It’s been a little over 8 weeks since we kicked off our “The New Way To Work” contest back in September, and the world of work is continuing to evolve. We’ve spotted a healthy number of blog posts, articles, videos, and graphic designs on Twitter, Facebook, and Vator.TV expressing and celebrating the new way to work – here are a few special submissions that have really caught our eye.

First, an awesome YouTube clip from Tanika Goudeau, otherwise known as tigi202:

 

And secondly, a powerful story from a Rita Sanghita, based out of Greece. Here’s an excerpt (read the full story here):

If you’ve logged into an email account in the past 15 years, you’ve almost definitely encountered some form of email marketing during your daily inbox routine. Regardless of if it’s used properly (opt-in) or not (oh no, spam!), one fact is clear: Email marketing is a very powerful tool for a wide variety of reasons that businesses can take advantage of with very low overhead costs. However, maximizing its potential requires you to use it as effectively as possible. Want to learn more? Here are a few pointers to get your feet wet. (Don't have the time? Hire an expert on Elance to get the job done.)

What Is Email Marketing?

According to Wikipedia, email marketing is “a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience.” So basically, if you’re a business and you’re contacting your current or potential future customers with sweet offers, then you’re using email marketing. Additionally, from the same source, researchers estimate that U.S. firms alone spent $400 million on email marketing in 2006.

Opt-In Vs. Opt-Out

If you're unfamiliar with Opt-In or Opt-Out email marketing, think of it like this: Opt-In are your customers who specifically asked to receive email updates and newsletters from you, while Opt-Out is that you assume your customers, or anyone for that matter, wants to hear from you unless they specifically state that they do not want to hear from you. Of course, it gets far more technical (read the full descriptions here at Spamhaus.org), but before you choose one, be sure to understand all of the potential ramifications prior to making a decision.

Personalization

“Dear Alex, check out our newest sales offer!” If you’re sitting there thinking that someone is on the other end typing each individual email in Outlook and clicking send, think again. There are quite a few email marketing solutions online that offer a wide variety of features, like email personalization. And don’t think that personalization is limited to just a name – you can personalize each email with custom links, login and user information, subject lines, headlines, and more. Does it make a difference? Well, a Jupiter Research study in 2006 states that inserting a person’s name into an email increases open rates by as much as 10%.

Managing Your Email Lists

So, how do they get your name and all of that personalization in there? In reality, the information needed to customize all of these emails is placed in simple spreadsheets. These datasheets are the who, what, and where of your entire email marketing campaign. It’s important for you to pay close attention to these lists because if these lists get filled with bad email addresses, it could negatively affect your email deliverability rate. Email hosts pay close attention to who’s sending what to who, so if you’re getting a high bounce rate (due to invalid or outdated email addresses), you could end up getting blacklisted and end up in the junk box rather quickly.

We’ve all heard so much about full-time job losses in the IT sector of late that it’s almost hard to fathom the numbers. At the risk of going all “green shoots” on you, I’m here to tell you that there is a rosier outlook for tech hiring when you consider the data coming out of this month’s Elance Work Index.

More companies than ever are realizing the benefits of hiring contractors online. Facts don’t lie, and the fact is, so far in October awarded jobs on Elance are up almost 50% from the same period a year ago.

Let’s face it, online work is more than a trend. This is happening as people (both companies and workers) continue to discover and embrace the New Way To Work.

Speaking of trends, here are the trends we see in this month’s Elance Work Index:
 

“How do I get my website to show up higher in search results?”

That question is oftentimes heard flying around meetings of entrepreneurs, small businesses, and large corporations alike. Search engine optimization is a science that is complex and constantly evolving, and developing a strategy can be difficult for some. (Having trouble? Hire an SEO expert on Elance.). However, if you’re looking to do a little dabbling in improving your website’s SEO, familiarize yourself with all of the tools in this Ultimate SEO Toolbox.

(Want more tips and SEO strategies? Search SEO on our blog, and you'll find more great stories like 5 Ways To Improve Your Search Rankings and Why You Need Social Media Bookmarking In Your SEO Strategy.)

SEO Chat Tools: SEO Chat Forums is a nicely equipped website with 41 free mini widgets that fulfill a variety of search engine optimization needs making it a great starting point for those looking to improve their website’s SEO. There’s an AdSense Calculator, an Advanced Meta Tag Generator, a Future PageRank preview, a Keyword Density analyzer, a Google vs. Yahoo search query tool, and a whole lot more. A great site definitely worth checking out. (Free)

Website Grader: This quick and easy tool allows you to get a brief report card on how your site’s SEO strategy stacks up and where you can make improvements. The tool grades you on six different criteria, which includes On-Page SEO (Metadata, Heading Summary, Image Summary, etc), Off-Page SEO (Domain Info, Google Page Rank, etc), Blogosphere, Social, Converting Qualified Visitors to Leads (RSS Feed, Conversion Form) and Competitive Intelligence. See if your website makes the grade. (Free)

High-end software packages from giants like Adobe and Microsoft are an absolute pleasure to use – they’re the industry standard for a reason. But legitimate retail copies of the software can cost a pretty penny and put a dent in the wallets of small businesses and individuals.

However, there are free, open-source alternatives that are widely available on the web that can tackle some of the tasks that the big-brother software packages do on a regular basis. I’ve lined up a number of alternatives to the most popular programs – trust me, they can be very useful in a pinch.

(Interested in free Microsoft web development software? Check out the Microsoft WebsiteSpark program and you can get thousands of dollars of software at no cost.)

Adobe Photoshop Alternatives: GIMP and GIMPshop – GIMP, otherwise known as the GNU Image Manipulation Program, is one of the oldest and most well-known open-source projects out there today. The image editing program offers most basic and intermediate level functions, like resizing, editing, cropping, layers, filters, and more. Although you won’t be getting the same level of tools available in its powerful, high-end counterpart, don’t count the GIMP out for image editing needed in a pinch.

GIMPshop is a modification to the GIMP software package that changes the menus and user interface to offer an experience more similar to Photoshop. GIMP is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and more, while GIMPshop is only available to Windows users.

More Photoshop Alternatives: CinePaint, Krita

Microsoft Office Alternatives: OpenOffice – If you’ve used a computer in the past 20 years, chances are that it had some form of the Microsoft Office suite installed. In recent years, however, OpenOffice, the Sun Microsystem-backed office suite, has been a turning a huge number of heads in the business world and has become a legitimate contender in the office suite arena. Its package offers Writer (Word), Calc (Excel), Impress (PowerPoint), Base (Access), Draw (Visio), and Math (Equation Editor).

You won’t be getting all of the Office Suite knickknacks, like Outlook, Publisher, InfoPath, OneNote, SharePoint, and Groove, but for the core functions, OpenOffice is definitely a solid choice. OpenOffice 3 is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and is ready to download today.

More Microsoft Office Alternatives: KOffice, Google Docs

Microsoft Outlook Alternatives: Thunderbird: - Outlook makes the corporate world go round – we all know that. But there are a couple of viable open source alternatives to the email-handling software that are available on multiple platforms. Mozilla, creators of the Firefox web browser, developed a fully-featured, open-source email client named Thunderbird. Thunderbird offers email search, message tagging, a fully customizable interface, add-ons and extensions, and more.

Mozilla Thunderbird 2 is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux and is ready to download today.

More Microsoft Outlook Alternatives: Evolution (for Linux)