No More Compromise

I am not a top provider on Elance. This is deliberate. My primary aim of being online is to run my own businesses so I can earn money in a hands-off fashion. Working as a freelancer means that you generally only get paid when you actually work. I want to be able to take a vacation and still have funds coming in. Infact, I only offer my services as a freelancer from time to time when I want a “topup” of funds - such as to pay for a vacation or an expensive business investment. Then as soon as I have the cash, I carry on as before.

However even in this context I have discovered a considerable amount about succeeding at Elance because as mentioned in the last article, the getting started can be quite difficult. You see, Elance, like so many other sites, gives you a profile that you can fill in. Then when you place a bid on a job, your potential client can check out your profile. It lists, among other things, what jobs you have done recently and any feedback that previous clients have given you. Of course when you start out you have neither and so it is hard for a potential client to know whether you are reliable, capable or hardworking.

The initial legwork therefore involves building up this reputation, whereupon things become much easier. With a few projects under your belt and some positive feedback, clients understandably and rightly take more interest in your bids and you will be able to garner far more work for the same amount of effort.

In this article, though, I’d like to carefully examine my entire list of tips that I have built up to give you a fast-track on Elance. Please note that the aim here is not to “con” your way into jobs that you are not suitable for but rather to help you play the game and win jobs are *are* suitable for.

1) Select A Niche

If you have been inline for a period of time you no doubt havea wide variety of skills. I can write articles, ebooks and sales letters. I can build basic websites. I have work with Joomla and Wordpress. I can set up PPC campaigns, affiliate programs and merchant accounts. I can carry out market research or drive traffic from the search engines and social media. But to succeed as a freelancer you need to focus your attentions.

Select just one, or at the most two, elements that you think are your greatest strengths and market only those. You need to be a Wordpress theme designer or a customer service professional or video editing expert. Just like creating a powerful resume, your profile can then be focused around proving you are the “goto guy” when it comes to your chosen niche, and by applying for only jobs in that niche you will greatly increase the results you see. You will spend less time bidding on jobs and more time actually doing the jobs.

2) Add A Picture

Make people feel they can trust you. Add a picture or even a video of yourself to your profile so people can visualize who they are doing business with.

3) Use Examples

You need to add as much evidence as possible to your profile that you know what you are talking about. Submit examples of previous work tat you may have done for yourself. If you don’t have any evidence - make some. Build a few Wordpress themes or create some viral videos. You need to have a portfolio that potential clients of yours can look through and be impressed at. Many decisions will be made on your portfolio so make sure that it is not only fine work but is also a standard you can achieve again for future clients.

4) Pass The Test

Elance lets you take tests at their site to prove your skills. Take the time and do the study so you can pass a few of these. These “verified skills” show up when you bid and once again help you stand out as an experienced professional rather than a fly-by-night amateur.

5) Over Deliver

Always aim to do more than is required. Under promise and over deliver. If you honestly feel you can finish a project in 10 days, say it will take 2 weeks. It prevents you feeling under pressure and if you get it finished early your client will get more than they expected. If they want 10 articles written, consider writing them 2 bonus articles. Aim to do whatever it takes to create a “wow” factor and make you stand out from the crowd. This should result in repeat work and positive feedback for you.

6) Request Feedback

At the end of each project, if you feel it has gone well and your client expressed satisfaction at the final result then feel free to ask for feedback on your profile. The more positive feedback you can get, the easier it will be to win jobs in the future.

7) Choose Your Projects Carefully

Read through each potential job to get an idea of what is expected, and also what the client is like. It is unfortunate that the odd client will never be happy, no matter what but you can often tell they are that sort of person by the project description. Pay attention to the language they use and select only jobs which carefully match your themed profile.

You can also reduce the chances of disappointment by looking at how many previous jobs that specific provider has placed on Elance and how many actually got done. Many clients will place adverts on the site and then never award projects because their expectations are unrealistic.

Personally, if less than 80% of previous projects have actually been awared, I move on to the next potential job. Remember - you pay for every bid you make, so don’t waste your time or money on bidding on projects tendered by people who never actually award them.

Target Your Bid

When you place a bid, you can add a short note to it. Think of your profile as your resume, and this note as your cover letter. Take the time to write a special, custom note to your potential client covering the points they mention in their desciption and how these relate to your strengths and previous experience.

9) Use Your Workspace

Whether you win a project or not, you can go into your workspace in your Elance area and see both the highest bid, the lowest and the average. If the project has been awarded you will also be able to see what the winning bid was. By taking the time to examine this historical data from time to time you will be able to get a better feel of what people are willing to pay for certain jobs making your own bids more accurate and competitive.

10) No Emailing

Lastly, try to avoid project descriptions that aren’t clear. You will see some that might just say “I need someone to build a website for me”. Great, but how many pages? What sort of style do you like? What do you want the website to do? Etc. etc. It is virtually impossible to place an accurate bid on a project like this and unfortunately if you send an email to the buyer to ask for more information you will rarely get a response. And don’t forget that you pay to send these emails too. Personally I suggest you avoid any project description that isn’t totally clear because you will waste time and money on such projects.

If you are to grow a successful business as quickly as possible it is important that you leverage the time and efforts of other people. This is, after all, how the biggest companies in history got so big.

But if you’re just starting out earning money on the Internet, you can act as one of those people that successful entrepreneurs can leverage. You can offer your time and effort in exchange for money. By doing this you will be able to grow your own business slowly and quietly in the background while earning money upfront doing work for other people.

As an example, it may take 3 months or longer to achieve a decent ranking in the search engines so if you are building virtual real estate on which to place Adsense, sell advertising and promote affiliate products it can take some considerable time until you actually start seeing the fruits of your labor.

However, you could make money as a freelancer alongside your main venture thus allowing you to keep afloat.

Freelancing is often billed as a way for a complete internet newbie to earn money - that you can just sign up to one of the freelance websites and you will be overrun with orders but I have to level with you - this generally isn’t the case in my experience.

There are only two types of people who succeed on the freelance sites like Elance, Guru and Rentacoder.

They are the people who are willing to work for next to nothing and so undercut other freelancers and appeal to the budget-conscious client.

Then there are the people with experience and verifiable skills, who generally charge more but offer a greater level of service, and appeal most to the client looking for quality in the finished product.

It is virtually impossible to make any decent money by becoming one of the first group. Adverts abound for people who will write 500 word articles for $1-2. For a decent writer, that sum is just insulting and to earn any decent money you will have to work for 12 hours a day or more for next to nothing. Also appreciate that suppliers in India are everywhere and with their lower cost of living they can undercut whatever your bid is and still manage to make ends meet.

Instead, what I suggest is that you focus on the second group.

Take the time and effort to set yourself up as a professional. You are still unlikely to get rich from freelancing unless you are very lucky, but you will earn far more on an hourly basis, produce higher quality work (which is more satisfying) and build up a list of satisfied clients who appreciate your efforts.

In the next part of this series we will take a look at using Elance, in my opinion the top freelance website, in order to start your own freelancing career.

According to a recent article in the British newspaper The Sunday Times the average Brit spends 3 hours a day “faffing around”. It lists a long list potential time-wasters including queueing, gossiping and clearing up after other people. That 3 hours excludes things like TV watching which many of us take for granted.

The point is this - so many people feel they are constantly on the go and don’t have the time to do the things they want to do - just as starting their own business or going to the gym regularly. But if you keep a journal of what you spend your time doing there is a great liklihood there is plenty of time you “waste” without realising it on things that could be ignored altogether. Dropping these could subsequently give you all the time you need to achieve your goals.

When asked for the key to success in terms of blogging, virtually anyone will tell you that frequently updated, high quality content is the answer.

Let’s press further - how often?

Most will tell you as often as possible - at least daily in an ideal world.

However what you may be surprised to leanr is that I have actually unsubscribed to half a dozen blogs this month alone because they posted too often.

It actually happens more often that you’d realise and there are 3 classic signs that will make me unsubscribe from your RSS feed.

1) Posting Junk Just To Post Daily

I only really post here two or three times a week but I try wherever possible to make them high quality posts. I think too many bloggers feel under pressure to post daily that they just post junk content. It is so frustrating to open up your feed reader and find that half of all the posts offer no value whatsoever simply because the blogger felt they had to post something - anything - to keep their readers happy.

Then - after all that effort - I go and unsubscribe.

Remember - quantity will never make up for quality in blog posts.

2) Posting Multiple Times A Day

I unsubscribed from some very well-known blogs (like Lifehacker) simply because you can sometimes get 5, 10 or even more blog posts in a single day. The point of an RSS subscription is that I don’t want to miss stuff but when I get back after a long weekend and find 30+ posts from a single blog it just becomes a chore to read rather than fun.

I would therefore suggest no more than one or at most two posts a day unless you are to risk readers like me going elsewhere.

3) Updating Each Post

One blog I joined updated their posts on a regular basis as well as adding new ones. So my feed reader would tell me they had 12 new posts, when actually only one was new and all the others were old posts that they had updated.

At first this isn’t a problem but after a week or two this became incredibly annoying and I left this blog too.

So the lesson is this - while I may be in the minority - I would rather you post top quality information less regularly than posting tons of stuff each day. One of my favourite blogs is Michael Campbells, and he only posts when he has something genuinely useful to say. The thing is - I have his feed in my reader so it doesn’t matter if a week goes by without a post. I don’t visit his site so I don’t waste any of my time. And when he does write something, I know about it almost instantly.

So you’re looking to hire a freelancer to do some work for you on one of the freelance sites? Fantastic. As both a buyer myself and an occasional provider, I have seen the setup from both angles and what I want to do in this article is examine the pointers I have picked up over the years fron the school of hard knocks on how to get the best results possible out of your freelancing experience.

In short - how do you choose the right person and ensure the job gets done to the right standard and on time?

1) Look At Feedback

If previous clients have left feedback on the provider take a look at what has been said. No feedback may be acceptable for a new provider but wherever possible take into account the freelancers reputation. Remember that it takes time for anyone to leave feedback so generally the most extreme freelancers - the best and the worst - tend to have the most feedback when compared to the total number of jobs they have completed.

2) Build Up A Dream Team

Over time, try out different providers to see which create the sort of work you are looking for. Reward them with positive feedback as a result but also keep a note of who you would willingly work with again. Over time you will build up a list of trusted freelancers that you have done business with in the past and so you know their standards. This greatly reduces your risk and speeds up the process of outsourcing future jobs when you can offer work directly to providers who have already proven themselves to you.

3) Examine Previous Work

Wherever possible try to look at the potential freelancer’s portfolio to see if their previous work is the sort of thing you are looking for. Does their writing appeal to you, for example? Do you like what they have done with that sales letter? Is that blog theme classy-looking? Try to imagine whether you would be happy receiving similar work.

4) Produce A Detailed project Description

Take the time to create a detailed project description which lays out in great details exactly what you need your freelancer to produce for you. In this way not only will your freelancer be happier because they know what you are looking for but you redice the chances of the prject not turning out how you would like. Try to include timescales in the project too and agree these with your freelancer before work beginds so that you can manage the workflow and ensure the project gets finished when needed.

5) Don’t Just Look At Price

Many of us have done this in the past, including me. Try not to pay too much attention to price but intseas look for someone with experience and a good reputation that you feel you could work with. Price should be secondary after finding people with the skills to complete your project to the standards you expect.

6) Stay In Contact

Not only should you email potential freelancers before selecting a final winner if you have any questions at all with a bid, but once it has begun stay in regular (ideally daily) contact with them via the private message board so you can keep abreast of how the project is developing.