First thing that you must remember – sleep is the enemy! Well, not always :)

An adult human needs seven hours of sleep every day, also nine hours are widely recommended for good rest, but generally seven is enough. That leaves seventeen hours available for work every day. Even when you take four or five hours for eating, shopping, cleaning and offline rest you still have like twelve hours that can be used for work. If you sleep eleven hours you automatically cut the whole available time to 8 hours. Usually there is nothing good in oversleeping, you will still be sleepy and not able to concentrate for a while. Also it’s better not to experiment with sleeping like five or four hours. You can end up as a sleepy worker who can’t concentrate and needs too much caffeine to go on (check our caffeine article for more info).

A healthy seven to nine hours sleep is a must for every freelancer. I usually work for six days and rest on Sunday, so in case you really need to get some extra sleep – use Sunday. A big success is to beat the most common alarm clock problem. If you are not obliged to be in the office by 8:30 it is very hard to make yourself get up and start the day. One of the solutions is to get over to the computer and read some latest news from RSS (that are interesting for you of course). This will start your brain and you can move over to the bathroom and kitchen. Sounds strange but it definitely works for me.

Another common problem is to start working. It is always not very easy especially if you have some large amounts of work hanging over you. The solution is to start with some simple things, like half-hour of bidding or information search for the future articles. This will get you into working mood and you can start coding or writing. Another very good psychological thing is keeping yourself, your working space and your house clean. If you are stuck in some project and can’t find a solution or you just can’t start working – take a shower or grab a vacuum cleaner and clean your room. I promise you after that you will feel fresh, comfortable and ready for work.

So as you see freelancing is a big freedom that requires even bigger discipline. But learning to discipline yourself is great. Trust me when you can make yourself work, you will become to feel much more confident in all parts of your life.

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.

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!

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.

Depending from the type of your work we recommend an 8-10 hours working day for writers/translators and 6-8 hours for coders. But remember that you are a freelancer and there is no need to work all the 6 or 10 hours. If you can work effective for five hours, work five, but consider this fact when you are setting your rates. Learn to manage your time. You have 24/7 available and if you set a 40 hours working week feel free to distribute the hours between the days in the most suitable way leaving some time for things like home stuff.

Mood is a huge problem. Try to avoid annoying things like unpleasant letters or personal problems and focus on the work. Close the door, put the cell phone on silent and get into the current projects. For a beginner it will be very difficult to concentrate when working at home for the first few months, but eventually you will get over it. Working at night is a good solution. You will get less distracted, because everyone is sleeping, but you will definitely require some caffeine too keep you up during first nights. The fact that sleepless nights damage your health is questionable. Even if you finish your work at 4 A.M., you can always get your seven (recommended by the doctors) hours of sleep and get up at 11.00 A.M., which is still morning. Also working at nights is a good solution during summer, when it is really hard to thing during the heat.

The Breaks

A good break is sometimes even more important for an effective work than a good working time. The generally recommended length is from 15 to 30 minutes for 1-3 working hours. Try to avoid actions that require much time or are very interesting for you during breaks. Like watching new movies, reading interesting books and most important playing games. The movie or book could be too interesting and your 15-30 minutes will turn into an hour or so, and that is already a loss of time. Also avoid too much chatting during breaks. Games are one of the biggest enemies of a freelancer, but there is a way to solve this problem. A good solution is to fill the breaks with some short things like 20 minute sitcoms or games that have a time limit (in my case 10 minute long Resistance: Retribution online match). This will clear your head a bit and you can start working again. Getting a breath of fresh air or some exercise is also good.

Also you can make your breaks useful, read some work related forums and articles, bid on some new projects, check your mail, or make some basic document work. Usually if you are deep into some work problem the need to do such minor work is annoying, but if you’ve already done it during a break it will be helpful.

The Conclusion

Be flexible and learn to think different! OnlineFreelance only shares experience, it is up to you to spend some time experimenting with various schedules and finding the one that is most suitable for you.

Coffee is the best way to keep you concentrated and working. For me even holding a cup of coffee gets me into working mood. It keeps you awake and has a proven positive effect on your brain functions. After its 22-year study on coffee the Harvard School of Public Health stated that: “the overall balance of risks and benefits [of coffee consumption] are on the side of benefits.” Still there is a general limit for coffee consumption: not more that seven-eight cups per day for an adult. People also have different caffeine tolerance so maybe for some of our readers three-four cups will be enough.

Energy drinks are even a more effective caffeine filled solution. A Red Bull can actually keep you up for three to four hours and it is a good thing for an emergency. But remember that consuming of more than three to four cans of energy drinks per day is very dangerous. If you happen to be younger that 18, than you limit is probably one per day. As for the sad facts, until 2008 France banned Red Bull after the death of eighteen-year-old Irish athlete Ross Cooney, who consumed four cans of this Energy Drink. He died as a result of playing basketball, but this case shows how “effective” energy drinks can be. Today some advocates even try to pursue government organizations on placing a warning logo on energy drinks, similar to warning logos on alcohol and tobacco.

Another effect of caffeine is that it increases the production of stomach acid. So when you are consuming too much coffee, you will be followed by hunger. If you will ignore your hunger or try to satisfy it with junk food, this could lead to stomach problems. As for the heart problems if you already have some try to limit your coffee consumption and avoid energy drinks. A good solution is a careful and effective planning of your working hours, this could help you to avoid caffeine at all and take it just in some emergency cases. Also it is useful to get some exercise, a freelancer has the unique opportunity to make some exercise breaks right during work time. The biggest problem is that most people don’t believe in any of the serious health issues before they actually face it. Everyone who is working in IT has three or five friends that have health problems gained from caffeine, but most people ignore these warnings.

Natural Born Freelancer

A good freelancer must know how to work alone, how to organize the working process, working hours, documentation, his working space, etc. There are dozens of things that need much more attention than a newcomer can think of and if you’ll ignore them you can end up with missed deadlines and failed projects. Generally the main problem for the newcomer will be organizing the work process. You are not limited by corporate thinking, but actually you have little understanding of how the work actually goes. The easiest solution will be to get three to six month of work in a company. It will give you very important experience in communicating with people, handling the documentation and organizing the work process. Or you can build your own working style based on your experience and information sources like our blog.

Newly Converted Freelance Adept

The three things that you need to break in your mind are time, team and money. If you are used to 8 working hours – forget it. As a freelancer you can work all the 24 if you are capable of keeping the quality of your work at an appropriate level. Still some people can’t handle the new schedule and end up with working 4 to 12 hours. To avoid such problems pay more attention to time management. During the first time, try to keep the 8 standard hours working shift and have some 2-4 extra hours for emergencies.

You are now on your own, but in most cases you are not alone. Double check your work, to avoid minor mistakes. Keep a good eye on your health and your PC. Most clients usually understand that you can get sick or you can have a hard drive crash, but they will not pay you for this time. Also it is good to have a few friends that can do a part of your work while you are incapable of doing it.

Money is the third problem. People who worked in various companies are used to the fact that they will be paid even during the hours when no actual work was done. That’s the beginning of the end. In freelance you are paid only for the work, it is very easy to understand, but too easy to forget. So try to avoid too much coffee breaks and chatting in IMs with friends during the working hours.

Actually all of these problems can be solved, if you really want to. And maybe after the first difficult months you will start seeing freelancing not as a job, but as an adventure.

Right now if we take Ukraine (a land that lot of market reports consider to be a big player on the IT market) the situation is very interesting. Lots of IT companies worldwide either went bankrupt or suffered a loss of funds. They closed their development projects and their outsourcing provider companies in countries like Ukraine, Russian, India, etc. lost their main clients. These provider companies also had to go through some changes and as a result literally thousands of IT workers were fired. It was generally good for the local IT labor markets, because only the most qualified workers remained in IT companies. Still some number of mostly low- to mid-qualified workers who lost their jobs tried to remain “in IT” and ended up as outsourcing newcomers. Some of the high qualified workers also ended up on the outsourcing market, so as you see on the provider side there is plenty of new labor force.

On the buyer side the situation is also very interesting. While many companies cut their costs for development or even things like paperwork, more and more of them turn to outsourcing as a way to save money. New types of outsourcing like legal-outsourcing are rising very quickly today and turning from questionable to effective. Hundreds of IT companies change their strategies and are looking for developers or development teams that will be able to work on their projects. So on the other hand we see that there are also a plenty of new buyers.

Right now it is the best time to start working as an outsourcing provider, so don’t hesitate. If you have enough skill in programming, translation, writing or even data input and a good level of English you will be able to find work on dozens of outsourcing websites. This blog will try to help you if you are a newcomer and give you information and advice from experienced outsourcing providers.