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.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 5th, 2009 at 10:01 and is filed under uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.