oDesk Insider - Freelancing is more fun with oDesk

Dec4

oDesk’s New Manifesto

2 comments Posted by Nelson Manning in Finding work

We haven’t had many updates on here lately, but I’d like to share with you my thoughts on the new oDesk Manifesto that has come out recently. So many of the freelancing/outsourcing services seem to work against the provider or against the buyer to make their money, but what those services fail to realize is that by turning off qualified providers or making the hiring process more difficult and costly for buyers will create a diminishing return.

That’s why I like oDesk and their new manifesto. Really, to be honest, there’s nothing new in it. It’s the same policies which they’ve always expressed throughout the terms, conditions, and guidelines. However, I’m happy to see that they’re elevating those guidelines to the status of rights. I can be a little paranoid about whether or not I’m going to be paid for a job, whether or not my rating is going to get knocked down for a silly reason, and many other things, but I’m very happy to see that oDesk is taking the stance of a mediator between the two parties to ensure that both are protected in a transaction.

It may not be new news, but it’s good news.

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Oct11

Using Discipline and Determination

1 comment Posted by Nelson Manning in Finding work

I think we got something going here. There’s a few more words I would like to get out regarding Bill’s post and mine. It’s no secret that Bill, Dave, and I are writers, and we tend to write on this blog with a writer’s slant. Keep in mind that a lot of what we say applies to coders, artists, and other creative/technical types who create a product as their trade.

When Bill said discipline, the first thing that came to mind is what another friend said to me, “Put ink to wood. Every day.” I think that’s an important step for any professional. You should write, code, or draw every single day whether you’re being paid to do it or not. Why? Because it’s especially important to use the unpaid, free time you have to improve your skills and build your portfolio. Also, if you don’t practice your skills every day, they will begin to dull. It’s surprisingly fast, too. You could stop writing for a week, come back, and you will feel like you’re lost. It sucks pretty hard.

Ink to wood. Every day. When you get a job on oDesk, you’re being paid to write for someone else. That’s not the time you should be improving your skills–you should be using them to your best ability to produce the product your client wants as quickly as you can. However, when you’re off the clock, you’re free to play and try new things. Explore different solutions to common errors you encounter. Make yourself worth more money to future clients who want to hire you.

That’s why Bill says discipline is so important. You have to have discipline to sit down every day and work at it. You can’t stop and wonder if you’re doing a good job. You can’t second-guess yourself. You just have to put ink to wood like nobody’s business, and charge at it full force.

If you don’t believe us, try it. You’ll see for yourself.

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Oct10

You Say Tomato

4 comments Posted by William Morrison in Doing the work

Nelson recently posted his ultimate secret for success in freelancing. He nailed it. If you haven’t read it yet, you can view it here.

Nelson got it down to a single word, “determination”. It got me thinking about what one concept would I recommend to freelancers as the single most important element of success. My single word is discipline.

One of the easiest, most natural things for me to do is write. It’s also the hardest, most unnatural thing. When the words are flowing, when the idea is fresh and compelling, when I’m knocking an assignment out of the park – well then, writing is great. Ah, but when I’m tired, when I have to fulfill unreasonable expectations (which of course, I agreed to) and when the work is piling up and the deadlines are coming and going like flies on roadkill – well then, writing sucks.

I never believed that freelance writing was going to be a cakewalk. I absolutely hate those ads and ebooks that hype the job and the marketplace. Sure, I write from home. Yes, I listen to the radio and dress however I want. But in the end, the equation is the same as always: Work = Money. No work means no money.

So when I see a “Work from Home as a Freelance Writer (and make super money while you laze about)” that promises the moon, I just shudder. If they only titled it, “Bust Your Ass as a Freelancer” they would at least be telling the truth.

So, Nelson is right, determination is key. I just use a different word. He says toe-may-toe and I say toe-ma-toe. For me, discipline is the most important thing. Without a boss at hand, I have to be the hard driving boss myself. I have to crack the whip and get things moving when there is little time and even less inspiration.

But here’s the payoff. After a few times forcing myself to do more and to keep at it, what seemed impossible before becomes more a matter of normal. And then, over time, becomes habitual. The jobs I thought were too much for me a few months ago are nothing to worry about now. Now, I have other, even more impossible jobs to keep me up till all hours.

A couple of days ago I was facing three deadlines. Not all of them set in concrete, but each of them, if missed, would disappoint buyers and make me look bad. I’ll warn you now – when you start making decent money, you are going to treasure buyers who pay you 10 cents a word or $25 an hour.

In any case, I panicked and wrote like a demon – about 5000 words in a single day. That’s two chapters of an ebook at 2000 words each and three blog posts at around 350. Oh, and there was this weird English as a second language test question set I cranked out in about an hour and a half.

I don’t know what you consider high volume, but for me, 5000+ publishable words is over the top. Ah, but not today. Today, I can look at that day with pride and some confidence that the next time I’m under the gun, I can do it. All it took was discipline. That’s a cool thing, how we have these artificial limits in our heads and the ability to surpass them, to do more than we thought doable. I wish I could turn that switch on all the time, but I can’t. I don’t have that much discipline.

But at least I know how important discipline is. That’s my ultimate secret. And now it’s yours too.

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Oct8

To All New Freelancers: Here’s the Secret to Success

3 comments Posted by Nelson Manning in Finding work, Philosophy of freelancing, Searching tips

I’ve been holding back on you. There really is a secret to success on oDesk, your life, and anything else. Countless people have approached me and said, “I want to do what you’re doing. You seem to be having a ton of fun and making money at it.” So, I tell them about how freelance writing/programming/art/etc works in general, and then I tell them about oDesk. Invariably, that leads to the clinger-on syndrome which I’ve grumbled incoherently about in previous posts. In reality, it’s all my fault that they’re clinging to me. They know that I know the one thing you have to do to find success, and they want to draw it out of me.

Well, here it goes. Like chum to the hungry sharks you are, I offer up that one thing which will turn you from an aspiring freelancer into a competent professional.

Are you ready?

Determination.

lol wut?

It’s becoming a throw-away word anymore, its meaning lost in a sea of motivational posters depicting various animals in precarious situations. However, true determination is the key to being successful in any pursuit.

I’ve said it many ways, but it still doesn’t seem to sink in. I’m asked to babysit people while they apply for jobs or let them look over my shoulder while I work. I don’t have time for that.

Here’s what I do

I follow the advice in this blog, I sharpen my skills every day by reading and practicing, and I apply to jobs. The only difference between me and someone who doesn’t get work is that I do it ten times more. I firebomb the market with my resume, inquiries, and everything else I think may help me find work. I do it for hours on end.

A lot of people think they should succeed because they really WANT to succeed. However, it doesn’t work that way. Just because you really want something doesn’t mean you’re going to get it. You can actively work towards your goal and still not reach it. Many beginning fiction writers give up because they wrote a story they think is awesome yet never is published. They don’t edit that story, they don’t read omnivorously to improve their skills, and they don’t write new stories. To be a successful fiction writer, you have to work. It’s not a hobby.

The way to guarantee success is to work harder than everyone else on every application on oDesk and make sacrifices. Instead of going out with your friends, work on your oDesk profile and portfolio samples. Instead of watching another movie, spend two hours working on your career. Instead of (insert mindless activity here), work on finding work.

You don’t have to drive yourself insane by becoming a workaholic. However, you should definitely “feel the burn” when you’re flexing your freelancer muscle. Otherwise, it’s just a casual hobby, and buyers will treat you like a hobbyist.

That’s the one thing you need to find success. It’s not what you want to hear, but it’s the factor that changes everything.

P.S. Feel free (and please do) throw out any topics you’re interested in us covering by posting a comment here or on any post. We’ll be glad to give our opinion, and we’d love to hear yours on whatever topic.

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Sep7

Time… The Moving Finger Writes

3 comments Posted by Dave Robinson in Doing the work, Increase your productivity, Keeping it together

Time is one of those things you just can’t get away from. It just keeps going at one second per second and never stops. Many of us don’t even think about it until we have a massive project due the next day and we haven’t even started. It’s not a problem for people with traditional jobs, they have bosses to schedule their work, but for a freelancer things don’t work the same way.

With Labor Day safely behind me, it’s time to start ramping up my freelancing again. I’ve been working all year, but with the kids home from school I didn’t have as much time to work and so my income dropped off. But they’re back in school now so I have my time back.

The teens leave for school at about 8:10 in the morning, and my six-year old gets home around 2:45, which gives me about six and a half hours a day to focus on working. I figure there’s no reason at all why I can’t be productive for at least four or five of those hours.

The only catch is that I’m going to have to do a better job of time management than I’ve been used to over the summer. The advantage of my light workload was that it was easy to find time to fit my jobs in around things like playing chauffer and listening to the stories my daughter made up. Once I get busier, it won’t be quite as easy, though I will have to factor in time for kid-based emergencies.

That means I’m going to have to bite the bullet and use time-management software.

Right now I’m looking at using Mozilla Sunbird because I like its standalone nature.

The key is going to be getting started on work bright and early (shortly after the kids leave for school) and also making sure I have time to look for new projects. Luckily I can probably do a lot of the searching in the afternoon after the kids get home as that doesn’t need the same kind of sustained concentration as paying work.

If any of you have any specific tricks you use, let me know and maybe we can all take advantage of them.

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Sep2

What If You Don’t Get the Job?

5 comments Posted by Dave Robinson in Applying for jobs, Doing the work, Finding work, Keeping it together, What not to do

It’s happened to me, it’s happened to you, it’s happened to all of us. You apply for a job opening, get the interview and then after what feels like some good solid communication you discover the job went to someone else.

Well, you could do some yelling and screaming and run about the house tearing your hair out. I don’t recommend it, but you could. You could also send off a nasty email cursing the buyer and all their family to the seventh generation.

Guess what? I don’t recommend that either.

If they were nice enough to inform you they were going with someone else then I recommend a polite thank-you note and move on.

Nothing you can do is going to get you this job so there’s no reason to worry about it. However, the fact that they put the time into the original discussion means that they are perfectly willing to consider working with you in the future.

So don’t do anything to mess that up.

One of the most common reasons that this happens is that the client found someone else who was better for this job.

It doesn’t mean they found someone who was better overall, just better for this job. It may be that when their next opening comes up they’ll immediately think of you and fire off an email.

In the meantime, pick yourself up and work on something else.

Networking and patience are two of the keys to a successful freelance career.

Here’s an example of what I mean by patience. As many of you know I don’t just work on oDesk, but I use other freelance sites as well. I recently got my first job at one of those other sites: after only five months of trying.

I admit I wasn’t spending all day every day looking for work on that site: there were times I had more than enough work and stopped looking on new sites. However I was looking fairly frequently and while there weren’t a lot of jobs that caught my eye, there were some that I would have liked to have done that I didn’t get.

So I spent time polishing my profile and figuring out the ins and outs of the site. I tried a few different methods of bidding and finally won a job.

Yes it took a while, and more than I would have liked, but since I wasn’t depending purely on that site I had the time to spend getting it right and not ranting and raving about the injustice that meant I didn’t get a job there until now.

It would have been just as pointless as any of the other rants I mentioned at the beginning of the post.

You need to look forward not backward.

As Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam goes:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

Freelancers need to live by that dictum. You can’t change the past, only the future.

In other news: I’m now writing for another blog as well as this one. If you’re interested in technology why not come over and see what’s going on at Gizmotechnet. Hopefully I’ll see some of you there.

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Aug27

A Cold, Hard Truth

5 comments Posted by Nelson Manning in Finding work, What not to do

It’s not easy to be a freelancer. That’s just the way it is. It takes a certain kind of bravery.

Lately, a lot of my friends have seen what I’ve been doing, and they want “in on the action.” Of course, I’m perfectly willing to oblige by pointing them in the right direction. I say, “Well, actually, I work on a blog which explains the ropes of oDesk, and there’s a great book about freelancing on oDesk there. Check that out, sign up for an account, and just go for it.”

When I first started out, everything was so new to me, and I was excited about every aspect of freelance writing. I have friends who are writers, so I was excited to show them what is possible. However, I found that it’s a huge mistake to hold another’s hand while they’re getting started. It goes from simply helping them navigate around the website (which is fine) to bleeding off your own work to them to doing work that they’ve found even though they’re the one who gets paid.

If there ever was one, this is the proverbial “slippery slope.” Chances are, the person you’re introducing oDesk to is your friend. You want this person to succeed. However, the irony is that by using your skills and reputation to help this person succeed, you’re setting them up for ultimate failure. You’re also hurting yourself in the process. After I’ve pointed someone to resources, I tell them that’s as far as I’ll go.

When you’re helping them to succeed, you’re taking time away from your own career building. When you’ve finally given all you have and need some time to recover, that person will be unable to cope with the rough life of freelancing. Their success depends on you holding their hand the entire way. You let go, they flop.

That’s the cold, hard truth of freelancing. For people who are serious about it, it’s not about sitting on your porch with a cup of coffee and pecking at the keyboard with leisure. It’s a business, and if you’re not breaking a sweat by thinking hard, you’re not trying hard enough.

In a way, freelancers can be seen in the same light as movie stars. They see the money, the people you know, the freedom, the fact that your schedule is flexible. They see the product of your work. However, very few have seen the hours upon hours of work behind the scenes: applying for jobs, being rejected from jobs, cutting deals with clients, working until your eyes feel like they’re bleeding just to finish a project on time. There’s a lot we do which never sees the light of day, and for a lot of that work, we don’t get paid for it. It’s all about putting ourselves into a position where we can have those things people envy.

This type of career is a very solitary pursuit. Some people are simply not cut out for it. If you’re hanging on to someone else, or if someone else is hanging on to you, (politely) cut them loose. It will be better for both of you now and in the long run. There’s no other way you’ll know whether or not this career choice is right for you.

If you’re still trying to get your first job, don’t worry. It will come if you work for it. Take more tests, get better scores, and add pieces to your portfolio. It makes a huge difference.

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Aug21

Burned Out and Busted

5 comments Posted by Nelson Manning in Keeping it together, Philosophy of freelancing, Psychology, What not to do

I haven’t posted here in a while. A long while. There’s one reason why: I went into full shutdown from freelance writer burn-out. I couldn’t even log into oDesk without getting a sick feeling in my stomach. The danger of destroying yourself from overworking is very real, and as part of my personal therapy in recovering from burn-out, I’d like to share my personal experience with you in the hopes that you will have a better time at avoiding it.

It’s not quite like hitting a brick wall

It was very gradual. I didn’t know I was burned out until it was far too late to do anything about it. In addition, knowing that I was made me even worse. If it had been sudden, it would have been much easier to cope with, but that wasn’t the case.

It all started with having a ton of work. In a professional/career sense, I was doing great. However, I kept piling up more and more work. Then, life interfered with my working schedule. That’s okay because there’s no way to avoid that. The result, though, was that I wasn’t constantly working. I enjoyed having some time off, but I took that time off too far. I never had any time on.

It wasn’t a sudden dropoff, though. I kept working on the projects I had open, finished them up. The bad part was that I stopped applying for new jobs. As a result, I ran out of work. Should that have been a wakeup call? Yes. Did I wake up? No.

Kept going on my merry way. Tried to force the thought of work completely out of my head. I had been under the gun for a long time, and I suppose I was subconsciously trying to keep myself from getting back into that situation.

Pace yourself

I’m recovering now. Taking baby steps. Trying to dispel my irrational fear for all things writing-related. Just seeing an ink pen makes me want to curl up in a ball and wet myself.

How do you keep yourself from crashing like I did? At the risk of sounding like every self-help book to ever hit a shelf, I’ll say this: schedule yourself some “you time.” As corny as it sounds, it actually helps. Treat it like you would treat any project you do on oDesk. If you tell a buyer you’re going to work two hours on something today, it wouldn’t be very smart to go back on that.

Pick a couple hours and stick to them. Turn off the computer. Turn off the phone. Don’t check your E-Mail every 15 minutes. Instead, read a book or watch a movie. Do something you enjoy which has nothing to do with work. The world isn’t suddenly going to crash to the ground if you don’t check your messages. You’ll crash to the ground if you get stuck in work-eat-sleep mode.

Give it a shot. It probably won’t be like you flipped a magic switch which makes life better, but it’s one of many ways to keep you from going crazy.

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Aug19

A Niche I Didn’t See Coming

2 comments Posted by William Morrison in Doing the work, Increase your productivity

Here’s a writing niche I hope takes off: Spoofs.

A spoof is an article or webpage you write as a satire, mimicking some otherwise serious subject. I didn’t even know there was a demand for this until someone asked if I could write ‘humor’. Turns out I can.

My first effort, Math Kills was a great deal of fun to write and it gave me some sorely needed training with pictures and charts. I’m weak on graphics and HTML in general, but I believe this is where the online writing game is headed…

The itch to niche

So, now that I’m all nichey, I’ve got to sell this puppy. First go will be contacting web warriors I’ve worked for in the past to see if they might want a little ’spice’. And meanwhile, I’ll sit spider-like and cruise the job postings looking for my niche to come up. But not just that, I’m looking for content requests that I might be able to nichify with examples and clever suggestions.

This gives me 3 current niches. And that’s the overall strategy: keep adding oddball assignments I like to do (which translates into ‘pretty good at doing’) and use these as my fishing lures.

This, for me, is where the fun is in online freelancing. I get to try new things and see how they work out. It’s the oddest sort of synchronicity when an assignment blossoms, and it always comes as a nice surprise. The beauty part is that when you find a job to your liking, you’ve just completed a sample you can show to get your next job.

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Aug18

Chance Only Matters When it’s Random

3 comments Posted by Dave Robinson in Applying for jobs, Cover letters, Finding work, Philosophy of freelancing, Pricing, What not to do, Your profile, odesk

I was on the oDesk forums recently and came across a comment from a new provider who was worried by the ratio of working to registered providers.

She couldn’t find the page, which was probably the main oConomy page here which currently shows 248 providers working and 95,545 registered int the system. I admit that those numbers weren’t calculated to put a new provider in her happy place, but they don’t tell the whole story either.

It isn’t showing how many providers on the network have jobs, but how many people were actively logging time on the oDesk client at the time the numbers were generated. Given that oDesk is a 24 hour global marketplace those numbers will fluctuate throughout the day and really aren’t anything to worry about. They certainly don’t reflect the number of providers who are currently employed. (I expect they’re short by at least one or two orders of magnitude).

Now let’s look at some other numbers from the same page. There are almost 100,000 providers, and together they’ve earned just under 40 million dollars, which works out to an average of almost U$400/per provider to date. Since not every provider on oDesk has worked, and that some profiles are so incomplete that the providers are never going to work, the numbers have nowhere to go but up.

When it comes to getting a job, none of those numbers matter.

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