Steps to Start as Freelancer
Ask yourself “Are you ready to Start as Freelancer?”
If the answer is Yes, then proceed this articles is for you
If the answer is No, then you need to make up your mind first, read this motivational article ‘Start Working Freelancer‘
Ok, Now its good that you are ready to start, here is your Freelancer Starter Guide.
There are lots of freelancing websites available these days. Many of them doing good business and some only trying to beat the competition, but some of the starter and popular of these are Elance.com, RentACoder.com, oDesk.com and Freelancer.com (previously known as GAF – GetAFreelancer.com) there are many others too, will list these for you with my review in another article soon. I use many of these, started with Elance.com in past when it was free many years back but later focus more on RentACoder.com and so far it is my favorite freelancing site due to its ease, usability and fairness.
All of these site works almost in similar ways. I recommend you to select only one at a time and try to build your profile there first [Its also good to join a site when it start, specially if its growing -> bringing in more buyers]. ok lets start with one here.
Lets go with RentACoder (RAC) Freelancing site first, We will do it in quick following steps to start with:
Step 1- Prepare Freelance Profile:
- Register with RentACoder RAC (or any other Freelance site) and create your profile and polish it up with your skills. Mention your skills in points and off course mention your certificates in it. Mention any online work that you have done, any achievements that you have made. I recommend to make it look professional and mention all your plus points, keep it in Verdana 10 (size2) fonts. Make specific points bold.
[added see new article on profile here: http://www.myfreelancerguide.com/preparing-freelancer-profile/ ]
Step 2- Review Projects:
- Once your profile is set, you are ready for next step, that is reviewing projects on regular basis based on your skills and bidding on these. In RAC you can do this through ‘Browse Projects’ or ‘Search Projects’ feature easily (similar on other).
Step 3- Start Bidding:
- I recommend to bid on small projects first, for which you are sure you can do it in best way. (I myself did the first RAC project for $5). But remember to review larger projects too if by any chance you find some requirements that you know you can fulfill, go for it and place bid but make your bid text make sense.
Step 4- Know when not to bid:
- There are tons of open project at RAC (and other sites), but you will not get them all or may be getting your first hit some time takes lot of time and efforts (That is also one of the reason why we are here for you). So its important to utilize your time best while bidding and make sure you understand when to drop a project from your bidding list. Do not bid on any project that you feel you may not be able to complete for any reason, time, low motivation, low understanding of the subject or anything.
Step 5- Polish your bidding style:
- For bidding you need to adopt some styles, and practice different words, we can guide you more on this. But basic thing is that, read the bid description carefully, while reading the description or attached documents (with bids), write down questions that comes to your mind while reading and then ask these as many questions as you can (but no dumb question) in your bid to the buyer, buyer should get a feeling that you study his/her requirement seriously and willing to do it with full heart.
Step 6- Understand Buyers:
- Remember all buyers do not like long replies specially when its cluttered, so make your bid comments in points. On other hand, every buyer likes it when he see someone replying to him after reading his requirements carefully. But no one like a reply where you explain all about yourself but it sounds like you don’t read the requirements carefully.
Step 7- Place Comments, not only bids:
- Also if you are not clear on the complete requirements or not sure of the bid price, do not place bid at-once, first send message without bid price but message should be asking to the point questions. Then based on the reply decide your actions to bid.
I believe thats it for now. We will discuss these points in more details soon, you are also welcome to Ask any Questions to your specific issue.
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Hi, this is Nicole from Rent a Coder.
This is a fantastic article that describes the steps necessary to become a successful freelancer through our service.
I’d like to point out a few differences between our service and services like Elance, oDesk and Freelancer, since those differences could influence your satisfaction and earnings.
Fees:
Workers on Elance cannot place more than 10 bids a month unless they pay a subscription fee ($10/month for 20, $20/month for 40 or $40/month for 60). It also charges workers a monthly subscription fee of $10/month – $40/month just to show test results on their profiles.
Odesk charges 10% for all types of projects versus 6.5-10% on Rent a Coder. So we let you keep more of your money and if you bring a repeat buyer from Odesk, you’re guaranteed a cheaper 9% maximum rate (and perhaps lower – see http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/dotnet/Docs/FindersFeeComissionSchedule.aspx).
Rent a Coder does not have any subscription fees or any other types of hidden fees. Our project fees are as low as 6% and we guarantee all types of unlimited work.
Escrow/Guarantee of Payment:
With pay-for-time type projects, neither Elance nor Freelancer allows you to verify your time on pay-for-time projects by punching in and out of a real-time system, and conclusively prove to the buyer that you were working. As a result they do not guarantee payment, and if the buyer does not wish to pay you, you may end up with no money.
Rent a Coder allows you to verify your time spent on a project by punching in and out of a real-time card application which records your desktop and webcam. The end result is indisputable proof that you’ve worked and deserve payment.
In addition, Elance does not offer escrowing on pay-for-time projects so payment is not guaranteed on these types of jobs. And oDesk does not require escrow for pay-for-deliverables projects. But Rent a Coder protects your money with escrowing on all job types.
Arbitration:
Elance charges $66.66 or $133.33 for each arbitration, which may make it too expensive to be a legitimate option on your project. In addition, a buyer intent on abusing the system can stall the start of arbitration on Elance for 21 business days and during this period your money is not available to you. You also won’t find any detailed rules on how Elance arbitrators make their decisions.
Freelancer limits arbitration to projects with milestone payments of more than $30. And its mandatory pre-arbitration processes allow an abusive buyer to stall the start of arbitration (and prevent you from accessing your money) for weeks.
oDesk’s limited arbitration could prevent you from getting rightfully paid for the work you do. And they won’t test your work to make sure it meets contract requirements.
At Rentacoder, we offer arbitration on all projects free of charge and we test your deliverables to make sure they meet requirements so that you can get paid. We also prevent abusive buyers from stalling the start of arbitration. As a result, 45% of our arbitrations are completed under a day. 75% under a week. We additionally publicize the detailed rules of how our arbitrators make their decisions.
There are other differences as well. I invite everyone to compare the 7 major services through this link to learn even more: http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/DotNet/misc/CompetitorInformation/WhyRentACoder_ForSellers.aspx
If you have any questions, please let me know. You can also call in to talk to a facilitator 7 days a week, or email us (see http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/misc/Feedback.asp).
Nicole
http://www.rentacoder.com
Hi Nicole,
Its nice to have details from you. We also invite other sites to post there comments while keeping the discussion positive.
Although I personally admit that so far I found RAC Arbitration process the best and supportive.
Thank you very much, talashme. We’re pleased that you’re impressed with our process. Don’t forget to visit our blog at http://blog.vworker.com to learn about some rather exciting changes to our website.
Great blog, really.
ЎHola!
ЎIncreнble! No estб claro para mн, їcуmo offen que la actualizaciуn de su nombre de http://www.myfreelancerguide.com.
Have a nice day
Truden
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Great post!
As with all points, the starting point is important. It’s like taking a highway and not understanding the direction in which you would like to travel if you do not use a starting stage. For me, the starting stage is understanding which marketplace I’m aiming for.
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