a2 Milk Company sues the ABC

THE a2 Milk Company has launched legal action against the ABC over a segment of The Checkout which described a2’s health claims as “bullshit”.

Source NEWS.com.au | Business http://ift.tt/1B3TRZI

Could this be the Aldi killer?

COLES and Woolies, watch out. It’s the discount chain which just beat Aldi to be named Britain’s best supermarket, and now it’s headed down under.

Source NEWS.com.au | Business http://ift.tt/1B3TRZw

Never Pay Baggage Fees Again: Why Budget Travelers Love Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines fans know the routine: 24 hours before your scheduled departure, you make a mad dash for the computer to check in for your flight. That prompt check-in is key to getting a good seat on the discount airline, which doesn’t assign seats — it leaves it up to passengers to seat themselves on each and every flight.

The days of snagging a coveted “A” boarding pass are likely gone unless you’ve paid for early boarding or have amassed an approximate bajillion Rapid Rewards points. But there are still plenty of solid reasons to fly Southwest, both to save money and to get more for your travel dollars. If you aren’t already including this carrier in your airfare searches, you’ll want to change your ways.

Bigger Seats: Headed Your Way in 2016

New planes joining Southwest’s fleet will provide .7 more inches of seat cushion for weary travelers to rest on. Boeing 737 planes set for takeoff in mid-2016 will feature seats 17.8 inches wide. It may not seem like much extra space, but the new seats are more than a half-inch larger than those on most major airlines. It could be the difference between a comfortable flight and three hours of feeling the circulation to the lower half of your body slowly drain away.

In the 1980s, many major carriers offered seats between 19 and 20 inches wide. But rising fuel costs and a struggling air travel industry pushed airlines to pack more passengers onto every departing flight. In many cases, that meant reducing seat width or pitch in order to squeeze a few more rows of paying travelers onto a plane.

For Many, the Best Frequent Flyer Program

Airfarewatchdog.com users voted Southwest the best frequent flyer program this spring, favored by 32% of the more than 1,500 travelers who completed the poll. Delta came in second place, with a paltry 17% of the vote. “Southwest is a great value for domestic flyers, and their Companion Pass is one of the most valuable rewards available on the market,” The Points Guy Brian Kelly told Mashable in light of the poll results.

Southwest enacted changes to Rapid Rewards in April, and it took some time for Jason Steele, another writer at The Points Guy, to determine the true effects of the changes. Rather than charging the equivalent of 70 points per dollar for Southwest reward flights, the program now determines the points required based on where you fly, when you fly, and even variables like demand and the time of your flight.

So while before you could pretty much guess whether your points could get you on a free flight, now you’ll have to poke through Southwest’s itinerary to find the cheapest or otherwise most-feasible flight to use your rewards on. “Southwest still has plenty going for it … but the truth is that nobody knows what value to expect from Rapid Rewards anymore, which is not how a loyalty program should work,” Steele concluded.

But Southwest’s Rapid Rewards program is still one of the easiest ones to decipher: You earn a point for every dollar you spend on airfare, the airline offers unlimited rewards seats and your points don’t expire — ever. And Southwest doesn’t have annoying blackout dates for reward travel.

Want to earn points faster? The Southwest Airlines Visa card offers 50,000 bonus points if you spend $2,000 in your first three months, two points per dollar spent and 6,000 anniversary points.

No Change Fees, Free Bags and Other Perks

Even if you aren’t adding up your rewards points as we speak, Southwest has plenty of other perks that make it worth flying.

Southwest is the only major U.S. airline that doesn’t charge change fees. That means you can change your mind or your plans as many times as you like before stepping onto your flight. The one catch: Southwest, like many airlines, does have a no-show fee.

If you fail to notify the airline at least 10 minutes before your departure that you’re going to miss your flight, you’ll lose that ticket and any right to a credit to use on another flight. And missing your departure could even void your return flight. If you’re a frequent Southwest traveler, store its customer service line in your phone in case you change plans or are in a cab that likely won’t make it to the airport in time.

Another perk: Go ahead, pack that extra bag. “Lost so much in the complaining about rising fees is the fact that Southwest still allows travelers to check two bags under 50 lbs. for precisely no money,” David Landsel explained on a recent Airfarewatchdog.com list of reasons to fly Southwest. “And if you are traveling with more than that, it’s kind of hard to feel sorry for you having to pay your share.”

OK, one last way Southwest saves you money: the booze. One very happy customer reports that free drink tickets are readily available, but if you need to pay up, it’s still worth it — drinks on Southwest cost just $5 each, compared to the $7 and up on most airlines.

Your Turn: Do you fly Southwest? What’s your favorite money-saving perk?

Lisa Rowan is a writer, editor, and podcaster living in Washington, D.C. She thinks free drink tickets on flights are better than Christmas.

The post Never Pay Baggage Fees Again: Why Budget Travelers Love Southwest Airlines appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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22 Gmail Plugins That All Content Marketers Need to Know About

When email first came out, each time I got a new message, I loved it!

Now? I get hundreds per day—it’s not quite as special anymore.

But while the entertainment value of email has declined, its role in business has remained important.

Of all the email options out there, I’m a big fan of Gmail. It’s a free service and one of the most popular email services on the web:

But here’s the thing: just using Gmail isn’t enough if you want to achieve great results in your business. You have to use it the right way.

Did you know that being interrupted by email costs the average worker an hour of lost time each day? Think about how much work could be done in that extra hour. 

Part of the problem is that we develop bad habits over the years. Radicati found that the typical employee checks their email an amazing 36 times per hour. They also send and receive 105 emails during the day.

I’m sure you’ll agree that this level of distraction is not conducive to productivity and that this volume of email for an average worker is kind of scary. It’s almost inevitable that you would lose emails and forget to do important things.

Managers are supposed to be pretty good at…well…managing things, right? But even they can’t manage inboxes well. In fact, 59% of middle managers miss at least one important piece of information from email every day because they can’t find it. Sometimes, they never see it in the first place.

As marketers, we deal with many people who have these habits every day. Heck, maybe we ourselves are guilty of some bad habits as well.

That’s why I’m going to show you how to turn your Gmail inbox into a machine, where junk is ruthlessly eliminated and valuable emails are always acted upon.

To do so, you’re going to need plugins, and lots of them.

That’s why I’ve hand-picked 22 of the best Gmail plugins that will help you clean up your inbox (and keep it clean), send emails that get opened more, and increase your email productivity.

You won’t and shouldn’t install them all, but I bet you can find at least a few that will make a significant difference in the results of your emailing efforts.

Streamline and automate sending emails

Two things always grow as you become more successful: income and emails.

Not only do you receive more email but you also send more emails—out of necessity, of course. Readers, employees, partners, and your regular friends all need your attention.

If you’re not careful, you’ll spend half your day checking and writing emails.

TNS found that workers spend the most time every week checking email:

Luckily, there are some great Gmail plugins that will help you clear out your inbox faster without missing anything important.

1. Boomerang. Use it to schedule emails or remind you to send an email at a specific time.

Boomerang solves all sorts of common problems for content marketers.

Do you ever want to respond to an email, but not right away? For example, maybe you need to send an invoice in a week.

Boomerang lets you schedule when your email needs to go out. Here’s how you do it:

Once you send the email, you don’t have to worry about remembering to do it later, and it doesn’t clutter up your inbox.

One other great reason to use the scheduling feature is for your link outreach campaigns. Emailing someone at 2 AM is a surefire way to get your email buried under the rest of someone’s morning email.

MailChimp found that the highest email open rates occur between 8 AM and 5 PM.

When sending emails to someone you don’t know well, schedule them to be sent during this window to maximize your chances of them being read.

While the plugin has a few other features, the next most useful one reflects why the plugin named Boomerang in the first place.

Sometimes, you can’t respond to an email right away even if you’d like to. You could be waiting for some results or for responses from other members of your team on a project.

So if someone, say a client, sends you an email asking for an update at the start of the day, you can “boomerang” the email to make it disappear from your inbox—for now—and show up at a later time marked “unread.”

This will prevent emails from being buried and forgotten. Here’s how simple it is:

2. Clientele.io. This plugin was created for marketers who want to maximize their follow-up email response rates.

If you’re dealing with busy clients but need their approval or feedback, you likely find yourself waiting for them to get back to you.

What Clientele does is it tracks the results of your normal email activity and over time determines which times are best to send emails to a certain person. You want emails not just to get opened but also replied to.

Like we discussed before, many people get bogged down by piles of email. Even if they mean to respond to you, it’s possible that they just forget.

Not only will this plugin help you send the first email at the optimal time but it will also help you time a follow-up email.

3. FollowupCC. Sometimes we mean to follow up with someone, but forget to. This plugin gives you the choice to set a follow-up date when you are sending/replying to an email.

If you haven’t heard back from your recipient, you’ll get a new email in that thread reminding you to follow up.

There’s another feature that made it hard to categorize this plugin. When you send emails, you have the option of tracking who’s looking at the email. The results can be seen in a sidebar as shown below:

When it comes to sales, only 2% of sales actually occur on the first contact. Eighty percent occur after the fifth contact.

Even if you’re not directly involved in the sales process, you likely use email to build relationships and work with people. If you don’t ever follow up, chances are that you’ve lost a lot of business (and profit) because your emails were simply forgotten or buried.

Considering how little it takes to send a follow-up (especially with a plugin), the results are definitely worth your effort.

Give it a try—start following up regularly when you don’t hear back from a contact. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the results over time.

4. Yet Another Mail Merge. Mail merges may have fallen out of fashion over the years, but in some situations they are still handy.

A mail merge, for those of you not familiar with the term, allows you to input contact information such as name, email address, and anything else you’d like into a spreadsheet. You can then send an email to all these addresses at the same time, complete with personalization.

Here’s how Yet Another Mail Merge works using a Google Sheet (spreadsheet) and your Gmail account:

5. WiseStamp: Create an email signature that stands out. If you’ve ever emailed me, you know that I have a pretty unique signature at the end of all my emails:

A good email signature is a great personal branding opportunity. It’s a chance to stand out while also communicating important information without any extra effort.

If you have a really high volume of emails, adding a line like mine to your signature will significantly cut down on the number of emails people send you. In addition, it saves you from people thinking that you’re rude because of your short replies due to time constraints.

WiseStamp allows you to create a custom signature for your emails. You can include a picture, links to social profiles or websites, phone numbers, and any message you want—the sky’s the limit.

Spying on prospects (a.k.a. tracking email open rate)

Where does your email go when you click “send”?

It seems as if it just poofs into the ether of the Internet.

Of course, it doesn’t disappear. You just can’t see it going into your recipient’s mailbox.

If you’re like me, you’d feel that it sucks. I want to know that my emails are ending up in inboxes and being read, not being filtered into junk or promotional tabs.

If you’re emailing someone influential, it could be days or weeks before you hear back…or never.

James Altucher once shared that he had 105,591 unread emails in his inbox. Wouldn’t it be helpful to know if he had at least opened an email you sent? You bet. Then you could follow up or try to get in touch through different means.

This is where the following plugins come in handy. They allow you to see when emails you send are opened and how often. You can use this information to improve your email open rate over time.

6. Yesware. When you send an email, all you need to do is check the box beside “Track” at the bottom. Yesware will track all future actions your recipient takes with your email.

You have two types of ways to view the results of tracking. There’s a limited collapsible panel above your inbox that you can use to view the most recent email data, or you can dig into detailed reports on the Yesware website.

In the detailed reports, you can analyze your results for all the major metrics such as clicks and opens.

If you’re running an email outreach campaign, chances are you’ll be emailing hundreds of people with similar subject lines.

By creating a few variations of your subject line, you can split test which one gets the most opens and positive responses. Take the winner as your new default, and then begin a new test during your next campaign.

Finally, Yesware also lets you create and save email templates. If you find yourself sending a lot of similar emails, just create a template and insert it into your next blank email. This feature can save you a lot of time during email outreach campaigns.

7. BananaTag. This plugin is very similar to Yesware. Just click the tag option at the bottom of any email, and you will be able to see exactly when and who is opening it later on.

The analytics are also very solid, allowing you to examine your email open rate over time and improve it through experimentation.

One final note: they’ve also released a beta tool that allows you to schedule sending emails, which may eliminate the need for an extra plugin.

8. ToutApp. This plugin is a little more robust and meant for a team use. It features similar tracking capabilities as the other plugins in this section, e.g., email opens, interactions (clicks/downloads), and replies.

ToutApp also features easy to save and use templates, which can speed up any repetitive outreach efforts.

I’d say the biggest difference between ToutApp and the other plugins in this category is that ToutApp focuses on tracking by the person rather than the email. This is a major benefit if you communicate with certain people over and over again and really want to learn which emails they respond to best.

Finally, note that ToutApp is exclusively a paid one. While they offer a 14-day free trial, there is no free level. It’s meant more for teams and professional marketers rather than those that are relatively new to the field.

9. Sidekick. This plugin was developed for Gmail by HubSpot and released as a free version (paid plan available). Just like the other plugins in this category, it tells you when and who opened your email.

On the free plan, the reporting is pretty basic and isn’t quite up to par with the other options. It’s not as easy to see overall clicks and opens over time.

The one neat feature of this plugin is customer insights. When you send an email, the Sidekick sidebar will emerge on the right of the screen and attempt to pull up relevant social media information of your contact.

Unfortunately, I found this to be really hit or miss, and often the plugin couldn’t find any information on a contact.

Boost sales with a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) plugin

Despite purchasing a CRM startup a while back, I don’t write much about CRM on Quick Sprout or the NeilPatel.com blog.

That’s because CRM is for sales, not marketing. CRM tools help you track your relationships with leads and nurture them down your sales funnel.

That being said, I know that some of you are involved in both marketing and sales. Since there are some great Gmail CRM plugins, I wanted to give you a few options.

These are all fairly comprehensive tools, so the best I can do is highlight the main benefits for choosing each, and you can read up on them on your own if interested.

10. Streak. Unlike most other CRM tools, Streak is specifically designed for Gmail, which gives it an advantage over many of the best-known CRM companies.

It features a lightweight dashboard that’s built right into Gmail. You can color-code prospects as they move through each stage in your funnel.

The big reason a CRM like this is helpful is that it takes a complex set of data and puts it on an easy to see chart/spreadsheet. Even with several leads at different stages in your funnel, you won’t forget to follow up with anyone.

And while this is typically meant for sales, there’s no reason why you can’t use a similar process for building relationships with influencers.

In addition to having standard CRM features, Streak also gives you other basic business tools that you might be interested in such as:

• email support (customer service)
• project development
• fundraising
• bug tracking

11. WORKetc CRM. This is another highly rated CRM plugin for Gmail. It’s not as pretty as its competitors, but it performs well.

This CRM plugin is designed for teams, and it excels in that area. In addition, it has great built-in features for project management and billing, which is a huge asset for certain businesses.

Instead of being built right into Gmail, it syncs with Gmail. Sometimes this is inconvenient, but it can be beneficial if you’re working with outside docs and calendars that you want to sync up.

Here’s a more in-depth video of its features:

12. ProsperWorks (formerly Strideapp). Recognize the handsome guy on the homepage? That’s the startup I was talking about earlier. It’s another Google App designed for Gmail users (rather than a poor adaptation of an app).

It is simpler than some of the alternatives, but that’s also a good thing for anyone looking for a lightweight CRM. It is a CRM tool, and it does CRM well. And while it syncs with your Google calendar, contacts, etc., it doesn’t try to handle billing or project development.

Obviously, I’m biased, so let me instead copy part of a review from a user:

“[Where] The extension really SHINES are the task management features. There are so many situations where several of us are involved in working on different activities for one prospect that are all tied together. It eliminated ugly spreadsheet pipelines, strings of forwarded emails, and hours spent searching/coordinating things.”

You’ll get a standard sidebar when in Gmail, showing you your contact history and profile:

Learn everything about the person you’re emailing

Even though sales is typically thought of as separate from marketing, there is some overlap.

You might have noticed that the sidebar in the screenshot of ProsperWorks has a ton of contact information on the person the email is being sent to. This has obvious benefits. No more forgetting what you’ve covered or asking embarrassing questions.

The plugins in this section are dedicated to this one important function. In addition, they can help you find contact information if needed.

Can you imagine sending an email to someone and being able to say, “I saw your tweet yesterday about X—it was great,” or something along those lines?

Or asking about a family member or a hobby your contact brought up months or years ago? Who isn’t going to appreciate that?

And these plugins can help you do that without you having to go out of your way. Most have a way to add important notes or check recent social media activity of your contacts.

13. Rapportive. About five years ago, Rapportive was the king in this area. It was pretty much the first plugin to do this sort of function right, which quickly led to its rise in popularity.

But since it was acquired by LinkedIn in 2012, Rapportive has lost its stranglehold on the niche. Many of its original features were stripped away to emphasize LinkedIn, and some performance bugs led to the rapid creation of alternative plugins.

The Rapportive sidebar today is fairly solid and draws its information directly from LinkedIn. This is a good thing if your contact uses LinkedIn, but it’s not very useful if they don’t.

14. Discoverly. One of the first major competitors to Rapportive was Discoverly. It has a lot of features similar to the original Rapportive.

You’ll see the sidebar widget on the right side as usual, and it contains links to the displayed contact’s profiles on popular social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter as well as information about connections (friends) and some recent activity.

It’s fairly simple, but that’s the appeal.

15. Full Contact. This is one of the latest rising competitors to the now crowded space of contact profiling widgets.

It also features a fairly simple but very attractive design. On the main panel, the social activity is downplayed in favor of other information. While there are links to social networks (small logos), there is a lot of space dedicated to allowing you to add tags or notes to a contact.

In addition, it clearly displays your contact’s location and time zone, which can be very handy when scheduling emails. If you want to see recent social activity, you simply click on the social tab at the bottom of the widget.

The most important thing is that it seems to be one of the most reliable plugins currently when it comes to finding contact information, which is the biggest challenge for plugins in this area.

Waste less time in your email inbox with productivity plugins

As a marketer, you know that your most limited resource is your time. And if you’re spending half of your day in your email inbox, you likely aren’t using it effectively.

Email, like social media, is both a tool and a recreational outlet. It’s easy to confuse value-creating work with fun.

That’s why I recommend using Gmail plugins to maximize your productivity.

Everyone has their own productivity kryptonite, which is why I’ve included plugins that address a wide variety of productivity issues.

16. Unroll.me. How many emails from other marketers do you end up deleting 90% of the time after glancing at them for a few seconds?

It’s normal to sign up for email lists. You might do it because you’re actually a fan of someone’s work or you just want to see what they’re up to. But over time, you’re likely to find yourself on a lot of lists that end up overwhelming you and your inbox.

The point of Unroll.me is to consolidate all the messages that you do want to read into one easy-to-read email per day.

You can also easily go down the list of your current subscriptions and unsubscribe from any lists you don’t want to be on with one click. Sure, this will take you a few minutes now, but it’ll save you hours over the long run.

17. Assistant.to. Ever get sick of trying to find a meeting time that works for both you and the other party? To help you with this task, this plugin is the best free plugin out there for you.

This plugin integrates with your Google Calendar to let you easily select free time in the upcoming days that you could use for meetings.

In the actual email you’re sending, you enter the length of time required for the meeting, then click on the free time in your calendar. The plugin formats the different time options so that your recipient can just click on a time that works for them, and the meeting will be automatically set.

18. ActiveInbox. While some of us are better or worse than others, most people procrastinate until a deadline comes up. This plugin was created to deal with that problem.

You can go through a large batch of emails and assign them both a priority and a due date. They will be arranged in a logical order so that you can deal with them most efficiently.

One caveat: There’s a free trial, but after that, it’s a paid tool (a few dollars a month). You should know by the end of the trial if the tool is worth paying for.

19. AwayFind. Put your hand up if you’re constantly checking your email throughout the day. Almost everyone does.

It’s obviously a huge waste of time and distracts you from doing actual work that produces value.

This plugin was created so that you could stop checking your inbox without worrying about missing anything important.

You create filters with it so that if a certain person sends you a message within a certain time frame, you will get a phone call or text to your cell phone with the text of the email.

This way, you’ll still get emails you want to read immediately within the time frame you want, but the less important stuff will wait for you until later.

20. Send & Archive. This plugin is actually built right into Gmail. It’s designed to help you get rid of all those long email threads.

When you reply to an email thread, it stays in your inbox unless you move it. With Send & Archive, as you might have guessed, the email automatically gets archived (you can still retrieve it later if needed).

To enable Send & Archive, click on the gear near the top right of your inbox, then click on “Settings.”

Next, click the radio button beside “show ‘Send & Archive’ button in reply” to turn it on.

Now, when you reply to an email, you’ll see a second “send” button. The one with the box with a down arrow will automatically archive the email after you send it.

21. The Email Game. Who said answering emails can’t be fun? This plugin isn’t for everyone, but if you find that it takes you a long time to slog through your emails every day, it might help you.

Once started, the plugin will give you a time limit to respond to each email. As you answer each email, the progress bar fills up until you finish answering all emails.

Obviously, this plugin isn’t good if most of your emails require carefully thought-out responses.

22. Taskforce. Taskforce is a really handy to-do list that you can edit on the fly in Gmail.

This saves you from having to record things that you need to do in another spreadsheet or text file. In the case that you don’t write down tasks in the first place, this saves you from continually having to search for and open emails.

Additionally, you can add people to specific tasks. When you finish the task, they’ll get an email update.

Conclusion

I really hope that you were able to identify areas where you could become more effective and/or efficient when it comes to emailing and found a plugin in this list that could help you improve in those areas.

Remember that Gmail is a tool (a good one), and you need to adapt it to your needs to make the most of it.

With the plugins in this article, you should be able to:

• get higher open and response rates
• spend less time checking email
• maintain a cleaner email box
• miss fewer important emails
• stress less about your inbox
• integrate Gmail into your marketing efforts for more profit
• make answering email less of a chore

I’ve given you 22 great plugins, but there are hundreds more out there. If you want more options or find a new problem, don’t be afraid to look around.

If there’s a particular plugin that you love that didn’t make this list, let me know in the comments below.

Source Quick Sprout http://ift.tt/1QM28CX

How to Make $40 an Hour as a Virtual Assistant: 7 In-Demand Services

Before I started working online, I thought the only freelance services business owners were willing to pay for were writing, web development and graphic design. Everyone I knew who was working from home and earning a good, solid income on their own terms seemed to fit into one of those three areas of specialization.

I didn’t have any of those skill sets, so when my husband and I decided to move to Costa Rica in 2011, my plan was to earn just enough to cover our living expenses by providing freelance administrative services. In other words, becoming a virtual assistant.

But along the way, I discovered a “middle ground” between the highly specialized copywriting, coding and design work done by professionals in those areas, and the lower rate administrative services typically provided by virtual assistants, like data entry, scheduling and inbox management. These were important services businesses owners needed, but they weren’t so specialized I’d need to go back to college or spend a ton of time studying.

Taking advantage of this middle ground helped me increase my freelance rate up from $20 to $40 per hour, while at the same time getting more and more client requests for ongoing work.

So what are these services in the middle ground? Here are seven crucial business support services you can offer as a freelancer, along with an idea of potential rates for each one.

1. Proofread Blog Posts

Business owners know that they need to be attracting visitors to their websites, and one great way to do this is through blogging. However, running a blog generally means working with a lot of content.

Draft blog posts will be coming in from all angles: paid writers, the business owner, guest contributors, company staff, interns and even customers. Someone needs to carefully proofread and edit each post before it’s published online. Why not you?

Estimated hourly rate: $15 to $25

2. Format Posts in WordPress

Once a blog post is polished and error-free, the next step is to publish it inside the business owner’s website content management system. Nine times out of 10, this is going to be the ever popular WordPress, and the great news is, WordPress is easy to learn.

If you’re new to freelancing, and you’re starting out like I did with no coding skills, know you’ll be just fine: You don’t need to know how to code to format and optimize blog posts. You can master the process in one week or less using resources on Udemy or WordPress 101.

Estimated hourly rate: $20 to $40

3. Manage a Blog Editorial Calendar and Brainstorm Headlines

What is a blog editorial calendar? It’s simply a plan and schedule of all of the upcoming blog posts that will be published on a business owner’s site. Brainstorm topic ideas and headlines that will appeal to the business’ target audience and help boost the site’s search engine rankings, and then space them out in a logical way on an online calendar or spreadsheet.

Estimated hourly rate: $30 to $50

4. Curate Content for Social Media

Anyone can research interesting article links, images and quote graphics, but not just anyone demonstrates the care or attention to detail to provide value to a business owner’s audience.

Do you think you could manage it? Could you put yourself in the shoes of someone who frequents your client’s blog, and figure out what headlines and images they’d find most helpful, entertaining or inspiring? If you can, get ready to write your own PayPal paycheck.

Estimated hourly rate: $15 to $40

5. Create Landing Pages

To build an audience and sell products or services, business owners have an ongoing need for special action-focused web pages, called “landing pages.” A landing page might encourage people to subscribe to an email list, register for a webinar, sell a product or announce an upcoming launch.

If you can create great landing pages, you’re guaranteeing yourself a freelance income, because the impact on your client’s business growth is immediate and obvious. Rest assured, there’s still no code to learn. Using WordPress page templates or user-friendly software tools like LeadPages and Unbounce, you can lay out your client’s marketing message perfectly.

Estimated hourly rate: $40 to $60

6. Format Email Newsletters

Take that same raw text you’ve been using for social media updates or in blog posts, and this time load it up inside email marketing software such as MailChimp, Infusionsoft or Get Response.

Use an existing template or create a new layout, put the right fonts in the right places, arrange the images where they look best, and double-check all the hyperlinks. Schedule the newsletter to send at a specific day and time, and you’ve just performed one of the most in-demand freelance services in the online business world.

Imagine how your weekly income could start to build if you were supporting just five individual business owners with their email marketing, for one hour’s pay each, every single week.

Estimated hourly rate: $25 to $40

7. Provide Customer Support

Business owners often receive a ton of audience feedback, questions and enquiries. To respond to all this incoming correspondence, they need help from detail-oriented, available freelancers.

In fact, my very first online job involved responding to customer support emails and formatting (not writing) blog posts for approximately 20 billable hours each and every week. It was a great way to get my foot in the door — and I’ve built my business from there.

Estimated hourly rate: $15 to $30

How to Find Freelance Jobs in Online Marketing Support

Now that you know what you’re going to do to help business owners, the next step is to find clients. To do this, you can try either the reactive approach or the proactive approach.

The first option is to respond reactively to job posts you see listed on freelancer platforms like Upwork and Elance. Search in the categories related to marketing, sales and administration, and focus in on keywords like blog management, social media and email marketing. For gigs focused on online marketing, set up a profile on CloudPeeps and start reviewing job listings.

When I started working online, I found four of my first five clients on Elance with rates between $17 and $25 per hour. One of those jobs expanded into full-time work in online marketing support after a couple of months.

To weed out the good opportunities, I read each and every new job posting in a given category once per day, narrowing them down to a shortlist of saved jobs. I considered how the tasks were described, what kind of tone the business owner used in their writing and how I could make a personal connection in my pitch.

I knew it was a numbers game — even if only one out of 50 opportunities was relevant for my limited experience at the time and paid a reasonable rate, being consistent in checking those new listings every day meant I would find it.

The second option is to reach out proactively to business owners via email and social media, introduce yourself and ask if they need support in a specific area of their business. Be clear, be confident and be brief, and you’ll be surprised by the number of times you’ll receive a “please tell me more” in response. LinkedIn is the perfect place to get started with this type of proactive networking with potential clients.

In addition, get yourself a new email address and sign up for newsletters from all the businesses you’d love to work with someday. By taking some time to scan those newsletters each week, even if it’s just their subject lines, you’ll start to get familiar with their voices, strategies and plans. This knowledge puts you in the perfect position to know when they might be expanding or changing, so you can jump in with a timely offer of your skills and support.

(Don’t want to get another email address? You can also create a filter in Gmail so these messages skip your inbox and go straight to a folder called “newsletters,” where they’ll be out of your way until you want to review them.)

Don’t be afraid to use a mix of both the reactive and proactive approaches. But in my experience, the reactive approach usually helps you get work more quickly, while the proactive approach helps you earn a comparatively higher rate. Once you try a bit of both, decide which one or what combination works best for you.

Start with one of the services on the list, decide on the resource you’ll use to learn it, then find your first paying client and you’re underway. Begin it as a side hustle for extra cash, or commit to rounding out your knowledge in each of the skills to make it a full-time, scalable income you can take with you anywhere in the world.

Your Turn: Have you earned money offering any of the services above? How did you find clients?

Danielle Greason, founder of Greason Media, quit her job and moved to Costa Rica with her family to start a new freedom lifestyle working online. Through her blog at VA Lifestyle Design, she helps aspiring freelancers to get the skills they need to earn money anywhere in the world there’s a WiFi connection.

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Some Thoughts on “Cutting Back” on Frugality

It’s a pretty typical story.

Person reaches a financial breaking point. Person begins to use frugality to cut back strongly on their expenses. Person pays down their debts and begins saving for the future. Person begins to feel a whole lot better about their financial state.

At that point, many people reach a crossroads. They begin to ask whether or not it makes sense to keep being so frugal. Once you have a healthy amount of savings or investments, is there really a reason to continue being so frugal?

Whenever I hear that question, it serves as a recognition to me that there are two ways to look at frugality.

Some people look at frugality as a tool. Frugality is something you choose to do to extract more money by doing things differently than you would normally do them. If you begin to feel like things are in a financially good place, it’s tempting to put that tool down and not “work” as much.

Others – myself included – look at frugality as a mindset. Frugality is simply how you look at all purchasing decisions. By default, you look for ways to minimize expenses and maximize your bang for the buck. By default, you question whether or not a pleasurable expense is really worth it.

When you use frugality merely as a tool, it becomes very tempting to put that tool down when the immediate financial danger has passed. Frugality as a tool means that you’re doing things in a way that doesn’t seem normal to you. You’re making choices you wouldn’t otherwise make if you weren’t “being frugal.”

So, in my eyes, people that really want to “cut back on frugality” are ones that view frugality as a tool rather than a mindset. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

In my eyes, having frugality as a mindset is far better than simply viewing it as a tool. Rather than having a desire to “put frugality away,” frugality is simply a normal part of how I view life.

(It’s worth noting here that I don’t think it’s “bad” to think of frugality as a tool. However, I do find that having frugality as a mindset has helped me tremendously in achieving personal and financial goals.)

I think there are several key components to having a frugal mindset, some of which I think can be cultivated.

Inexpensive items make me extra happy. I feel quite good about buying something at a significant discount than what I would normally pay for that item. It feels like a real “win” to hunt down a bargain. Whenever I use that inexpensive item, I feel good about it, too. I know that I’m receiving the benefit of using the item and I have more money in hand than I would have if I didn’t make a careful, smart purchase.

During those moments when I really recognize that I’ve achieved this – I’ve spent less money on something to get the same personal benefit – I feel really good in that moment. It’s a real “pump the fist” moment.

Expensive items make me feel unnecessarily self-conscious. A friend of mine owns a watch that cost almost $10,000. If I were to wear that watch on my wrist, I wouldn’t feel self-confident. I would feel incredibly self-conscious. I’d worry about having the watch stolen. I’d worry about appearing like a “mark” for pickpockets and people with something to sell. I’d worry about losing the watch. I also see it as a constant reminder of how much money I spent on this thing and I’d constantly think about how I could be using a lower-cost alternative to do the same thing.

Expensive items, unless they fulfill a very specific purpose, generally make me feel worse than before. I guess, in some ways, this is just a heightened awareness of the fulfillment curve.

I often feel bad about buying stuff just to fulfill a short-term want. For some people, the two factors above cause them to fill up their carts at the dollar store and constantly hunt for “bargains” on unnecessary stuff. In fact, my uncle did that very thing – he used to buy tons of stuff from dollar stores, much of which went unused.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t mind buying stuff that I want. The thing is that many of my wants are very fleeting. I’ll see something in a store and it becomes a short-term want. Most of the time, that want vanishes within a day or two if I don’t take action on it, so buying something to fulfill it is pretty wasteful.

Instead, I really only pay attention to the long term wants. Do I still want this thing that I wanted a few months ago? If so, then I’ll consider buying it. If the want doesn’t last… then it’s a waste of my money.

I am drawn to trying out the free and cheap options first. Basically, I want to see if the free or cheap options fulfill my needs or desires before I start plunking down more money.

For example, this is why I’ve made a few dozen batches of homebrewed beer in the cheapest stock pot known to man. Sure, I wouldn’t mind upgrading it at some point, but the cheap one works fine.

This is also why I buy a lot of generic products. I tried them first. They worked. Why buy the name brand version? I’ll upgrade to the name brand version if the generic version doesn’t work.

Most of the things that bring me genuine joy don’t involve spending money. I like playing with my children. I like doing things with my wife. I like going on walks. I like reading books. I like geocaching. I like playing board games, particularly at community game nights where they have a game library available. I like exploring new places. I like cooking great meals at home.

Those things bring me genuine joy. I don’t have to spend much money at all on any of them – and most of them are completely free. Knowing this causes me to lose some motivation to spend money on other things, other than as a relatively rare treat.

My savings for the future are naturally accelerated by this mindset. Not only do the above things feel completely natural to me, they also provide fuel for saving for the future. This provides a constant sense of progress and financial safety as I move through my normal life.

I know I have money in the bank. I know that my normal behaviors are causing that money to grow. Together, those things feel good.

On the relatively rare occasions when I do choose to spend money, it doesn’t cause any stress at all. I know that the money is available, so there’s no guilt or remorse when I do decide to pull the trigger on a big expense. In the last few years, our only major expenses have revolved around family travel, and I anticipate the same thing being true down the road. Yet, when we’ve traveled, I’ve not worried too much about the expense of things. We go where we want to go without worry.

To me, these are the elements of the frugal “mindset.” They work together to keep my personal spending and our family’s spending in check.

The real question is, how do you translate using frugality as a “tool” into this mindset?

For me, the most important factor in that transition was simply spending a lot of time thinking about my spending decisions outside of the stores.

I spent – and still spend – time reviewing our bills and our receipts. I look at the things I spent money on and ask myself, for each one, whether I got enough value out of that to make the expense worthwhile.

These days, I can usually say “yes” about getting value out of our expenses, but that wasn’t always the case. Going through statements like that during the early days of our turnaround usually involved repeated admissions that I wasn’t really getting worthwhile value out of my spending. There were always ways to spend less in order to get the same benefit. Often, I’d spend money without really receiving any significant benefit at all.

Hammering myself with those things again and again was painful, but it helped to forge a much better mindset. Today, purchases that don’t return enough value to me just seem wasteful. They don’t seem like fun things that I am denying myself. They just seem like a waste of my money and my life’s energy.

The end result? I find deep personal happiness in a lot of things in my life and I spend less money without really having to think about it at all.

That’s a real frugal victory.

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10 Work at Home Jobs for People Who Love Kids

By Holly Reisem Hanna Do you love working with children, but don’t want to work in a school, pediatrician’s office, or daycare? No worries! With today’s technological advances, women are able to work with kids and in fields that revolve around kids while maintaining a home office. So if you’ve been looking for a money-making […]

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Rotating Rewards: Smart Summer Buys in Discover and Chase Freedom Categories

July is a great time to pick up tools on sale — and Discover it® card users can get an extra 5% cash back to boot. Photo: Black & Decker via Facebook

When it comes to maximizing credit card rewards, many people choose to never pay an annual fee. That way, they never have to worry about canceling the card if they stop using it enough, or the impact on their credit if they do.

Two excellent rewards cards that can help you maximize rewards without ever paying an annual fee are the Discover it® and Chase Freedom® cards. Although they’re issued by different banks, they both work in similar ways – neither one charges an annual fee, and they both offer a lucrative rewards program that allows you to rack up cash back on your everyday purchases.

Even better, both cards offer the opportunity to earn five points per $1 spent on certain categories that rotate throughout the year. Here’s how they work:

Discover it®

Highlights:

Rotating 5% Cash-Back Categories:

• April–June 2015: Restaurants and movies
• July–Sept. 2015: Home improvement stores, department stores, and Amazon.com
• Oct.–Dec. 2015: Holiday Shopping & more

Chase Freedom®

Highlights:

Rotating 5% Cash-Back Categories:

• April–June 2015: Restaurants, Bed, Bath & Beyond, H&M, Overstock.com
• July–Sept. 2015: Gas stations and more
• Oct.–Dec. 2015: Amazon.com and more

How to Maximize Rotating Rewards

Obviously, the opportunity is there to rack up some serious rewards throughout the year with either of these cards. With the Discover it®, for example, you could earn 5% cash back on dinner-and-movie “date nights” through the end of June.

Meanwhile, if you had both of these cards, you could enjoy 5% cash back on all of your Amazon.com purchases through the second half of the year (July through September with Discover it® and October through December with Chase Freedom®). And if you drive a lot or have a family road-trip coming up, the Chase Freedom® card’s 5% cash back at gas stations this summer could come in extremely handy.

However, there are even more ways to maximize these rewards that you may not have thought of. Part of the strategy involves stacking the 5% cash-back offers with items that tend to go on sale at certain times of the year. Here are a few examples:

Tools

Right after Father’s Day is usually the best time to stock up on tools, which is perfect timing if you have the Discover it® card. The 5% cash back you’ll earn at home improvement stores from July through September can help boost your savings even more. Summer is the time when most of us complete a slew of home improvement projects we’ve been meaning to get to, including painting inside and out, building a new decks, or upgrading windows and doors.

Mattresses

Mattresses often go on sale around Memorial Day, and then again right after Independence Day — the latter of which coincides perfectly with the Discover it® card’s 5% cash back at department stores that quarter.

Linens

If you need some sheets for that new mattress, linens tend to go on sale in August. Pick them up at a department store or on Amazon.com to get an extra 5% cash back.

Furniture

If you’ve just bought a new house or need to replace a ratty old couch, July is a great month to score furniture discounts. Find a good deal at a department store and you’ll get 5% cash back on that big purchase using your Discover it® card.

Appliances and Lawnmowers

According to Lifehacker, September is one of the best months to pick up a lawnmower or upgrade your appliances. If you use your Discover it® card to buy them at a home improvement store, and you’ll likely get the best prices of the season — and 5% cash back to boot.

Clothes

Need to boost your summer wardrobe this June? Look to Overstock.com to buy everything from summer sandals to that new bikini. And with the Chase Freedom® card, you’ll earn 5% back.

Home and Patio

Using the Chase Freedom® will also gets you 5% cash back on all the things you need to decorate your home for those summer barbecues. This June, look for deals on patio furniture, plant stands, and shade umbrellas at Bed, Bath & Beyond.

What to Watch Out For

Earning 5% cash back on certain purchases throughout the year is a tempting proposition, but there are certain caveats to watch out for.

For starters, with either of these cards, you only earn 5% cash back on your first $1,500 worth of qualifying purchases each quarter – or $75. After that, you’ll only earn the standard 1%.

Here are some other tips and things to watch out for to make you’re the one taking advantage of your credit cards (and not the other way around):

Always pay your bill in full.

Although both cards offer 0% APR on purchases for a limited time, you should practice paying your balance in full each month. You won’t benefit from the rewards if you wind up paying interest on your purchases.

Don’t forget to opt in.

With the Chase Freedom® card, you need to “opt in” each quarter to earn the full 5% cash back on qualifying purchases. It’s easy to do online, but some might see it as an additional hassle.

Compare other perks.

If you’re trying to decide between the Chase Freedom® and Discover it® cards, don’t forget to look at the other perks each offers. The Chase Freedom®, for example, offers a sign-up bonus after you meet a minimum spending requirement in the first three months. Meanwhile, the Discover it® card offers a free FICO score on your monthly statement.

Know your redemption options.

With the Discover it® card, you can redeem your rewards in a few ways – as a direct deposit into your bank account, a statement credit, a payment through one of Discover’s partners (such as iTunes, Facebook, or Amazon.com), or a gift card to any number of retailers.

With the Chase Freedom® card, you have even more options. Not only can you redeem for cash back, but you can also redeem your points for gift cards or travel gift cards. And if you also have a Chase card that earns Ultimate Rewards points, such as the Chase Sapphire Preferred®, you can even combine your points and transfer them to a number of hotel loyalty and frequent flyer programs, such as British Airways, IHG, Marriott, Hyatt, Virgin Atlantic, and Southwest Airlines.

When it comes to the best no annual fee cards, the Chase Freedom® and Discover it® cards are in a league of their own. Not only do you earn a constant rate of 1% cash back on everything, but you can also score big with lucrative 5% categories that rotate every quarter.

The key to maximizing these rewards is to look for subtle and not-so-subtle ways to save on purchases you were going to make anyway. And once you do, you get to enjoy the fun part – looking for ways to spend all of the rewards you’ve earned.

Do you try to maximize your rotating rewards categories? What strategies do you use?

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