Hola, party people! I’m adding a new feature to my regular schedule. It’s called Review Thursday. Because people are starting to send me their nifty stuff to review! For free! So exciting. In order to not be totally overwhelming I’ll only do this once a week, and always for stuff I have had a look at personally. I will use an affiliate links, in case you decide this is for you.
I didn’t pay for a copy of The Unconventional Guide to Freelancing and I’m glad. I would have felt cheated.
I thought I was a freelancer, but apparently not. (I’m still not 100% clear on how that term works nowadays in the age of microbusinesses and solopreneurs and such.) Either way, the UGF – which I shall now call it because the other thing is hard to type and UGF makes me think of the BFG and have a moment of childhood book nostalgia – is clearly not for me.
Who it is for are people who have a technical and marketable skill (like copywriting or web design or precision engineering or rodeo clowning) and have no idea about how to turn, “I’m a really magnificent particle physicist,” into, “Give me mucho cashola please.”
The writing part
It’s entirely written by the delightful Charlie Gilkey, which surprised me. I thought that it would be a joint work by Charlie and Chris Guillebeau, the Unconventional Guide guy. (Chris wrote the introduction.) This is not a bad thing, because Charlie is aces.
It goes through the basics of building a business around your skill.
- How to manage your time, attention and energy
- How to market and self-promote
- How to get paid and manage the cash
- How to move past trading time for money
- How to integrate all of the above
Now, the PDF is 54 pages long; it does not go into a mountain of detail about how to do these things, instead providing a very broad overview of the basics. How to create a tagline. Why you should start a blog. How much to save for taxes and when they should be paid, if you’re in the US.
Sidenote: something I really would have liked to see would be the same tax information for all the other likely countries. Chris is the Travelling Man, after all, and he has contacts everywhere. And plenty of buyers outside the US! A guide that talked to Canadians and Australians and Brits and South Africans etc etc would have been more valuable, and more in line with Chris’ world-travelling philosophy. I’m used to the “We only provide US-centric information because we secretly believe that the United States is the only real country on Earth” parochialism from other products, but I expected more here.
The checklist
The bigger levels (there are three to choose from) include a 5-page checklist of stuff to think about when drawing up agreements, contracts and policies. It’s practical, thorough, and if you need it, would save your ass enough that the extra $21 would be totally worth it.
The audio
3 interviews if you get the smaller version, 5 for the bigger ones. (Since I didn’t actually buy this, I’m looking at the three levels with distance, but on Chris’ products that I did buy I remember the “Can I afford the big one? Can I afford to skip these extra features?” anxiety. It works, but it makes me twitchy.)
They’re great interviews with awesome people that cover the basics very well. I got a couple of tips from the bookkeeping one, which is an area I’m aware I’m lacking in. There are transcripts, but why you would pass up the chance to listen to Charlie’s soothing Southern drawl I do not know.
The super-duper bonus
I have not used, because it’s live group coaching with Charlie. It would totally be worth paying extra for, in my opinion.
The summary
If you’re tangled in a giant web of “OMG I wanna sell my watercolour skills how in the Nine Hells do I do that?” then The Unconventional Guide to Freelancing will be a lifeline. It’s simple, actionable and focused.
If, like me, you already know why you should be encouraging referrals and creating multiple streams of income and all the other business basics, then the UGF will leave you cold. It’s well-written, beautifully designed, and… simple. Obvious. And not very unconventional at all.
Other, totally unrelated, announcement!
Pamela Wilson is a friend of mine from the Remarkable Marketing Blueprint forums and she is bringing out her new design-for-we-clueless course soon. She has a competition running where people can score a copy for free! You should totally check it out.
Have you enjoyed the first installment of Review Thursday or have some suggestions? Come tell me in the comments!