Freelance Websites FAQ

Freelancing is like climbing a mountain: the scenery is great at the top, but to actually get there an inconsiderate amount of work is required. You’ve probably heard countless success stories of self-employed individuals who earn more than $30,000 from easy gigs, making you think that ‘I can do this too’. Unfortunately, not only did the pioneers – those that are on the market from the very beginning – probably snatch easy-to-get positions already, but the freelance market is quite exaggerated as well.

Although this might seem frightening at first, we don’t wish to discourage you from pursuing your dream. However, you should come in terms with the ins and outs of the industry before making any radical changes in your life.

The virtues of a true freelancer

Let’s start with the obvious: freelancing in its current state isn’t for everyone. In other words, everyone can do freelancing, but a high level of expertise is key in being successful: as all job types are based on a specific skillset workers must have, they’ll struggle if said skills are missing.

So how does an ideal freelancer look like? First and foremost, an independent worker must have self-discipline: if you easily fall victim to the seduction of time-consuming websites such as Facebook, Twitter, 9GAG or YouTube, chances are high you’ll produce slap-dash results in the last minute. Therefore, good freelancers dictate their own schedule, sticking to it no matter what. In simpler words, no excuses, so forget things like ‘Just one more episode of Game of Thrones and then I’ll start working’.

Another key virtue you need is self-motivation. Doing what you love the most for a living seems like the ideal job, but clients are the ones dictating the assignments, which could quickly sap your enthusiasm. Repetitive, uncreative tasks lead to indifference and boredom, effectively killing any investment in freelancing, which will no doubt show on the work quality. Thus, you must have a unique drive deep within your soul to maintain the same kind of zeal you had during your first gig for the rest of your career.

A good freelancer also has good communication skills and wears a thick skin. You’ll be dealing with difficult clients all the time, who bargain for lower pay rates, demand free work as ‘skill testing’, make mountains out of molehills, or constantly nag you with last minute changes. Remaining calm, collected and polite is the only way of handling these issues, but it’s worth the price in the end. However, it’s best to also prepare yourself for letdowns and rejections when another freelancer runs off with that project you had set your eyes on.

Take a demo tour

Freelancing is a risky business, where everyone competes against each other, so it’s highly recommended not quitting your day job on a whim.

Being a beginner freelancer is an especially difficult position: you won’t get well-paying gigs due to lack of experience, therefore you need to build an impressive resume before making any profit. Making a good first impression is everything, so fumbling with the first task and getting a poor review for a subpar performance scars your resume for good.

The best course of action is to start taking freelance gigs while having a full-time job. This may come at the expense of your free time, but there are always opportunities that don’t require the sacrifice of your livelihood. The community is surprisingly helpful, meaning you’ll find lengthy blog articles and forum debates chock-full of helpful advice and warnings. And don’t forget that reading freelance site reviews is also a good way of gathering intel or avoiding landmines.

Being a freelancer is often not easy: you must juggle several projects at once, deal with tight deadlines, and manage unreasonable clients… The last thing you, as an independent worker want is a lawsuit – and doing this side activity as a mean to get some extra money beside your day job might bring you to court.

Freelancing is a grey area in the eye of the law, yet many people jump into it without being aware of certain legal consequences. But the truth is, there are indeed cases when freelancing while holding a full-time job is considered to be illegal.

When freelancing is illegal

In order to be sure that freelancing while having a day job is completely legal most lawyers recommend checking your employment agreement. There are companies which are aware of freelancing and thus do everything in their power to prevent workers from any side activities that could potentially lead to denunciation.

However, be aware that the employment contract doesn’t have to spell out an explicit prohibition of freelancing. In that case it’s important to clarify whether or not your freelance job causes a conflict of interest. In general freelancing is illegal if you are sharing company secrets or using their assets to further your self-employment. Additionally, employers can also expect to be laid off if they are freelancing during regular work hours or use the company’s resources, such as cars or the phone line to do gigs.

When freelancing is welcome

In case the state laws and your employers don’t state anything against freelancing, and there is no conflict of interest, then you have nothing to be afraid of.

Still, having two jobs at the same time may severely affect your performance. Remember that even those employers who don’t hinder you in having a secondary career can easily change their opinions the moment your productivity drops. Turning up late on meetings, showing signs of excessive fatigue are clear indications of a less valuable worker in employers’ eyes, and the board might decide to replace you.

Our advice is to consider freelancing as a temporary alternative and not a permanent second job. In other words, see whether you can manage on your own and go with one of the two positions after a few weeks.

Disclose or not?

‘Should my boss know about my side projects?’ That’s a very legitimate question.

There are some enlightened workplaces where the employer encourages employees to widen their horizon: in fact, one lucky guy who was treated like this later invented Post-it, which benefited the company he was working at. But sadly, these are only rare exceptions.

Think about it: if you are considering self-employment then it’s clearly not a great work place to begin with. So it’s not surprising that most people hide their freelancing activities, fearing that their employer might fire them too early or just make their life even more miserable. However, experts pointed out that lying is never a solution. In fact, if you truly wish to avoid unseen legal ramifications, it’s best to discuss your free-time career with your boss.

No matter their field of expertise, all freelancers dream of having a successful brand and dictating their own terms. Although you can never shake off the influence of your employers, in time you can grow big enough to afford certain sassiness, such as charging clients for meeting you face to face.

Your first instinct upon hearing this might be ‘Oh no, I would instantly scare away my employer with such a move’. However, believe it or not, this is a tactic pro freelancers constantly use.

Being big enough for charging

There is a time and place for everything, so don’t even dream about asking a penny from your client when you are a small fish. But the question still remains: how do you know your status is imposing enough for pulling such a move?

We believe influence starts with having a well-established profile with lots of positive reviews and successfully completed jobs alongside several clients from known companies. In fact, if you are the one being approached by the company then it’s a clear indication of being influential enough – and asking for a small amount in exchange for sacrificing some of your time on the negotiation. However, remember that charging money is only acceptable when meeting face to face – although Skype calls and virtual meetings also count.

Additionally, it’s good to have a continuous stream of work flowing in as well; therefore, even if you get rejected for proposing a fee for meeting, you won’t lose food from the table.

The rules of sweetening the deal

Assuming you meet the above mentioned criteria, the first thing to do is decide whether to ask for a traveling compensation or charge a fixed fee. If you choose the latter, be sure to set a max limit for the meeting time, which (ideally) should not be more than an hour. Especially in the event of an online meeting, during which participants may be distracted by incoming emails and other activities, it’s best to keep it short and sweet.

In case your (potential) client establishes an agenda for the meeting with topics that require additional preparatory work from your part, then this may be more of a consulting session rather than a meeting. If it requires works for which you normally charge, your client should understand that this requires additional input on your behalf. You may want to agree on charging an hourly rate for the preparatory work and the consulting session itself, or agree on a fixed rate.

We recommend offering a free 10-15 minute call. It’s beneficial for both of you: the employer has a chance to conduct a brief evaluation on your skills and personality, while you can gather further information on the job. However, don’t forget that in order to make a good impression you must appear well-prepared and collected.

Lastly, we have three more advices for you. One: accept the money before the meeting. Two: don’t charge a fee if the client is referred through a friend or a family member. And three: tell in advance that the meeting fee is part of the first contractual invoice if they choose to hire you. In fact, this little psychology trick melts the heart of even the biggest Scrooge McDucks…

While it is totally acceptable to put your freelance work onto your CV, just as is the case with listing regular work, you shouldn’t get carried away with putting all your freelance jobs on there either. To this day many people think that leaving out some of their past work won’t make their CVs impressive enough in the eyes of future employers, however since the golden rule of resume writing is relevancy, including only the freelancing jobs that are relevant to the position you’re applying for is actually the right approach.

Short but sweet

Since employers are looking for a candidate with a particular set of skills, work not supporting the required skills should be put aside, even if they are something you are proud of. Admittedly, condensing your talent into one or two pages is tough, but it’s actually a necessary evil that can even improve your editing skills. Still, if some past work is too important to be left out, then include it in the CV in a different section but in such a way that it won’t ruin the overall legibility of the resume. In other words, miscellaneous jobs should be in a new section either next to or under relevant work experiences.

Keep it in order

Although no resume is the same, jobs including those done on a freelance basis should always be listed under ‘Work Experience’ in reverse chronological order. However, to avoid the tedious selection process and, therefore, include more jobs that are relevant but wouldn’t normally be featured in the resume due to lack of space, consider merging similar freelance work together under categorized titles, giving the opportunity to leave out extra details that might take up space. The description of each job should be consistent, however, detailing the date, the client’s name, and what the job was.

Skills

Showcasing certain skills is a must for anyone on a freelancing website, but in resumes they aren’t strictly necessary. However, that doesn’t mean that there is no room for skills in CVs, especially since an appropriately titled ‘Skills’ section is quite common to see on resumes. Here you can describe your qualifications in single words or terms that can further be explained in cover letters and/or during personal interviews. Skills related to work that are intentionally left out of the resume can be mentioned here as well, but only if they are relevant to the applied job.

Including references

References are essential to further strengthening your consideration in the eyes of future clients, but including them in the resume is a bit tricky. For starters, the names and contact info of references always require a new section, but at the same time can only be added to the second page of the resume. It’s also a good idea to provide links to your references so when the new client performs a quick background check they can find these people easily.

However, keep in mind that references may take up valuable space from other sections, so give them a little twist by listing them on a professional page and include the link directing to it in the personal information section, which would make the CV less condensed.

Going online

Since we’ve already mentioned professional pages, it’s good to know that certain resume builders can put together online resumes as well, the use of which has many advantages. Firstly, online resumes can display more information and sections, not to mention that certain resume builders are capable of adding multimedia content too, such as links, charts, pictures, or videos. And secondly, online resumes save time since they can easily be modified, replicated, and shared with others either in the form of a direct link or by being displayed on your freelancer profile or website.

You think making the decision of becoming a freelancer was hard? Sorry to be the party-poopers, but it’s nothing compared to the dilemma of choosing an area of expertise. Just visit any freelance site, service marketplace or job board to feel like you could drown in an ocean of offers.

This of course begs the question: ‘What kind of freelance work should I do?’ The straight answer is to partake in something you have the skills for. However, you’ll see that even good writers or artists must face some sort of orientation before diving into the big unknown. This is why it’s beneficial to have some help in order to see a general direction in the maze of freelance work.

Generalist vs specialist

Before you pick anything, make sure to decide whether you are a generalist or a specialist.

Being someone who tackles more genres or a purist who is an expert of one particular field is often debated in forums. Newcomers tend to lean towards the generalist approach, something that is considered to be a good choice for anyone who hasn’t done freelancing before. In fact, it’s the best way to take a sample of this lifestyle and determine whether or not you wish to push forward. Moreover, you can still snatch yourself some decent gigs and build your portfolio even if you aren’t a master of writing or a pro artist.

Additionally, there is a general consensus between freelancers stating that if you are a jack of all trades, companies are more likely to contact you with other kinds of jobs. For example, if they are satisfied with your content writing abilities, they might ask you to be their social media guru as well.

It’s important to note, though, that you should only do projects that are somehow linked. Don’t be a writer and graphic designer at the same time, but instead stay in your respective category. On the other hand, those preferring specialization claim that companies only wish to hire experts. Indeed, a resume listing previous successes achieved in a certain field is far more appealing for a company looking for this exact talent, because it clearly shows dedication from the potential employee. However, if you still insist on doing more than one kind of job, consider registering separate accounts.

Writing gigs

Taking writing tasks is regarded as an important milestone of becoming a freelancer.

There is a huge pool of offers, such as doing the homework for someone, copywriting, blogging, creating blog articles etc, but if you are native in another language, translating is another popular job type you could consider, too. For those with outstanding hearing abilities there are transcript opportunities by medical or legal companies, but there are further well-paying gigs such as editing or proofreading.

In simpler words: with writing gigs only the sky is the limit.

Art gigs

If you are good at handling the virtual brush, head to a design contest website or offer your services on a freelance marketplace – and you’ll be bombarded with offers. No joking, designers can pick from a gigantic selection, including logo design, animation, web/blog design, greeting cards, T-Shirt logos, photoshopping, app design, custom artwork, YouTube channel logos and so on.

Programming gigs

There are surely a lot of branches when it comes to programming – just the sheer amount of languages could cause a headache in itself. Website or app development are the most popular job offers, but there are people who wish to have a custom flash game or just need someone for bug testing.

To make things better, programming is a freelancing field where you can definitely land yourself some long-lasting contracts if you are proven to be reliable.

Communication and administration gigs

If you are good with words or know how to handle other people, you can try yourself as a content advertiser, social media expert or marketing/PR manager. These kinds of jobs can be done from a home office and tend to be well paid, though the road to success in these positions is long and paved with dedication and creativity. Virtual assistant, online tutor and call center work are also fit for freelance workers. While these positions aren’t the most lucrative, they may be steppingstones to related gigs within the field or business you’re active in.