Welcome to www.minisinbox.com

Working on Your Own Time: It’s What Freelancing is About (freelance jobs) Do you have a busy life? Do you wish that you could schedule your work around the rest of your priorities? You work to make money so that you can live. You have no choice but to pay for housing and food and other life necessities. Because you need the money, work tends to creep up to the top of the priority list. Other things are more important though. Freelance jobs allow you to put work where it belongs on the list of priorities. You can play with your kids when they’re home, enjoy doing the things you enjoy outdoors while it’s daytime and spend your Sunday mornings at church instead of behind a counter. The work still needs to get done, but you can do it when you have time instead of from nine to five, Monday through Friday or worse, whenever you’re put on the schedule. Kinds of Freelance Jobs Do you have the appropriate skills and abilities to work at freelance jobs? There are many, many different kinds available. Those with professional degrees can consult. While the jobs that result from extensive education generally lead to many hours working for a good salary, your education can lead you in another direction. If you can manage to find the clients, you can work by appointment only, guiding those who do not have the experience or education that you have. If you are not a professional, you may still have the appropriate talents that will get you into freelance jobs. Writing is a very popular freelance opportunity. You live in a world that relies on the written word. You do not go through a single day without reading a considerable amount of text. Someone needs to do all of that writing, and much of it is hired out to freelancers. Actually, any skill that you possess may be suited to freelance work. Check out a few job boards and find out who’s hiring. Tips of the Trade Freelance jobs are out there, but so is the competition. To get yourself to the top of the hiring list, there are a few things you can do. First, use any experience you have to your advantage. Even if a previous job was short term or didn’t seem significant to you, you gained experience there. Let the employers know about everything you can do. Another thing you must do as a freelancer is to be very consistent and organized. An employer will be much more likely to rehire you if you turn out a good product. Everything you turn in should be clear and professional. Always meet deadlines. While most of the freelance jobs are extremely flexible, allowing you to work at your convenience, there are still deadlines. The work needs to be finished when the employer asks for it. Most of the qualities that will get you more freelance jobs only require common sense and a good work ethic. Living on Sparse Paychecks One downside of freelance jobs is that they are not necessarily consistent. Especially if you jump from one job to another, working for different companies, you will not have any guarantee about how much you will get paid each month. The flexibility may or may not be worth the uncertainty of freelancing to you. If you can manage to save effectively, the distance between paychecks won’t matter. If you do get frustrated about always wondering where the next paycheck is coming from, just remind yourself that the trade off is getting to enjoy more precious time not tied to a desk. There are definitely pros and cons when it comes to freelancing. You just need to decide how important it is to you to prioritize your life around what really matters to you.

Quest of Becoming a Writer (becoming a writer) Finding ones’ true calling is one of the hardest things in life. There are some people who believe that they are meant to sing, or dance, or even write. Like all things, becoming a writer is a process and there are many hurdles and even steps, potential writers must take in their quest of making their writing dream come true. It has been said that the art of writing is exploration of you, your own thoughts, your own motivations, and your own goals. However, there is much more to being a writer that just learning to be a good writer. Potential writers must realize that a career writer is one that recognizes writing as a profession and craft that can be turned into a career. The first step to becoming a writer is the most obvious, which is writing. If one is going to make writing their career then they must write first. There are many who believe that writers have no excuse not to write. A writer who does not want to write may be classified as someone who doesn’t want to be a writer. However, there are many people who don’t have the time to write, and in some cases it is best for potential writers to get jobs that make use of their writing skills. Most writers believe that to become a writer you must work as a fiction writer, but there are many jobs that offer the experience needed to become a professional writer. Although the creative process may not be the same as writing fiction, by acquiring a job that uses their writing skills, potential writers will be able to write more creatively and efficiently as fiction writers. Nonfiction writing jobs include, journalism, becoming a technical writer, becoming a technical editing, science writing, marketing communications, sales writing, resume writing, freelancing, and many more. There are many writers who don’t believe that they have to write or obtain a job in writing to become a great writer, but writing is the key to becoming a writer. Another key step for potential writers is to use logic to create the vision, and to achieve the desired goal. Before writing, it is important to think about what you want to write, instead of thinking of what can be gain from writing. It is typical for many writers to site personal gain as their reason for writing, instead of financial gain. There are some who believe that you can’t put a price on pursuing a dream. Becoming a writer also requires working long, and odd hours. A creative idea may strike at any moment, and it is advisable for writers to write and to expand their ideas, no matter what time of day it may be. Potential professional writers should also become comfortable with their place as a writer, and comfortable with their own creative process. If you are going to write, it is best to find a process that works best for you, and to use that process in all of your endeavors as a writer. Writers who have a steady process and who strive to become better and to write more will eventually achieve the success they want. Potential writers should also know that writers’ block is not real, and many times writers cannot write, because they are lacking something and may need to fill a need in order to return to their comfortable place of writing. Becoming a writer is not easy and many writers may run away when they see all the hard work that is required. However, there are many who pursue their dreams and who become the writers they always wanted to be. So, while it may be easy to run away, it is always more rewarding to face a challenge and come out on the other end as the victor, and for many that means becoming a writer.

Web Hosting - Why Backups Are Essential One thing most web site owners have little time for is... anything! Anything other than focusing on their site content and the business or service it supports and the information it provides, that is. That means that administration often suffers, as it frequently must. There's only so much time in the day. But the one thing that you should never let slide are backups. They are like insurance. You rarely need it (you hope), but when you do you need it very badly. Performing regular backups - and testing them - doesn't have to be a nightmare. A little bit of forethought and effort and they can be automated to a high degree. And, they should be tested from time to time. Even when a backup appears to have gone without a hitch, the only way to know whether it's of any value is to attempt to restore the information. If it can't be restored, the backup is worthless. Even when the web hosting company provides the service, there is still some planning involved for the site owner. Hosting companies often rely on one or both of two methods. They backup everything (called a full backup), then backup anything which has changed since the last full backup (called an incremental backup). Of special interest are any configuration files that have been tailored. If you've modified the default installation of a software package, you want to be able to recapture or reproduce those changes without starting from scratch. Network configuration files, modifications to basic HTML files, CSS style sheets and others fall into the same category. If you have XML files, databases, spreadsheets or other files that carry product or subscriber information - about items purchased, for example, or people who signed up for a newsletter - those should get special attention, too. That's the lifeblood of your business or service. Lose them and you must start over. That can break your site permanently. It should go without saying that all HTML and related web site files that comprise visible pages should be backed up regularly. It isn't necessary to record every trivial change, but you can tailor backup software to exclude files or folders. Usually they're so small it isn't worth the trouble. But in some cases those small changes can add up in scenarios where there are many thousands of them. Here again, the backups are worthless if they can't be used. Even if the hosting company charges for doing so, it's worthwhile to test once or twice a year at least to ensure the data can be restored. That's especially true of database backups, which often involve special software and routines. Database files have a special structure and the information is related in certain ways that require backups be done differently. Developing a backup strategy can be straightforward. Start simply and review your plan from time to time, modifying it as your site changes and grows. But don't neglect the subject entirely. The day will come when a hard drive fails, or you get hacked or attacked by a virus, or you accidentally delete something important. When that day comes, the few minutes or hours you spent developing and executing a backup plan will have saved you days or weeks of effort.