New Year Resolutions
With the new year comes the inevitable - a set of new year resolutions, often swiftly followed by a host of excuses as to why they weren’t possible, realistic or convenient. Even so, the new year is a good opportunity to look at the way you undertake all aspects of your business, from finding new work to planning your time to keeping your accounts. And to improve your chances of actually sticking to your resolutions why not pick just one a month for the year ahead – write one across the top of each month of your calendar and you never know, you might actually see them through!

Here are a few steps you could take over the course of the year to help run your business more effectively:

Set yourself some goals
Do you feel that you met your goals in 2007? Did you actually have any goals in 2007? Many small businesses run from day to day without a clear plan of where they are going and what they are trying to achieve. Setting yourself some goals and planning what steps you need to take to achieve them is a powerful way to move your business forward and give you a clear understanding of what you have achieved when you look back at the end of the year.

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Latest Projects & Contracts
More and more employers of freelancers are joining our site each week. As well as their contracts we are also sourcing contracts from across the Web (from agencies such as The Guardian Online, Michael Page, Trovit etc...)

This months Featured Contract is the Food PR Freelancer role based in Wiltshire. The contract is ongoing and requires a self-starter with great media contracts.

Account Director, Norwich
Home Based Telesales Agent Required, Cheshire
International Media Buyer, London (Greater)
Marketing Consultant, Hampshire, negotiable rate
Internal Communications Executive, London, £120 per day

The Yuletide PR Stunt
Year on year the retailers dig out the violins to cry about how tough Christmas is, and how consumers are not spending on the high street. Yet here we are in January hearing about how surprisingly well Christmas went for many of our high street giants.

I’m not suggesting consumer spending is not dropping, and with the credit-crunch consumers are not a little more thrifty, but its becoming a bit old hat, when we hear the same thing each year, then in January they say, ‘maybe it wasn’t so bad after all’!

The PR stunt of making consumers think they should be out spending seems to be working a treat.

John Lewis has been quoted as enjoying a bumper Christmas with the group reporting an 8% jump in department store sales in the week up to December 29. Electricals showed the strongest growth, with televisions (flat-screen TV sales were up 50%), MP3 players, digital photograph frames and digital cameras flying off the shelves.

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Latest Industry News
Avoid trawling the Web for all the latest industry news by visiting our aggregated news feeds page. We currently source stories from Profile Extra, Marketing Week, E-consultancy - Online PR to name but a few.
Whitehall forms new body to oversee government marketing spend
When public 'relations' become very public
Unilever launches three-in-one Lynx body spray
Managed conflict can be good for business
Google to add blogs to Universal Search
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December Newsletter Survey Results
Last month we asked you, "How long have you been freelance?" Many thanks for your responses. Here are the results:

• 0 to 2 Years (23%)
• 2 to 5 Years (16%)
• 5 to 10 Years (27%)
• 10 to 15 Years (15%)
• 15+ Years (19%)

• Yes
• No, but I would like the opportunity
• No, and I am ok with this