OnlineFreelance.com

Documentation is a thing that most of the freelancers usually ignore and I took it not seriously for a long time. Still one of the companies where I worked had strict rules concerning documentation and I just had to organize and label my doc files. Today I understand that is it was actually very helpful, because proper and organized work with documentation is very important for a freelancer in many ways. Most of the buyers will be impressed by nice documents and this can lead to additional work for you. Also it will be easier for you to search your own old work. So let’s move to some practical things.

In letters don’t forget the greetings and goodbyes even if your client already dropped them, be professional. Of course this is not crucial for your work, but it will keep you more disciplined and the client impressed. Also check grammar in your letters even if your English is good, you can always miss some mistakes. The topic of the letter is important, all the good buyers (and OnlineFreelance recommends to look only for good buyers) usually have about a dozen projects running. Labeling your letters like “GetAFreelancer – yoursite.com project – php forum complete – 06.06.2009″, will make it easier for your clients and will give additional points to you.

Common documents like reports for example, are the main working element, especially for article writers, translators and marketing guys. I have one professional secret: if I can’t concentrate and start working on a new article – I create a document. Sounds stupid but it works, this will bring additional order to your thoughts and with an open document hanging you will be always reminded about your unfinished article. Contents of the documents must have basics like headers, numeration and even a table of contents if the document is big. Remember that your documents will be read, they must look good and be well formatted. A bad document is a direct disrespect of the reader, still there is no need to focus on this too much. In a while you will find your most common documentation templates that you are comfortable with and this problem will be solved for you. Labeling of documents must be also done properly. Add dates, numbers and topics to file or archive names. Keep the work in special folders and keep the folders clean and organized. It will help you to find parts of the work if the client lost them or if you need to look at a certain part of some previous project.

It will be useful to master the Google Docs. This service will keep your documents online, stored in a special place and your clients who have a Gmail account will be able to access these documents. The documents will be safe from disasters like hard drive crashes, still you work will be tied to the Internet too much. The best way here is to keep your docs both on Google Docs and on your hard drive.

The biggest problem that a freelance newcomer usually has is to get a first project. In this article we will give some hints for newcomers.

Profile

Filling out a profile is one of the most important things. You need to keep in mind that profile will show your personality to your future clients. Try to avoid extra creativity and focus on the description of your skills. Most buyers that I know ask for creative ideas only if they need it, while in most cases it is more important for them to get the job done. The best way is to find the top freelancers on the site that you work on, analyze their profiles and resumes and write yours basing on their ideas. Great artists steal :) But in this case it is more important for you to understand the standards that are most effective on this site.

Work samples and work experience are the keys to your project, I usually post links to my work samples right after the usual “Hi!” You need to give your best to get some work done before you start looking for a project. It is great if you already worked in a company or as a freelancer outside this website. If not, an important rule here is not to sit and wait for work. Work starts in your mind and not on your monitor. There are numerous possibilities out there, you can always write some articles, make a website or design something for your friends for free. It will help you to practice and if the work was done well, you can always put that into your resume. Some people even start that way and at some point they understand, that they are paid for their work, and can actually make a living from that.

Pricing

The best newcomer strategy is offering a low price. It is common on every site to offer some low rates for your first project, but try to avoid doing something for free. On the one hand, most of the buyers will have little trust for someone, who is willing to do a job absolutely for free and on the other hand, a project with $0 or $1 payment will not look very serious in your profile.

In work like translation or writing you can always offer to do a small part of the project for free as a test. So if the buyer is not sure about you, he or she can just choose another provider in case you skills were not good enough. In my experience of writing free samples, most of them were actually paid, even if I eventually lost the project to another freelancer. It is also important not to grab just any work. You can end up with a task that is too big for you or with a dull task where you need to do some copy-paste work for $0.10 per hour.

Be persistent and remember that all of the top freelancers also had their first difficult projects!

Long-term projects are the main goal of every freelancer. You have a project that you are paid for during a certain period of time, you don’t need to spend time looking for new projects and you are focused on one main work. Still this type of project has some negative sides. If it ends before the scheduled time for some reason, you will be left with no work and in some cases even no money. On every freelance site getting a new project takes time and you could have no projects for one or maybe even two weeks.

Short-term projects actually need even a more serious approach. First it is usually hard to control a big number of small projects. Second if you run out of work, it will also take some time to get a new project, and it is easy to loose track of your deadlines if you have for example five of them. So we recommend not focusing on this type of projects and only taking them as “extra cash” projects, if you have some free time. Also taking such projects from time to time will give you a lot of experience in interviews with buyers.

If you are a newcomer it will be hard to get a long-term project and there are also a number of things that you must remember. One of the usual newcomer strategies is “low prices” (we will have an article about that in the future). I actually did some of my first projects for some small rates, just to get some working history and ratings. In getting long-term projects it can work against you. If you get a 6-8 month project for your beginner rates, after three or four months you will most definitely understand that this project is just not profitable for you anymore and you can earn more from current smaller projects. At that point not every buyer will be willing to pay you more. This can be solved during the initial negotiation with setting a test period or a lower rate period. It is also better to have two or three small project completed before getting the first long-term one. It will not only give you an argument in asking for higher rates, but also give you experience in completing projects, which helps to avoid beginners mistakes like missing deadlines for uploading working hours for example.

The best possible scheme for a newcomer is to have a “15-40 hour per week” main project and additional 3-4 smaller projects. It will allow getting new buyers and don’t depend from the main project. At some point you will understand that you have five six people who can provide you with enough work and you will have enough income even if one or two of them will run out of work for you. Basically the thing that people don’t understand at first is that you must be looking for buyers and not projects. A good buyer can constantly provide you with work and that might be even better than having a big long-term project.