The 50 Best Freelance Tools for Freelancing Online Ah, the life of self-employment. It is certainly a rewarding one, but remember, it’s a jungle out there. Here at Bidsketch, we feel your pain: the internet offers such a vast ocean of resources that it can be hard to tell which ones are actually worth using. I’d like to believe that this post will alleviate a huge part of that burden. While it took many hours to write, edit, and re-write, it took countless hours of me procrastinating from my work and trying out new tools! Let my many hours of exploration become your “cheat sheet” to the most worthwhile freelance and self-employment related resources on the web. Not only that, I’ve grouped them all neatly for you, feel free to browse at your leisure and share this resource if you find it useful! How to Avoid Procrastinating It’s my personal belief that every massive list (especially one made for people that get things done) needs to come with a bit of a disclaimer. {Join me in sharing this on Twitter, click here!} The Grand List 1. 2. 3/4. 5. 6.
Introducing the 2009 Edition of Quirky Marketing Calendar eBook Hi-Def Pics - The Sun and All Its Glory (11 photos) A sweeping prominence, a huge cloud of relatively cool dense plasma is seen suspended in the Sun's hot, thin corona. At times, promineces can erupt, escaping the Sun's atmosphere. Emission in this spectral line shows the upper chromosphere at a temperature of about 60,000 degrees K (over 100,000 degrees F). Every feature in the image traces magnetic field structure. The hottest areas appear almost white, while the darker red areas indicate cooler temperatures. Detailed closeup of magnetic structures on the Sun's surface, seen in the H-alpha wavelength on August 22, 2003. The total solar eclipse of February 16, 1980 was photographed from Palem, India, by a research team from the High Altitude Observatory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. An animation of the sun, seen by NASA's Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) over the course of 6 days, starting June 27, 2005. The Sun, observed on May 22, 2008. Courtesy of the Boston Globe
Top 100 Free eBooks for Business Students and Entrepreneurs Whether you’re enrolled in a business school degree program or desperate for a review of b-school basics as you start your own company, it’s hard to pass up free study materials. These 100 ebooks on marketing, management, ecommerce, and finance are all free and worth checking out. Basic Business These foundational courses focus on basic business skills like earning money, understanding your relationship with the customer, and more. Management Become a better manager with these courses, which cover topics in psychology, change management, and more. E-commerce and Internet Marketing Review the cutting edge techniques necessary to master online business. 3 Vital Steps to KickStart Your Web Business: Daniel Sudhakar’s book helps you "avoid all the mistakes that start-ups make." Finance Here you can review accounting, investments and other business finance guides. Budget Breeze: Learn new budgeting strategies for your business. Human Resources Marketing and Advertising International Business Economics
Most Popular Business Books Stephen Lam/Getty ImagesSheryl Sandberg's "Lean In" is among the top sellers. Amazon's annual list of the best-selling books on its platform signals which ideas and trends have taken hold of the culture in a given year. Even in a world where technology is taking over, books are an essential resource for people in business. DropBox CEO Drew Houston, for example, got a crash course in business and management by reading bestsellers across different Amazon categories. We looked at this year's list of the 100 best-selling physical books on Amazon, and pulled out those about business, productivity, and the psychology of success. Along with newcomers like Sheryl Sandberg's book "Lean In," some older and still beloved titles continue to fly off shelves. Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.
15 Quick Pitch Tips for Kick Ass Presentations The pitch isn’t the only thing that will make your business successful; far from it. But it sure does matter when you have an opportunity to get on stage and present. Those opportunities may be few and far between, but you don’t want to blow them. And opportunities to pitch your business should happen all the time – because ultimately we’re always pitching, whether it’s investors, customers, business partners, candidates, spouses, or random people we catch on the street. Pitching and presenting are critical skills for startup owners. After attending the YES Entrepreneurship Conference and watching a handful of young startups do their 5-minute pitches, and jotting down some notes, here are 15 quick pitch tips. Pitch Solo. Pitching is hard, whether it’s on stage, in a boardroom, on a conference call or anywhere else for that matter.
Newbie Checklist - Get Your Projects Done Faster, and Easier Book Country: Discover New Fiction with the Genre Map Publishers, booksellers, and readers describe books by their literary categories, or genres. It's how books are placed in stores and sold online. We created the Genre Map to help you find the right genre for your book. Roll over the map with your cursor to see the different genres. Some categories, such as women's fiction, stand alone. If you select mystery, fantasy, romance, science fiction, or thriller, you'll see the many subgenres that you can explore within these categories. Please contact us if there's a category you'd like to see on the Genre Map. How Not to Be Offended Editor’s note: This post was written by Shemsi Prinzivalli. There is an ancient and well-kept secret to happiness which the Great Ones have known for centuries. They rarely talk about it, but they use it all the time, and it is fundamental to good mental health. This secret is called The Fine Art of Not Being Offended. In order to truly be a master of this art, one must be able to see that every statement, action and reaction of another human being is the sum result of their total life experience to date. In other words, the majority of people in our world say and do what they do from their own set of fears, conclusions, defenses and attempts to survive. Yes, this is psychodynamic. All of that said, almost nothing is personal. This frees us to be a little more detached from the reactions of people around us. This is also not to be confused with allowing ourselves to be hurt, neglected or taken advantage of. Source: “The Art of Not Being Offended,” from shemsi-prinzivalli.blogspot.gr
The 99 Best Business Books - Recommended Reading List “You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for a buck fifty in late charges at the public library.” Will Hunting (played by Matt Damon), Good Will Hunting MBA programs don’t have a monopoly on advanced business knowledge: you can teach yourself everything you need to know to succeed in life and at work. The Personal MBA features the very best business books available, based on over ten years and thousands of hours of research. So skip business school and the $150,000 loan: you can get a world-class business education own your own at very low cost by reading the best business books. This page lists all Personal MBA recommended books and resources for easy printing, bookmarking, and reference. Here are the 99 business books The Personal MBA officially recommends… click on the title of each book to read a detailed description of each book and why it’s important, or the buttons to the right for additional reviews. Read This First For Best Results... Buy the Book: Business Creation Sales
How Funding Works - Splitting The Equity With Investors - Infographic A hypothetical startup will get about $15,000 from family and friends, about $200,000 from an angel investor three months later, and about $2 Million from a VC another six months later. If all goes well. See how funding works in this infographic: First, let’s figure out why we are talking about funding as something you need to do. If you know the basics of how funding works, skim to the end. Every time you get funding, you give up a piece of your company. Splitting the Pie The basic idea behind equity is the splitting of a pie. When Google went public, Larry and Sergey had about 15% of the pie, each. Funding Stages Let’s look at how a hypothetical startup would get funding. Idea stage At first it is just you. Co-Founder Stage As you start to transform your idea into a physical prototype you realize that it is taking you longer (it almost always does.) Soon you realize that the two of you have been eating Ramen noodles three times a day. Registering the Company The Angel Round Is dilution bad?
WiredTree – Fully Managed Dedicated Server and VPS Hosting 15 cool word illusions If you're a regular visitor (reader) of my blog, you'll probably know that I really like optical illusions. Here's another article about this phenomenon, now it's all about optical illusions with words. I'll start off with a classic. Say aloud the ink color of each word. The next one is a really cool wedding card. This one is pretty strange. What do you read here? Somewhat simular to the previous illusion. When looking at the following illusion, you'll probably read the word Life. Another double word illusion. The following illusion looks like a couple of blocks don't doing anything. This is a double word illusion that fits exactly in this topic. Read the text in the triangle below out lout. Did you read I love Paris in the springtime? In this illusion you'll read the word Teach and the reflection of it. The following four illusions show faces of people. Bonus: FFF Count the "F's" that are in the following text. How many "F's" did you find? Wrong. How is this possible? Bonus 2: Face
100 Tough Things Every Man Must Do AskMen Editors Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Page 1 of 5 Learning to drive stick. Big choices steer the paths of our lives, but it's the little choices that determine if they'll be lives that we can be proud of. If you do these 100 things when confronted with them, you'll be able to walk tall into your old age, your self-respect forever secured. Here are the 100 tough things all men must do. 1. 2. 3. -Matthew Plunkett (AskMen Reader) 4. 5. 6. Learn how to ask for a haircut — or anything, for that matter. 7. Force yourself to talk to new people. 8. When discussing said venture with friends, consensus towards the act’s necessity was split. Eventually noting my suddenly ashen pallor, he said. 9. 10. You hear that a friend has a serious illness. But you have to call, or at least email. If he doesn't want a heavy conversation, then don’t start to emote; let him emote if he wants to but don’t make him deal with your feelings. 11. Of course you have a sh*t voice — isn't that the point? 12. 13.