The Lady Programmer

My freelance work eats up a lot of my time that I already need a household help to do the daily household chores. Just doing blogging tasks alone keeps me working at the start of the day until late in the evening. I’m trying to work within the US time zones since I get more work opportunities that way, so I get to stay up late until after midnight and wake up near noon.

photo credit: justino307 (SXC)

Opportunities come up often each day and I almost do not run out of things to do. I would rather opt to pay someone to do a portion of my daily duties. This includes some tasks that allow me to get some substantial traffic for this blog. I’ve already outsourced one task as a part-time job for another person to do. I intend to hire more people to get me relieved from such tasks and let me concentrate on pressing tasks, such as coming up with freelance article pieces for this blog and doing bits of SEO at the same time.

Every worker has to learn how to manage a set of tasks that are to be done during the day. As I am relying purely on my active work to earn income, I had to prune out parts of my freelance job. Make a list of tasks that are to be done during the day and before numbering these tasks according to priority, eliminate the time wasters first. The points are mentioned below:

• Do the task at a later date. If the job can be postponed then do it so. Find a free day or free time to do the task.
• Have another person do the task. I already got other people do some chores to relieve me the stress of too much work to do.
• Find another way to simplify the task. I found a number of duties that I can simplify. Sometimes using software can help me simplify such task. Learning another method can be difficult in the beginning, but if done effectively then it could be a great time-saver.
• Determine tasks that can be done by batch. This is much related in simplifying tasks. In my case, I do blog visiting and commenting at the end of the week, instead of doing it when I do not have things to do. I do blog redesigns at the end of the week too.
• Make the most out of idle time. Here, keeping a list can be handy. Sometimes I find myself faced with too many tasks to do and I do not know which one is next to my list. The list can be helpful when there are some idle periods.
• Determine resources that are useful to the job but takes up too much time. I’ve upgraded my PC to a faster one so that I can run the latest software, which demands more out of hardware. I’ve upgraded my internet connection so that I can also work fast. A slow PC is counterproductive so I am looking towards upgrading it.
• Just drop the task from the list. There are simply some jobs that are truly time wasters. For me I changed my IM status from busy to invisible, since I realized that simply talking to someone really wastes a lot of my time. I turn on my visibility to the person whom I need to talk immediately.

Proper planning of activities will surely lead to better ways of maximizing time to the fullest and having loose extra time change at the end of the day for replenishing work energy.

More Filipinos discover there are ways to make money online. The US and other developed countries had long harnessed the potential of earning online: this is obvious with the various income generating websites that are geared towards these geographical locations. Filipinos are still slowly getting aware of that the internet can be a rich source of income. Almost all of my friends are not aware that there are legit online jobs that really pay good income or even beats it. Many home-based moms even see this as a great alternative to pursuing work in the office.

photo credit: LeoSynapse(SXC)

A lot of my professional friends had not really understood the nature of what I am doing right now. I simply tell them went into freelance jobs in programming, web design and blogging. While I am currently upgrading my technical skills in Information Technology, paid blogging gigs is the main thing that puts food on my table. I simply said to my friends that I work at home. They are often baffled at how I do it and how I collect my payments from these outsourced jobs.

From blogging alone, I’m making a good income – not yet at par with the income of A-list bloggers that I’ve encountered in the blogosphere – but it exceeded the previous salaries that I’ve been receiving from my previous jobs. Blogging is enough for me to put such good income on my table. It is some kind of a regular stream of income that I can fall back when opportunities for web design and programming are not plentiful. If there would be someone who is looking for a good part time job to add to one’s income, then finding ways to earn online is a good thing to have.

Setting a price for one’s skills in many freelance job markets is one thing that new freelancers should always take care of. For sites that let the freelancer sets hourly rates, a newer freelancer should take care not to set their prices high. As a blogger, I find this also applicable in setting blog prices.

What should be my right price?

One good thing about online job marketplaces and paid blogging sites is that most of the information is transparent. It is easy to see the profiles of other freelancers offering the same job with their hourly rates posted out on most online resumes. Some freelance sites even offer information such as graphs and charts based on the pay rate of their active members. In one site that I’ve been working with, there is a suggested range of prices for each blog post that I can choose from.

photo credits: conmani (SXC)

The price is used for clients to handpick their freelancers. Clients often prefer freelancers who are in the middle of both extremes of high and low priced services. It is not true that the cheapest freelancer gets to do the job, because quality is often an issue in this case. The most expensive freelancer may also turn off the client, because there are other freelancers who can do the job. In the end the freelancer that gets the job is the one that is not too expensive and too cheap either, and delivers the sufficient quality of work that the client expects.

When I first came into the freelance world, I did not expect it to require a different set of skills than what I have been accustomed to. In the corporate setting, my life almost revolves around the boss in the office. In doing so, I was forced to learn different sets of skills – the skills that are necessary to be a successful entrepreneur. Some skills on leadership and management are best suited to full time freelancing jobs.

photo credit: barthetzk (SXC)

These are the skills that are needed in freelance jobs:

1. Negotiation
   In many freelance sites like oDesk, Elance and SponsoredReviews.com, there is almost always a need to bid on projects or set an hourly rate. At first, I prided myself on the skills that I had, so I set a higher rate. But as I apply to jobs in oDesk, I was not able to easily get noticed through an interview. I decided to put a lower hourly rate and bid a little lower on projects to get me started.
2. Time Management
   Full time and part time freelancers definitely need this. Juggling between regular 8 to 5 working hours plus a part time job surely sacrifices breaks on weekends. Full time freelancers need to juggle between one jobs. Learning how to mark priority tasks is definitely the key to success in this skill. Time management also includes having time for personal tasks and family as well.
3. Personal Finance Management
   Financial literacy plays a big role particularly for full time freelancers, because their job depends solely on the income that they had actively earned from several freelance projects. It is always a challenge to find freelance jobs that a full time freelancer can have after finishing one because it is possible not to have any qualified jobs for several months at a time. The full time freelancer is left to find other ways of earning income – one of the best ways is to invest in passive income.
4. Communication
   Communication is one of the strongest skills that should be developed in freelancers, because these people often do not get immediate interaction with their clients in case of problems. Updates are also necessary to inform the client of the work progress. These reports can be done over a short daily report, an email or a quick IM message to the client.
5. Goal Setting
   Goals are very important because it keeps the freelancer focused on personal development. Having goals in as ambitious as being a lead freelancer or as simple as learning a new skill would definitely help and would make freelancing a more challenging and fulfilling job. Making plans sets the direction of one’s freelance career and sees how the freelancer has fared.
6. Decision-making
   In leadership, decision-making is a very important skill to cope up with various situations. There are plenty of decisions to look into when doing freelance jobs, and it is very important to develop effective decisions that will truly change the course of freelance jobs. Would I specialize in one skill? Will I need to learn a new programming language? Will I take this job at this bid? Is my skills enough? Do I need to hire another freelancer to finish a particular task? What other options do I have to finish this job in time?
7. Managing Risk
   Entrepreneurs find ways to invest in risky ventures which gives higher profits. This is indeed true in freelancing. I’ve often noticed that even Filipino IT graduates settle down on easier data entry jobs that pay $1 to $3 per hour rather than pursuing high paying programming jobs that pays $10 to $20 per hour. Oftentimes the reason is that skills may not be enough for these jobs, but spending to upgrade or learn new technical skills such as call center skills can give a big difference in the long run.

Many of these skills were derived from skills that are needed to be a successful entrepreneur. Thus changing the mindset from the employee to entrepreneur is almost needed.

One of the frustrating challenges in freelancing is to find a client who really pays at the agreed price and time. It is a sad fact that in many outsourced jobs, there are many clients who do not really pay their freelancers. The freelancer spends some hours to complete a task, and then submits it to the client, and then the client vanishes without paying. The poor freelancer is left to contact the unresponsive client, who vanishes without a trace.

photo credit: channah (SXC)

What are the ways of avoiding non-paying clients? Here are some ways to avoid these clients:

1. Check the history of the client. Did that client hire somebody before? What is the general feedback? If you are meeting clients within your locality, does that client maintain or work with a business or is the client an individual?
2. If you are looking for jobs in a freelance site, take note of the measures that the freelance site is giving to its members. Does it perform payment verification checks like oDesk does? Does it have escrow services for huge projects similar to the one performed in Elance? Do you get guaranteed payment for each successful post just like PayPerPost?
3. Ask the client thoroughly not about the details of the project. If the client bids for outrageously lower bids or early deadlines than the usual market average then the client has unrealistic expectations for the duration of the project.
4. Try new clients by accepting clients offering low priced jobs. In many cases new clients are often excited about hiring an offshore job and finding success in it and would probably settle down for the first freelancer that they had found.
5. Avoid a client that lets you do a significant amount of sample work. You can opt to submit sample work that is unrelated to the theme of the requirement but speaks to more to the

In outsourced freelance jobs, non-paying clients is highly likely because job is done without any written contract at all, unlike accepting freelance jobs in companies around town. Remember that if you get caught with non-paying clients and you have exhausted all the means to make them pay for work done, just get that project added to your portfolio and leverage that for that next big freelance job – it can be counted as a good job experience instead.