Category: Careers

There’re many strategies for selecting topics to blog about, and using the keyword golden ratio is one of them.

In this article, we’ll look at the keyword golden ratio and how to use them to our advantage.

Long-Tail Keywords

If we want to have success in blogging faster, then we have to choose some long-tail keywords.

They’re keywords that aren’t as competitive since they’re longer than the usual popular keywords and therefore, there aren’t as many results competing for rankings by Google.

They are things like “best shaver for men” instead of “best shaver”.

Long-tail keywords have more words in them, so they’re less likely to be in as many articles as shorter keywords.

Keyword Golden Ratio

Doug Cunnington’s keyword golden ratio (KGR) is all about finding those long-tail keywords in a more systematic way.

It lets us get the keywords that are long-tail without us flying blind to find them.

The ratio is the number of alltitle results on Google divided by the search volume.

We can get the search volume of a keyword with keyword tools like the Google Keyword Planner or Keyword Surfer.

For instance, if we want to get the KGR of the keyword “best shaver for men”, we do the following.

First, we find the search volume for “best shaver for men”, which is 7310 according to Keyword Surfer, as we see below:

Then we can get the number of allintitle result searches as follows:

Then the KGR for “best shaver for men” is 3150 / 7310, which 0.43. Any KGR that’s less than 1 is worth targeting with our posts if the search volume is less than 250.

Therefore, since they’re more than 7000 in search volume for “best shaver for men”, we should probably skip it even if the KGR is less than 1 if we following the KGR rule strictly.

The rule is to write posts that target keywords with the following characteristics:

• less than 250 search volume
• KGR less than 1, less than 0.25 is even better

We can use KGR as a rough guide or follow it strictly depending on our preferences.

However, since we use a keyword tool, it does give us a better idea of what keywords we should have in our posts.

It also gives us ideas for topics to write about even though we may be running out of ideas.

Keyword tools are great for providing us with ideas and the KGR rules narrow down the set of keywords that we should target.

Conclusion

Using the KGR rule to look for keywords that we want to target in our post is one way to get our keywords ranked easily and to find out what we should write about.

The important takeaway is that we should be targeting keywords that aren’t too competitive.

Freelancing is something that may be tough for some people. If we avoid some mistakes, we can save ourselves from some grief.

In this article, we’ll look at some advice to follow as freelancers.

Overestimating What You can do Well in a day or Week

It’s better to underbook than overbook yourself so you won’t be too stressed.

It’s hard to do a good job if you’re in a rush.

Leaving Holes in a Contract

Make sure you think of all the points to protect yourself and your client and all the expectations from both sides are met.

Not Calculating Your Rate

You have to calculate your rate in order for your work to be profitable.

Compromising Work-Life Balance

Everyone needs to take a break once in a while.

Working too hard will leave you stressed and unhappy.

It’s hard to do a good job in this situation.

Venturing Too Far From Your Niches

Better stick to what you’re good at so you can do a good job.

Make sure you can actually do a good job before you accept a project.

Trust Your Gut When You Choose What Project to Accept

Your gut feeling is usually accurate when choosing what to pick.

Getting Too Emotional About Business Relationships

Business relationships should stay as such.

Never get too emotional about business relationships and make yourself miserable.

Not Tracking Your Time

Time tracking is needed for accurate billing, project time estimation, and managing productivity.

Not Taking Care of Yourself

Never skip meals, take breaks often, don’t sit on your chair all day, and enjoy the sunshine once in a while.

Selling Yourself Too Hard

Being genuine helps with getting sales than focusing only on sales.

Being too sales-y will be noticed by your prospect and that won’t leave a good impression.

Trying to Sell to High-Quality Clients With the Same Methods That Works for Low-Quality Clients

High-quality and low-quality clients are different.

So they should be targeted differently.

Sales and marketing strategies should be different for both.

Not Giving Samples Much Thought

You should retain rights to your sample work whenever possible.

This way, you can refer to them whenever you want since you’re in control of them.

Not Asking for Help

Asking for help will help you solve problems much faster.

It’s also better to work with a support network that can help you get through the problems you face.

Not Having an Onboarding Checklist

Having a checklist will make sure you won’t forget what you have to do to onboard clients.

Forgetting to Celebrate Small Wins

Celebrating small wins is a great way to keep yourself positive and become more successful.

Conclusion

If we follow the advice above, we can all be successful freelancers.

Freelancing is something that may be tough for some people. If we avoid some mistakes, we can save ourselves from some grief.

In this article, we’ll look at some advice to follow as freelancers.

Forgetting that I’m a business owner

You aren’t working for anyone as an employee. Your client is a partner you’re working with.

So you shouldn’t expect clients to dictate what you do.

Trying to Sell Your Skills Instead of Solutions to Clients

Clients want solutions, so selling them solutions you can offer them is better than selling what skills you have.

Competing Mainly on Price

Good clients are willing to pay you good prices, so don’t compete on price.

You don’t want to work hard for low pay.

Viewing Other Freelancers Solely as Competition and not Building a Network

Some freelancers can be your competitors, but they can also help you find work and refer you to people they know.

Niching Down Too Much and Too Fast

The narrower the niche, the harder it is to find people that need your specialization.

Not Marketing Until Your Run Out of Projects

It’s a good idea to maintain your presence all the time so that you get noticed by potential clients.

It takes time for you and clients to find each other, so it’s better to start early so it’s less likely that you run out of work.

Not Saving Enough Money

There’re always unexpected expenses and slow months, so saving money is always important in case you need the money.

Dipping to Rock Bottom Rates

If you work for a rate that’s too low, you may be working on projects that aren’t profitable.

That means you’re wasting money.

Wasting Time on Useless Things

You should prioritize useful things for clients and making money freelancing.

Anything else can wait.

Of course, taking breaks is also important.

Relying Too Much on One Source of Work

Always diversify in case one source of income runs out.

Relying on Freelance Platforms

Freelance platforms may work for some people.

But you don’t control them and they can cut you off with a click of a button.

You don’t want them to cut you off from your clients.

Always diversify on sources of client and income.

Keeping Bad Clients for Too Long

If they’re shady or you aren’t profitable working with them, then cut them off as soon as you can.

Not Having Formal Processes

Processes speed things up and keep things consistent, so it’s worth having them.

Setting standards for quality and other workflows are helpful.

Taking in Too Much Advice

There’re lots of advice online. They’re either conflicting or may not be relevant to your situation.

They may lead you in the wrong direction, so it’s a good idea to take a break from reading advice.

Conclusion

If we follow the advice above, we can all be successful freelancers.

Software development is a great skill to have in the modern world.

We can take advantage of it by making money in multiple ways.

In this article, we’ll look at some ways we can make money as a developer.

Create Your Own Apps

With your programming skills, you can create your own apps easily.

Just create a prototype version and let people test to see if they want it.

If people want it, then double down and finish the apps.

Now you got something that you can sell.

API Programming

If you know back end technologies like AWS or Azure well, then you’re a great asset to lots of people.

Back end is complex, so any expertise is welcome by companies.

This is something that will get anyone money if they know it well.

However, there’re many parts to these cloud services, so mastering them all is going to be a long journey.

Get Social

It’s time to get social if you want more opportunities.

As a developer, you can help lots of developers with your experience.

Many people get stuck on problems that you can answer.

They may ask on social media or on forums like Stack Overflow.

If you appear enough times, they’ll know you exist.

Paid Guest Posts

There’re some websites that’ll pay people to guest post on there.

As developers, you can contribute technical articles to these sites.

They include:

• Clubhouse.io ($350–600)
• Honey Badger ($500+)
• Twilio ($500)
• Digital Ocean ($300/$400)
• Log Rocket (up to $350)
• Real Python (up to $300)
• Linode ($100/$300+)
• Hasura ($100-$300)
• Code Tuts+ ($100–250)
• Smashing Magazine (up to $200)
• GitLab (up to $200)
• Scotch ($150)
• Soshace ($100)
• SitePoint (~$100)

Some of these are harder to get accepted than others.

But you can try them all and see how far you get.

The quantity of work must be good.

And you should submit original articles to these sites.

Write Games

You can write games to make money as a developer.

Games are harder to write than apps, so they’ll take more time.

Like writing apps, you should test the waters with your game by building a prototype before building a full version.

If people like it, then build a full version.

You can provide premium features like purchases and currencies.

Also, you can launch a paid version or sell merchandise in your game.

Subscriptions

Selling subscription services is another way to make money.

You can have a paid section in your blog or course.

Or you can add paid sections to your app or game.

Conclusion

You can create apps, sell subscriptions, or sell games to make money as a developer.

Software development is a great skill to have in the modern world.

We can take advantage of it by making money in multiple ways.

In this article, we’ll look at some ways we can make money as a developer.

Sell Swag

You can sell swag to customers.

If they’re interesting, then people may buy it.

Newsletter

A newsletter is something that lets you keep in touch with your audience.

You collect emails from people that are interested in you and you can send out newsletters regularly to keep them looking at useful information and promotions you send out.

Coaching

Software development is an expertise that not everyone has.

Therefore, there’s a market for people that needs your help.

They may need help with some programming problems and other things.

If you can help people and they know you exist, then you will get the opportunity to make money with coaching.

Trading Bot

If you’re interested in trading various securities, you can automate trading with your own bot.

If you’re confident about it, then you can let it sit and make money for you.

Of course, trading always has risks, so you don’t want to let it run without watching it.

Paid Coding Challenges

If you’ve mastered programming, then you can join coding challenges like hackathons, bug hunts, and more and make money.

Of course, to make money, you have to win.

So this isn’t the most reliable source of income out there.

But if you like to solve hard problems, the paid coding challenges are what you’re looking for.

Investing

With the income you get from programming, it’s a good idea to invest them since accruing interest means you get more income.

Now you can buy and sell various things like ETFs, mutual bonds, stock, etc. without a broken.

However, now you have to be informed of their risk and potential reward before putting money on them.

Sell Templates and CMS Plugins

You can sell templates for popular content management systems like WordPress or Joomla.

Many people can’t code and want a customized website.

They’ll buy WordPress themes put them on their site.

If your theme does what they want, then you’ll get their business.

You can sell your theme on Theme Forest.

Also, you can sell WordPress plugins in the same way.

Sell Development Services

You can sell development services.

It’s probably easier to have a web presence and promote yourself wherever you can.

This way, people know you exist.

The best way to promote is to help people online.

You can put up free content online to help people.

They’ll appreciate you and will find you.

If you have lots of money, you can also promote your services with ads.

However, the risk of this is bigger since the cost per click of an ad that promotes your service will probably be high.

Conclusion

You can sell stuff online, promote your services, and sell CMS themes and plugins to make money as a developer.