The reds and plums are taking over our newsfeeds and it only means one thing – fall season is looming! Check out this week’s most beautiful hair colors shared by our #HolisticHairTribe.
Tuesday, August 8, 2017
Monday, August 7, 2017
We Need Your Vote! Check Out Upwork’s SXSW 2018 Proposals
This is your chance to influence the conversation during next year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, TX. Over the past month, people from the SXSW community submitted their session ideas, now it’s your turn to decide who makes the cut.
SXSW is one of the leading conferences in the world for music, film, and interactive—a hotspot for emerging ideas and technologies. Hosted from Mar. 9-18, 2018, the conference a great place to learn what’s new straight from experts like the team at Upwork!
To cast your votes, go to panelpicker.sxsw.com and login or create an account. You can vote once per proposal by clicking “arrow up” for yes, or “arrow down” for no. You can also comment on or ask questions about each session, and share your top picks through social media. You have until Aug. 25 to make your selection. Click here to learn more about the PanelPicker process.
We’ve proposed four different sessions and would like to get your vote and your feedback! Here’s a look at what we have in store.
Leveraging a flexible workforce for marketers
Marketers are constantly asked to do more with less. In addition to mastering traditional marketing duties like customer marketing and demand generation, leaders must juggle changing technology platforms and new marketing channels that emerge.
How can marketing leaders meet these challenges head-on?
This session will explore how today’s marketers can leverage freelance talent to achieve scale and get more done. We’ll consider the following questions:
- Can my organization benefit from engaging with freelance talent?
- What types of projects can be done with freelance talent?
- When should I use freelancers, and when should I use an agency?
Vote for this SXSW PanelPicker idea now >>
Remote team management: Leading tomorrow’s teams
Understanding how to lead a remote team will be critical to your career potential. It’s easy to overlook how essential remote management is because the classic picture of a “manager” is still someone sitting at a desk in an office surrounded by their team.
That image, however, is outdated. Most business schools now teach courses on managing remotely because they recognize what an important future skill this is.
During this session, you’ll hear from remote managers and researchers on how to brush up your skills. We’ll consider the following questions:
- Why is remote team management important now and what role will this skill play in your future career prospects?
- What’s different about managing a remote team vs a team that’s all in person? Any key differences / tricks aspiring remote team managers should know?
- Is it possible to create a team culture when team members aren’t located in the same place and able to work together in person daily?
Vote for this SXSW PanelPicker idea now >>
Marketplaces and the future of work
The way we work is changing. Structures and motivations decades in the making have shifted dramatically as more earning pathways go “gig”.
But are all “gig” economy companies created equal? Are all of their relationships the same with their users? And, in a policy context, should they be regulated in the same way?
This panel will explore one aspect of the often-lumped-together “gig” economy and provide fresh insight into how marketplaces are creating economic impact in new ways around the globe.
Vote for this SXSW PanelPicker idea now >>
Why companies are ditching their old talent models
Born out of the industrial era, hierarchical, in-person work with traditional employees drove corporate success for decades. While this legacy model served a purpose in the 20th century, it’s no longer sufficient to meet the demands of the
Born out of the industrial era, hierarchical, in-person work with traditional employees drove corporate success for decades. While this legacy model served a purpose in the 20th century, it’s no longer sufficient to meet the demands of the 21st century workforce.
This session will explore how companies are ditching traditional models with defined job roles in favor of more flexible models that allow people to work in different ways.
Vote for this SXSW PanelPicker idea now >>
Thanks for your support! You can check out all the proposed SXSW 2018 sessions at panelpicker.sxsw.com.
The post We Need Your Vote! Check Out Upwork’s SXSW 2018 Proposals appeared first on Upwork Blog.
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Friday, August 4, 2017
Trending Hair Colors This Week
Crimson Hair Color Formula
Hair by Deb Pedraza
The great thing about red hair is you can wear it any time of the year. It’s vibrant enough for summer, and reminds you of autumn leaves at the same time. Add a little peak-a-boo to put more fun into the color.
Roots: Oway Hcolor 7.46 Red Coppery Blonde + Oway Hcatalyst 30 Volume Cream Developer
Mid + Ends: Oway Hcolor 7.46 Red Coppery Blonde + Oway Hcatalyst 20 Volume Cream Developer
Green Peek-a-boo (Previous Color, Washed Out): Oway Hcolor 0.8 Blue Booster + Oway Hcolor 0.9 Green Booster + Oway Htone 9 Volume Cream Developer
Blush Melt Hair Color Formula
Hair by Angela Owens
Summer ain’t over yet. This gorgeous blush pink hair color is perfect for clients who are looking to make a bold statement or just a color that pairs well with summer outfits.
Prelighten to Pale Yellow: O&M Ammonia Free Keratin Powder Lightener
Root: 24g O&M Mineral.CCT 9/8 Very Light Pearl Blonde + 6g 0/45 with O&M Mineral.CCT 5 Volume SEMI Cream Activator
Mids (10mins): 24g O&M Mineral.CCT 10/8 Lightest Pearl Blonde + 6g O&M Mineral.CCT 0/45 Red Tone Booster with O&M Mineral.CCT 5 Volume SEMI Cream Activator
Pulled Through the Ends for 5mins
Sandy Blonde Hair Color Formula
Hair by Kaila Ward
Don’t you just love it when your client has amazing hair? Kaila never needed a toner for this beautiful sandy blonde hair!
Natural Level: 7
Highlights: Oway Hbleach Butter Cream Lightener + Oway Htone 9 Volume Cream Developer
Purple Sapphire Hair Color Formula
Hair by Caroline of Studio Alf Frisorer
When it comes to making a statement, purple is always one of first choices. Leave it to Caroline to give the hair a stunning makeover.
Color: Oway Hcolor 11.17 Frosted Platinum + Oway Hcolor 6.77 Deep Purple Dark Blonde + Oway Hcolor 8.1 Ash Light Blonde + Oway Hcolor 1.8 Blue Black + Oway Htone 9 Volume Cream Developer
Royal Plum Hair Color Formula
Sometimes all it takes is a little hair color refresh to revive the hair. This client used to have violet hair and wanted the same color. The stylist gave her exactly that and more. Look at that shine!
Mids to Ends: Pre-Lightened to Level 7
Natural Level: 5
All over: Oway Hcolor 6.77 Deep Purple Dark Blonde + Oway Htone 9 Volume Cream Developer (mixed 1:2)
Persian Red Hair Color Formula
Hair by Anna Lundeberg
Vibrant shades like red can be more difficult to maintain than other hair colors. Use Anna’s formula below so when hair grows out, it will create a subtle, smokey effect.
Ends: Oway Hcolor 4.4 Coppery Brown with Oway Htone 9 Volume Cream Developer
Mids: Oway Hcolor 0.0 Bleaching Booster + Oway Hcatalyst 20 Volume Cream Developer
Which hair color is your favorite?
from Simply Organic Beauty http://ift.tt/2vp37te
Thursday, August 3, 2017
Wednesday, August 2, 2017
5 Ways to Set the Right Rate and Grow Your Freelance Business
Whether you’re just starting your freelance business or you’ve been growing it for years, knowing what to charge for your services—and the value you provide—will be critical to your success and your earnings.
Charge too little and you’ll have to take on more projects and work even harder to meet your financial goals. Charge too much and you run the risk of turning clients off and not landing as many contracts as you’d like.
Since your time is money, you’ll want to spend it wisely and get compensated appropriately to maximize your earnings.
Setting your rate is all about striking a balance to arrive at the right price for the value and unique skills you provide in the current market while also factoring in the workload you can take on. Here are a few tips to consider when determining how much to charge for your services.
Get started on the right foot
Not sure where to begin? Setting your price for the first time and landing your first client can be tricky, but one thing is for sure: It’s not in your best interest to offer to do a trial project for free. (Not to mention, it’s strictly against Upwork’s policies.)
A better way to get started is to familiarize yourself with the competitive landscape:
- Research what other freelancers with similar skills are charging for their services on Upwork.
- Check their work history, feedback, and Top Rated status.
- Look at a variety of freelancers, including those who are new to Upwork and those who are more established, to get a sense of the range of rates in the marketplace.
You can also explore project listings to see what clients have budgeted for the types of projects you’d like to do.
Keep in mind there is no one-size-fits-all answer to what you should be charging. There are many factors to consider such as the market, your skills, experience level, educational background, and other assets you have that make you a unique and qualified professional. Take all these factors into account and test the waters to see what works for you and resonates with clients.
For more tips on how to determine your initial rate, read “How to Set and Raise Your First Rate on Upwork.”
Another resource to check out is Upwork’s free eBook, “Build a Business You Love: Freelancing Tips from the Pros.” Designed to help new freelancers lay the groundwork for success, this ebook is packed with ideas from freelancers who’ve been there before and have found success—including six-figure incomes—on Upwork.
Factor in your expenses
Many freelancers transition from or continue to work full-time jobs while building their businesses—which could be a potential pitfall when it comes to setting freelance rates.
Freelance copywriter and founder of Freelance to Win Danny Margulies finds many freelancers undercharge for their services and surmises it’s because they base their rate on their annual salary. “When people move to freelancing from a corporate job, they often use their salary as a benchmark: ‘I was making $X an hour, so that’s what I should charge,’” he said.
However, that rate doesn’t account for expenses you’ll encounter as an independent professional—costs like your computer, office supplies, self-employment taxes, and insurance. In addition, you should also consider the time you’ll need to spend on administrative tasks, which aren’t billable but are essential to keep your business running smoothly. All of these things add up and should be factored into the equation when determining your rate.
For more insights and tips Margulies has discovered on his way to becoming a six-figure freelance pro, check out “Mistakes Freelancers Make When Setting Their Rates—and Ideas to Fix Them.”
Provide bang for the buck
Value isn’t easy to define, but it’s something that will make clients happy and can help fuel your success and pave the way to charging a higher rate.
In “Four Ways to Get the Rate You Want: Tips From a Six-Figure Freelancer,” freelance marketing strategist and writer Tim H. shares his strategies on how he went from earning $0 to $100,000 in three years. One of his secrets to success? Delivering value to his clients. And that starts with thinking like the client.
“Clients care about streamlined processes, less stress, and more bang for their buck,”
— Freelancer Tim H.
That calls for approaching a project with their perspective in mind. What can you do to make their jobs easier? How can you help them look good to their executives or customers? It could be something as simple as putting together a document that clearly shows the project timeline and deliverables so everyone can be on the same page.
Taking the extra step to offer something that makes the clients’ lives easier will help solidify your value and could lead to more projects—and potentially a higher rate—down the road.
Set it but don’t forget it
You’ve established your rate and it’s working: You’re landing contracts, delivering great work, and making money. So that’s it, right? Not entirely.
The article “3 Fundamentals to Freelance Success” sheds light on a few key factors you’ll need to consider to stay competitive: growing your business, boosting your efficiency, and learning new skills. From finding new clients to marketing your services to streamlining processes to keeping your skills fresh, there are many things outside of your project deliverables that you’ll need time to tackle if you want to continue to build your business and command a higher rate.
While this may sound like extra work at first, it will pay off in the long run. For example, by expanding your expertise, you’ll not only broaden the types of projects you can take on but also provide greater value to your existing clients, which could make it easier to negotiate a rate increase in the future.
Raising your rates effectively and tactfully
Once you’ve established your initial rate, you’ll likely want to increase it at some point whether you’ve developed new skills, acquired more experience, or simply think it’s time to charge more for your expertise.
While discussing a rate increase with a client may not be easy, it’s an essential skill to hone when you run your own business. It’s all about timing and how you approach the situation. The article “Is It Time to Raise Your Rates on Upwork?” has ideas on how and when to discuss a rate increase with new and existing clients.
Before you broach the topic with clients, a good place to start is by taking stock of your business. Does your profile accurately reflect the value you provide and the higher rate you want to charge? By sprucing up your profile, adding new experience and skills, building out your portfolio of recent work, and marketing your services more effectively, it’ll be more apparent to clients why you should command more.
For more ideas on how to raise your rates and negotiate effectively with clients, be sure to read “6 Methods for Raising Your Rates (Without Losing Any Clients).”
While building a thriving freelance business takes some time and energy, it’ll pay off in spades when you start winning contracts, garnering great feedback from clients, and increasing your earnings. Start by setting a rate that accurately reflects your value and expertise, and you’ll be well on your way to success.
The post 5 Ways to Set the Right Rate and Grow Your Freelance Business appeared first on Upwork Blog.
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Tuesday, August 1, 2017
Why Elon Musk Is Wrong About AI
There’s a growing debate about the impact that artificial intelligence will have on our future, with two tech luminaries themselves — Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Facebook CEO Mark Zukerberg — as figureheads representing glass half empty versus half full perspectives, respectively.
Musk recently commented that AI is an “existential risk for human civilization.” Zuckerberg retorted that comments like this are “pretty irresponsible,” to which Musk tweeted that Zuckerberg’s “understanding of the subject is limited.” While these comments refer to sweeping impacts, many are debating one specific area where we are already seeing the effects of AI: jobs.
As humans, we’re trained to watch for threats to our survival and predict tragedies. Jobs are intrinsically linked to our survival, as they’re the way most of us earn income and are therefore able to provide for our basic needs. However, many are predicting that with the advent of AI, we will see the rise of a “useless class” — people who are not just unemployed, but are unemployable.
This is a chilling and pessimistic view of the future. If the last century of incredible advances in digital technologies leads to the creation of a “useless class” of people who have nothing better to do than play virtual-reality video games all day, that’s a tragedy for civilization. If that’s what happens, we will look back at Musk’s remarks and say they were accurate. But if that happens, shame on us because we are in charge of our destiny, not AI. AI itself is not a thing; it is a series of combined technologies that humans are creating and guiding the impacts of, including impacts on work.
In particular, those of us in the technology industry have an obligation to shape the future of AI and robotics to help create better and more productive jobs. We can leverage AI to ensure that opportunity is more equally distributed around the country and around the world, rather than concentrated in small pockets of urban wealth and opportunity.
Investing energy in the vigilant watch over the future of work is wise because only one thing is sure: Jobs will change. However, buying into doom and gloom is not wise, in my opinion. There is time to shape our future and make it a positive one. Everyone in society has an obligation to ensure that people are educated for a future in which AI touches every aspect of work. But it’s up to those of us who build technology to ensure that it augments human workers, not replaces them.
This is an area where Silicon Valley culture has fallen short, with its obsessive focus on eliminating labor costs. However, there are indications that people in technology are starting to think differently about their obligations toward humanity, and to design their products accordingly.
When it comes to dirty, dangerous, and demeaning work, automation can save lives and increase human dignity. There are already signs that this “fourth industrial revolution” will increase gross domestic product and overall productivity, just as the previous three have done, and it could also increase the flexibility and geographic diversity of work. If this is what we can expect from robots and automation, bring it on.
How AI technology can create opportunity
It’s true that technology has enormous power to eliminate jobs. In 1900, more than 40% of the population worked in agriculture, but by 2000, that was down to 2%, thanks to the efficiencies introduced by farming machines, as economist David Autor points out. Similarly, self-driving vehicle technologies may eventually make millions of truck drivers, taxi drivers, and other driving occupations obsolete. People who do those jobs now will need to find new work.
On the other hand, automation can result in a net increase of jobs. The number of bank tellers in the U.S. has doubled since the introduction of the ATM. And while farm machinery decimated the market for agricultural jobs, overall participation in the U.S. workforce grew steadily throughout the 20th century. In every major transition to date, we’ve wound up with more jobs, not fewer.
There is evidence that this is happening now. Indeed, nonfarm private employment has risen for 87 months in a row and unemployment levels are at record lows, in a sign that Internet technologies have not in fact destroyed jobs. Meanwhile, in the past year, about one-third of U.S. companies have started deploying artificial intelligence. This enormous transition is already beginning.
In the future, AI can help augment people’s work regardless of where they live. For instance, AI-enhanced medical diagnoses may bring the power of supercomputers and the world’s best medical centers into the hands of local family doctors. AI-powered news algorithms can improve our knowledge of world events and help fight fake news. AI can increase the productivity of computer programmers wherever they live, not just in Silicon Valley.
Our obligation to educate ourselves
One reason the last century resulted in so many new jobs is because of the early 20th-century movement to extend mandatory schooling through high school, providing education for people who no longer had farm jobs to look forward to. That decision ensured that we had millions of literate, well-educated people ready to take on the jobs that the second half of the 20th century needed.
We need to do the same now. Only this time, we need to jettison our outdated, 19th-century model of classroom education, and embrace new approaches more suited to our rapidly changing times. Individuals should position themselves for a lifetime of learning since the skills demanded by the workplace are changing more rapidly than ever. Traditional college degrees no longer lead to stable long-term employment opportunities—fresh training on new skills is much more impactful. Companies should also be prepared to retrain people when they replace them with machines. And we need more public-private education partnerships that combine contributions from both business and government.
Yes, we need safety nets to help people through these massive transitions, but instead of merely investing in social safety nets, we need to address the root causes.
Those of us in technology need to guide it to augment humans, not replace them. And companies and society as a whole need to invest in education to ensure we and our children are ready for jobs we can’t even imagine yet.
If we do that, as our ancestors did at the beginning of the 20th century, we can help ensure that AI will usher in an era of opportunity and wealth for all.
The post Why Elon Musk Is Wrong About AI appeared first on Upwork Blog.
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