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What's Out There?

© Debbi Cunnington

Last week, I discussed the best way to promote yourself when bidding on freelance projects. The next step involves finding those elusive freelance projects.

When I first embarked on my freelance adventure, I began at my favorite search engine, and typed in ‘freelance’. I found a horde of sites. I have visited most and learned a lot along the way. Basically, there are different categories of freelance opportunity sites on the Internet. My favorite is the site that offers the freelancer, or seller, the opportunity to bid on projects. The prospective client, or buyer lists the specifics of the project (posts the project), determines any special skills that are required for the project and establishes what is expected to be the end result (the deliverable item at the project end). In this way, the buyer and seller effectively communicate with each other without actually meeting.

Within this category, the sites are either broad- based or focused on a particular set of skills. For example, http://www.elance.com is an exceptionally well-developed site that has a broad-based variety of projects. Some of the categories include administrative & clerical projects, finance, web page design, logo design, resume creation, recipes & advice. For the most part, a freelance professional could find a variety of projects on which to bid. The only downside to this type of site is that there is no guarantee of payment for the project. Most of these sites, Elance included, are set up so that the freelance worker pays a set free upon acceptance of the project. Most fees are based on a percentage of the cost of the project. However, even if you do not receive payment from your client, you are still required to pay the project cost. Elance in particular has a procedure for collecting on delinquent payments, but unless the project was very large and costly, it is difficult and time consuming. For example, I created an outstanding resume for a client and I have yet to receive payment. Because the actual cost was only $40 and the only thing I am losing is the cost of my time, I decided not to pursue it. But I learned a valuable lesson: I do not deliver final documents until I have been paid in full.

Other sites, however, focus on a certain market or skill. A good example of this type is http://www.freelance.com. This site is devoted entirely to the field of Information Technology or IT. I cannot personally utilize this site to it’s fullest potential because my skills do not fall along those lines. However, I did recently join their community (my thinking was that everybody needs a bookkeeper!) and I have nothing negative to report. If anyone has experience with this site, positive or negative, I would appreciate your comments.