Tag Archives: freelance hiring

advice, freelance money, Marketing yourself

Freelance Jobs–What’s Your Advantage?

Joe Wallace Freelance Social Mediaby Joe Wallace

If you’ve been scouring the freelance job boards lately, you might have noticed a trend among the ads–those offering freelance job gigs aren’t necessarily asking for the dependable old resume and cover letter combo.

Consider the job ad I found while researching this topic at Problogger.net; one job ad merely asked for a sample of websites worked recently and a list of five reasons why YOU are the right person for the gig.

Which begs the question–why ARE you the right person for the job? Can you rattle off your top five strengths for your given specialty? I asked myself that question and found myself slightly rusty.

Unless I fell back on a couple of my old cliches–which seems pretty unsatisfactory to me, so I ran down my own personal checklist and refreshed my memory for a couple of recent accomplishments that would be relevant to anyone in need of an editor, ghost writer or social media manager.

Sometimes it’s good to blow the cobwebs out of the old brain box and remind yourself why, if you were a hiring manager, you’d hire YOU. It’s impossible to tell when you will need to rattle off a few of those recent accomplishments to impress someone who might pay you…a party, casual encounter at the coffee shop, anywhere at all.

Joe Wallace is a freelance editor, writer and social media manager. He is currently reviewing vinyl albums for the book WTF Records: The Turntabling.net Guide To Weird and Wonderful Vinyl and writing a travel diary about indie record stores called Vinyl Road Rage. Wallace is founder and chief vinyl collector at Turntabling.net

advice, lifestyle

Negotiating Freelance Work: Five Things to Try

Ever try to negotiate rates, output and fees with a client only to discover that all the things they seemed to want in the initial meeting have changed overnight?

What’s a poor freelancer to do? Every situation is different, but here’s what I find myself doing time and again when faced with a situation where plenty of ideas are thrown around and “Come and join us” invitations or “Let’s work together” offers are given, then suddenly turned into a set of vague demands or a hesitancy to commit to specifics.

5. Repeat the obvious for clarity’s sake. “OK, so you want X, Y, and Z delivered by X date, correct? And you want me to write 700 words for each one with a payment rate per project of ABC. Right? Don’t commit to a project if they can’t quantify numbers. Get everyone on the same page for output, deadlines and pay.

4. If they can’t commit to the specifics, spell out what you’re willing to do. “I’m capable of writing X amount of pieces per day/week/month at a rate of ABC. I can give you topics on ABC and D. How does that sound?

3. Always explain your position fully. One client wanted me to start working on a project the week of Christmas. I said, “Why don’t we make it the following week, since I’m already committed to travel on those dates.” If the client wants something that’s too much work for not enough pay, find a tactful way to explain that you need more money for that work–something along the lines of “Well, for the (lower) pay you’re offering, I could do XYZ and not ABC because that would involve extra hours and other labor. However, for X amount of dollars, I could definitely do both XZY plus ABC no problem.”

2. If you are taken by surprise by any part of the negotiations, don’t answer right away. Say you’d like a bit of time to study the proposal a bit more so you can make a good offer on the deal.

1. If you’re forced to say no, be tactful, be diplomatic but above all, be honest–or at least appear to be honest. If you really DON’T want the gig, turn it down by saying you’ve gotten another project at a rate you simply can’t turn down, but you’d be happy to revisit the deal at a later date. (If you are indeed happy to do so). Or you can simply come right out and hit them with the truth if the money they want to pay is too low or the work they want for a decent sum is too much. You can say no without burning your bridges, simply by explaining that you’ve got other commitments which demand more of your time than you previously expected and you don’t want to give a new project the short shrift…