6 Ways to Present Yourself Better

Zane Claes

Original Resource: Studentsthatfreelance

Most engineers have a profound dislike for the subjective, and I was no exception.  In school, presentations often felt like a popularity contest no matter how unbiased the professors claimed to be.  In the freelance world though, every meeting with a client is a mini-presentation and your audience is even more influenced by his/her emotions.  To get the best contracts at the best rates, we have take a deep breath and embrace the subjective.
The truth is that the real world is a very subjective place.  The biggest paychecks go not to the programmers and artists but to the CEOs and salesmen with no single discernible “skill.”  This is because, at the end of the day, the best artist can only create so many images per day and the best programmer can only type so fast.  Once you reach basic competence in your trade, the ability to put people at ease and feel good about what you do is far more valuable than any other trait.  If you ask certain analysts they’ll tell you the current Apple empire is (partially) built upon Steve Jobs’ ability to present – and the tech world looks forward to these events as if it was Christmas for nerds.

School is actually one of the best places to learn the skill of presentation.  Professors and peers will often be much more open with their criticism rather than rejecting your proposal out of hand (and if they are not specific enough you can ask them for more details).  Plus there is the added fact that school is a reduced-pressure environment where your composure does not effect your ability to put food on the table tomorrow.

Many people do not realize this until they are out of school and spend years reading books trying to catch up.  There’s plenty of interesting research which pop-science likes to quote such as the debatable notion that 93% of communication is nonverbal, the recent discovery of mirror neurons and so on.

The truth, though, is that the basics of presenting yourself to a client are extraordinarily simple.  Everybody wants to work with someone who enjoys what he/she does and can tell you in a clear, concise and confident manner about the specifics.  These are exactly the skills which are tested when you “pitch” or present in front of a class.  It all boils down to the fact that your audience needs to feel good about you.  Professors (should) do a great job of instructing you on what to say in a presentation, but they often miss or gloss over how to say it.

With that in mind, here are some things to try next time you have a presentation:

1. Always start with a smile

A smile is powerful and contagious and will make everyone a little more relaxed.  It takes practice to break into a grin in front of one or more pseudo-strangers, but the right smile is a valuable tool.  Moreover, the most attractive people to do business with are those who seem to enjoy what they do.  Anybody who has been in the business world for a while has met at least one exceptionally negative person who they would rather not work with again.  Along the same lines, make sure to come across as enthusiastic about your subject.

2. Cycle your attention through the audience

Make eye content for a moment with each person as you talk, just enough to make them feel included.  Not only does this build rapport but it also makes people more likely to listen to what you have to say.  Again, this is a skill that takes practice!  Not only does it require that you build up confidence, but you need to be able to maintain your train of thought.

3. Practice the Dramatic Pause

The use of filler words like “um” and “uh” are one of the most detrimental habits in presentations.  They are a hard habit to break, and the truth is that there will alwaysbe time when you need a moment to think.  The solution is simple though: just take your moment while you look at the audience and smile.  Practice in a mirror if you need to.  Instead of seeming nervous, it’ll appear as if you have the secret to the universe, life and everything – and are just about to tell the audience.

4. Watch your classmates when they present

This may be one of the most overlooked benefits of being in a class with presentations.  Did someone get a good laugh?  Did he or she seem nervous, and if so, why?  Examine your own emotional reaction to your peers to understand how to present yourself better.

5. Understand your own image

No two people are the same, which means you should not try to bring the same things to the table as everyone else.  Do you have a unique brand of humor?  Do you naturally come across as large and threatening, meek and unsure, nervous and jittery or something else?  If you understand how other people perceive you, you can exploit this perception.  Not sure how you come across?  Ask someone in the class!  Try to convince them to list not only the good but the bad as well.

6. Put yourself in front of people

When I was a Sophomore I took a year off of school and taught English in China.  To this day the skills I learned in front of the classroom are some of the most valuable I have obtained in my entire life (for example, I learned that my brand of humor is self-deprecation, which works well because I am a tall guy who, when not smiling, looks very serious; suddenly doing something that shows that I am willing to sacrifice that image seems to put other people at ease).  Remember, presentations are a socialskill!  Suddenly taking a little time off to meet new people and go out for a beer is not so wasted, if you keep these things in mind and use the time to figure out how to present yourself better.

These thoughts are just a place to start – there are plenty more tips, books, strategies and so on out there.  Reading more may help you get a grasp on what you need to do to succeed, but at the end of the day you just need to get out there and present.  The most important bit of all is simply to understand that presentations are a valuable skill and that you need to jump into the ice water so that it is not so painful later in front of a client.

Freelancing 101 – The Basics

Mathias Meyer

Original Resource: Freelanceswitch

So you wanted to become a Freelancer. That’s great! You’re one step closer to more personal freedom and a job you actually enjoy. Here are a couple of things to keep in mind – things I found important to consider when I began freelancing. Of course there are many more, so feel free to add your thoughts in the comments section.

Finances

Your finances are the most important issue to consider when starting out. You’re probably used to getting a pay-check by the end of the week/month/year. Not having that is what many people are afraid of when embarking on their freelancing career. Luckily, you will get used to this pretty quickly. You just have to approach your finances differently. The most important thing is to always have enough money in your bank account to allow you to live for the next couple of months, even when it seems the work is rolling in.

Taxes are an important part of accounting that many overlook in the early days. It’s tempting to spend all the money you get, but it’s important to keep in mind that someday the tax office will want its part of your income.

In order to avoid being trapped in the pitfalls of your tax system, I highly recommend getting an accountant. It’s generally not too expensive and allows you to focus on what you’re good at. At the beginning of every month I collect my bills, drop them off at my accountant’s and wait for her to tell me how much I have to transfer to the tax office.

However, it is possible to take care of your finances without the help of an accountant. If you have the time to spend on your accounts (and a mind that bends well to these things) you can have a far greater control and insight into your financial situation. The most important thing is to be realistic – if you know you’re not the accounting type, get an accountant straight away. Hiring an accountant at the beginning of your freelancing career will be far less expensive in the long run than fines from the tax department and hiring someone to sort out your abysmal records.

Working Environment

There’s been a lot of coverage on this issue here on FreelanceSwitch, so I’m going to keep it short. The first thing I looked for, even before I registered myself as a freelancer, was an office. While I enjoy working from home, I prefer to have a place where I can focus solely on work. If you can devote yourself to your work at home, then great! But if like may of us you find this impossible, look for a place in a shared freelancer office or get your own. I’m sharing mine with two other freelancers. Though I like a quiet atmosphere, I also like to have people around and this setup is the perfect arrangement for me.

Portfolio

As a freelancer, your portfolio represents you and your work. If you’re a software developer like me that means always having a profile at hand. It features your last projects, what technologies, programming languages and tools you’re fluent in, and your educational history. How much you put in here is up to you, I have just one recommendation: Don’t lie in your resume. Don’t mention things you didn’t do, don’t know how to handle or worse, things you know are fashionable but know nothing about.

The work you’ve done in the past speaks for itself. If you already worked on several projects, know your way around in several programming languages, there’s no need to lie. The more you already know, the easier it usually is to learn new things. If a client asks for a specific technology that’s not yet on your resume, either show the willingness to learn, or pass. That’s something to get used to. It’s tempting to say yes to every job you’re offered, but in the end it might result in a disappointment for both you and your client.

Care for your portfolio, improve it, and learn new things on your own time.

Holidays

IMAGE FROM ISTOCKPHOTO

A lot of freelancers live by the rule that holidays are to be treated as rare events. Work is important for sure, but I already paid my dues working too much some years ago. For me it’s not worth it to work without taking time off. The myth is that clients expect you to work by their schedule. While that can be true of some projects, it’s important to have your own schedule too. Plan your holidays, at least the time frame, in advance and inform your current and potential clients about it when the project schedule is discussed.

Personally I need an extended holiday every once a while, time to get away from the computer, get away from the stuff happening in the world of software development, time to get new ideas, regain strength and to read. I think of it as recharging my batteries. Your clients go on holidays, so there’s no need to feel bad about going yourself, as long as you give them warning.

Though I shut off most of my communication channels when I’m away, I try to answer emails of potential clients once a week (a nice way to fill in the time it takes to upload your photos on Flickr). On my last trip most potential clients were understanding that I was on the other side of the world at that moment and I’d get back to them as soon as I’d returned home. I’m working for one of them at the moment.

Avoiding holidays is also related to another issue:

The Fear

Everyone feels the fear at some point: The fear of not having money coming into your bank account for a long time, or of not having work for a while. Whether you’re on holidays or work’s been scarce, there’s no income coming in.

In my early days freelancing I panicked. But there’s no need to, at least in the short run. It’s a situation you have to get used to. Though it’s tempting to work your ass off to ensure a constant flow of money, you have to ask yourself if it’s really worth it and if you want to do that to your body.

Prepare in advance for situations like this. Budget to have enough money in your account to get through a dry spell or a holiday. Have a list at hand of things that you’ve always wanted to do. Quiet spells can be used for these things, or to learn new technologies, different techniques to approach certain problems, and the like. The important thing is avoid slacking off when you know you have the time at hand. Don’t fall into the habit of postponing things you could do in periods without gigs.

It’s far easier and less stressful to confront the fear with a game plan than to give into it. Of course it’s normal to worry about money, but there’s no need to panic and to drain your batteries with excessive work. You wanted to become a freelancer because you wanted freedom, remember? So use your quiet times to develop yourself instead of stressing out. Hopefully you’ll find yourself better equipped when that new job comes along!

8 Top Tips for Young Entrepreneurs

Akash Mehta

Original Resource: Sitepoint

Online start-up businesses run by young adults are an increasingly common phenomenon. A commonly overlooked demographic, however, are the real youth — those under 18 years of age. With online businesspeople facing very low barriers to market entry, many tech-savvy kids are getting in on the act and taking advantage of the opportunities that abound. While these entrepreneurs are more the exception than the rule, some of their successes are highly notable — myyearbook.com was initially founded by two high-school students, yet at one stage was the third-most popular social networking site in the United States, behind MySpace and Facebook. Of course, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was still in college when he established one of the most popular social networking sites in the world.

Sadly, these successes aren’t as common as they could be. While the world has countless enthusiastic young people with ideas and technical skills, there are many challenges facing these youthful entrepreneurs. These range from the natural — Venture Capitalists (VC) disputing their expertise, for example — to artificial (such as the age restrictions placed on credit card services that might otherwise be used to pay for start-up resources). Here are some tips for the technically-minded young entrepreneur — both the aspirant service provider and the ambitious salesman — to help them overcome these challenges and succeed in their ventures.

1. Be ready to handle the challenges of a business.

Running a business isn’t easy. With customers to deal with, clients contacting you at any hour of the day, products to maintain and possibly even staff to manage, operating a business is very intensive. Before you begin anything, consider whether or not you really want to be in business. Running a business isn’t for everyone — you may be technically minded, but running a profitable business is a different thing altogether. Look at the market leaders — Google, for example, is managed by three people: two technically minded founders, plus an experienced professional in the business-oriented role of CEO. Still, if you have an idea, and you really want to go into business with it, don’t give up now. You just might it make it big!

Another important issue you will have to deal with is time, or a lack thereof! With school, work, and everything in between, you could soon find yourself trying to get through 30 hours of work every day. Running a business is more often than not a full time job, and at some point, something’s got to give. Think about where you want to go in life, and make your decisions accordingly. For example, you could be part of a sporting team, or you could go into business, but you probably can’t do both. Often co-curricular and non-school (where applicable) involvements are the first to go; to maintain your social involvement, consider attending user groups, where you can also network and create opportunities for your business.

2. Plan your idea on paper and be ready to explain it to others.

When you’re running a small business, opportunities can come up at the most unexpected times. You may run into a potential client at a party, a conference, or even a bus stop. You can’t let everyone know about your new product or service but the more people who do know, the more opportunities you’re likely to get, and therefore the better your chances of making it through your first few months in business. Get the word out — you might just chance on a recommendation to a potential client!

Work out your business model and the most useful, concise description you can come up with for your goods or services. Let me take this opportunity to recommend my ingenious patent-pending project management system — I call it Pen and Paper. Working out a plan with pen and paper is often far more effective than typing it up, and gives you more time to think it out while you write. Be ready to explain your business to anyone at any time; with this plan in hand, you shouldn’t have any problems. Without a plan, your explanations can end up being inconsistent, sounding unconfident, and achieving little or no effect.

Get business cards printed and carry them around. I’ve been handing out cards since I was 13, and they’re very effective client-winners. At the very least, they give you something on which to scribble the contact details of potential clients. If you bump into anyone who might be in the market for your goods or services, let them know what you do; briefly explain your business using the plan you prepared earlier and give them a card. When you meet in person, some people simply won’t take you seriously; a business card demonstrates that you’re serious about what you do.

3. Make good use of all the resources available to you.

Often, young entrepreneurs don’t have a lot of capital, but there are still many resources available to you. For example, if you’re building a web application for the financial services industry, do you (or more likely, your parents) know any accountants of economists? If you need to quickly undertake a photo shoot for an advertising campaign that a friend has offered to help out with, could you set something up in your parents’ garage? For some, imposing on friends and family to help get things moving can be awkward, but learning to take advantage of the available resources is going to give you a huge advantage as a young entrepreneur.

Lack of access to capital can often become a challenge for young entrepreneurs — basic business development resources such as ad campaigns can become a problem if you don’t have a budget. With a bit of thinking, however, many of these problems can be alleviated by taking advantage of the resources at hand.

4. Build your product to be as complete as possible before seeking financial assistance.

So, you’re developing your whiz-bang product, and suddenly you realise that the Flash charting library you’ve been using in your application actually costs $1200 for commercial use. You pick up the phone, call Uncle Rob and ask if he can lend you the cash. He politely declines. A series of calls to your other relatives end in a similar fashion.

As an entrepreneur, you have ideas with a lot of potential. Just as you will eventually sell your product to potential customers, selling your product to potential financial backers is even more important, and this makes explaining and clarifying those ideas a priority. Develop your product as much as you can before seeking financial support; if possible, put together a demonstration video. The more you can demonstrate your idea, the more convincing you’ll be. Building on the advice that we discussed in point 2 above, potential financial backers — especially venture capitalists — are very important to the success of your business, and deserve an appropriate amount of your attention.

5. Maintain a professional communication channel.

When dealing with clients, you may find yourself working with mature professionals who are high up in their respective corporate hierarchies. Getting them to take you seriously is the tricky part.

If at all possible, live locally, but work globally. Run your life in your local neighbourhood, but until you’re older and feel confident to deal with clients in person or over the phone, you might consider restricting your customer base to offshore clients (although for US-based entrepreneurs this isn’t always an option). Assume the role of a mature industry professional, and you’ll be treated like one. When you go professional, age won’t matter unless you make it matter. Preparing stunning introductions and speeches always helps for the times when you have to work locally; keep a standard speech in mind and make sure you can deliver it confidently as needed.

When you’re working globally, keep communication to email — definitely don’t offer instant messaging as a method of communication. With email, you have a chance to gather your thoughts, and to work out how to respond to clients. As a young entrepreneur, you often have to tread carefully and make sure you don’t lose anyone from your limited customer base. With email, you can take the time to prepare a professional response that conveys your intended image. Instant messaging should be avoided at all costs, especially if you plan to contact clients using the same instant messaging profile you use to contact friends — this creates all sorts of opportunities for revealing your lack of experience.

6. Monitor progress and keep track of tasks.

The last thing clients want is for you to miss a deadline because you were out on a date or partying with friends. Keep a reasonable separation between your professional and social lives — the so-called work/life balance — but keep track of your progress in your life as an entrepreneur, and maintain a close eye on your daily operations.

Often a dedicated calendar and marker pen are sufficient, but develop a system that works for you and allows you to keep track of deadlines, pending tasks, and goals. Importantly, establish many goals, and give each a definite deadline; then make sure you achieve these goals within the time frame you have given yourself. Of course, this is easier said than done, and requires a lot of self-discipline.

Make sure you keep an eye on the big picture, of course. Work out when you expect to start generating revenues, when you want your products and services to be ready, when you aim to secure your first customer, and so on. If you see progress in general sliding, consider putting in a few extra hours here and there, or (if possible) hiring some help — reliable offshore freelancers are plentiful, and the kid next door might not mind helping you out here and there in return for a bit of pocket money (although again, this might be a bit too close to home).

7. Be prepared to fail.

Let’s be honest — most start-ups just don’t take off. However, this eventuality shouldn’t be confused with "failure." Every time you start a business, you gain a new raft of experiences, extend your skill set, and learn valuable lessons for your future enterprising.

In the event that your business doesn’t make it big, and you end up pulling out of it, look back on what you’ve learned and consider what you plan to do next time. Chances are that you intend to start another business in your lifetime; when you do, you’ll be one business the wiser, and ready to deal with new challenges. There’s always another opportunity; dust yourself off and keep on going! You haven’t failed; you’ve progressed.

8. Have fun!

You might have built a fantastic product and sold it to half of your target market. Perhaps it even made you rich and famous and put you on the cover of TIME magazine at 16! But at the end of the day, the question is: did you have fun?

It may be the case that your product doesn’t take off, you can’t find any suitable buyers, or the world simply isn’t ready for your product or service. In any case, always keep an eye on the big picture, and make sure you enjoy what you’re doing. Entrepreneurialism requires a lot of enthusiasm — you can face some serious challenges if you don’t take pleasure in your daily business activities.

Further Reading

If you’re thinking of starting a business, there are many excellent resources at hand. A quick web search turns up hundreds, but the following might be of special interest to you:

• Entrepreneur.com on starting a business
• The Young Entrepreneur Forums
• FCIC article on being an entrepreneur

On the Side or All the Way?

Collis Ta'eed

Original Resource: Freelanceswitch

Freelancing on the side while working a regular 9-5 job is both a handy way to get your freelancing business started as well as a useful trick for earning extra cashwithout the stress of giving up your day job. For myself, doing the odd job here and there was how I started even thinking about freelancing. As it became obvious that there was enough work to keep me afloat I gave my old employer a ‘thank you very much and see ya later’ and off I went to full time freelancing freedom. Here are some of the pros and cons of moonlighting on the side that I found during my time:

What’s Great About Freelancing on the Side

• You Get to Test the Waters
  Giving up the security of your day job can be a bit frightening. When you work for someone else it’s their responsibility to bring in the clients, get you the jobs and pay you when not much is afoot. As a full time freelancer you’ll be inheriting all that and more. But the great thing about freelancing on the side is that you get to test the waters before you completely give up the security of your job. A little like wearing floaties on your first trip in the pool. If it doesn’t pan out and you turn out to be an awful swimmer well those little balloons of air will make sure you don’t get into too much trouble, and if you’re the next Ian Thorpe then you can quickly slip out of them and splash away.

IMAGE FROM ISTOCKPHOTO

You Get to Take Holidays
I don’t know if all freelancers are like me, but I have a hard time taking holidays. There hardly ever seems to be a good time to do it, someone’s project is always due and if you don’t have any jobs on then you’re probably freaking out about your impending poverty. This is not the case for part-time freelancers, for they can always free up some time by turning away jobs with the luxury of knowing that they still have an employer who will actually pay them to relax… Did I mention that I miss paid holidays?

• Build a Portfolio and Stable of Clients for Future Full-Time Freelancing
  When I left my last job, my employer made it clear that I was not to pass off their work as my own when bidding for new jobs, in particular on my new freelancing website. Not all employers do this and for some industries it’s not an issue at all, but if you are a designer in particular this can be a significant drag as any portfolio pieces you might have look rather lonely. Working on the side however meant that I had already managed to put together a few reasonable designs to show off and they were to form the core of my future portfolio.

  Whatever industry you are in, freelancing on the side does ensure that you have a few regular clients already before you jump into full-time freelancing. This takes some of the early pressure off you to get clients as fast as possible.

• Cash Up
  Who ever feels they earn enough? I never did, that’s for damn sure. Working for the man left me with plenty of time to think about things like ‘raises’ and ‘bonuses’, but somehow they never came quite fast enough. Freelancing on the side however is a neat way to tap into some extra cash for that holiday, car or just to start your new freelancing business

What To Watch Out For

IMAGE FROM ISTOCKPHOTO

Whoops there goes your free time
Oh you wanted a full-time job, freelance work AND time to have a life? Well more often than not that is a hard act to achieve. Freelancing on the side naturally sucks up your evenings, weekends and when I used to do it, my early, early mornings! If you think free time is overrated then this probably isn’t a big deal. In fact it might be a good taste of what full-time freelancing can be like.

• Don’t get caught doing it at work
  I doubt there’s a freelancer alive who didn’t try to squeeze in a bit of their own work while at the office supposedly doing the man’s work. Certainly I used to use my ‘lunch breaks’ to finish off the odd job, but this can have consequences. Your employer starts wondering why you take so long, your stress levels go up as you invent increasingly more complex schemes to make yourself look like you’ve been working when you haven’t and you become all too familiar with “Alt-Tab” to switch between windows away from client work you weren’t meant to be doing.

• No pressure release valves
  I’ve always believed in the concept of what I call ‘pressure valves’. When you have way too much work to do, its nice to have something you can do to take the pressure off. For me this usually means working on the weekend. Knowing that I have a weekend or a night up my sleeve means that I can relax in the knowledge that if I somehow don’t finish my Monday-due project by Friday afternoon that it’s not the end of the world. As an on-the-side freelancer though you have far fewer pressure valves since you’re already using those times to do the jobs anyway. So if you accidentally bite off more than you can chew – something not uncommon to freelancers – then you may find that less sleep and a timely ‘sick day’ are the only cards you have left to play, and that’s no fun.

• Clients don’t always want to talk outside of office hours
  Most clients (rightly) see the hours of 9 to 5 as those to be used for doing business. Most on-the-side freelancers see the hours of 9 to 5 as the hours when they need to switch off their mobile phone, not check their other email address and at least maintain the facade of working for someone else. This inevitably causes problems. Personally I hated having hushed conversations in corridors while I hurriedly tried to placate my client and get him off the phone before a too-curious co-worker realised what I was up to. Some office environments don’t care if you run your freelance communications through them, but these are relatively few and far-between.
• A Bit of the Worst of Both Worlds
  There is good and bad about working for the man and freelancing, when you part-time freelance you get a bit of the worst of both. Not only do you have to find clients, be responsible for the jobs, worry about invoicing and quoting and all that malarkey, but hey you also have to show up on time to work, do what someone else tells you to do and put up with all the other annoyances of working in an office.

So there you have it, my take on part-time freelancing. I’ve added a poll to this post, so vote now and tell me whether you do it on the side or all the way with Stephanie K!

What You Need To Be A Successful Freelancer?

Loveish Kalsi

Original Resource: Make Money Tips

Freelancing job has its own pros and cons. Everybody has its own reasons of becoming freelancer. If you would ask me why I choose freelancing as my career option? My answer would be that I love my freedom. I just hate a routine 9 to 5 job. Well this article is not about why you should be a freelancer, it is about what you need to be a successful freelancer. I thought about it so much and finally I came to the following points which helps me becoming a successful freelancer.

Skills

Skill is the basic need of any work. You can’t be successful in any work which you don’t know, so the point is that whatever work you do first learn it properly then enter the field. If you want to become a designer then learn the art of designing and then launch yourself as a freelancer. I am sure if you will be good with your skills you will get work regularly.

Dedication

If you will do any work with dedication then there is no chance that you can’t touch the successive heights of that field. I remember those days when I used to work till late nights just to ensure that the design I am creating will be the best design I can ever create. This kind of dedication is the strong effect on my freelancing career. Dedication helps you to do your work with your best skills. So take my work that if you will do your work with dedication then success will follow you.

Passion

There is a famous saying “Performance always comes from passion not from pressure”. So always do your work with passion not under pressure. Pressure stops us from doing work the best way, when we work under pressure we can’t work like we can. I would always work with passion not under pressure. Whenever I take a new work I always keep in mind that I should not take so much work that I can’t complete on time because I know that my work is related to the creative work and creativity can’t be good when you are under pressure. So my advice to all you guys is that always work with passion not with pressure.

Above are the three things you should have in yourself If you wish to be successful in the field of freelancing. I am 100% sure if you have great skills of your work and you will work with passion and dedication no one is this world can stop yourself from touching the heights of success.

Image Credits : first image, second image, third image

A Comprehensive Guide to Starting Your Freelance Career

Collis Ta'eed

Original Resource : Freelanceswitch

Working as a contractor–or freelancing as it is often termed–is both a great stepping stone to running your own business and a viable career in itself. For the uninitiated, there can be numerous hurdles to overcome on the way to starting and having a successful freelancing career.

As a former freelancer myself and having employed more than a few, I have observed some of these hurdles firsthand. This article discusses some of the ins and outs of both freelancing and running a small business.

This article is also available in French. Pour nos chers lecteurs de la langue Francaise, je suis heureux de vous informer que vous pouvez lire une traduction complete de cet article: Le guide complet du débutant freelance.

What is Freelancing?

In medieval times when knights roamed the land and fighting was done on horseback with a long pole known as a lance, the mercenaries of the time were referred to as ‘free lances’.

Today freelancing typically refers to writers, designers, programmers and so on. Freelancers are people who offer their services to employers without a long term commitment to them. They often charge by the hour, day or job and are essentially one person businesses.

The business conditions necessary to freelance differ around the world, but typically include some sort of business registration and tax setup to charge for your services. The main prerequisites to becoming a freelancer however are a high level of skill in your field and drive. Once you are out on your own there is no longer the shelter of senior employees to correct your mistakes or cover your faults. Freelancers are typically very well rounded in their skills as they need to operate as a one person team.

Beyond the basic regulatory conditions, the desire to freelance and the skill level required there are a variety of details that you need to consider from branding to rates, client liaison to the mechanics of accounting. This article will walk you through some of these.

Branding Yourself

One of the first things you will need to do as a freelancer is decide on a brand for yourself. It might be your name ‘John Smith Design’ or something more grand ‘Eclipse Programming Services’. Whatever it is you will need a business identity to work under and for clients to know you as.

Along with your new name you will naturally need a logo, business cards and a website. Remember that you are now a business and all your materials need to be polished and professional. It’s nice to be personal, but don’t let your hobbies, rants or photos into the picture, particularly on your website.

If you’re not a designer yourself, invest the money in someone who knows what they are doing as the difference is immeasurable and the impact of looking professional can make the crucial difference when your potential client hasn’t yet had the chance to know you by your quality of work.

When it comes to your website, make sure you get a domain name that is:

1. Easy to remember. Really long domains can be confusing, as can ones with odd acronyms or letters in them
2. Easy to spell. If you have to say your web or email address over the phone it’s always better if you don’t have to say it letter by letter with things like dashes or underscores mixed in.
3. Appropriately descriptive. A name that says something or ties in with your name or business name is best. Its easy to remember and immediately identifies you

Make no mistake, having a website and particularly a domain name is essential. Freelancing off a hotmail account just does not come across as professional or serious and impressions count.

When it comes to building your website, there are a few key pieces of information that must be on there, they are:

1. An introduction of some sort – usually just a statement is best
2. Your services, or else how will anyone know what you do?
3. Examples of your previous work
4. Contact details

You may wish to make more of your site, work on search engine optimization or make it part of your workflow process, but for the bare minimum those four items will suffice.

Where do you find work?

The key to getting started as a freelancer is to have work. But where do you find your first jobs and indeed your later jobs too? And what do you put in your portfolio if everything you’ve ever done belongs to your old employers?

FreelanceSwitch offers a job board which is hand-moderated so you only see the legitimate jobs that meet our standards. It’s free to post jobs and $7 per month to apply to them, and get priority listing in our freelancer directory.

When it comes to getting your first job, its really a matter of using your contacts, and that means telling everyone you know that you are available for hire. If you do not have many leads then you will also want to make sure they know that you’ll come cheap. It might be a good idea to send a mailer around to family and friends, or you might prefer to talk to people in person, whatever the case remember, no-one will hire you if no-one knows about you.

You can often also find jobs on the web on forums and job boards. Look for local sites as well as international ones. Here are some examples of places you could look:

1. FreelanceSwitch Jobs
2. 37Signals’ Gig board
3. Krop
4. Australian INfront (my local)
5. Coroflot

Another good starting point for work are places that you have worked at before or where you know someone who works. Two of my own first clients were former employers who had overflow work. It padded out the portfolio and helped me ride out the lean early months.

If you have nothing to show for yourself for whatever reason then you had either better be a great talker or find something to put as a sample. This might mean:

1. Creating an imaginary job for yourself and executing
2. Offering your services for free to someone
3. Talking your last employer into allowing you to show some of your old work for a specific period of time

In any case it’s difficult for a client to hire you on the strength of your word alone. From time to time you will be asked to do what is known as free pitching, where the potential client will ask you to do some of the work prior to payment. My view is that this devalues your industry and indicates the potential client does not place much worth on your work. Consider if you went to see a doctor, would you ask for a sample health check free of charge, or would you get your mechanic to start fixing your car to see if you liked the way he worked? These things tend to happen in creative fields such as design and writing, but they should not. Keep these thoughts in mind, particularly in your early days when you are struggling.

Once you have worked a fair amount of jobs, you should find that you steadily get an increase in repeat work and referral work and that you depend less and less on new jobs. If this is not the case you are either too expensive, getting the wrong types of clients or not good enough at your work (which in turn means you’re too expensive). You can and should generally anyway look for outside ways to get more work – advertising, yellow pages listings, getting your website found and so on, but if you have trouble retaining your clients or having them refer you on, then these are cosmetic fixes and you should be looking at addressing the main problem.

Quoting and Estimating

Once you have a job or a prospective job, you will need to provide an estimate or quote for the job. Estimates differ from quotes in their degree of fixedness. Estimates are not guarantees of the final price and in essence declare that the final cost of the work will be within about 20% of that price if nothing changes. Quotes on the other hand mean that the price you give is a firm amount that is agreed upon for the amount of work specified.

Most clients prefer quotes as estimates have a tendency of becoming more expensive by the end and hardly ever the other way around. Still estimates can work if you have a good reputation either generally or with that client specifically. They can also work if you guarantee that the price variation will be within a certain margin (10%, 20% etc).

Itemizing your quotes and estimates means laying out the quote so each part of the job can be seen separately. This is not only useful for your client who for example gets to see why a logo costs what it does, but is also good for you, as it will force you to think each part of the process out. At the end of the job it is an excellent idea to review your original quote and compare the final times to your estimates. This will help you refine your understanding of what each job takes and make you better able to win jobs in the future. There are plenty of good time tracking applications around like SlimTimer, Basecamp and a variety of others. Get one and use it.

From time to time a project will blow out its schedule. This happens for one of two reasons;

1. YOU UNDERESTIMATED HOW MUCH WORK WAS INVOLVED

Unfortunately no-one said freelancing was easy, and nine times out of ten you just have to swallow and bear the cost for your mistake. If you have made it clear to your client for one reason or another at the beginning that you are unsure, then they may accept to pay further fees however generally speaking if you aren’t competent enough yet to price your services, you are the one that deserves to carry the cost.

2. THE CLIENT HAS MISCOMMUNICATED WHAT THE PROJECT ENTAILED

Clients do this for many reasons – they might not understand what’s involved, might not know what you need to know, might be too busy or might just have gotten overexcited and started adding to the job midway. Whatever the reason, it is your job to pull them up. And it is here that an itemized quote will help you out. You can point to exactly what was quoted for. If there is something you are doing which is not in there, it is your right to ask to charge for that additional service.

When sending your initial quote it can be a good idea to send your terms of service along with it. “Terms of service” or “Terms and Conditions” are simply a set of terms that you set for the agreement. Generally speaking they work to protect you and your client from transactions that go wrong. They might include things like

1. How long the client has to pay your final invoice – also called your Payment Terms
2. How you deal with rebilling extra costs
3. Deposits you take
4. Copyright for the work you do
5. Ownership before and after payment
6. Your rights and responsibilities and their rights and responsibilities

You can choose to have these terms written up by your legal counsel, or simply have them in plain, clear and grammatically correct English. When attached to your quote or estimate, the terms and conditions are taken to be accepted when the actual quote itself is. That is once the quote is signed off on, then the terms of service are taken to be agreed upon.

Taking the time to make sure you have a set of terms that protect you and your client is important. When both you and your client have agreed on them it means you have a firm footing to work from. As a freelancer you will sometimes be asked to sign a contract or terms from your client as well, make sure you read them carefully as they often will have clauses to specify that they supersede your own terms.

Rebilling Other Services

Along with your own services you may find you need to rebill other services that your client requires. Examples might include hosting, printing costs, couriers, stock and specialist work. There are a few issues here:

1. Never swallow the cost unless it is very small
   Getting a client used to having things for free is a bad idea as one small item can soon become a string of items which will leave you with a bad feeling and eventually a bad relationship.
2. Add a percentage on top of the cost
   Adding about 25% on to the cost when you rebill is fairly standard and this covers the cost to you of hampering your cash flow and in some cases organizing the item (e.g. calling the courier, locating a web host and so on)
3. If the cost is high, seriously consider letting the client deal directly with the supplier As tempting as it is to think you are making an easy 25% commission on large cost such as a big print job, what you are in fact doing is taking a huge risk. Swallowing a large supply cost that has gone wrong can break a freelance business very quickly. The best example of this is in the printing industry. Print jobs easily run into the thousands, and if the job goes wrong for whatever reason and you have a client who decides to bully you, you will find yourself stuck between a rock and a hard place trying to figure out how you can possibly pay for a reprint out of your own pocket. Rebilling this sort of large supply cost can work, but you do so at your own risk

How much is right?

That brings us to the hardest part of freelancing – deciding what to charge. Most freelancers work with an hourly rate. They will then either lease themselves out at that rate, or they will use that hourly rate to determine the price of a job by estimating how many hours it involves.

Finding your hourly rate involves the following considerations:

1. What do others charge? Naturally finding the industry norms is probably the most important factor, especially when you first start out. If everybody else is charging $50 p/hr and you are $200 p/hr you may find work hard to come by. Ask around, particularly of people in the same specialization and skill level as yourself.
2. What is the maximum you can charge? If your services really are worth $200 p/hr and there are sufficient clients who can afford that rate, then you would be foolish not to charge it. In essence your cost is what the market can bear. Finding this out however tends to be a matter of trial and error and overestimating can often lose you potential jobs. Do this over time in small increments.
3. What do you need to charge? One way of determining your hourly rate is to work backwards and calculate how many hours you will be billing in a week, what your costs are and therefore how much you need to charge in order to meet those costs. This can be a good way to go about it, unless of course you have no idea how many hours you will be billing in a week because you are just starting out.

Another important consideration to take into account is that the hours you bill make up only a part of the hours you work. It is tempting to think of maths like this: $40 p/hr x 40 hours a week = $1600 a week. In reality every hour you work will accompany an hour of non-billable work such as accounting, client liason, searching for work, marketing yourself and other duties. Plus you also need to consider time you are sick, time you have taken for holidays and everyone’s favorite – time when you just plain don’t have any work to do. For these reasons your hourly rate should generally be higher than you would first guess when you are starting out.

On the other hand there are benefits to undercharging, particularly at the beginning of your career. Namely a low rate gets you work, repeat work and most importantly referral work. Since jobs are the lifeblood of your freelancing business, this value cannot be underestimated. If you are doing good work at a low cost, word will get around. Of course in the beginning you will have to work very hard to make ends meet, but what you can do is raise your prices just a little with each successive wave of clients. Eventually you should find yourself in a position with lots of work and a reasonable rate. In my own experience from the time that I first began freelancing until I stopped, my hourly rate multiplied by a factor of 6 – going from very cheap to now fairly expensive.

Another important facet of your charges is keeping track of exactly where your time goes, not just during client work, but generally. As mentioned previously find yourself a good timing program and monitor where every hour goes. This will help you understand what you should charge as well as what is actually happening with your time as opposed to what you think is happening.

Invoicing

Now it’s all very well to get your price right, but at the end of the day quotes don’t get paid, invoices do – most of the time. Getting your invoicing right can mean the difference between a healthy business and a defunct business.

So first of all, what is an invoice? It is simply the counterpart to a quote. Where a quote is a declaration of what the client will eventually pay, the invoice is the piece of paper that says ‘pay this amount now please’. The exact format of an invoice differs in different countries, but generally involves a few components:

1. Tax and Legal information. This might include your business registration, address and invoice record number.
2. What needs to be paid. The final cost, often spelled out in an itemized fashion to match the quote.
3. How to pay. It’s good to make this as easy as possible! Offer multiple options such as a bank transfer, an address to send cheques to and a service such as PayPal to accept credit card payments.
4. The due date for payment. Giving your client a fixed date when payment is due is crucial to having something to point to if things go south. The length of time you give a client varies, and is typically anything from cash on delivery to 90 days.

With a large job, you may wish to break it down into components and set what are called milestones, the completion of which will involve a partial payment. So for example you might split the job into three stages, then ask for a 25% deposit and a further 25% at the end of each stage. When you set the milestones make sure there are specific deliverables that the client will see at the end of each. You may also wish to estimate dates and provide a schedule of how it will happen.

The advantage to milestone payments are that your cash flow situation will be significantly more stable. Rather than waiting months for the job to complete and then waiting again another month for actual payment, you can be taking chunks of cash as you go. The other major advantage is that you decrease the chance of not getting paid for your work on a large job.

On almost any job it is a good idea to take a deposit at the beginning. This is particularly true of clients you are unfamiliar with or who have a history of slow payment. The deposit may range anywhere from 25% – 50%. Needless to say once you take a deposit you had better finish the job and finish it well.

Perhaps the most important point about invoicing however is to stay on top of it. Sometimes when you have a lot of work on it can seem like a tedious thing to do, but the earlier you send your invoice the sooner you get paid. Invoicing and chasing invoices should have a very high priority in your to-do list.

Getting Paid

Unfortunately during your freelance career, there is a good chance you will find a client who either refuses to pay, tries to reduce their payment or delays payment for as long as humanly possible. These clients can cause significant problems for a small freelance business, particularly if their job makes up a large portion of your billable work during a specific period.

Before we discuss ways to ensure you get paid, it is worth noting that for this very reason it is a good idea to always keep a cash reserve in your business or personal account to weather such times. Not having enough cash to pay your daily costs while you wait for bills to be paid – also known as cash flow problems – is a major cause of small businesses closing shop.

When a client refuses to pay, you generally find yourself looking back to the original quotes, emails and invoices for assistance. It is a good idea to have clear, itemized quotes so that you can show that you have completed the work you were commissioned for. It is also a good idea if your invoice has a clear payment date that you can point to. If you have emails that show the client was satisfied with the work, this will also help to state your case.

So lets look at the three main scenarios:

CLIENT TAKES AS LONG AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE TO PAY

On your quote and later your invoice you will have written your ‘terms of payment’, or in other words the length of time after your invoice is issued that payment must be made. This ranges from cash on delivery to 90 day terms. Clearly giving the client 90 days to pay your invoice really favours the client and for a freelancer I wouldn’t advise such generous terms. Rather most freelancers should be looking at 0 – 30 day terms. Large companies can manage long waits for payment, you cannot.

Now if a client delays their payment outside your terms, it is your responsibility to begin reminding them and reminding them constantly. Remember the only people who should be embarrassed by this are the people who haven’t paid, so if you feel a sense of shame about constantly calling or writing about money, swallow it and forget about it.

A weekly or sometimes in more extreme situations daily reminder about the payment almost always does the trick. There is an old saying ‘the squeaky wheel gets the grease’ and this is particularly true when it comes to receiving payment. If the client does get annoyed with you for asking to be paid, consider that this is part of their strategy to avoid paying you and also that they may not be a client worth working for.

One other solution you may try to guard against late payments is to institute a system of late fees. This may take the form of something like 1% late fee when the invoice becomes late and a further 1% for every calendar month after that. Do not set a late fee that is overly high, generally you will not want to go higher than about 12-15% per calendar year – similar to a credit card’s rate of interest.

Late fees can work, however many clients will bristle at them, and they can create animosity, particularly if you are stringent and issue a late fee the moment an invoice becomes overdue. Similarly if you issue a late fee for a client who has always been good to you, there is a good chance you will receive an angry email or call!

CLIENT TRIES TO REDUCE PAYMENT SOMEHOW

In this scenario the client will often either state that they have not had delivered all that was asked for. It is for this reason that it is so important to have a clear and itemized quote. If at all possible it is good if your quote has been ‘signed off’ on – i.e. you have a printed copy which holds the client’s signature on it. If you don’t have a signed copy, generally a deposit payment or a some sort of written go-ahead will suffice to show that the client had accepted the quote.

The best thing to do in this situation is to visit the client in person. Rather than take an adversarial stance, go in with two thoughts in mind: (a) You wish to ensure your client’s needs have been met and that if they are asking for reductions it may very well be for a good reason; and (b) You will also not cave in simply to please the client, you must ensure that you are firm without being aggressive.

Seeing the client or at least speaking over the phone, is the best way to clear up whatever issues have caused the problem. If you feel the client is simply trying to worm out of paying then point to the quotes and any other documentation showing that you delivered what was requested. If the issue cannot be resolved – which is an unlikely scenario – then you have escalated to the next scenario.

CLIENT REFUSES TO PAY OUTRIGHT OR AVOIDS YOU

When your situation goes from a very late payment or a dispute over payment into a refusal to pay, it is time to seek legal counsel. Every situation is a little different and laws in different countries vary on how this plays out. Generally speaking you should always have a lawyer that you have some contact with so that in a situation you can call on their services.

You may also consider hiring a debt collector. Debt collectors take a percentage of the amount they are hired to collect and are usually very experienced at extracting money from rogue clients by both persistence and threats of legal or financial ramifications to their actions.

There are also times – particularly for small sums of money – where you write off the loss as a cost of doing business and avoid both that client and similar sorts of clients like the plague. This course of action usually results from the legal and debt collection costs outweighing the amount of money owed. It is frustrating and upsetting but sometimes is just simpler.

Recognizing Trouble Clients

Not all clients are the same, and with experience you will find you become adept at recognizing clients who may be troublesome later on down the track. Here are a few potential tell-tale signs – remember these are not hard and fast rules however:

1. Clients who are overly protective of themselves. Sometimes you will get clients who ask you to sign lots of legal documents, such as non-disclosure agreements; terms of supply agreements; contracts and so on. Generally speaking these are not a bad idea with a lot of careful reading that is; however over time it has been my experience that clients who are worried about being ripped off tend to start thinking they are being ripped off. It is almost as if they create the situation for themselves or find evidence. This is not to say that any client who asks you to sign something is a bad client, but rather to be wary of a client who seems very worried that you might take advantage of them.
2. Clients who ask a lot of questions about whether they will need to pay for things if they don’t like them. This happens a lot in the design business, a client will say something like “What happens if I don’t like the logo designs you do, do I still need to pay for them?” This shows the client does not value your time, does not trust your service, and almost always means they will be hard to deal with.
3. Clients who say they just had a very bad experience with the last writer/developer/designer. Sometimes they really have had a bad contractor, however sometimes they were the problem themselves. This is a bit like people who seem to always have bad relationships; when you look carefully often the common factor in all their relationships is them. In business trouble clients will often have problems with other suppliers and contractors, and in many cases will even tell you this.

Paying attention for these and other warning signs may help you to protect yourself against trouble in the future. Though always remember every client is different and there are no hard and fast rules, so always give your client the benefit of the doubt if you are not completely sure.

Scoping, Delivery and Time Frames

When a client pays you to do a job, it is your responsibility to do not only a good job, but also to do it on time. In fact the quality of the job and the efficiency with which you do it all are almost equal in the sight of many clients and you will get an extremely high reputation if you always deliver on time. In business most people want something they can rely on, even if it means sacrificing some level of quality. Of course having the highest quality work delivered on time is even better!

Determining when work is due must happen at the beginning of the job. For this reason it is a good idea to do some form of scoping to determine what the job entails. This is more important in some fields of work than others; in particular software and programming often require very in-depth analysis before work commences.

Once you have a good idea of how much work there is to be done and you and your client have agreed upon its nature it is time to provide delivery dates and time frames for the work. These milestones will usually have deliverables for the client to inspect and can include payment schedules as was discussed previously.

After committing to a schedule it is absolutely imperative that you stick to it. I cannot stress how important delivering on time is and how much repeat and referral work it will get you.

Service, Accessibility and Saving the Day

There are four defining characteristics to a business; quality, price, reliability and service. If you can deliver all four, you will be much sought after. We deal now with the fourth and final of those characteristics: service.

As in any other business, service sets you apart, keeps the client and relationship happy and justifies your cost. In freelancing service takes four main forms:

1. General Relations. This means the quality of your face to face relations, your phone conversations and your emails. It means being approachable, affable and easy to get along with. It means taking an interest in your client and their business above and beyond the job. It means being someone theywant to work with.
2. Accessibility. Clients want to be able to get in touch with you. There is nothing worse than not being able to get a hold of a person in a critical moment, so make sure you are available by phone, email, internet chat and possibly even at your business address. Different types of work will entail different levels of accessibility in terms of after hours, but all freelancers should be available during business hours at the minimum.Moreover if you are unavailable make sure you have an answering machine – which you respond to! If you are taking a vacation or are off sick, add a special answering message and/or had an auto responder to your email so that your clients know where you are.

3. Occasionally Over-delivering. Over-delivering on a job means going the extra mile for a client, it might be an extra feature in a software job, an extra application of their graphic identity, or some written copy they needed but didn’t ask for. It is work that when delivered makes the client feel they are being taken care of and that you have their best interests at heart.

   Notice also that I have said ‘occasionally’. If you consistently deliver more than you stated, your client will simply get used to things being this way and it won’t be over delivering any more. Additionally make sure (subtly) your client realizes that you have done this or else you lose some of the benefit – though you still get the knowledge of a job well done.

4. Saving the Day. In freelancing you will often get the chance to save the day for your client and I recommend taking advantage of these opportunities when they come up. It occurs often for a freelancer because your client will often have their own client that they are working for, and all clients have deadlines. So when your client comes to you with an emergency deadline that no-one else can handle, it looks great if you can produce results at that critical moment.But a warning as well, saving the day over and over again will result in it becoming something the client will rely on. So use your powers sparingly to make them most effective!

Expansion and Becoming a Full-Fledged Business

Taking a successful freelance business and expanding out to hire employees in order to turn transform from a one-man-band to a full-fledged business may or may not have been your intention from the start. It is however a relatively common occurrence and is a very good way to get a larger business started without investing lots of capital.

The principle pitfall is that when you are working for yourself you only have one person to worry about – you. You know when you like to work, what your capabilities are, how much money you need, when you have been slack and when you are working hard. In other words you make your freelance business successful and you are totally under your own control. When you decide to start hiring freelancers and employees you are stepping into a much larger fish bowl where you will increasingly find yourself managing rather than practicing your primary skill.

There are many ins and outs to growing into a larger business and it can be very worthwhile. For the purposes of this article I will say my advice is to go slowly and not expand beyond your means. Additionally you should read a book called the E-myth which deals precisely with this situation.