Freelance School

In recent years, I have been cautious with Russian freelance exchanges. They reminded me more of a vanity fair. But the announcement of Freelance was not able to miss, at least out of curiosity, and posted several projects there. The first dozen or two reviews inspired a terrible melancholy and desire to escape. But literally on the threshold I stopped. After all, most of the people who responded (and this is confirmed later) have very little experience in this area. At school, no one taught them freelancing skills. This was not taught at the institute and this experience cannot be gathered at work.

Since my sense of citizen has been seriously aggravated lately, I decided to open a freelance school. This loud statement, I do not want to say that I am the exclusive carrier of knowledge in this area. I just hope that my initiative will be supported by everyone who can somehow give something to the younger generation of freelancing.
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As for my experience, I executed my first order on the stock exchange in late spring 2005, and in the winter of 2006 I left work and never returned there. I was lucky to always keep converting the application into an order at a very high level. As a performer, I last went to the stock exchange during the crisis of 2008–2009, quickly recovered, and from the same 2009 I use them only as a customer. It's up to you how my advice will be helpful. And I invite those wishing under the cut and at the desks.



I will start with the obvious axiom that underlies practically all of the following freelancing techniques. Freelance is obviously a search for benefits by both parties. Nobody goes to the exchange, because everything suits. Therefore, all that you should aim at is creating a mutually beneficial and, as a result, mutually effective environment. If you create comfort only for yourself, you will play as

and there will only be scraps after the predators. To avoid this, try to analyze your response from the customer. Here you can immediately begin with examples of how not to do it:

1. Messages like "+", "I'm here" and similar project trash. If I still give such a chance to such responses and I can look into the profile when there are no others at all, then many of them cross out immediately. In itself, the presence of a response already indicates that the person has expressed a desire to participate. If the text states the obvious, then this is equivalent to sending an empty message. A lot of questions arise: “Does he have nothing to say at all about the task?”. What does it mean? Does he agree to all the terms? Does he want to discuss? Does he simply declare his existential claims? How does he see the interaction? Through a series of leading questions, will I pull information from him every time? "

2. The same category includes messages “ICQ 322223”, “profile portfolio” and other obvious information. First, all that can be learned from the profile will be drawn from it. Believe me, anyone who is interested will find a profile, and you are not interested in cross-posting information from the profile. Secondly, if you use ICQ - this does not mean that everyone uses it. This applies to all types of communications. And finally, imagine a customer who wanted to save time and money. What do you offer him? To mess with each of the 20-30 responded and chew the task?

3. Often, the customer arrives proactively and places specific questions in the text of the task. If you do not respond to them (and so do 70-80%), then you automatically go to the reserve. This is at best. If really bad with alternatives. Most of the time you are simply deleted for total disrespect. Understand asking questions he has already started the project. If you do not respond to them, then this project is delaying from the very beginning. Do you want to repeat them for you personally?

This, so to speak, is a situation with a minus sign (and they account for 70-80% of all responses). Naturally, there are many intermediate options that are better than extremely negative, but worse than positive ones, to which I will proceed. I will tell you how it worked for me and due to what I managed to achieve a fairly high percentage of converting my applications into projects. If in the evening I threw 2-3 fishing rods, in the morning I waited for 1-2 fish. And where they didn’t choose me, customers often unsubscribed that they would very much like to work with me, but someone honestly admitted that I was too expensive, someone found the performer right next to him, and someone just said, that this project was a trial and immediately invited for something more serious.

And I acted according to a fairly simple scheme. The first thing was looking through the eyes of the customer. It sounds - obviously, but in practice very few people do that. For the customer, his project is the center of the exchange universe. Through the eyes of this guy, we, like turtles on the run, each put on his own path. He placed the task and thus gave a start. The last thing he wants is to choose from those dozens of turtles that are still on the starting line. His attention will be riveted on those who rushed from the spot. All your responses, which do not carry semantic information, tell about your regalia, the lack of answers to the questions posed is all standing still. The one who went from the start by an inch is already overtaking you.

This in no way means that you should rush to implement the project entirely. Such an approach may create a feeling that you are trying to manipulate. Although it is better to manipulate than to stand still. It is enough just to carry out the first stage of the project cycle - analysis. According to its results is:

1. Answer the questions that have taken place. If you say that you cannot say anything to a question yet, this is also the answer. Failure to answer is ignoring the question.

2. It is better to immediately answer those questions that still arise. These are questions of price and timing. Do not be afraid to indicate doubts that may cause the growth of these indicators, depending on certain conditions. Just try to indicate the causes and dimensions of these deviations. Remember that the customer first of all operates with them and the one who will help to orient will appear in this race ahead. In some projects, the absence of such doubts and too tight deadlines / budgets can create the feeling that you either put all the risks at a premium if the price is higher than expected, or you rated the task poorly if it is lower. You can soften the feeling of the latter either by hinting that such a task has already been done, or directly saying that there is any underestimation of the complexity on your shoulders. Soften the feeling of the first does not work, you just fly through the budget.

3. By answering his questions, immediately present the situation that you were told: “yes”. Immediately appreciate the lack of any information will prevent you from immediately starting to execute. If you request it immediately: “To get started, I will need: ...”, then you will avoid another extra step and get an additional lead over your opponents.

4. The climax may look like a plan that you offer to the customer and according to which you will act. This plan won't hurt you either.

I will try to summarize the tactics that I propose. You enter the task as a person who has already received it and start working on the project from the very first response, because it is not at all profitable for you and the customer to conduct long, tedious correspondences. With a high degree of probability, the one who effectively launched the project and will continue it.

Someone can say that all this is difficult, that his “I am here” is already biting the fish. Your right to think so, but a couple of reasons for thought women.

Firstly, if the analysis of the task for you is complicated and tedious, then you simply do not know how to carry it out or undertake the wrong task. When a person is “trained”, the analysis is carried out almost at the speed of printing. Our brain automatically imposes patterns from our experience. From here I have a question. You have your own analytical apparatus, when and how are you going to develop? If not today and not now, on those projects where you put your meaningless responses?

Secondly, I several times cut the fish so that it clings to the gills or even the backside. This is not the norm. You may look a little more attractive if everything around is tutk. But the competitive environment will begin to develop (I hope that this post will spur). As soon as freelancers set up proactively appear in the responses, you will immediately find yourself head and shoulders. Even a good portfolio and all the breasts in orders do not always save against a person who, in a particular task taken, thumps right on target. This may lie to me that he has a hundred years of experience, it's just his first order in freelancing, so there are no reviews. And I would rather believe and take him, rather than the “patriarch” of the exchange with two cars of letters, from whose responses it does not follow that he read the task at all.

Remember that the well-trained freelancer turns on the stock exchange for long. In the very first months it is overgrown with regular customers. There are some nuances that deserve a separate article, but it has an additional choice.

With this, I finish my trial first September at freelancing school. I hope someone wants to continue. And even more I hope that my initiative will be continued by more professional mentors, who can say more and better. It hurts me to want us, qualified, to appear on foreign exchanges as much as possible. To the glory of our experts thundered around the world. Ros exported information, not resources. And if not the state, then we ourselves created an educational system for the issue of qualified personnel for the benefit of all.

Epilogue

Very often I get questions from people who doubt whether freelancing will work for them. Understand freelancing is not easy. Even now, living 300m from the sea and at the same time in the elite city center in a four-room luxury apartment with a fireplace, I often wonder if I acted correctly? After all, my head falls a thousand times more than any office worker. And every time I see a person in it ... who quit smoking, but sometimes looks askance at a cigarette, which is engaged in fitness, but looks askance for sweets. Temptations, including a more lazy lifestyle, will always be inherent to us. We are well aware of all the positive consequences of the regular use of a sports simulator, but we are afraid of the victims, to which we have to go. Here is the same choice. Freelance, like fitness, will give a lot of advantages, but will require the manifestation of strength.

Do not forget that the age of IT person is not long. Chiefs and leaders will not be everything, and when you are over 40, then twenty years will come on the heels. If you have been busy with your routine lately and your tools have become blunt, then the chances of being kept afloat will quickly melt. The freelancer is forced to keep his sword always sharpened.

I will add that many freelance problems that are often voiced, such as reduced communication, deterioration of fitness, etc. - not a lack of freelancing, but a consequence of the misuse of those unusual opportunities that it gives or personal inefficiency. His only "flaw" - in front of you will constantly be challenges that you have to answer.

In general, the term "freelancer" in itself is very capacious. It united freedom and warrior. You will have to become both. If you answer this question, consider that you already know if you want to be a freelancer. If you are not sure, just take a chance.

UPDATE. Those who think that I have somehow humiliated 40-year-olds, I explain. First, I have absolutely no prejudices about age. I myself are much closer to 40 than to 20. Secondly, read the entire paragraph, namely: “If you have been doing your routine lately and your tools have become blunt, then the chances of staying afloat will quickly melt.” Third, you can cite as many private cases as you like, but the laws of the market will not change them. Go to any working site and see the average age requirement. And I'm talking about the average worker and to a lesser extent trying to warn professionals, well, by God, this is obvious.