HDD failure (also works for other technical problems)

The best solution is: purchase a netbook or keep your old laptop, so in case your primary computer fails you will be able to take the information out and finish the work.

As for some of my personal experience, I had dozens of situation when windows started crashing somewhere at the booting phase (note from Alex: buy a mac :) and all these situations were solved with a simple filesystem repair. So if you have problems with booting simply plug in your hard drive into an external drive USB adapter (also a very useful thing) and run a simple fsck operation on the second workstation. If everything is okay, then you will be working again in 20 minutes.

Another good solution is to keep all the work on an external drive (flash preferred). In more than a decade of using the PC I’ve seen a lot of dead hard drives and not one dead flash drive. So in the worst possible crash situation you can simply plug out the flash drive, plug it into your second workstation and finish the work.

Power failure

While such things as power failures often happen only in the developing countries (usually lot of freelancers are from these countries), there is no guarantee that your younger sister (brother, cat, dog, girlfriend or drunk roommate) wont accidentally mess with the power cable or crash into your workstation. And boom, you are sitting in from of a rebooting PC. While most of the data will definitely be saved (if you have autosave enabled) it is still not a very pleasant situation. It can happen that all you loose a small part of the code and your concentration, but it also can lead to things like damaged hard drives and even burned parts of the PC.

The whole problem has one great solution – laptop computer which is the best friend of every freelancer or, if you prefer desktops, – an uninterruptible power supply (UPS).

Internet failure

This is bad only for some type of work (like SEO) and for situations when you need to send the completed work to the client. So it is important to have a second internet connection nearby (the best one is to get a cell phone that can be used as a modem), to notify the client about the delay or email the completed work. One of my friends also used another solution: he took a cab to the nearest cybercafé. Not the most effective one, but can definitely be used as the last possible solution.

Define your easiest article

The easiest article is a great tool for work. Basically you need to specify the amount of words that you can write about the given subject in five-seven minutes without thinking too much or searching for additional info. For me it is 150-250 words. Later you can use this easiest article amount of words to split some large articles into smaller ones. It will help you.

Split the articles

This hint works for large articles, but can be used in any case. If you have a 1000 words article, you can write a 100 words intro and split the rest of the article into three or more parts (the mentioned easiest articles or even smaller ones). From this moment you will have three 300 words articles or five 180 words articles and they will be much easier to write.

Add some extra info

You can always cover a part of the article with additional extra info. For example if the article is about auto insurance, you can add a small part about auto insurance in general. Such additional information blocks are a great solution if you lack few hundreds of words to finish the article. Of course this works only if the client is ok with such info.

Start with the facts

If you don’t know how to start the article, start with the middle facts part. For example if it is a description of a product you can write the specifications of the product color, length, general market info. At some point you will see that you already have 150-200 words and you got some additional ideas while you were writing the facts.

Write parts

If you have a large number of articles to write, you need to start writing as soon as possible. Create all the empty documents, do some information search and start writing. As soon as you run out of inspiration for one of the articles, switch to the next one. Eventually you will end up with all the articles 20-60% done. At that point it will be very easy to finish such almost done articles. You’ve got to be careful with large amounts of articles, if you get stuck with one article you can easily spend too much time and miss the deadline. So it is better to start writing small parts of all articles.

Concentration

This works basically for every type of work. You need to concentrate to get the job done. Turn off the messenger, turn of the music (or turn on the one that you like), if it is possible even turn off the Internet. When you are left alone with your articles, you will be able to do the double of your usual work. I manage to do up to 12 articles per such offline day and only 4-5 per a day with dozens of things distracting me. Of course it is not easy to work 10-12 article days in a row, but I recommend mixing easy days with hard working days.

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.

The first tip is – be 100% professional during the bidding and interview. Make sure that your messages have no mistakes, that you are polite and that you are posting information required for taking the project (like samples of your work and some ideas about how to complete the project.)

Pay attention to the buyers profile. If the buyer has a lot of serious projects running or already spent like $20.000 on this marketplace – pay extra attention to this project and his projects in general. You can offer him to do the job for a small rate. If you impress him it is possible that he will offer you work on some of his upcoming or current projects, or will contact you in a while to offer some work.

Stick to the buyers that have no problems with paying you the money that you consider okay for the completed work. There is no need to waste your time on some poorly paid job if you can earn more. Still defining the appropriate sum requires a skill that will come after five six completed jobs.

It is important to remember that this is all real life and while the buyers may be looking for cheap top quality freelancers, they understand that a real professional will work only for some serious rates. There is nothing wrong about bidding more that a buyer offers and argument this with good quality. It at some point the buyer will understand all the negative sides of low-quality work or simply gets tired of low paid unreliable workers (especially if he provides work in some serious areas like mobile devices or large web development projects). So it is possible that you will be the one who will rework or finish the project for the price that you set.

It is important to remember that a project is lost only when it is completed by someone else. I had some situations when I wasn’t selected during the interview, but due to some problems with the selected provider, I ended up as the one who finished the project and was paid for it.

And the final tip – don’t be upset if you lost the job especially if you were interviewed. It means that the buyer was interested in you and you already have some chances to get his next project. So try ending the negotiations with something like “Thank you Mike, feel free to contact me if you need some of my services.”

1. Examine the rules of the website concerning the profile and the profiles of the top freelancers in your field. This will help you with some basics of how a good profile must look on this website.
2. If you already have a resume use it as a basis, if not take some time and make a document with your complete work experience and skills. It is important to remember all your previous work experience before filling out your profile.
3. Try to choose a general strategy of yourself as a freelancer. For example if you are good in SEO focus the first lines and words of your resume on SEO skills and experience. Try not to present yourself as a do-all guy.
4. Try to highlight your main skills in the description and make sure that the client will immediately see these skills when he goes to your profile. There is no need to mention all the programming languages you know if you use only PHP or JAVA. You can make a list of these languages in some secondary information fields.
5. Avoid bright colored elements and any additional creative stuff, focus on the main thing – presenting information to the client.
6. Post samples of your projects if you have done some outside the website that you are working on. It is also good to post the offline working experience, especially if you worked for some serious companies.
7. Check the project sample links from time to time, especially if you are in search of new projects. It might happen that the website with your work is down or the URLs were changed. Also be honest about your work, if the work was done some time ago and it was done not very well, better drop the link from your resume.
8. Be sure to have everything clear with the copyrights of the work that you’ve done. If you are not listed as a developer it is better not to present the project in your portfolio. It can lead to some misunderstanding with your previous clients.
9. The best thing in a profile is a list of projects already done on the website. So if you are a newcomer try to get three-five properly done projects, it will show that you are a trustworthy person.
10. If you are a writer – get a blog. If you are a web-developer or a SEO guy – get a website. And give your best effort to keep this website good looking and properly coded. Be sure that it presents you as a professional.
11. Make a small downloadable and printable version of you portfolio.

That’s all for today, folks :)

Keep in mind that you are advertising yourself to the buyer and use the most effective strategies of advertising. For example everyone knows that buying a larger pack of snacks for example is economically more effective than buying three small packs, but not everyone can use such ideas in freelance. In negotiation with the client you are selling your time and skills, so try to show that you have good quality and most important flexible and negotiable prices. It gives the client a feeling that he has an influence of the situation, while you are the one who will define the price in the end.

Another good pricing strategy are bonuses. Don’t hesitate if you see that a part of clients website for example is poorly coded or needs additional search optimization, offer to fix the problem for a bonus fee. In one of my latest projects I easily raised the article price by %5 with simply offering additional meta tags for each page. Of course %5 won’t give a huge sum but for a 200 articles project it will already be a difference. So remember to grab as much extra work as possible especially if the buyer pays well.

The most important thing that you need to know about pricing is: don’t be afraid to loose the project because you wanted too much; there is always another project nearby.

There is one thing that most of the beginner writers don’t want to accept — more work, less creativity! You need to be creative only if you are asked to. 99% (okay maybe 90%) of the buyers actually don’t need imagination. If you need to write a large number of articles most probably the ideas will be borrowed from other websites. The buyer sees something he likes and he needs to get a similar article for his website. So there is no need to bother with inventing something new. The facts will always be the same: this law is specified in this part of the Criminal Code, this car has this air conditioning installed and this hotel is rated with five stars. Everything you need is to spice up the existing document and facts. Before you start writing an article it is better to search the web for some similar articles. This will help you with choosing the style for your article and definitely help you with some additional ideas. Your best friend in most of the cases will be Wikipedia. Usually my articles consist of 40-70% original article + 20-50% Wikipedia facts and related ideas + 10% of my own ideas and thoughts about the subject. The result — an article where buyer sees the facts, something he liked in the previous article and most important some new thoughts. Of course this strategy helps not in every case, but it works for any large project. And… oh yeah this article is completely original.

Another common problem is the level of English. The best solution is to write simple. A large part of the web comes from non-English speaking countries, so it is best to focus on some plain and understandable English if possible. Try to avoid some complex sentence structures and if there is a choice between a simple word and a specific term choose the simple word. Of course it doesn’t mean that you need to write in monkey English.

As for the large projects, there is a thing that beginners usually don’t believe in: it is actually very hard to write big amounts of articles. So if you are negotiating a big project don’t be a hero and promise to finish everything in one day, better take some more time. I manage to write not more than 8-10 500 word articles (this article is a 500 word one) per day and this is very hard. It is hard to maintain a good writing tempo; it is hard to generate new ideas and thoughts starting from like article number six; it is hard to avoid mistakes when you are tired. If you can write a 500 word article in 30 minutes, it doesn’t mean that you will be able to handle 10 articles in 5 hours. It will most probably take like 10-12 hours with breaks. So in every case it is always better to split large projects into smaller parts.

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.