Freelancing Tips for 2014

With 2014 drawing near, it's only natural to look back on the past year and look ahead to the one forthcoming. The world of freelancing is witnessing rapid changes like never before.

Today, more and more people are leaving their regular jobs to "go freelance" or moonlighting a freelancing career as a secondary means of income. Because after all, what with the job market still not fully recovered and of course the dream of working from home and being your own boss, freelancing is more than ever the destination of choice for those looking for work.

Apart from the traditional offline freelancing practice of subcontracting, the online freelancing world is dominated by less than a dozen major websites. We have global freelance "marketplaces" like Elance, Fiverr, Freelancer, Guru and oDesk as well as more unconventional destinations like www.craigslist.org, www.freelancewriting.com, www.microlancer.com, www.seoclerks.com, www.99designs.com and other more specific niche-oriented freelance websites.

So looking forward to the year ahead, what are some great tips that freelancers can apply? We at Frontier Freelancing have come up with the Top 10 Freelancing Tips for 2014 below:

Wordpress Basics for Websites

The most popular content management  system (CMS) used by websites and blogs throughout the world is no doubt WordPress. It's used by well over 50% of all blogs and websites in order to create, modify, edit and publish text, videos and links on the internet.


CMSs are basically computer programs that can be accessed and run through a central interface. Most CMSs have their own 'dashboards' enabling users to control every aspect of content management. The 3 most popular CMSs in use today are WordPress, Drupal and Joomla.

When it comes to running your own blog or website, using WordPress is

The Top 5 Web Hosting Companies for Businesses

After last talking about the right web host for your specific needs, we now focus our attention on some of the best web hosting companies for businesses out there.

As a rising freelancer, internet marketer or small business, you need to be sure that the web hosting service that you sign up to will guarantee what you are looking for. Of course, you want to make yourself and your website look professional, neat and attractive for your clients and visitors to notice and go 'wow.' Based on the price plan that you choose, you would either be focusing on affordability and ease of use or performance and therefore expect greater costs.

Below, is Frontier Freelancing's list of the Top 5 Web Hosting Companies for Businesses:

1. HostGator

Known around the globe for its affordable plans, abundant features and reliable customer service, HostGator is

BREAKING NEWS: Elance and oDesk to Merge!

I just found out today through email that two of the giants of the online freelancing community are all set to merge into one monstrous entity. Ironically enough, I got the news email from BOTH the Elance and oDesk websites signed by the two CEOs themselves.

This is obviously big news for anyone following the freelancing industry as well as for those actively practicing freelancing themselves. After all, we are talking about two of the very biggest freelance websites out there!

What makes this merger particularly significant are the numbers involved. Elance has

How to Find the Right Web Host for Your Business

In order to carve out your very own place on the internet, it's important that you first establish and set up a domain from where you can announce, inform and persuade others about your ideas and products. Whether you're a growing business with a lot of potential, an entrepreneur seeking fortunes through internet marketing and affiliate programs or just a lone freelancer who wants to get noticed professionally and be taken seriously, then you NEED to start thinking about developing a blog or website to shelter your content, thoughts and products.


For affiliate marketing in particular, you need to establish a credible base by which you can attract visitors with useful content and then later encourage them to click through your affiliate partners' links and buy from their company websites. Blogs can also be leveraged for affiliate programs, but just don't have the same power as your own independent theme-based (niche specific) website.

Below are a list of steps (not necessarily in chronological order) that you can expect when finding and signing up for the right host for your business.

1. Choosing Your Domain Name

To begin with, you need to first find the right companies providing domain names. You must decide whether you will be going for a custom or top-level domain (for example, www.amazon.com) or a sub-domain name using the names of the service providers like Blogger, Wordpress, Weebly, Geocities, etc. (like www.frontierfreelancing.blogspot.com). The choice is up to you. However, as a rule of thumb, if you want to go for the independent and professional look, then buy your own domain - after all, for any growing business, you want others to take you seriously and have the conviction that you can at least pay to keep up your site!

For searching available domain names, you can either use

How to Sign Up for Affiliate Marketing Programs

Taking off from where The ABCs of Affiliate Marketing left off, we now turn our attention to how to join some of the major affiliate programs on the web.

To begin with, we should first understand that the internet is chock full of hundreds of possible affiliate marketing programs for you to join. What’s important however, is that you select the ones that are most appropriate for your situation and that you feel most comfortable with. Note: though every affiliate program out there will promise you good returns, only a few can actually live up to their word – so browse wisely!

Major Affiliate Programs

For example, if you run a website or blog about pets, then the ideal way for you to go is to

Frontier Marketing debuts on Wordpress!

Hello all,

Recently, we have decided to launch our new Frontier Marketing blog on Wordpress to take advantage of its unique features and community.

This will complete Frontier Freelancing by providing fresh and fantastic content dedicated exclusively to internet marketing.

Please visit our new blog and help spread the word. You will leave bored or without learning something new about internet marketing and freelancing, guaranteed!

Until next time, au revoir!

The ABCs of Affiliate Marketing

Sometime or another, we've all heard of affiliate marketing. In a nutshell, it is one of the core elements of internet marketing whereby affiliates representing companies are rewarded for bringing over visitors to said company's website. Also called cost per action/acquisition (CPA) marketing, it is one of the oldest forms of marketing extant on the web.

The four essential components or "players" of the system include: the merchant (the retailer/company that wants to sell products); the affiliate network (intermediates between the merchant and affiliate); the affiliate (or publisher); and the ultimate customer.

To advertise and promote the products of their merchants, affiliates use a variety of means ranging from organic search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) using Google's AdWords or Microsoft's AdCenter, email marketing, content marketing (including article marketing) and also offline, physical display advertising in the form of fliers, banners, etc.

Probing PayPal

Baby boomers and Luddites excused, who among us has not heard of PayPal - especially with the near saturation of e-commerce in many markets?

Before delving into the technicalities of PayPal, it's best if we understand a bit about the company's history.

PayPal's history begins with the inception of the internet financial services company X.com founded by Elon Musk among others around 2000. By March of that year, X.com acquired Confinity (founded by Peter Thiel and Max Levchin) and the rights to its PayPal system (the gateway was launched only in October 1999). The company renamed itself as PayPal on June 2001 to focus exclusively on internet transactions - particularly on the popular e-shopping portal eBay.

In February 2002, PayPal became the first tech company to go for an IPO after the 9/11 attacks. On 3 October 2002, eBay acquired PayPal for a brisk $1.5 billion - thereby consolidating eBay's hold of online payments and seamlessly integrated the preferred payment means into its shopping portal (as early as April 2000, over 1 million eBay users were already using PayPal for transactions).

Today, the gateway boasts an astounding 100 million active accounts with coverage in over 190 countries around the world. However, the availability of accounts, payment options, fees and other particulars varies from country to country. For that, do refer to their official policies: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/country-worldwide

For starters, PayPal is the internet's largest and most popular payment gateway. Payment gateways, or e-commerce payments systems, are essentially online portals that facilitate electronic transfers of money for online transactions. Gateways serve as alternatives to traditional payment methods like cheques, credit/debit cards and have even swallowed some of the pie away from internet and mobile banking.For companies like PayPal, they act as intermediaries between those who buy (whether individual consumers or businesses) and those who sell (individual or business). PayPal and other gateways (don't forget banks) use sophisticated encryption software involving "tokens" to facilitate money transfer.