Workalone UK Sometimes, when you work alone, you need a little help

While looking at my relentless and un-diminishing task list this morning and wondering how I could be better organised, I hit upon a new plan.

Most of what I do falls into one of four 'areas of focus'

• Xebit Ltd
• Boldfish
• Future
• Domestic

The first two are obvious business areas and the last anything that isn't income generation but needs doing.

Beware of companies, and others, contacting you about advertising, especially if you've just appeared in the Yellow Pages.

• Telegraph Marketing - Contact you by phone, about some advertising you apparently ordered several months ago. They construct a poor copy of your Yellow Pages advert using graphics from your web site, and send it to you with an invoice.

Welcome to the Wauk Backup Initiative

This was borne due to the fact that most of us are one-man-bands and whilst on holiday, business trips or even more unavoidable absences from the office/pc, client problems, server issues and similar demands on our knowledge and time are still coming in. In order to resolve this, we want to create a mutual backup solution for data as well as services and support.

- interested members, please add your name here so we can check how many are interested.

Listed below in loose categorisation are affiliate links to various services and products.

If you are an affiliate, feel free to add your links, but use the power of Karma and click through someone elses when you plan to buy.

please add your name before your link and remember this is a freely editable page.

Business name
Address 1
Address 2
Town
County
Postcode

DATE 00.00.2007

Search Engine Optimisation Agreement

This agreement is hereby entered into between Company Name here (hereinafter referred to as “Company” and _____________________ (hereinafter referred to as “Client”) on the ___ day of _______, 200___.

1. ”Company” agrees to provide “Client” with Search Engine Optimisation and Reporting Services (if applicable) (hereinafter referred to as “SEO”).

a free model contract

http://www.nmk.co.uk/article/2004/02/10/model-contract

"NMK has joined forces with ISBA, the representative body for UK advertisers, and the IPA, representing communications agencies, to develop and launch a specialist ‘Model Contract’ for website design and maintenance.

Scams to watch for

There are a lot of scams about that any new businesses (and, indeed, established ones) need to be aware of, and it's true to say that there is a lot of information about them on the Internet, but it's generally quite spread about - hopefully we can start to keep a track of the common ones that small freelance businesses need to be aware of here.

If you find yourself posting "Is this a scam?" to the list, it almost certainly is.

• DomainRenewalScams - Bogus invoices for domain renewal
• DataCollectionServices - False 'Data Protection Act' scam
• CharityAdvert

Recruitment Agencies, found to be helpful

• RADIUS Recruitment - http://www.radiusrecruitment.co.uk
• ITSS Recruitment - http://www.itssrecruitment.com
• Peoplesource Consulting - http://www.peoplesource.co.uk
• Bytes technology recruitment - http://www.bytes-tec.com
• Evolution Contract - http://www.evolution-contract.co.uk
• NetworkersMSB - http://www.NetworkersMSB.com
• Square One Resources - http://www.squareoneresources.com
• Penta Consulting - http://www.pentaconsulting.com
• ReThink Recruitment - http://www.rethink-recruitment.com
• Leapfrog Careers - http://www.

Are you sure you want to?

Freelancing generally means working long hours and only getting paid when you've completed the work. You'll most likely lurch from having plenty of work but no money, through just enough work and just enough money to no work and no money. Rarely do you have too much money and no work...

This is caused by the simple process of being a one-man business. All businesses should spend time on marketing and promotion, but as a freelancer when you're busy working there's then less time for promotional activities, which means that work has a tendency to dry up.

1. Do you intend to get lots of business via the Internet? If so, SEO needs to be your primary consideration for name. Name words and associated words are what people will search upon. abcname.com means nothing whilst superbchoice-greatname.com will be picked up by search engines as two separate searchable words which if repeated in meta, heading and alt tags should drive you towards the front of SE pages.

2. Does "Your first thought up name" stick psychologically?