There are a lot of stories written about home-based businesses—trust me, I just did a Google search. Working from home has changed drastically over the years, thanks to technology. If you think back not even 20 years about home-based businesses, you might envision a low-tech service business such as a daycare or landscaping company.

In this issue of Ask FreelanceSwitch, we look at growing into an agency and freelancing internationally. Ask FreelanceSwitch is a regular column here that allows us to help beginners get a grip on freelancing.

A recent story in The Australian caught my eye. The title of the piece is “Online magazine offers less than 2c a word to freelancers”.

Unless you’ve been living underneath a very large rock for the past couple of years, you’ve probably heard that Europe is teetering on the brink of financial armageddon. While there’s no shortage of doom and gloom in the the global outlook, it’s not all bad news – especially if you’re a freelancer.

I love sleeping. Always have, always will. I was the kid whose parents had to wake up on Christmas morning. If I don’t get enough sleep—watch out. Admittedly, sometimes I feel ashamed at getting nine hours of sleep at night. But when I read this article in Inc.com about how important sleep really is, I decided to never feel ashamed again. The overall arching theme of this article?

So you finally got a call back and that client is ready to move forward with working with you! Great! Now it’s time to get down to business. How do you make sure you get paid for the work you do? We all hate this part, but the nuts and bolts of a business relationship are the foundation for freelance success.

I love a good infographic, and this one created by Jobvite (view full infographic post or view it at full size) is really cool. It shows how Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter help people find work. This research looks at how people are using social media to look for and find work. Facebook leads the pack, with 44% of job seeking activity followed by LinkedIn at 26%.

To do list task managers and full productivity software is essential to a freelancers business.

When you’re looking at banking options for yourself as an individual, you need different things than you need as a freelancer. A personal bank account is usually part and parcel of building a larger relationship with your bank.

Chris Brogan is the author of the new book, Google+ for Business: How Google’s Social Network Changes Everything. As a Google+ skeptic (heck, I’m skeptical of all new social media) I was interested to learn more, so I sat down and watched this video where Michael Stelzner of Socialmediaexaminer.com interviewed Brogan about how Google+ can help small businesses. As a freelancer, you are r