It’s been 3 years that I am working as a freelancer professionally and have experienced every kind of clients from all over the world, including the irritating ones and also, the good ones. While talking about good ones, I’m referring towards those clients who understand your proposal in first attempt and appreciate you. And while talking about irritating ones, I’m referring to those clients who never get satisfy and keep asking for more. Most of you freelancers might give them a title of “Client from Hell”.
Today I am about to discuss the Five most common challenges which almost every freelancer faces. I don’t expect a one side communication on this brand new site. So if you have anything to add in this article, you are most welcome to leave a comment and have your say.

Self Discipline

Having self discipline is main key to success in your freelancing carrier. The time management and every other regularity come into it. The basic difference in 9 to 5 regular job and freelancing is organization discipline and self discipline. In an organization, there is a boss to keep the discipline and there is always a thread, as soon you quit following these regulations you are out. However in freelancing, disciplines matter much more than it. Your clients’ reviews about your recent work are gateway to your next bigger projects, and for it you need to provide their projects within the fixed time in order to have healthy testimonials from them and self discipline is the only way of keeping yourself on the track.

Going Solo

Another challenge in freelancing is working all alone. Well it is recommended to hire an assistant to manage your finance and other tasks, weekly, in case you are earning more than 100 dollars a day. The biggest problem with working solo is not having any person on your back to cover your work in case you are having fever or any family emergency. Your clients might not want to hear any excuses from you once you are in the deal, and it might just effect your reputation online if you don’t deliver the project on the time. So the solution for it to have a social links with the people from same field, and when you see yourself in trouble and not seeing yourself getting done with project in the required time, forward the work to your any friend, and pay him/her if necessary.

Lack of Experience

Your client might not want to hear “no” from you on any task in the project assigned to you. And of course you will also not want to say “no”, no matter you have never did this task before or not sure how to get it done. Actually freelancing is not all about utilizing your practice from your previous work, it also about keep learning new things and preparing yourself for newer things in future projects. You should have spirit of accepting challenges and also have an attitude of “can do it”.

Shortage of Resources

That’s true; you can start your freelancing carrier with less than 1000 dollars. In start, all you might need is to have domain name and hosting account to host your portfolio site and a notebook or a simple desktop. But as soon the work load start getting increase and you have multiple things to do, such as designing, developing and content writing etc, you will start to hate your slow and cheap machines and will dream of a bigger one with heavy ram and bigger and multiple screens to do your work in less time. And of course, you will have to keep improving your workstation from time to time to save your time and to enjoy latest software updates. In freelancing, you are the only one of to take care of your financial needs including equipment expenses. However in offices, your organization will provide you the workstation and other required stuff to make it easy for you to complete the work in less time.

No Holidays

The best thing about 9 to 5 job is holidays with full wage. Means, you can enjoy your holidays without losing salary. But in freelancing, holiday means “no earning”. The most relieved moment for you can be the project submission and payment receiving moment.

:: As Published on CIETRO by Saad Irfan (Cietro’s blog has been closed and few of posts are getting re-published on TechCline)

Maintain a healthy and a modest Profile

The basic thing which you need to get start or to hunt for freelance project via job boards is to have a healthy and modest profile on the site. Your profile reveals your online reputation as your employers always give review about your recital, and you don’t have any room of any mistake there. It is better to have no profile than having bad reputed profile. Do include your recent projects, according to site terms and conditions and also write your specialties visibly.

Narrow your search with precise terms

Before getting start with your search for projects, write down your specialties. It will lesser the time span for searching part. Don’t include your expertise in which you are not experienced enough as you have to be very professional in making and maintaining your profile. Don’t include your private contact or private email address in the profile, even if you are permitted to add according to site policy. It will lead you to many troubles in case something goes off beam. That is why I mentioned, be modest while composing your profile. Arrange a separate email address and include your secondary contact number if you want to have it.

Came across some ideal projects? Can you do it?

Once you have came across some ideal projects, go through every single word of the job post and make sure none of assignment is out of your expertise. Don’t bid for any project in case you are not entirely confident about it, no matter you having bad timings in hunting any project. Bidding for the projects you have not experienced of, will only lead you to have a profile full of bad reviews.

Do some spy job to avoid disturbing employer

Another essential step you should take is to check employer’s profile for his recent offers and reviews. Don’t bother to bid for the project in case you have found any bad review or didn’t like his profile. Doing some spy job is only way to avoid disturbing clients, as you will not have any option but to complete the project once the deal is on.

What offer others are making?

Don’t overlook to check all the recent bids on that project and also go through the offers which bidders are making for project. It will help you to compare yourself with them and will help you in better way for making an offer. Try to be more specific than others when making offer.

Bidding Factor

In my opinion, it is your profile and reviews which decide how big a bid you should make. In case you have a profile with bunch of positive reviews, you are good to go for making a higher bid. So even if the client visits your profile he will not have any hesitation in accepting your proposal after reading recent reviews made on your work. However, if you are a newcomer to the site, and don’t have any or much reviews mentioned in your profile, you should make an average bid and make a promise of quality product. Try to be experienced and qualified person in your words as for yet your proposal statement is the only way of attracting the employer.

Keep checking the job post for recent updates and biddings

After making a bid on the project, bookmark the page and keep checking the job post frequently to know what bids and what else proposals are being posted by other bidders.

Won the Bid? Be humble while replaying back

If you have got yourself a deal, be humble while replying and assure the employer of delivering the quality product in expecting time. Ask for maximum raw and prepared content/ data which he can offer you. Remember, more the data you have, more it will be easy for you to get done with the project efficiently and in lesser time.

*Logos used in photo are copyright and trademark of respective owners

:: As Published on CIETRO by Saad Irfan (Cietro’s blog has been closed and few of posts are getting re-published on TechCline)

Got an idea? Stick to it

The basic thing you need about blogging is an idea. Yes an idea is gateway to everything. Got an idea? You think you can write on it? Good, get start, and stick to it. Don’t poke your nose in other unrelated topics, as you might not be able to cover them in proper way as you should be or your audience expect from you.

Utilize available sources

If you already having a site running, place an introductory banner or link to your new Blog on the sidebar or footer of that site. It will introduce your URL to spiders, as your old site might already have lots of spiders visiting your site every day. And trust me; spiders are really good in catching new URLs by sliding from one link to other link, because that is what they are programmed to do.

If you are a guest writer at any blog or site, use that URL in author bio. You should also ask to that site admin for little help in social media promotion. If he is kind enough to help you out, request him to suggest your FaceBook Fan Page to his fans.

Know your Audience

What kind of audience you are expecting on your site, as suggested by your site name and slogan? Give value to readers. By value I mean, don’t be mean when designing site layout. Your focus should be only to attract readers not to start earning money from first day by placing lots of advertisements on top and bottom of article. Be patient, and let your blog earn a name, and once the traffic is increased, you are good to put some ads on site and earn some bucks.

Branding

No doubt, Brand designing is truly important to grasp the attention on social media. An attractive logo on your blog and FaceBook fan page will increase the odds of fan chasing. Your logo stays with you from first day and the more it get spread on internet, more brand promotion you get.

Planning SEO & SEM Strategy

No problem if you don’t have any SEO or SEM specialist in your team. When the term blogging comes in mind, the name WordPress also rings the bell, as it is a most common blogging platform and available with variety of plug-ins, including plug-ins for search engine optimization. Help yourself with a SEO plug-in. You can find yourself free and pro versions both, depending on your needs and budget.  Don’t just adopt random URL structure, but decide and adopt according to your topics. If you are planning to publish articles on daily bases, use the permalink which includes date, month and year of published article. If you are planning to run blog magazine or not sure about publishing ratio, use the permalink with a category name in it. I will not get deeper in too much detail about how to set these permalink, just want keep it short. But mark my one suggestion. Don’t alter the URL structure again and again as it will cause to lose heavy amount of traffic from outer links. Read my article on Aext magazine about SEO Strategy.

Be patient

Being patient about hard work is a wise thing. Don’t rush to judge the outcome of your hard work. For any new URL it takes time to get a good Google Page Rank and Alexa Rank. Keep adding features and channels to increase more and more possible ways of increasing traffic, but by fair means only. Don’t do anything stupid or don’t practice any unfair (blackhat) means that you end-up with getting black listed your URL by Google.

One thing more, in case you are planning to utilize the domain which was already registered to any person in past. Do check the history of that domain to avoid any trouble.

:: As Published on CIETRO by Saad Irfan (Cietro’s blog has been closed and few of posts are getting re-published on TechCline)

Now coming back to our original conversation, we will discuss several simple and easy way of handling brand designing along your web designing project or in other words how to establish as healthy brand with the power of website design. If you a freelance web designer, you may receive those offers in which you will be asked for doing logo and other essential designing as well for company, along web designing. Well lucky you, because in this case you can perk up up your talent and make your portfolio more striking. Who don’t want to have extra credits? But in some cases, most of the web designers get nervous with such offers, as they consider themselves a web designer only. If you think you are good with playing colors and can design a beautiful website, it means you can do logo and other essential designing as well for company, or if your web design is impressive, it can make company’s brand more attractive. Other essentials includes designing visiting cards, notepad covers design and even desktop wallpapers.

Getting Start

If you think, you can’t satisfy client, without even trying, you are totally wrong. You can send few samples at least, and let the client decide, weather he wants you or not. =).

Before getting start with logo, you should understand the logo importance. It’s entirely different from designing any picture etc. in logo designing; you have some limitation, and rules to follow, about color selection, character or symbol in logo and font. These all things make emotional effects on viewer. Always select such color, which don’t make boring or irritating effect. Avoid using sharp colors, and so much thin fonts. If character needed to be used in logo, make it simple and easy to understand, and also easy to re-draw as company might need to place their logo in so many places. Also remember, character should clear convey message, no matter in which size it is being display.

Character’s presence in logo makes a solid effect as it reveals the nature of the company. Character should bring smile to the viewer face, instead of conveying a sad or anger impression.

Font selection is very time taking step, as first you need to find out the client’s favorite font, and in case you find that font not suitable, you have to convince the client by showing famous brands’ logos. Obviously, there is no restriction in font selection, but much funky, very thin and italic font should be avoided as they don’t appear to be eye-catching.

Send few logo samples and suggest some colors

Best way of getting start is studying the company’s competitor’s sites and schemes which they are using. Once done with that, think which color pattern will suits company’s profile. Don’t decide only one theme, but design two or three themes.

Design bunch of logos, in different fonts with different idea and colors. Use wide range of different fonts, both sophisticated and funky ones. Don’t waste much time on logos, because once the color and font is decided by client, you can improve the logo. The actual reason of sending sample was to know the client’s taste only. Once you got the idea of liking and disliking of the client, you will do well.

Color patterns in Site Designing

After getting done with logo designing, suggest some colors to the client, which suits its company. You are designer with wide knowledge of colors, and you know very well what colors suits well, and where. Send your client few patterns of colors and let him decide what suites him well. Color matching between site and logo is very important as it improves the company’s brand power. In some places alternative colors can be chosen, but again, they should have some likeness with original logo colors.

In case you are working on new born company, you need to spend some extra time in content writing as well, as it also plays important role in brand development. Since the company is new, so the site’s front page should clearly tells what does the company do.

These tips might not be helpful in every case, but still supportive for small level websites.

Take a Deep Breath:

Once you are standing in front of People, you are in limelight and you might forget most of your planned parts. Take a deep breath once get on the stage or dice.

Little Introduction helps:

“Good evening everyone.  I’m Saad, and I am the founder of TechCline and currently working as the Admin. I will be giving you a little demonstration on what I have recently developed.”

In the previous introductory lines, the speaker has mentioned his profile. Your introduction makes you more valued for listeners.

Getting Nervous?

When you are done with your introduction, silence is what you might be hearing from audience side. And in most of cases, speakers get nervous and lose control. Overcoming this situation is an art, and need confidence only. Think about it as your own time, as people are really interested to listen to you. So thinking, you know more, is not a bad idea. If situation is valid, crack a sophisticated joke to get more attract and frank with audience.

Grab a One Page Note with you:

Having One Page Note containing outline of your topic is the best idea. Grab this note in your hand and avoid keep staring it. Use it only, when you really need it. Design this one page note according to your needs, and don’t forget to use large font for all the text and underline the specific terms, so you can keep the track of our presentation.

Using Projector or Blackboard:

Narrating your financial expenditures and other charts is not possible without graphical representation. Use projector on background to run a graphical chart to display facts and figures. If possible describe the specific terms with which, most of the audience might be not familiar much. In case you are not facilitated with a projector, use a blackboard etc to display rough sketch. Move towards the blackboard while talking, and sketch a graph or write figures on board with marker.

Body Language:

Your body language shows your confidence level, and people expect you to be a confident person if you are addressing them.  Don’t reveal symptoms of being nervous, by walking here and there, keeping hands in pockets, abruptly changing the topic, and doing cluttering, or staring at your One Page Note.   Keeping your voice modest is very important and don’t get emotional or aggressive on any formal topic.

Eye Contact:

While talking to people, keep eye contact with all of the audience. Avoid watching just one person, or staring to the floor. Start from left or right and slowly move your eyes to other side of the hall by making sure, people think your eyes have gone through everyone of them. This is an art, watching in the eyes of the audience is very important to make them realize about the importance of your topic. If you are unable to make eye contact, just pretend.

Tick Tock, Time is running:

Time runs very fast, if you are doing well. So make sure you are doing well with conveying your speech also. Leave the last 30 seconds for winding up your conversation.

Proper Ending:

These are last moments of your presentation. And people might forget everything about your presentation if you don’t finish it up properly and captivatingly. Leave the audience with some interesting facts and also make sure you have mentioned clearly, for what you were here and you didn’t miss anything important.

Thank you:

“Ok it’s time for me to leave. Thank you all of you, and have a nice evening. Cheers.”

When you are done, say Thank you and ask for questions if there is a room for question and answer session.

Giving an oral presentation is not that difficult, you just have to be confident about what you saying and carry on with your story. Dressing yourself according to the occasion also matters as your clothing can leave a good impression.