The Article Writer

Ugh — say it isn’t so! On the heels that its profits have slipped by 23% in the fourth quarter, internet giant Yahoo! is ready to pink-slip as many as 1000 employees to help restore financial order.

Before anyone begins to think that Yahoo! is losing money, they aren’t. Profits for the fourth quarter were $206 million compared to $269 million for the same period a year earlier. The Big Y! is reacting to a loss in profits and is not losing money overall — ignore the pundits who are saying that the company is losing money as they are simply making less of it.

Welcome to the working world of today — if profits are down, you react and kick your talent to the curb instead of leveraging your “resources” and moving forward.

I am so glad that I am self-employed.

Q. I am new at working at freelance, how do I create an invoice?

A. Keep it simple! Well, as simple as you can. If you invoice through Paypal, they have an invoicing tool to help you along. Otherwise, I am a bit more detailed as I provide a little more information:

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Today’s Date

Salutation:

A brief explanation of the services rendered. For example: 3 articles at $40 each.

Total: $120.00

Terms: Net payable upon request.

Please remit payment for $120.00 to:

Your Name

Your Address

City, State, Zip

Phone number

Tax ID or Social Security Number

Best Regards,

Me

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Adjust accordingly to your own payment policies. Come up with something that works best for you and that your clients will accept.

Hands down, StumbleUpon is my favorite social network. I am more active with SU more than I am with LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace combined. Did I mention that I really like SU?

Happy Stumbleversary!

Last week, I hit my one year anniversary with SU, but I was too busy going through my notes following my press days at the Detroit Auto Show to mention it. The date isn’t really important, rather my experience with this nifty social media tool is.

Helping Friends Out

Admittedly, I got off to a very slow start with SU as I couldn’t figure out all of the ins and outs of stumbling. SEO mavens like Dosh Dosh have published handy “stumble guides” and a few active stumblers shared their tips to help me gain traction. After six months time I began to write about SU and publish that information to this blog. Eventually, all 200 of my mutual friends get stumbled and then I repeat the process.

This morning, I spent some time stumbling through my SU Friends’ pages, something I like to do from time to time. I figure that if we’re “friends” the least I can do is to visit your site and stumble your pages. I will usually leave a comment behind, whether on your blog or with SU — sometimes both, but rarely so.

No More Proxies

SU spam is on the rise and involves silly comments to users’ SU Inbox and requests to stumble certain types of pages. Recently, I made the decision (finally, I know) that I would no longer stumble proxy pages. I don’t stumble adult, hate and warez pages and I don’t automatically “thumbs up” any page just because someone sent it to me.

Stats Not Important

I’m not part of SU for stat generating, though it isn’t too hard to climb the SU ladder and get labeled as a stumble pro. From time to time I cull through my list of friends and remove inactive people while adding those folks who have friended (I hate that word) me and who are a good fit for what I do.

Yes, after one year of regular use, I can still say that SU remains very stumblicious!