How to promote your freelance services

Posted on October 19, 2011
by

How To Promote Your Freelance Services

Freelancing is an awesome job for anyone. The term independent contractor is another name for a freelancer. All this means is a new way of saying a person works for themselves. Traditionally, the name freelance was rarely used. When saying work from home, usually the person was pounding the pavement everyday going door to door selling items. Maybe a beauty or car shop was on the person’s property. That is being an independent contractor.

Now, in today’s world, working online for yourself is freelancing. A lot of people who try to get work online do not know this is a major keyword to use in the search engines. Thinking differently online from offline is how a person gets found and hired to do work. So, yes by tax terms use independent contractor but just using the word freelance for work, will open thousands of jobs up in a person’s job field.

Ghostwriting articles is one of the largest jobs online. As a freelancer,  use job boards for this. Some good ones is Freelancer, VWorker, Fiverr, and others. A person gets their feet wet with experience but have to watch fees they have to pay. When receiving great feedback for work done and receiving more and more work, this is where you go to the next step and make a website.

A website will be able to show samples of work a person has done. The freelancer will be able to have their rates set on what they would like to charge per article for example. The same goes if the person knew how to build websites, write code for banners and logos, knew how to fix things, even offering services such as a virtual assistant or bookkeeper.

Offering services as a freelancer is extremely easy. A person can freelance immediately with no huge costs of starting their own business. Most of the time a person will receive work instantly or within a few days when advertising their job skills and services.

Advertise for free also at the grocery store and laundry mats in your area. There is a ton of people that work from home that could use freelancing services. Being local could be a plus as it could provide local work and builds up trust as a high quality business. Craigs List online is a wonderful place to advertise if the freelancer does not have a website yet.

Even a local penny saver type weekly newspaper will let a person advertise dirt cheap. Depending on the area, local radio stations offer free listings on a certain time and day of the week. People can give stuff away, advertise yard sales, and of course looking for work.

All in all, how to promotoe your freelance services depends on the work you do. There are very specific places to advertise these certain job skills. This is the beauty of working online. Instead of advertising these job skills in a general place, which cheapens high quality work and receive lower pay,  the freelancer will earn what they deserve in a place that truly knows what they want when hired for the job.

Leave a Reply ?

How to calculate your freelance rates

Posted on October 18, 2011
by

It is common for new freelancers to wonder how to calculate their freelance rates.  If you are wondering how to calculate your freelance rates, that is not a stupid question.

To come up with the best calculation, you need to take several things into consideration.  This is because you could miss out on work if clientele think that your rate is either too high or too low.

When you set your rate too high, clients may not want to pay your rates.  If you set your rates too low, clients will either think that you are not experienced or that your work is subpar.

You will also want to consider whether you want to choose a per-job rate or a per-hour rate.  If you choose an hourly rate, you will want to do this very carefully, as you can potentially lose out on clients due to this, as well.  You need to find a happy medium where your rates are affordable yet show that you are capable of handling the different items clients may ask for.

In order to figure out the rate that you should charge, you must evaluate your skill sets and your experience objectively, as well as how productive you can be on an average day.  Plus, if you know many different types of writing styles, you will get much more work than someone who simply knows, for instance, how to write blogs or articles.  Also, the more that you can produce in a day, the higher you can set your rate, and the more money you will be able to make.  By taking all of this into consideration, it will be simple to come up with a figure that works not only for you, but for your clients, as well.

Once you begin working, you can keep track of your earnings in a spreadsheet that can do all of your calculations for you.  This is a great way to keep track of earnings and expenses related to your writing business.  If you are just starting out, these calculations will help you decide on a good beginning rate to charge your clientele.

If you are already established with a list of clients, the spreadsheet will automatically calculate the projects that you have completed, how much money you received for the projects, and how much time it took you to finish.  By keeping track of your work that you are able to produce, you will be much better able to set a great rate that will show off what you are worth.

At the same time, you can always raise or lower your rates depending on the client or the order, as well.  You should never set your rate in stone.  This can cause you to lose work.  It is better to get ten orders that only pay $30.00 apiece rather than no orders at all.  You can be as flexible with your rate as you want to, just remember, the more flexible you are can mean the difference between working and not working.

Leave a Reply ?

Getting hired online

Posted on September 24, 2011
by

In order to get yourself hired online you can find jobs through these websites:

Connecting employeers with contractors and getting paid online

oDesk

Categories of jobs include: Web Development, Software Development, Networking and Information systems, Writing and Translation, Administrative support, Design and Multimedia, Customer Service, Sales and Marketing and Business Services. oDesk also helps people develop a team.

Benefits

  • You download oDesk’s software so that your employers know what you are doing and you don’t have arguments about time billed
  • Some tests are available to prove your skills
  • You can get validated that you are a true person by sending some documents

Guru.com

Benefits

  • Good User Interface
  • Not bloated with features
  • Simple to use

Elance

Benefits

  • Simple User Interface
  • Ability to verify yourself
  • You can really stand out from the crowd with a paid account

You can also check Freelancer.com (ex GetAFreelancer) and vWorker.com (ex RentACoder)

 

 

Leave a Reply ?

Qualities needed to be a freelancer

Posted on September 24, 2011
by

Freelancing is not as easy as it sounds. While it is great to do your work from home you have to have (or at least try to steadily develop) some qualities in order to be a successful freelancer.

Discipline

Can you say no to your friends that invite you to a coffee? Can you concentrate to work event if the sun is out? Can you keep the TV off while you work? Anyway, you have to say no to a lot of distractions in order to cope with your work.

Finances

How do you manage your money? Are you good at it? Did the salary you used to get vanish at the middle of the month or you could save some money? Are you buying the things you truly need or you just spend your money anywhere? Be aware that when starting your own business you can rarely estimate the cash flow that you will have for each month, some clients might postpone your payments while others might not be able to pay you at all.

Patience

One of the most important qualities of all. You have to be patient in a whole lot of aspects. First of all you have to be patient with your business development. When you start your business you must not disappoint yourself if you don’t manage to land a client the first month, or even the first three or six months. Some things do not evolve the way we like them to do. Also, you have to be patient with your clients. Some clients for x or y reasons (eg they are divorcing with their wife, or they have just found that their daughter has a boyfriend) might occasionally speak to you in a bad way. You must be patient when answering to such situations. If you cannot cope with that the same minute, just hang up the phone (use some excuse) and talk with the client another time.

Be social

People try to bond with each other. You have to be social with your clients. You care about them, because you want them to be ok and supply you with work. Its ok to ask some questions like “how is it doing” or “did you watch the match yesterday”. Be careful though not to be too much social and always be descriptive. While some clients might tell you that they have some family problems, they might not want to discuss them. Also, be aware that you cannot chit chat with clients all day because you have work to do.

Self-motivation

Never wait for something to happen in order to do something. Don’t wait your client to tell you ‘what is going on with x task’ in order to start working on it and don’t wait for clients to knock on your door. You have to be self-motivated in order to take full advantage of the time you work as a freelancer. Start your new task as soon as possible, and take necessary actions in order to market your self.

Study

Yes you have to constantly study about your profession. When you are freelancing you don’t compete with your colleagues.  On the other hand, you compete with thousands of other people that are freelancing and want to get your clients. Know where you stand and take necessary actions to stand higher.

Plan

For some people it might be quite hard, others have it in their blood. When starting a business you have to plan as much as possible. For example you must plan:

  • Your month’s cashflow
  • Your next month’s cashflow
  • Your business development
  • Your tasks for today
  • Your holidays

And a whole lot of other things

To be continued…

 

 

Leave a Reply ?

Reasons for starting freelancing

Posted on September 20, 2011
by

Are you thinking to become a freelancer? You are probably falling into some of the following categories:

You have been laid off from your previous job and you cannot currently find a similar one. In order to continue working in the same industry (eg designing, programming) you are thinking to start finding your own clients.

You have been working at a job position where it looks like you haven’t learned anything new for sometime. You are constantly seeking for new challenges and therefore you want the freedom to do different things whenever you want. Hopping through different job positions every once in a while is not an option and therefore you decide to find new challenges yourself.

You cannot cope with 09.00 – 17.00 working hours. You want the freedom and you have the discipline to work whenever you want.

You live somewhere (eg at a village) where there aren’t many job openings. You are thinking to start freelancing and find some clients for whom you can work remotely.

You are tired working to and from your work office. Traffic makes you crazy.

You have a good network of people that can regularly supply you with freelance jobs.

You think that if you start freelancing your income potential might increase.

and finally

You want to be your own boss!

 

 

Leave a Reply ?