Tag Archives: blog writing

Ten things any freelancer’s home office needs   

Every self-employed person goes on a journey, and one of the less heralded aspects of the freelancing journey involves the organic development of a more professional workspace. I started out with an antiquated old PC balanced on a glass display unit in my living room, with no storage or space for paperwork. It’s a far cry from today’s dedicated home office, where a six-foot oak desk packed with drawers and cupboards supports a high-end laptop and twin 27-inch monitors through a docking station.

I’ll come back to some of these efficiency-bolstering elements in a moment. First, let’s consider some of the benefits afforded by an appropriate and well-configured working environment:

  • – It’s ergonomic. Freelancing from a laptop at a dining table or on the sofa can induce numerous physical ailments, from RSI and tendonitis through to tech neck and eyestrain-related headaches.
  • – It’s professional. When a client calls, you need pads and pens, Dictaphones and documents to hand. Running around the house trying to find a Biro is tiring, unprofessional and unduly stressful.
  • – It’s distinct. The boundaries between work and home life are blurry for most freelancers. They’ll disappear entirely if you work where you eat or socialise – making it harder to switch off at night.
  • – It’s private. A dedicated workspace avoids unrelated clutter building up. It means children coming home from school don’t suddenly appear in video calls. It ensures you can work in relative peace.

Gone are the days when you could eke out a skinny latte in the local coffee emporium for an entire day while exploiting their free WiFi. Also gone are the days when employers or clients accepted people answering Zoom calls in onesies, with piles of laundry in the background or accompanied by unscheduled interruptions from other household members. In today’s ruthlessly competitive freelancing market, battered by generative AI and budgetary constraints, only the most professional freelancers will flourish. Doing so requires a dedicated place to work (even if that’s just a corner of a room) with the following ten essential attributes:

  1. Full spectrum lighting. These lamps cast a clear white light that’s easy to read by, great for designing in and capable of minimising the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder in the GMT seasons.
  2. An ergonomic chair. It may involve trial and error to find a chair deep enough to support your thighs and bolstered enough to offer lumbar support, but it’s a vital investment to avoid back or neck pain.
  3. A storage-equipped desk. Don’t try and work from a breakfast bar – you need drawers/cupboards/shelves for documents, brochures and post. Solid wooden furniture will last forever.
  4. Sound-cancelling microphone-equipped headphones. This ensures you can work in peace when the house is noisy, be clearly heard on video calls and listen to webinars without anyone eavesdropping.
  5. A docking station and laptop. Laptops are ideal for taking to meetings, pitches and presentations. Plugged into a docking station with hardwired peripherals, they’re also as practical as a desktop PC.
  6. An attractive backdrop. Blurring your background inevitably distracts with flickering, suggesting you’re hiding something. A nice picture is fine, as is a garden view; avoid clutter, clothes or mirrors.
  7. Full fibre broadband. Most UK households now have access to full fibre. ADSL lines of 10Mbps aren’t enough in today’s OneDrive and Zoom age – they’ll slow you up and result in stuttering streams.
  8. Privacy. It’s lovely freelancing from home with pets mooching around, but not during interviews or meetings. A door you can close (or a screen you can put up) is vital for appearing professional.
  9. Proximity to a window. A glance at trees or sunshine can provide inspiration, while daylight boosts our mood and simplifies reading. Position workstations beside or below windows wherever possible.
  10. Space to pace. A surprising addition, perhaps, but many people find it easier to talk on the phone or think while moving. A hallway will suffice, providing there’s nothing to bump into while you muse.

A professional approach

Having been founded back in the mid-Noughties, G75 Media is a paragon of professionalism, elevating freelancing to a fine art from a dedicated home office which ensures we’re able to deliver optimal work to every client. Get in touch to see how we can collaborate with working partnerships, marketing copy and content production for businesses in any industry.

How to manage the work-life balance as a freelancer

I hadn’t realised how burnt out I’d become until I drove into the back of a parked car at the traffic lights, one cold December evening. It was only later, pacing around the living room on the phone to my insurance company, that I realised I was partway through my fiftieth consecutive week of work. Apart from taking three days off to move house (even relocating to Carlisle couldn’t justify a full week off), I hadn’t had a break from the pressures of running a small business and freelancing for clients since the New Year.

The year was 2021, and it represented a turning point in my attitude to the work-life balance. Until then, I’d been a workaholic – always saying yes to clients, always meeting my deadlines, always afraid to ask for an extension or put back a proposed deadline in case it somehow caused offence. No wonder I was too tired to stop at the lights.

Striking a balance

The work-life balance is something many freelancers struggle with. When you’re a salaried employee, there’s usually a clear delineation between working hours and personal time, but company directors and the self-employed can’t draw that line as easily. Matters are compounded when you (a) work from home and (b) have your works phone number plastered all over the internet. In the past, I’ve had 3am phone calls from people wanting me to research state-led cover-ups, and 6am emails from people thinking I’d already be at my desk rather than asleep. Yes, you can put your phone on silent or Airplane mode, but then what if a friend or relative has an emergency and can’t contact you?

Based on 25 years as a professional, 17 years as the founder and chief copywriter of G75 Media, and almost 15 years working as a full-time freelancer, these are my recommendations on how to manage the work-life balance as a freelancer…

1. Have a dedicated home office.

I’ve previously written about how to create an optimal home office, which also brings benefits in terms of the work-life balance. If your ‘office’ is the sofa, it’s much harder to switch off at five o’clock. A home office is a distinct space, used for a specific purpose; when you close the door, it mentally segregates the working day. Your office doesn’t need to be spacious, or well-appointed, but it’ll feel more professional than using the dining table. It’ll also be quieter, more private for video calls, and better for storing paperwork, peripherals and a proper ergonomic desk/chair setup. 

2. Plan your annual holidays well in advance.

I now take two full weeks off each year – the minimum required to maintain my mental health, and the maximum I feel able to impose on my year-round clients. These breaks are organised before the start of each new year, which means scheduling time off many months in advance. However, I can then inform existing clients in the New Year about my forthcoming plans, and having those weeks blocked out in my diary ensures I’m aware of impending absences before entering into new contracts. And booking a trip away a year in advance tends to unlock bigger discounts…

3. Clear your desk before going on holiday.

Most freelance clients will respect you taking time off. It won’t materially affect their business if you aren’t around to submit content on weeks 23 and 44. Giving them plenty of notice also gives you time to prepare for your departure – stockpiling work if you want to hit the ground running on your return, for instance. Set Out Of Office autoreplies covering the weekends before and after any absences, promising to respond on your return, and record a similar voicemail message on your works mobile or landline. Holidays are vital for recharging, so don’t spend them working.

4. Keep weekends clear.

When your smartphone has push email notifications and your laptop is on the worktop, it’s very tempting to let your business encroach into personal time. Resist that temptation at weekends wherever possible, working on weekday evenings instead. A couple of mental rest days will reinvigorate you for the following week, whereas working 11 or 12 days out of 12 will result in fatigue, an increased likelihood of mistakes and an inevitable sense of resentment. Burnout – and car crashes – may ultimately ensue if you don’t get the work-life balance right.

5. Leave things until tomorrow.

Expanding on the last point, there’s always a temptation to deal with after-hours emails. They’ll keep. I have several clients in America, whose working day starts as mine draws to a close, but they’ve all accepted my GMT working hours with good grace. If I need to video call them, I schedule meetings in the morning Stateside time. If they email me towards the end of their working day, I don’t feel duty bound to respond, and neither should you. A next-day response to evening emails or calls is normally fine, unless your business provides crisis management or PR services.

If you’re struggling to achieve an optimal work-life balance,  outsourcing part of your (or your company’s) workload may be advisable. Contact us for more information on how G75 Media can assist you with anything from content production to bid writing, and from social media posts to company reports.

The importance of regular website updates

The last year has been a difficult one for many businesses reliant on search engines. Google is still the dominant force in UK search, despite a growing number of lawsuits and court rulings against it. Yet after years of relative stability, the mysterious algorithm which determines a website’s overall ranking in response to particular search terms has become volatile and unpredictable.

When it comes to creating and publishing original online content, a perfect storm is raging across cyberspace. Twice in the last year, Google arbitrarily downranked highly rated websites, usually with no warning or explanation for its actions. Consumers are increasingly rejecting cookies – the foundation stone of the business model which sustains many websites financially. Brands are struggling with subdued demand, spiralling costs and the inevitable consequences of economic stagnation. As a result, many are embracing generative AI content production to power their regular website updates, even though the results are sometimes inaccurate and always inferior to the output of professional writers.

Search and destroyed

The results of these interconnected phenomena have had a profound effect on content producers like G75 Media. Several well-established clients of ours have paused or cancelled work on their websites this year, in an attempt to save money and stave off closure. However, these decisions lead to an unwelcome knock-on effect – the absence of regular website updates. Over 80 per cent of all live websites are dormant and inactive. Creating a site is relatively easy – regularly updating it is much harder.

From social media posts and blogs through to news stories and the creation of new pages, regular website updates are vital to a site’s SEO performance. Search engines consider a variety of factors when deciding which websites to list on the first results page, including the domain’s history, traffic levels and inbound links from other reputable websites. Yet according to a report published in June 2024, the consistent publication of engaging content is the single most important factor in Google ranking – more valuable than keywords, backlinks, user engagement or page loading times.

Key takeaway: Over 20 per cent of the Google algorithm value is based on regular website updates, with a further six per cent dependent on a site’s content being fresh and topical.

Isn’t content production expensive?

Employing a freelance copywriter to create new content and regular website updates is certainly costlier than using generative AI, though the latter has too many drawbacks to be a serious alternative to employing a professional writer with industry experience. Generative tools which ‘borrow’ and regurgitate existing website data will incorporate all the inaccuracies and bias of the source material into their output, as a recent news story about ChatGPT inventing fake court cases demonstrates. AI could also generate near-identical data for your competitors (if it hasn’t already), and audiences are surprisingly adept at identifying text produced by an algorithm. Simply put, bots don’t produce compelling copy.

Key takeaway: Search engines hate plagiarism and low-quality content, and generative AI affords you no control over either of these metrics.

The cost of generating new content for your blog may not even extend to three figures, depending on its length and complexity. A simple blog or news story shows that the site remains active, even on a monthly publication rota, although weekly updates are optimal in terms of achieving superior ranking results. Your competitors won’t necessarily be able to manage regular website updates, but if they are, you need to keep up with them. If they aren’t, your brand or business will have a major advantage when search results are next recategorized and reordered – and when audiences next conduct a relevant search…

G75 Media is here to help

In the 17 years since G75 Media was founded, we’ve produced numerous pieces of website content for clients across the public, private and third sectors. We’ve written blogs and news articles, social media posts and infographics, opinion pieces and market commentary. White label copywriting comprises a large percentage of the regular website updates we supply, where our clients put their names to our work.

Key takeaway: Modesty prevents us from naming the clients we work with across the UK and America, but with around 11,000 items in our content archives, you’ve almost certainly read something we’ve written!

If your website isn’t appearing at the top of search results pages, regular website updates might be a vital weapon in boosting its SEO performance and bringing new visitors to your site. Contact us for more information on how G75 Media can suggest, create and even publish new content on your behalf, elevating your brand above its competitors.

How to source copyright-free photographs

Media degrees receive a lot of criticism in the press these days, and much of it is deserved. Yet it was a HND in Communications that first encouraged me to step outside the classroom and start taking photographs on a digital camera as a teenager, subsequently leading me to major in video production at university. I quickly became the unofficial custodianship of the company-owned digital camera in the two jobs I held between graduating and dedicating my career to G75 Media, which included a seven-year stint as a full-time property journalist.

Today, I have thirty years of photography experience, with an expert eye for framing and composition. This instinctive expertise was honed to perfection during the 11 years I ran G75 Images as a property photography sideline to G75 Media’s copywriting and content production business. I reluctantly closed G75 Images down following run-ins with clients who seemed to think paying for photography services was optional. And in one respect, they’re right – free images are widely available across the internet. You just need to know where to look.

Aren’t free images just a Google search away?

It’s a common misapprehension that pictures found through search engines are free to reuse. In fact, the penalties for infringing a copyrighted image (whether or not it shows up in normal results) may be punitive. If you want to source copyright-free photographs, there are specific avenues you’ll need to go down, some of which require delicate navigation. This is why I routinely offer to source and supply images to G75 Media’s copywriting and journalism clients, leveraging my expertise to simplify matters for them while ensuring the copy I write is accompanied by suitably dynamic visuals.

In many cases, the photographs I supply were taken by myself, sourced from my vast trove of digital photography. The photo accompanying this article was taken a few years ago during a travel journalism trip to the Netherlands. I could have subsequently provided a client with this quintessentially Dutch scene alongside an original piece of writing, though as yet I haven’t had the opportunity to write about Zaandam, clogs or bicycles. Alternatively, I could have simply searched for images in one of the curated collections of copyright-free photographs online.

Why would photography be free?

It’s a good question. Photography is an artform just like any other, and photographers have bills to pay just like the rest of us. These are some of the reasons why artists might share Creative Commons Zero (CC0) images online, effectively opting out of any right to royalties or accreditation:

  1. To build their reputation, in preparation for selling pictures later.
  2. They view taking photographs as a hobby rather than an income stream.
  3. They have a passion for a particular subject, which they’re keen to share with others.
  4. They don’t feel the images are sufficiently high-quality or high-resolution to be saleable.
  5. Their photographs complement another income stream (such as painting or graphic design).

How do I source copyright-free photographs?

Firstly, it’s advisable to look beyond search engines. There is a way to find CC0 licensed images on Bing or DuckDuckGo, but it’s not intuitive. Taking Google as an example, it involves going into the Images > Tools > Usage Rights submenu before choosing Creative Commons licenses. This tends to reveal visuals from a handful of sources such as Wikimedia, but it will also display photos with copyright details clearly displayed in the photo title and summary. In these instances, you can reproduce the photo without paying, but you’ll have to credit the photographer in whatever form they request every time you use the photo.

More unambiguous collections of CC0 images are hosted on websites which are specifically focused on helping people source copyright-free photographs. There are numerous examples of websites where the default setting involves images suitable for reproduction and republication with no attribution or acknowledgement, including FreeImages and Stockvault. Be aware that some sites (such as Unsplash) intersperse CC0 image results and their own paid shots, which require either a subscription or one-off fees. This replicates the model of paid photography websites including Getty Images and Shutterstock, which charge a fee for each reproduction or (in some cases) allow you to purchase exclusive copyright to individual shots.

If all this sounds too complicated (and it does take a while to master), you could always ask a freelance copywriter to source copyright-free photographs as part of their contract. It’s something G75 Media routinely does, and we’d be delighted to discuss this as part of any quote. Get in touch to discuss how we can meet your editorial and photography needs.