OnlineFreelance.com

The Hours

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.

Every freelancer knows that usually his salary depends directly on the number of his working hours and many people try to push the number of hour to maximum with the help of an old friend – caffeine. Also a freelancer, especially a freelance newcomer very often has the problem of having too much work that just can’t be handled in an 8-12 working hours day and this problem is solved with coffee filled extra working hours. OnlineFreelance has a positive attitude towards coffee and energy drinks, still in this article we will warn our readers about some of the dangers of consuming caffeine.

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.

There are two possible scenarios of becoming a freelancer: right from the beginning of your working career or after a certain period of working in the company. We will label the first – Natural Born Freelancer and the second – Newly Converted Freelance Adept. Both of these scenarios have a number of issues that a good freelancer must keep in mind.

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.

All over the years while I was working as an outsourcing provider people asked me about my job. How does it work, where do I get the projects, how do I transfer the money, what sites do I work on? People were interested in this type of work, but most of them viewed outsourcing as something like a summer fast-food job for students and of course not nearly like some serious full time job. That were the good times, by the way. In the end of 2008 with the global economic crisis currency rates in Ukraine began to rise and the whole situation became unstable. The only people who actually felt kind of safe were the people who were freelancers and had their salaries in USD or Euro. But during the most difficult moments people rarely remember opportunities that were not viewed seriously even when the situation was stable and that is a big mistake.

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.