Getting Started in Freelancing

This post is actually an excerpt of an article I submitted to Helium comparing oDesk and eLance.  I pulled all the comparison data but here’s some helpful hints!

Current Economic Crisis

We have hit a current unemployment rate of 7.2 percent as of December 31, 2008. According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics release that was published on January 9, 2009 in a period of only four (4) months, 1.9 million people have lost their jobs.

When you combine this frightening statistic with the increased cost of gas to get around, increased cost of food and clothing, it’s not that difficult to understand that people are going to have some challenges living for too long on unemployment.

Sadly, more people who are unemployed with begin having difficulty paying their mortgages, they’ll possibly lose medical benefits and many will drain their savings while they’re unemployed just to make everyday ends meet.

Transferable Skills

Fortunately, in today’s high-tech environment, most of us have what I like to call ‘transferable skills’. These are skills that you can take from one job and bring with you to begin seeking jobs in another field. For example, those who have worked in customer service often have keen data entry skills. Many who have worked in the financial services industry for instance are accustomed to writing reviews for clients, and the list goes on and on.

One of the first things you should consider when you’re considering looking for freelance opportunities is to clearly set out for yourself (you will need it later) exactly what skills you have available. This can help you further narrow down the type of work you’ll be able to do.

Update your Resume

While you are seeking freelance opportunities, this is a great time to sit down and bring your resume up to date. Regardless of whether you decide to pursue brick and mortar opportunities or freelance opportunities, this will help you prepare a fair overview of what you have to offer to potential employers or potential clients.

When you are preparing your resume make sure you don’t overlook such things as special projects you took on while with an employer, any training you participated in and other facts that can add to your credentials.

Create your online presence

You might be wondering how you will go about marketing yourself since it’s not like you can actually walk into a persons room and explain everything to them! This is true – this requires establishing yourself as a presence in the online marketplace. You are probably wondering how you would go about this. For starters, you can start with a profile at oDesk and beef it up! Put as much relevant information into your profile as you possibly can especially focusing in on your skills.

A) A blog - set up a free blog and do a thorough “About Me” page that talks about your skills and includes relevant parts of your resume. Thorough profiles, resume and a good about me page will help you get started. I personally recommend putting your name in the tags of each posting you put on your blog.

B) LinkedIn – LinkedIn is actually a networking and job site. However, for those who are looking for Freelance opportunities, they offer a free profile, online resume and they also offer you the ability to request references from prior business associates, employers, etc. This is a perfect way to set up a link to your resume and provide references immediately for potential new employers and if you’re looking for Freelance opportunities it allows you to have instant credibility. Once you set up your profile, search the network and find out if others whom you have worked with in the past in any capacity are signed up and request that they provide you recommendations. Not everyone will, but some will and you’ll soon develop instant credibility and you’ll have references to offset your lack of feedback.

C) Social Networking – I am not as familiar with social networking as I probably should be but I do know enough about them to recommend that you set up profiles with one or more of them. You can even create a YouTube video that is a resume of sorts that talks about you, talks about your personal goals and your skills which can be linked in job postings.

Beginning the job hunt

The first thing you need to do is be realistic. Chances are it’s going to take you as long (or longer) to find a freelance job than it may take you to find a new job at a brick and mortar establishment. Remember that all freelance opportunities are global and you’re often going to compete with people from all over the globe. This means that rates may be low, you may find yourself bidding on jobs that upwards of a hundred people are going to be bidding on.  Don’t get discouraged. If you believe your skills warrant higher rates, stick with it and let people know why you’re worth the extra rate!!

Applying for jobs

One of the things that will help you stand out here at oDesk is a good strong cover letter. Each position you bid on you should write a unique cover letter, it should clearly detail why you’re the right person for a job and you should also refer to parts of the job posting as they are appropriate. If you are asked for a sample of your work in the posting, you should make sure you include the sample as well.

Above all else, be consistent, keep applying for jobs and make yourself stand out each day!  You can succeed at freelancing if you are consistent and stick with it!

The line between enough and too much

As a freelance writer  one of the hazards of looking for ongoing work is finding the line between enough work and too much work.

It’s up to you to decide how many hours you wish to devote to working daily.  If you have regular clients with ongoing assignments for freelance writing it may be fairly simple to keep your schedule on track.  However, if like most freelance writers  you have a combination of long-term and short term clients finding the balance between enough been too much work can be tricky.

Balancing your time is critical to your success as a freelance writer .  Whether you determine that setting a weekly schedule, or a monthly schedule works best for you you must ensure that all assignments can be completed before their deadline.

For those with regular ongoing assignments, this is typically significantly easier than for those who depend on a variety of small assignments to keep them active.  If you have a blend of ongoing assignments that you mix one of into, your balancing act could become more difficult.

Weekly schedule

Whether you elect to wait until Monday morning or you opt to deal with it on Sunday night, your freelance writing weekly schedule should be prepared so you understand what your tasks are for the week.

For ongoing freelance writing assignments without deadlines, you may want to consider breaking them into weekly pieces and subsequently into daily pieces.  This will allow you to quickly identify gaps in your schedule that may allow you to take on additional assignments.

Monthly assignments

Do you have freelance writing clients who give you a fixed number of hours per month to deal with blogs, articles, or other type of projects?  If so you can easily fill your monthly calendar in based on the workload you’ve been assigned.

A perfect example of this would be the client who keeps an open freelance writing assignment and asks you to spend eight hours per month writing new articles.  Whether you elect to do all the hours in one day, or spread those eight hours out over the month is strictly up to you.  While spreading  the eight hours out over the entire month may allow you to spread your income out over the month, completing all eight hours of freelance writing in one day might actually free up additional time.

Summary

You will need to determine which method of tracking time works best for you as a freelance writing professional.  Always be sure when taking on new freelance writing assignments that you are not crossing that line between having enough work and having too much work.

While having too much freelance writing  work may be considered a good problem by some, failure to meet deadlines set by your buyers can haven’t long lasting negative impact on your freelance writing.

Reviewing Your Portfolio

With the new year upon us it might be a good time to review your portfolio. As a freelancer, our strongest selling points are our portfolios.

So here are some tips to help you review your portfolio:

A) How old are the samples in your portfolio? I like to keep my samples in my portfolio as current as possible. I typically will add new items if they reflect a change in topic, style or product. In fact I should be looking at my oDesk portfolio because while I have a lot of items in it some of them are more than a year old. I personally think that your main portfolio should be less than one year old

B) How well does your portfolio reflect your interests? If you’ve decided that you’re going to focus on article writing this year (versus website content or blogging) then your portfolio should show a strong article writing history. If you are interesting in staying diversified in your writing then you should make sure your portfolio is diversified

C) Is your portfolio clear and easy to read? Hopefully your portfolio will tell it’s own story. If you need to add text to explain your portfolio, keep the words short, crisp and to the point

D) Adding new material to your portfolio – Just because you are working regularly doesn’t mean you shouldn’t add new material to your portfolio. Once a month take a look and see if you did something different during the month and include it in your portfolio.

Remember, most buyers are going to take a look at your portfolio either during your interview or during the hiring process. Having a strong portfolio will help increase your chances of successfully bidding on new jobs!

Goal Setting

The beginning of a new year not only allows you the opportunity to set up your new schedule for the year it also allows you to reset your goals. What are your goals going to be this year?

A) Make more money than last year - I think 99.9% of us have this as our primary ‘professional goal’. Make a plan to achieve this goal. Set attainable benchmarks to help you along the way;

B) Add new clients – are you actively seeking out new opportunities? You can only increase your client base if you’re actively working towards that goal. Set a reasonable expectation today of how many new clients you can obtain this year;

C) Better time management – are you spending too much time reading emails, answering phone calls, searching the internet? Decide which of your habits are wasting the most time and take initial steps starting today to modify them;

D) Better organized – is your work area helping you succeed? Maximize your work space for maximum productivity.

If you’re setting your goals early in the year you should review them on a regular basis to make sure that you are on track.

Planning for 2009

It’s time to think about how to plan your year, especially if you are a freelancer. It’s hard enough working for yourself without having a plan to make sure that you have work throughout the upcoming year. There’s no time like now to begin planning.

A) Plan to Succeed - Of course none of us plan to fail. But the fact of the matter is that more small businesses fail after the first year. Regardless of whether you think so or not, your decision to be a freelancer means you’ve made the decision to be a small business! Today (January 1) is the day you want to plan your work for at least the next three (3) months if that’s at all possible.

B) Develop relationships – if you have only a few long term clients, it’s time to start nurturing new relationships. Contact former clients and find out if they might need your services. Sometimes, until you ‘remind’ them that they need just the type of work you provide then they just don’t think about it;

C) Budget – one of the most deadly things that happens to many of us as freelancers is not being able to depend on our income. Let’s face it, some months it’s really good and others it’s not so good. Right now is the time to take a look at your game plan to get through those lean months. Take a look at your 2008 income statement (monthly) and see which months were especially lean. Create your 2009 budget accordingly;

D) Upgrades in technology – are you keeping up with the needs of your clients? Is it time to start looking at new and innovative software, computers, accessories? Right now is a great time to buy some of these things (if you’ve got the resources) since so many sales are going on!

E)  Schedule – Too many times we’ve heard folks complaining about not being able to take time off during holidays.  If you plan your schedule now you can email your clients a link to your calendar.  Set up a free calendar in ZOHO or Google and clearly mark your availability.  If you’re taking full days off say so!  Send a link of your calendar to all of your clients.   Another thought is if you have a blog, post a slug to your calendar to that blog and email your blog to your clients and/or leads!

Your plan needs to be flexible to allow for changes, but if you start today, you can get a head start over many freelancers!  Happy New Year!

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

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.

Avoiding Back Pain

My best recommendation to avoid back pain at the computer is to invest wisely in a very good chair and watch your posture!

Contact some of your local companies and find out what type of chairs they purchase for their staff!

I was fortunate enough to be working for a very large company many years ago that started a ‘Work At Home’ program and I did exactly that.

While I gulped at the $900 price tag on the chair at the time (this was in the early 90’s) – the chair has been a wonderful addition to my home office.

This chair is now the main-stay of my office and while I’ve replaced desks, printers, computers, the chair is still here and still looks the same way it did when I purchased it more than 15 years ago! I think it’s paid for itself.

I also strongly recommend that you get up out of your chair at least every 2 hours and really stretch yourself out! Nothing is more abusive than those hours on end of pressure on your back when you don’t move! And, of course practice good seating posture, which can be different for everyone.