number. In ancient Rome, a Centurion commanded one hundred men (usually between 60 and 150). Even today, an army company will comprise about 100-150 soldiers. Reaching 100 employees is a landmark, and a step-change, for a growing business.

The anthropologist Robin Dunbar proposed, in 1992, that the human brain can maintain a maximum of around 150 social relationships (Dunbar’s Number).  In more recent research, he has found that the average number of Facebook Friends is 155. You can have more links, of course. Clicking is easy, but maintaining real social relationships is hard.

Take that across to a typical professional scenario. Your business relies on the relationship (not transactional) model: clients need to know and trust you. When your client faces a problem, they can choose from just 100-150 trusted relationships to solve it.

You want to be that one per cent – the one person best suited to save the day.

 

Photo by Thomas Lefebvre on Unsplash