Freelancing and Holidays

It’s definitely a lifestyle decision to be a freelancer. You’re trying as much as possible to have your future in your own hands, but the reality of it is unfortunately that your future (and your today) is firmly in the hands of your clients.  Unless of course you speak up.

First things first

Let’s not overlook the fact that many of the people who are hiring us don’t live (a) in our time zone and/or (b) in the same country as we live in.  They also may have different beliefs in terms of what holiday’s they find important as well meaning they don’t necessarily understand when we want to take time off.

Be proactive – make sure at the beginning of any month that you plan to take a holiday off (or partially off) that you let your clients know that.  If you’re taking off half days, full days or even just a couple of hours make sure you make it clear.

New Assignments/Holidays - one of the biggest challenges of the holidays is that they don’t typically stunt our need to apply for new assignments. Let’s face it, the bottom line is that once the holiday is over, you’re going to want to make sure you have assignments ready to jump right on.  If in fact you have open bids on new jobs and you should get hired just before you’re planning to take time off for a holiday, let the buyer know about it. Don’t be shy!  Remember something: If you don’t tell the buyer there’s an issue, then they are not going to know – like you and I they left their mind-reading gear in their other suits.

Don’t find yourself working through a holiday just because you agreed to take on an assignment (even if you feel the assignment is important to your future freelancing).

Take a stand and be true to your own needs. You’ll be a much happier freelancer if you take control where you can be in control.

Happy Freelancing

Making yourself Marketable

It’s one thing to decide that you want to venture into freelancing, and it’s another thing entirely to make yourself marketable.

One of the first things that you’ll quickly come to the realization of is that no matter how good you think you are at your given talent, there are another 50 (or more) people out there that believe themselves to be better than you are – and they can offer their service less expensively than you can.

If you’re leaving the brick and mortar job market for a virtual job the f irst thing you need to do is make sure you understand the reality of the virtual job market.  There are buyers who simply are not going to pay more than $5 an hour regardless of what skills they’re looking for. The more competitive the field, the more likely this is to happen (consider data entry for a great example of this).

You need to make yourself stand out from the crowd.   Now that might sound like a generality (and it is) but frankly, you have to figure out what your ‘niche’ is and you have to create an environment that highlights that niche.

If you’re a graphic artist for example – you will most likely highlight your graphics work in your portfolio – and this is a great idea.  However, you might have additional items that you want to share with potential buyers. Find a blog where you can upload files and highlight specific work broken out perhaps by categories.

You will definitely need to be creative, the more diverse the talent pool the more likely it is that you’ll have tough competition.  You are the only one who can market yourself – no one else is going to do it for you.

Happy Freelancing!

What’s Your Niche?

You might think that because you’re a freelancer that it’s ok to offer a variety of  skills and technically speaking you’d be correct. However, there are some things that you need to be aware of:

If I’m looking for a programmer (i.e. C Programming or other types) and your profile highlights what a great article writer you are, I’m not likely to even interview you.

If your skills are complimentary skills: I.E. a writer who’s really good at proofreading for example, I want to know that in your cover letter.  The same thing would go for SEO marketing – if you’re a writer with extensive SEO experience then perhaps that’s going to help me make a DECISION to hire you over the next person.

Don’t mix your fields - if you’re signed up as a ‘professional’ data entry person then don’t apply for writing jobs, you immediately lose credibility.  If you are ‘experimenting’ with a field, then make sure that you change your profile accordingly: If you’re an article writer/provider and I go to your portfolio and all I see are graphics that you designed – I’m out of here!

If you’re a ‘typical’ programmer but you’re trying to break into writing then the easy way to do that is to write a few articles for your portfolio or create a blog and point me there – if you don’t want to change your profile you can tell me in your cover letter ‘I normally focus on programming but I am working hard to develop my reputation as a writer – you can find some strong examples of my writing skills here’.  You get the picture…

Whatever field you chose, be an expert. Don’t bounce around from field to field and be honest with yourself. If you’re a lousy writer but a good programmer – stick to programming.  If you’re lousy programmer but you’re a  decent writer then stick to writing. You get the drift!!

Writing does offer additional opportunities such as proofreading. In fact, proofreaders are hard to come by because not everyone can easily identify mistakes in a document (or on a website) so if you have an eye for it then highlight that skill!

Happy Freelancing!

Virtual Reality 2

We talked in our last post about giving yourself a break – but there’s a downside too. Too often when folks work at home they think they have far more time than they really do!

What can happen?

The biggest problem for many people is working at home can lead to a lot of wasted time. If you’ve made the decision to work at home you have to be totally committed to working a set number of hours every day – and once you do that you need to stick to it. Whether it’s 3 hours every morning and 3 more every afternoon or 6 hours without a break, you need to decide that for yourself.

Keeping on track
There are tools you can use to make sure you stay on track and focused (or to see how well you’re doing). I like ‘WR Time Tracker’. Here’s what I can do with it – I can track all of my days ‘activities’ and mark them as billable or non-billable (by the way I don’t use this anymore since I joined oDesk) …. but what it allows you to do is to establish your own ‘pattern’.

Virtual Reality 1 – Get real

No, this post isn’t going to be what you think it’s about! It’s more to do with managing your new ’status’ as a freelancer, working alone, at home and often in your PJ’s.

One of the biggest mistakes that many freelancers make is thinking they’re automatically going to do the ‘right thing’ and work 8 hour days and earn every possible dime that they can. It’s not going to happen without some discipline. That discipline might be a lot more complicated than you think it is … follow me….

Give yourself a break!

Now it’s a pretty basic thing here – when you work in a traditional brick and mortar company they set your hours for you complete with breaks for ‘coffee’ and breaks for lunch. You don’t have a lot of control over that. You do at home of course, but therein lies the problem.

One of the biggest flaws with working at home is the ’sense’ that you can take breaks whenever you want them – in reality though do you really take a break?

Stop and consider the last ‘break’ you took from ‘working’ and what you did during that break. Did you:

A) Look for another ‘assignment’?
B) Read the news online?
C) Read a blog by your favorite poster?
D) Check your emails?

Chances are you did one of these things! If you did, then you really didn’t take a break. Here’s some ideas:

The next time you decide to take a break, walk away from your computer – in fact leave the room where your computer is! If you’re a smoker, take a walk out on the back porch and have a cigarette (even if you’re not a smoker a walk onto the porch for some fresh air can renew your energy), if you’re a pet owner grab their favorite toy and toss it around for a few minutes, take the dirty dishes out of the sink and load the dishwasher or even take a shower if you haven’t already.

The secret here is actually *take a break*. Don’t spend your ‘downtime’ staring at something on the computer – even if it’s not ‘work’ you’re not really giving yourself a break and a few minutes to revive yourself.

Don’t Waste My Time!

As a freelancer, our time is precious. As a buyer, we ask that you have the same respect for our time that you expect us to have for ours.

I want to share a story about a job that I posted for this week. Let me start this off by saying this: I’ve been signed up with oDesk for more than a year and I’ve had very few instances when I’ve really complained about buyers because for the most part they are extremely helpful, cooperative and they are good to deal with.

But this story is a ‘red flag’ warning to providers and a red flag to buyers as well!

Since March I have applied for less than 100 job postings. Since this is December that means that I apply for less than ten per month which is not excessive. In fairness, this is because I have a solid base of regular buyers who keep me on ‘retainer’ if you will to do work for them every month.

With that said let me say this: when I do apply for tasks it’s because I feel it’s a good match and that I can do the job to the specifications laid out in the job description. If I apply for a fixed rate job I anticipate being able to turn it over quickly and get it done with (this is an exception for me) and if I apply for an hourly job my goal is to eventually turn that buyer into a long term assignment. There’s no gray area here for me!

So with all of the dramatics out of the way let me share this with you. I applied for an hourly job this week with a buyer looking for three (3) to five (5) articles a day. My ’standard’ hourly rate is $25 per hour (and I really would like to be making more than that but factually I’m not ready to raise the rate higher) but if I feel I can turn the buyer into a long term assignment I’m willing to go a little lower. With this in mind I applied for this position.

The buyer had some sketchy requirements in the job posting so I elaborated by giving the buyer some history (i.e. look at my profile) and laid out a clear proposal of what I could do (i.e. how many articles a day, a week and a month) and what I was willing to accept for a rate based on (a) hours; (b) article count and I also provided him with a maximum monthly amount based on a total number of articles assuring him that if for some reason hours X article count didn’t give with the amount I was quoting I’d cover the ‘difference’ by providing the shortfall in articles for free. I spent at least thirty minutes writing this proposal.

I then attached a sample of a ’standard’ 500 word article and explained my research methods as well as providing my ’standard’ guarantee which is:

A) Free from plagiarism;
B) Free from typos/grammar errors
C) You’ll be happy or I keep it and reproduce it free

I submitted my cover letter and went back to work. About 2 hours later this buyer invited me to interview with him. Now to put this into perspective, I offered the buyer $15 per hour for this job (plus oDesk fees) which is $10 lower than my normal hourly rate.

I acknowledged the interview request and at the buyers request signed him into my chat and proceeded to discuss his job requirements with him and reiterated my commitment to the above points and my rate one more time.

In turn (after about 20 minutes) the buyer offered me $7 per article. When I pointed out to him that I had offered him an hourly rate and the above guarantees I was told that the job was not hourly but it was fixed and he would pay on a per article price only. I pointed out that he had posted an hourly job – he said he understood that but if I wanted the job he’d re-post as a fixed rate job.

So, I spent 30 minutes on my cover letter, 30 minutes on a chat and that’s one hour out of my work day for nothing.

Please don’t post an hourly rate job if you don’t intend to hire someone for hourly rate. Have some respect for my time as I have respect for yours.