By Greg Walker

Ah, the self-employed life. What a way to live! The freedom, the enjoyment, the unlimited earning potential. Who could fault it?

One of the reasons why being self-employed is so often seen as the solution for anyone who is unhappy in their mundane 9-to-5 is because many self-employed people have a habit of regularly promulgating a number of its key benefits in articles very much like this one.

These said benefits are then lapped up by those considering going self-employed and are used as the fuel to propel their headlong charge into independence and liberty and escape their current existence.

However, I’m not so sure that some of these widely-promoted benefits are as common as is sometimes suggested.

In fact, I know that they are not because in my own self-employed position I find them completely lacking.

When you’re in a situation that you’re not happy with, what do you do?  Stamp your feet and swear or stand back and see where you can change something? Or both!

Changing the words and phrases you say to yourself can make all the difference to you and what happens next.  I am a great believer in that the things we say to ourselves can either help us or hinder us in our day, especially in our mood and how we feel. Have you noticed that?

Watch out for what you’re saying to yourself

I’d like to introduce you to re-framing.  It’s a way of ‘flipping’ phrases around to give you a different perspective on the situation. This then changes how you feel, which will make all the difference to you and your day.

For example, I could say..’damn, it’s raining again’ and the reframe, or flip, is ‘it’s raining again, good for the garden’

Welcome to guest writer, Sinead Mac Manus:

I just got back from five weeks living, working and playing in Lisbon, Portugal. If you have never been I recommend a visit especially in the winter when day time temperatures rarely dip below 17 degrees and it’s bright and sunny everyday. Add to that the low cost of living, a beautiful city, friendly people and the best custard tarts in the world, it’s the perfect escape from grey London.

So how did I manage this as a freelancer?

Welcome to my world of part-time location independence.

The location independence movement was started by Lea Woodward and her husband Jonathan in 2007 when, fed up with their corporate lifestyles with plenty of money but little time, they packed it all in to work and travel around the world. Reading about Lea’s adventures in lifestyle design led me to quit my job in 2008 and go live for a year in the south of Spain while still consulting in the UK and building my first online business StartaTheatreCompany.com.

Referrals are the lifeblood of every business. It’s a fact. There is no better business than the one you didn’t have to chase and invest any time and energy on winning. Having said that, getting a referral is probably one of the hardest things to do when running your own company.

I hear a lot of freelancers complaining that they do not get any referrals. And, I can understand why. Over the years I had struggled myself to be recommended by my clients. I would read everything I could get my hands on about winning new work through referrals and tried the advice there. Nothing worked. Eventually I realized that the problem was somewhere else, changed my ways and referrals started rolling in. Because, you see, in order to get a referral you have to do a bit more than just provide a great service.

Freelancing is a great way to make a living independently or to supplement income from another full-time job. However, the work can be quite unpredictable, and revenue can be sparse at times. Finding ways to make extra money can help you through the lean times. Here are five easy ways to make additional money online:

1. Affiliate Marketing

Start with your own blog or Web site. Affiliate programs allow you to earn a commission on sales generated through advertising links on your page. Some programs pay a percentage of the sale, while others pay a flat fee based on each sale. The key to success with affiliate marketing is to choose a reputable program — Amazon is a popular choice for many bloggers — and to feature quality products that have some natural connection to your site. For example, if you blog about health, you should feature health products. The more organic the affiliate ads appear to be for your site, the less they will appear like ads, which can be a turn off for many readers.

Freelancing gives you a beautiful amount of professional and personal freedom. That beautiful freedom comes with one all-important price tag though—cash flow management.

It’s not quite like a traditional business model where you can get software to take care of your inventory management, it’s more like a second job in and of itself. You have to keep track of hours and work load, invoice and save for taxes, while managing the actual work and saving for the near and distant future.

If you haven’t made the leap into freelancing yet, you may still be taking for granted the structure of traditional jobs. Here are a few tips to help you handle your cash flow as a freelancer.

Tip 1: Look for new jobs before the old one is finished. There is a sizable amount of time lost between jobs, and as much as you may think you’re distracting from your current job, having zero to little downtime between jobs is important to keeping a steady flow of income.