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Free Lancing and its headaches.

  • Thread starter Thread starter nick
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nick

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There are Free Lancers everywhere in every industry. We will be focusing on online Free Lancing and customizations work.

Lets dive directly into one example here. A client need some thing made for his website. He logs on to Internet searches through search engine and lands on some Free - Lancing site or a forum full of people who are ready to sell their services. He posts his requirements and others makes offers with their cheap prices and previous work done. Well after some discussions one is selected and given the task. If there is something decided about advance payment or half of it then it are paid and the guy gets started some time the guy doesn't gets started and vanishes off with the money. In most of the cases the payment is done by paypal and the funds are recovered but only after 2 or 3 days are wasted in this mess. The other angle is that our Free Lancer guy is a hard working one and he really gets started and finishes the work. Then here the client vanishes without paying the out standing amount. So again the mess and Free - Lancer is scammed this time. Still lets continue with it and say the client is also a genuine one and is going to make the full payment but after seeing the work done he wants some tweaks for the final out-put. So some extra work for the Free - Lancer, which is un-accounted for and nothing extra, is going to be paid for this. Okay the second stage is also completed and for some reasons the client want 3 changes this way and wants to roll - back on 2 changes to the previous one. Free - Lancer has to do this other wise he is risking his out standing amount and also risking his clients paid amount.

Some times understanding plays an important role in this kind of deals. If this thing happens to a newbie Free Lancer then it might break his morale of ever working again. If this happens to some new client then he or she will never trust other person after that to do their work in this kind of scenario.

Best tips for the client is to outline the finest detail of the work needed. Plus it's also a duty of the Free Lancer to know as much as possible before jumping right into the project. If some simple rules are followed then the things might become smoother then they are right now.

Most of the sites dealing in this kind of thing have some kind of system in place. Reputation system, Trader rating system, which shows the positive and negative feed back about the user. This simple systems if followed along with simple rules then it might remove all the headaches out of Free Lancing.

©2006 Nick. Do not reprint this article.
 
I have been cheated in past for directories submissions, i submitted the site to 900 directories and the buyer didn't paid me. now i cannot email the admin on directory and tell him to delete the link in his already crawled directory.
 
I also don't have many ideas but nick is right. people cheat us many times. i am just starting my business and i can't afford cheating now. i am already in minus.
 
Jayesh: Ouch! That's a hard lesson to learn. As an American, I hope it was not someone in our country, but you really can't trust anyone until you get to know them on the web, it's just too risky. Contact me via PM and maybe we can get the person to pay you after all...?

I have a small consulting business, but I'm really a Free Lancer I guess. I ask for 50% of the money up front and the rest when the job is finished. The client takes the risk for the first part (in case I don't do any work for them) and I take the risk for the last part (in case they don't pay me).

If you ask for all the money when the work is done, you are asking for trouble, but if you get all the money first, you may get lazy or busy and not get the work done as fast as you can. I think two payments is the best. If you think the client may not pay you, you could ask for half to start, and then the rest at the middle.

But I have to say the #1 most important thing for a Free Lancer, especially one that is just getting started is to put in a document WHAT you are going to do for the client, and what they are going to do for you (pay you). If you just have a verbal agreement, it is easy to forget or get confused about what the agreement is. This also keeps the client from asking for all kinds of things they didn't tell you about when you gave them the price for the work. We like to be nice and make the client happy, but some clients really abuse this and can cause you to make much less money on a project.

Having everything written down makes it easy for you to tell the client you can do the extra work, but they will have to pay for the extra work. Most clients will not have a problem with this. It's bad business to keep doing many extra things and not get paid for it, UNLESS the client really appreciates it and will help you get more business. Then it can be worth doing some things for "free".

The other thing that hurts Free Lancers is bidding on projects. How much do I charge? This is hard when you are starting out, because you don't want to "overcharge" and lose the business. I tell people to look at what other people are charging in your area, and charge about the same amount. If you are not sure what that is, then charge an hourly rate that pays you a fair amount. If you can be happy with what you are charging, then that is the right price for you until you can get more experience and know if you can ask for more and not be too expensive.

[Ooops! I just read all of Nick's article and see that I have repeated some of what he already said, sorry about that!]
 
nielsencl said:
[Ooops! I just read all of Nick's article and see that I have repeated some of what he already said, sorry about that!]
LOL. Thanks mate for the compliments. If more ideas come to my mind I will post them here. But my mind is running in every direction and cannot write articles. If I write one I get ideas for 10 and so on.

I am also writing a SEO book which if publishers liked it will be printed and will be available at your nearest book store :smile:

Please don't say bad words to me after reading my book :tongue:
 
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