Freelance Jobs

1) Do not give up. Be persistent. In the beginning you will not be chosen, but you have to continue trying and improving your skills. As soon as you have more experience, knowledge and a good portfolio, you will start getting more projects. Focus on providing quality work and meeting the deadlines. That will get you some great reviews.

2) Good reviews are very important. You may think that the price is the most important. However in most of the cases this is not true. Before the Buyers choose you, they want to be sure that you will provide good quality and follow the time schedule. Of course, you will assure them that you will do it, but they need to confirm it with your reviews too. Good reviews will bring you more projects. You’d better spend more time to do a great job and get a good review than risk to get a bad review.

3) Keep your promises. When you call yourself professional, be professional. Spend the maximum time working on your projects, do not rush them. Do your best, provide quality work. Do not show a project to your client if you do not like it. Continue working until you have a product that you are proud of. Be punctual. Follow strictly the the project requirements, meet any deadlines and stay in touch with your clients. Reply to their emails and return their call in a timely manner. And remember small things matter.

1) Bid only for projects you can fully complete. Make sure you understand the requirements and know how to do all the work. Working as a freelancer gives you the chance to easily say “NO”, use this advantage wisely.

2) Make a portfolio. Buyers choose freelancers based on previous experience and quality of their work. Create a website or a blog and post your best projects there. For each project you can post a brief description, a preview image and a link to the website (if available). The more information you add, the better. Include a link to your portfolio each time you bid for a project. You will be amazed how soon you will start getting more projects.

3) Post short and clear messages. Ask for confirmations. Both you and the Buyer should feel confident that you understand the nature of the project and you will meet the deadline.

Who am I? - A hard-working employee who has a very good job with one of the top five hosting companies in the USA. I have 7 years experience in web design - 3 years as a web developer and 4 years as a project manager.

How it started? - Two months ago a friend of mine told me that he is making some good money on the side working as a freelancer. I did not pay a lot of attention, but I decided to register and see what type of projects are available.

After I did a search in Google I was convinced that one of the most popular freelance websites is GetAFreelancer.com I registered and I started checking the projects. My first impression for the site was great, but the projects - I cannot describe how disappointed I was.

I will give an example, so that you get a better idea of what I am speaking about:
A buyer requests a quote. The title is “facebook clone” and the description “how much and how long will it take?”. Facebook is a very complex website that has been developed for years. It is being updated every day and there is a planned schedule with new releases and features. I can tell that the time needed for research and documentation of all the facebook features is at least 20 business days. This is required in order for the developer to estimate the development work and create a timeline. Obviously the buyer has not done any research, because there is not even a list of the features provided. At the same time it is clear that the freelancers have not done a research in order to provide an accurate quote. My automatic reply was to give a price per hour, request a detailed list of requirements and suggest that I can do the research and prepare the needed documentation for the Buyer if he is ok with my charge per hour. Imagine what was my surprise when I saw that there are 41 bids with estimated delivery time anywhere between 1 day and 120 days and there are no messages in the Project Clarification Board.

Being a project manager myself, I was frustrated how unclear the requirements are and how easily people are giving quotes to such requests. There are no functional specifications and no timelines. I could easily predict that a lot of these big projects are going to fail and this is likely to have a really bad impact on both the buyer and the freelancer. Buyers spend a lot of money not knowing what they will receive and when they will receive it. Freelancers may end up redoing the project again or even worse not getting paid for the work that they did.

I left the website and I did not even want to try any freelance jobs on the Internet. Not until today. Today I thought I will try something different. I started this Blog to give advice and suggestions to both Freelancers and Service Buyers. I really hope that I will help them get more projects completed and improve the quality of their work.

Any comments and questions are welcome. I will try to provide as much information as possible. Good luck!

Maria