If you’re an entrepreneur, a freelancer, or a start-up, you’ll know how important it is to win new business and make lasting working relationships. Networking is now as important as advertising in terms of generating ongoing success for any venture. We’ve all had certain jobs or contracts that we feel we’ve not been paid well enough for. Whether that’s a bit of graphic design you felt had a high enough ROI to warrant a higher fee, or simply a contract you feel you could’ve pitched a little higher. But have you ever been asked to work for free? Lots of new businesses and freelancers are now being faced with this very situation. They’re told they’re working to gain experience, that the result will net them future work, that it’ll bolster their portfolios. But are these just excuses for free labor, and should you be more concerned with topping up your company finances?

The question you need to ask when deciding whether to work for free is: ‘what’s in it for me?’. There are exceptions: if it’s for a charitable cause, then by all means do as much work as necessary free of charge. But if it’s for other businesses, you need to ask yourself why you’d want to do it. This will usually boil down to how much experience you have. If it’s literally day one for you, you might want to swallow your pride, knuckle down, and work for the experience. It may well pay off when pitching for future business. On the other hand, if you’ve been working for years, there aren’t many situations where you should work for free (barring charity work, of course). Never take their word for it, always ask yourself whether the work is worth it. Generally speaking, that little voice inside will guide you down the right path.

Linda Haynes is a professional writer and researcher.

Have you ever been browsing the web, perhaps searching for something in particular, and come across a site that seems to be plastered in ads? It likely has the information you’re looking for, but also seems to have caught a bad case of advert measles. That’s what certain members of the SEO community call niche blog marketing – and if you’ve found one, it’s working at earning a passive income for someone. So how does it work?

Well, in a nutshell, a wily online marketer does a bit of keyword research, finds a word or phrase that has high search volume but low competition (much harder than it sounds), then creates a blog based solely on that keyword. It’ll be in the URL, in the titles, dotted around the content. The point is, all of those users searching will eventually land on the page and, if ads are implemented, may click on them. That earns a passive income for the site owner.

But before you go installing Wordpress and writing endless articles about ‘the best golf shop in Everytown’, be aware that niche blog marketing can be a risky business. The Google Adsense program can be a great source of income, but if your site is set up incorrectly, they can suspend your account without warning. Even having an image too close to an ad block is enough to incur their wrath, so if you do embark on a niche blog marketing venture, be very careful. Also keep in mind that this form of income generation is a long term thing. It will take literally months to rank a blog highly enough to generate good quality clicks. But if you follow some marketers advice, the more blogs you have, the better your chances. If you think you’ve got what it takes, head over to the Google Keyword Tool and start mining for keyword gold!

Linda Haynes is a professional writer and researcher.

We are all in the business of happiness, no matter the means. We make our daily living by serving others and delivering value to others.

Most of us know this regardless of education or experience, but as someone who operates a service-based business, my job is to help others be aware of it and optimize their assets to their fullest gains.

Our respective success ultimately depends on the extent to which we connect with others, and how skilled we are at establishing and maintaining relationships. This is nothing new. It is our personalities that we leverage to achieve relationships, and successful brands and companies are run by genuine people who practice this standard of communication.

One of my mentors, Rohit Bhargava, Senior Vice President of Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, a genuinely nice person (and quite brilliant, if I might say so) is on the verge of launching his second book titled “Likeanomics,” the premise of which is that relationships are based on real interactions, with personality and humanity.

Prior to this book, Rohit wrote (and disclaimer: I was formerly his publicist on this one) Personality Not Included, a practical guide for brands on how to communicate with their publics and build successful relationships. As a persuasive communications practitioner, I mention these books because the concepts are powerful and they have helped me better serve my clients and also everyone else in my life. And they offer a great reminder: that we are all in the business of happiness.

Henna Merchant is the Principal of Clicked :: Digital PR & Marketing Communications, an agency that combines digital influence, social and traditional media, public relations and marketing to produce a persuasive communications mix.

A seismic shift is underway in the advertising world, placing more power in the hands of the advertiser.

In the online/digital realms we see an enormous and unprecedented shift of advertising dollars away from other more traditional media. The incumbent “CPM” model (cost per thousand viewers) is giving way to new performance-based models where compensation to publishers is based on the actual success of the advertising campaign.

Under the old CPM model, the advertiser pays a flat rate for a specific amount of exposure to the consumer. Enter the newer performance-based models which can be more effective and more lucrative for both the advertiser and publisher. Standard performance-based models include:

The evolution of performance-based models are forcing publishers in the digital realm to be more selective about their advertisers, resulting in more contextually relevant and appropriate advertising in line with the consumer’s interests.

These models motivate publishers to see their advertisers as partners with a shared risk and reward for success, and ultimately that is a very positive step forward for the advertising industry.

Chris Wilkinson is Managing Director of Los Angeles-based Digital Revenue Partners, which specializes in performance-based marketing and sales strategies bridging the traditional and digital media worlds. He may be reached for comment or business inquiries by email (chris@drp-la.com) or phone (323-892-2256).

Mental athletes are my favorites. The designer on a deadline, the creative whose ideas come at 2 am, the entrepreneur dealing with daily cash flow crises.

Physical athletes understand the nutrition/performance connection. Creatives, not so much. If it meant more time to design, many would ask to live on air…cooking, exercise and sleeping interfere with deadlines!

Well-fueled brains are a crucial creativity tool. Stable blood sugar levels regulate mood, concentration, and decision making…not to mention impulsivity! Some strategies to prioritize:

1. Sugar cravings signal that you need to move. Ever had a brilliant idea while running that deposit to the bank? Moving improves brain blood flow and function.

2. Oils beginning with “s” and “c” (soybean, safflower, sunflower, sesame, corn, cottonseed) interfere with omega-3 function. Stick with olive and canola (one “c” oil that is ok).

3. Be sure you take enough fish oil, 500 mg DHA per day, about twice the dose the label usually recommends.

4. Keep protein foods handy (nuts, peanut butter, hard boiled eggs, string cheese, Greek yogurt).

5. Fast food doesn’t always mean restaurant food! Walk into the grocery store for tuna, an apple, baby carrots, and a mineral water. The Whole Foods deli only uses olive and canola oils; you can eat well there without tedious label reading.

6. Large amounts of caffeine in the morning inevitably crashes you late afternoon. A favorite non-caffeinated beverage is Solixir’s Awaken.

Practice these habits. Your productivity and creativity will respond with gratitude.

Monika M. Woolsey, MS, RD, is registered dietitian and exercise physiologist, and CEO of the inCYST Institute for Hormone Research, a non-profit organization raising money to support research into hormone-related problems such as infertility, insomnia, and premature aging. Check out their upcoming event: http://on.fb.me/o9ClEw.

It’s easy to show up to an event, order a drink, and schmooze. But even in a relaxed social setting there just might be a better way of maximizing your time and making things happen.

Know who’s going to be there. Whether the event has 30, 300, or 3000 people, identify who you want to talk to. Pick the five people you know have something to say to.

Create an agenda. Enter the room knowing who you’re going to talk to and what you’re going to say. Practice your pitch and then go find the guys you want to connect with.

Define your metrics for success. If you’ve talked to your hit list and received permission to outreach to them later, you can chalk that up as a pretty good use of time. If you met a few other connections on your way out, it might even be a homerun. What about if you only talk to three of your people? Be precise in knowing what success looks like to you – and don’t stop until you get there.

For many people, it’s not easy getting out there and rubbing elbows. No worries. The beauty about an event is you know people want to talk and meet, or they wouldn’t be there.

So let your guard down and start wheeling and dealing. Events, if done right, can really pay off.

And don’t forget, have fun! Sometimes we all forget that one.

John Diep is the founder of Schmoozd, StartupToStartup, and StartupDemo.

Growing up in the MTV generation, I was influenced by pop-culture and the forever quest for useless knowledge. Like a sponge, I retained as much information as possible. I memorized and researched jingles, movie lines, rock anthems, gossip, world history, future history, astrology (I am a Gemini), video game codes (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A), sports history, names of cities, anything I could get my hands on.

Believe it or not, I found myself disenchanted with school topics. English class was boring. My attention span was zero in AP Government. French made no sense to me, and math was only good for counting cards. Yet mastering the art of spitting out movie lines; that was awesome! I hung out with my geek friends talking about how “Andy” was a dude’s name, but in “The Goonies,” she was kind of hot.

You may be asking yourself why you just spent the last 30 seconds reading the paragraph above. You may think it was a waste of time. If you feel dumber or need better time management skills, continue reading. If you agree that random meaningless information doesn’t waste time, skip to the last paragraph.

People enjoy buying from people they like. What is the easiest way to get a client to like you? Have similar interests and be ever-knowing in random topics. I have closed deals based on discussions about Voltron and the Thundercats. Like intellects gathering in the center of town, I gather at John’s house and draft my top 26 fantasy baseball players. One of my clients asked me to join his league. My personal book of business has just tripled.

So if your child is asking to watch YouTube videos or anything viral, indulge them. Let them be the sponge that I was. I think I turned out alright.

You have completed the Choose Your Own Adventure quest. Please pass Go and collect your $200.00.

Michael Chiang is a senior regional manager at Crescent Solutionsand president of the Los Angeles .NET Developers Group.

Being a small business owner I frequently get asked what to do when clients don’t pay me for completed work. There are 3 things you can do to minimize the risk of not getting paid:

First, any entrepreneur or freelancer who doesn’t take basic small business courses from SBA.org (many for free) or some similar program is asking for trouble. If you pay self-employment tax you are a full-fledged business in the eyes of the IRS – so act like it. Learning about how to set up your business plan will help you get organized; so that non-payment will either not happen or you will have some type of recourse set up in advance.

Second, get it in writing. If you are a business you need a good contract. You don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on a lawyer, you just need to make sure that you include all the points about the service, product or work you are providing to your client, and points about situations that may or may not occur.

Finally, sometimes you need to “Just Say No…” thank you! If you have a gut reaction to a client that doesn’t sit right with you for more than 24 hours, say ‘no thank you,’ and move on. Chances are your gut is right. It’s your business and you can decide who you choose to work with and for.

The real difference between being a business or not is getting paid for your work. Setting up your business plan, service contracts and trusting your gut can go a long way in being perceived and feeling like a real business person. It doesn’t matter what you do or where you do your work – it just matters if you get paid.

Colleen Rice Nelson is a self employed business woman who runs a multimedia consulting business,The Ultimate Answer, helping her clients answer their questions about the world wide web.

We’ve been looking at design and branding from the angle of entrepreneurship. First we saw that the core of branding is having a coherent strategy. Next we looked at the planning behind an identity system and how this framework extends the character of the business.

Now let’s talk about design as execution. This means translating your identity system into the materials your business needs.

Once you have a well-planned identity system to work from, you can dismiss your top-dollar, strategic designer and hire a student intern for around $20/hour. If they have experience with the basic craft of design production, they will be fine at implementing the guidelines of the system. Your responsibility now is to give the intern the files from the system, (fonts, logos, color palettes, etc), along with the content and copy they need to populate your marketing materials.

In allocating your resources towards design, try and cover all touch-points of your business evenly, rather than blowing a lot on a single project, such as an overly-fancy site or business cards. It’s about the total impression—gaps cost more than flashy highlights earn.

Building a brand is about details in service of the greater vision. You must attend to both equally and always.

Adam Mefford is an alumni of Art Center College. He is presently launching a platform for entrepreneurship in Los Angeles known as Currency. Please email contact@currency.cx for more information.

(part two of three in a series on branding)

Last month I wrote about the most critical element of branding: a clearly articulated strategy for the business. Now let’s look at design, which is how most people think of branding.

Ideally, the product or service blends with the intangible meaning of a brand. The brand comes across as one unified, magical experience—hitting on all levels of body, mind and imagination.

In design training for branding, creative students develop systems to define aesthetic choices for composing and executing the assets of a company. This particular challenge is very specialized and appeals to a small percentage of creative designers.

At the start of your project you need one of these people to work with you on an identity system for your business. This translates your group character and strategy into specific criteria for designing the required materials.

Hiring someone with experience is worth your money—I’d recommend spending no less than $4K. You need a unique set of assets that will endure for at least five years and accommodate all future areas of design.

The goal is for your materials to give a sense of the logic and purpose uniting everything you do. This builds momentum and trust, and leaves a lasting impression on customers.

Adam Mefford is an alumni of Art Center College. He is launching a platform for entrepreneurship in Los Angeles known as Currency.

E-mail him at Adam Mefford