Freelance: how to make money in the province
Formulation of the problem
As you know, in the provinces (Russia, if you remove Moscow and St. Petersburg) there are straining work, and even if there is one, then the salary level is very different in the smaller direction from the western and Moscow salaries for the same job. IT professionals are lucky in some way, they are in demand everywhere ... except in their city. Even in the city there are large divisions of corporations such as Gazprom or Lukoil, but there are still not enough places for everyone. And I want to eat, I still want to buy good things, walk my girlfriend around restaurants and save for an apartment. You can go to some office to work as an admin for 10-15 tr, you can go as a programmer or a technician for 20 tr. But more unlikely. How difficult is it to find a job as a photographer, SEO specialist or translator in your small town? The following describes some aspects of personal experience, how to start earning more, while being free and doing what you love.
Preparatory stage
So you decided that working for your uncle for a penny is not for you, "we are not slaves, we are not slaves." We decided to work independently on ourselves. Stop. Think fifty times, do you have enough willpower to force yourself to work, to ignore your own thoughts that it would be nice to take a break from work, are you ready to work 12-14 hours a day? Working for yourself is not the same as working for someone in a company. Working for yourself, the principle of "Today did not work - tomorrow there is nothing to eat." So think 50 times, and then another 50 times, so surely. If you think badly, the result can be quite deplorable: lack of money, no work and prospects, a lot of debts to relatives and friends, sidelong glances of loved ones and unpleasant conversations behind the back, lack of understanding.
Well, you decided to work for yourself. Well thought? Well, think another 50 times. Okay, further determine for yourself what you want to do. What you are going to do must be pleasant to you, otherwise work on yourself will turn into dangerous torture. Of course, it is better to do something alone, but professionally and at a high level than everyone in a row at an average or low level. This work should be related to mental work. Of course, you can make a material product remotely, but not very conveniently. The most popular fields of activity of freelancers: programming, translation of texts, SEO, design. Less popular, but there are also: server administration, work with audio-video, photography. All these activities imply setting a task and obtaining a result in the form of digital information that can be transmitted via the Internet. Each activity has narrow areas, for example, programmers can be web programmers, systems engineers, testers, programmers of mobile applications, etc. Narrow specialization implies that you are engaged in something one, for example, you are a web programmer or a translator into Russian from Spanish. Specialization may be even narrower, for example, php-programmer or translator from Spanish technical literature. The narrower your specialty is, the more professional you should be in it, the higher your earnings. But of course, if you are in demand. It is unlikely that a translator of religious texts with Hindi will be very much in demand, no matter how guru in his field he is.
')
Yes, and another important moment. Check the demand for their specialty and level of earnings. Search everywhere, in search engines, forums, blogs, messages about finding relevant professionals. Find out what kind of work they offer to do and how much they pay for them. Evaluate your level, are you ready to do what is required for the money. If you do not feel confident about what you’ll succeed in, then it’s best not to start, even if the amounts are beckoning.
A small result. You have determined that you really want to work for yourself and you have a narrow demand for specialization, full of desire to work.
Search customers
Start by finding customers. You need to sell yourself. You turn yourself into a machine for transforming your personal time into money. The efficiency of the machine is determined by the ratio of the time spent to the monetary result obtained. Therefore, we must be able to sell yourself. Clients themselves will not come, like you, hundreds, and even thousands. Come to those who are really professional with a reputation. Probably, as long as you have no reputation in the relevant circles. For me personally, the Yandex.Lenty service turned out to be very useful for me; there you can add keywords and receive messages from forums and blogs for a given keyword. For example, you can set “Ruby on Rails” and periodically view the tape in search of messages about hiring an employee. Find thematic forums, look for messages in them, participate in special services and forums. Try to raise your reputation in the community by writing a couple of answers in the thematic forums, show yourself as a knowledgeable specialist. Well, if these forums are rated as on Habré. Get pluses, answer the questions "lamers". If you find an interesting offer from employers, then respond as quickly and locally as possible, they usually had to do everything yesterday, so there is not enough time for dating.
Payment
Any work must be paid. Before putting your price for a job to an employer, think for at least 15 minutes if you estimated the amount of work and the required time to do it correctly. For programmers, when determining the terms of work, the rule “Multiply the expected period by 2 times + 3 days + 1 night” applies. It is better to say a longer term than a smaller one and not stand it. There are complex and simple works; you can determine for yourself the cost of an hour for different types of work and proceed from this coefficient. Your price should be competitive, but not low. The client usually chooses the lesser of two evils. Competitive is not very high. Sometimes the client “fumbles in the subject” and roughly estimates how much it can cost. If the price is very low, then the client will of course be interested in, but will the end of this work be of interest to you, when the money from the prepayment runs out, and the balance will be meager? Practice shows that it is very difficult to determine the timing precisely, consider the error and in case of delaying, warn the client in advance.
Prepay or in fact is a difficult question, it is individual for each client, it is more a question of trust. I usually practice 50% prepayment and 50% in fact. If the project is large and stretches for several weeks, then all the work can be divided into stages and pay after completing and checking each stage. If the projects are small, for 1-2 days of work, then you can practice 100% prepayment, but not all clients go for it, even considering that the amount is small. You can not change the cost in the course of the work, no one will like it. You also can not change the task during the execution, if only for an additional fee.
How to get money. Being in another city, physical contact is not possible. Here banks, express transfers, electronic money will come to our aid. Express translations of Western Union, Anelik, Blitz are very convenient for me.
Of course, there are many other services, but had no experience of use. With electronic money, I think, everything is clear.
Organization
You are essentially doing business. Some clients prefer to work with organizations, rather than individuals. If you have a lot of such clients, then you cannot do without registering as an entrepreneur or opening your own legal entity. Each company opens a bank account. Opening it, you can receive non-cash bank transfers (non-cash). But you will have to share income with the Motherland, keep accounts, submit tax reports, keep statistics, insure yourself, pay the bank for servicing, etc. In general, your company is quite expensive. And the worst thing is that fines can be applied for not delivering any shnyagi on time. It costs about 10 tr to open your enterprise; monthly maintenance costs can range from 500 rubles, taxes can be from 1% to 15% of revenue.
From the organization there is a dubious plus - you can impersonate a company manager and ask for money 3 times more. Companies always take more private traders. You can enter into a contract. Clients are unlikely to conclude a contract with private traders, there are some troubles with which no one wants to get involved.
Completing of the work
Properly assigned task is half the success of the project. If you translate the text, then you should be given the style, theme, and requirements for the final result. With programmers more difficult, they need a technical task (TK). The TOR describes what should be in the result in detail, this document may be several dozen pages. The more meticulous TZ, the faster and more accurate the work will be done. If there are gaps in the statement of work and inaccurately or incompletely voiced moments, programmers have a habit of doing what they are used to or how they think is right. Typically, these thoughts do not suit the customer, he has his own vision of solutions. As a result, there may be a conflict in which the customer is not right, and the contractor has the right to demand additional payments for changing the TK.
The client likes to be aware of the situation. Do not consider it hard for every day or day to tell the client what has been done, what will be done, what changes in work occur, what problems arise. Show interim results if this is a long project. The client will have confidence that you are working and his prepayment is not lost. Be always in touch, in ICQ, quickly respond to emails, answer phone calls. If a few days do not communicate with the client, then he has an increasing information vacuum, commensurate with distrust and anxiety.
Try to complete the work on time. If there are questions in the course of implementation - communicate with the client, solve issues together. If you do the work before the expiration date, it will be quite wonderful, there will be time for correcting errors and for completing the next project, and efficiency will increase.
Trust your employer, especially if he has paid some of the money. Give him everything in the source, without any cipher codes.
Cheating and kidalovo
Unfortunately, it is all there. And it is even more than in ordinary life. The client wants to keep more money, and the performer always wants to strain less. To secure the parties is difficult enough. There are all kinds of services like “Fair Deal”, but I can’t say anything about them, they may turn out to be a scam;) If a client has thrown you, don’t be upset, just tell somewhere that you don’t need to work with it. Treat this failure in a philosophical way and look for the next client, the loss will return to you, and financial strains will become a good incentive for more efficient work.
Development
Work on reputation. You must be in demand. After reaching a certain level of reputation, you will stop looking for clients, and clients themselves will go to you, there will be a queue, you will have to abandon projects to finish current ones. By the way, you should not take projects that you can’t exactly accomplish on time, this is a big minus for your reputation. Get certificates, publish your resume, participate in specialized services and forums. If there are a lot of projects, you can transfer them to your colleagues for a percentage, but you have to be sure that your colleagues will not let down the client who came to you, this will again be a blow to your reputation. The number of former clients, completed successful projects - the most important and most convincing argument for clients. The client wants to work with experienced, proven specialists, and not with hack students.
Instead of conclusion
Freelance has its pros and cons. Everyone decides for himself what is more convenient for him. It's easier to work for an uncle, it's harder to work for yourself. Pros and cons of work on my uncle, I think everyone knows. Here are the pros and cons of freelancing:
+ You are free. Totally. Nobody dismisses you for hooky, for failure to fulfill the project, for embezzlement. You can work 14 hours today, and tomorrow 2 hours and no one will tell you anything.
+ You earn more at times. The level of wages in the province is several times lower than in Moscow. Being engaged in freelancing will have to mainly work with Moscow, and earnings will also be at the Moscow level.
+ The level of your salary depends on you. How many have worked, and received so much. When working for an uncle, when an emergency happens, well, if they say “thank you”, compensation for processing is not often the case.
+ You work anywhere. In theory, you need a computer and a network connection, at least on a modem, that's all. If you want to be at home - two steps from the bed and you are at your workplace. If you want to travel - fly in an airplane or lie on the beach and complete the project.
+ When you have a reputation, you choose projects that you are interested in.
- In the case of personal problems, you lose money and reputation. The child got sick, got into the hospital, flooded the apartment, the computer broke down - it doesn’t interest the employer, he just needs the result. No result - no money.
- You have to take care of yourself. Working at the enterprise, you are provided with insurance, pension contributions, meals, coffee, etc. The freelancer must do everything himself or spend the money earned on it.
- Not very far prospects. The world is changeable, in a year your specialty may be less in demand, you will lose income.
- Self-organization is necessary, you have to force yourself to work. It happens that after receiving an advance or earning a certain amount, you relax.
As you know, in the provinces (Russia, if you remove Moscow and St. Petersburg) there are straining work, and even if there is one, then the salary level is very different in the smaller direction from the western and Moscow salaries for the same job. IT professionals are lucky in some way, they are in demand everywhere ... except in their city. Even in the city there are large divisions of corporations such as Gazprom or Lukoil, but there are still not enough places for everyone. And I want to eat, I still want to buy good things, walk my girlfriend around restaurants and save for an apartment. You can go to some office to work as an admin for 10-15 tr, you can go as a programmer or a technician for 20 tr. But more unlikely. How difficult is it to find a job as a photographer, SEO specialist or translator in your small town? The following describes some aspects of personal experience, how to start earning more, while being free and doing what you love.
Preparatory stage
So you decided that working for your uncle for a penny is not for you, "we are not slaves, we are not slaves." We decided to work independently on ourselves. Stop. Think fifty times, do you have enough willpower to force yourself to work, to ignore your own thoughts that it would be nice to take a break from work, are you ready to work 12-14 hours a day? Working for yourself is not the same as working for someone in a company. Working for yourself, the principle of "Today did not work - tomorrow there is nothing to eat." So think 50 times, and then another 50 times, so surely. If you think badly, the result can be quite deplorable: lack of money, no work and prospects, a lot of debts to relatives and friends, sidelong glances of loved ones and unpleasant conversations behind the back, lack of understanding.
Well, you decided to work for yourself. Well thought? Well, think another 50 times. Okay, further determine for yourself what you want to do. What you are going to do must be pleasant to you, otherwise work on yourself will turn into dangerous torture. Of course, it is better to do something alone, but professionally and at a high level than everyone in a row at an average or low level. This work should be related to mental work. Of course, you can make a material product remotely, but not very conveniently. The most popular fields of activity of freelancers: programming, translation of texts, SEO, design. Less popular, but there are also: server administration, work with audio-video, photography. All these activities imply setting a task and obtaining a result in the form of digital information that can be transmitted via the Internet. Each activity has narrow areas, for example, programmers can be web programmers, systems engineers, testers, programmers of mobile applications, etc. Narrow specialization implies that you are engaged in something one, for example, you are a web programmer or a translator into Russian from Spanish. Specialization may be even narrower, for example, php-programmer or translator from Spanish technical literature. The narrower your specialty is, the more professional you should be in it, the higher your earnings. But of course, if you are in demand. It is unlikely that a translator of religious texts with Hindi will be very much in demand, no matter how guru in his field he is.
')
Yes, and another important moment. Check the demand for their specialty and level of earnings. Search everywhere, in search engines, forums, blogs, messages about finding relevant professionals. Find out what kind of work they offer to do and how much they pay for them. Evaluate your level, are you ready to do what is required for the money. If you do not feel confident about what you’ll succeed in, then it’s best not to start, even if the amounts are beckoning.
A small result. You have determined that you really want to work for yourself and you have a narrow demand for specialization, full of desire to work.
Search customers
Start by finding customers. You need to sell yourself. You turn yourself into a machine for transforming your personal time into money. The efficiency of the machine is determined by the ratio of the time spent to the monetary result obtained. Therefore, we must be able to sell yourself. Clients themselves will not come, like you, hundreds, and even thousands. Come to those who are really professional with a reputation. Probably, as long as you have no reputation in the relevant circles. For me personally, the Yandex.Lenty service turned out to be very useful for me; there you can add keywords and receive messages from forums and blogs for a given keyword. For example, you can set “Ruby on Rails” and periodically view the tape in search of messages about hiring an employee. Find thematic forums, look for messages in them, participate in special services and forums. Try to raise your reputation in the community by writing a couple of answers in the thematic forums, show yourself as a knowledgeable specialist. Well, if these forums are rated as on Habré. Get pluses, answer the questions "lamers". If you find an interesting offer from employers, then respond as quickly and locally as possible, they usually had to do everything yesterday, so there is not enough time for dating.
Payment
Any work must be paid. Before putting your price for a job to an employer, think for at least 15 minutes if you estimated the amount of work and the required time to do it correctly. For programmers, when determining the terms of work, the rule “Multiply the expected period by 2 times + 3 days + 1 night” applies. It is better to say a longer term than a smaller one and not stand it. There are complex and simple works; you can determine for yourself the cost of an hour for different types of work and proceed from this coefficient. Your price should be competitive, but not low. The client usually chooses the lesser of two evils. Competitive is not very high. Sometimes the client “fumbles in the subject” and roughly estimates how much it can cost. If the price is very low, then the client will of course be interested in, but will the end of this work be of interest to you, when the money from the prepayment runs out, and the balance will be meager? Practice shows that it is very difficult to determine the timing precisely, consider the error and in case of delaying, warn the client in advance.
Prepay or in fact is a difficult question, it is individual for each client, it is more a question of trust. I usually practice 50% prepayment and 50% in fact. If the project is large and stretches for several weeks, then all the work can be divided into stages and pay after completing and checking each stage. If the projects are small, for 1-2 days of work, then you can practice 100% prepayment, but not all clients go for it, even considering that the amount is small. You can not change the cost in the course of the work, no one will like it. You also can not change the task during the execution, if only for an additional fee.
How to get money. Being in another city, physical contact is not possible. Here banks, express transfers, electronic money will come to our aid. Express translations of Western Union, Anelik, Blitz are very convenient for me.
- WU can be used for international transfers, well distributed throughout the world and Russia, but a very large commission.
- Anelik is much less common, but the percentage is lower.
- Blitz - express transfers from Sberbank. Mudak system, but low percentage. The trick is that when you receive a transfer, you must wait from 20 minutes to an hour to get the money and all the disadvantages of the Soviet savings bank: the queue at the box office, slow service.
Of course, there are many other services, but had no experience of use. With electronic money, I think, everything is clear.
Organization
You are essentially doing business. Some clients prefer to work with organizations, rather than individuals. If you have a lot of such clients, then you cannot do without registering as an entrepreneur or opening your own legal entity. Each company opens a bank account. Opening it, you can receive non-cash bank transfers (non-cash). But you will have to share income with the Motherland, keep accounts, submit tax reports, keep statistics, insure yourself, pay the bank for servicing, etc. In general, your company is quite expensive. And the worst thing is that fines can be applied for not delivering any shnyagi on time. It costs about 10 tr to open your enterprise; monthly maintenance costs can range from 500 rubles, taxes can be from 1% to 15% of revenue.
From the organization there is a dubious plus - you can impersonate a company manager and ask for money 3 times more. Companies always take more private traders. You can enter into a contract. Clients are unlikely to conclude a contract with private traders, there are some troubles with which no one wants to get involved.
Completing of the work
Properly assigned task is half the success of the project. If you translate the text, then you should be given the style, theme, and requirements for the final result. With programmers more difficult, they need a technical task (TK). The TOR describes what should be in the result in detail, this document may be several dozen pages. The more meticulous TZ, the faster and more accurate the work will be done. If there are gaps in the statement of work and inaccurately or incompletely voiced moments, programmers have a habit of doing what they are used to or how they think is right. Typically, these thoughts do not suit the customer, he has his own vision of solutions. As a result, there may be a conflict in which the customer is not right, and the contractor has the right to demand additional payments for changing the TK.
The client likes to be aware of the situation. Do not consider it hard for every day or day to tell the client what has been done, what will be done, what changes in work occur, what problems arise. Show interim results if this is a long project. The client will have confidence that you are working and his prepayment is not lost. Be always in touch, in ICQ, quickly respond to emails, answer phone calls. If a few days do not communicate with the client, then he has an increasing information vacuum, commensurate with distrust and anxiety.
Try to complete the work on time. If there are questions in the course of implementation - communicate with the client, solve issues together. If you do the work before the expiration date, it will be quite wonderful, there will be time for correcting errors and for completing the next project, and efficiency will increase.
Trust your employer, especially if he has paid some of the money. Give him everything in the source, without any cipher codes.
Cheating and kidalovo
Unfortunately, it is all there. And it is even more than in ordinary life. The client wants to keep more money, and the performer always wants to strain less. To secure the parties is difficult enough. There are all kinds of services like “Fair Deal”, but I can’t say anything about them, they may turn out to be a scam;) If a client has thrown you, don’t be upset, just tell somewhere that you don’t need to work with it. Treat this failure in a philosophical way and look for the next client, the loss will return to you, and financial strains will become a good incentive for more efficient work.
Development
Work on reputation. You must be in demand. After reaching a certain level of reputation, you will stop looking for clients, and clients themselves will go to you, there will be a queue, you will have to abandon projects to finish current ones. By the way, you should not take projects that you can’t exactly accomplish on time, this is a big minus for your reputation. Get certificates, publish your resume, participate in specialized services and forums. If there are a lot of projects, you can transfer them to your colleagues for a percentage, but you have to be sure that your colleagues will not let down the client who came to you, this will again be a blow to your reputation. The number of former clients, completed successful projects - the most important and most convincing argument for clients. The client wants to work with experienced, proven specialists, and not with hack students.
Instead of conclusion
Freelance has its pros and cons. Everyone decides for himself what is more convenient for him. It's easier to work for an uncle, it's harder to work for yourself. Pros and cons of work on my uncle, I think everyone knows. Here are the pros and cons of freelancing:
+ You are free. Totally. Nobody dismisses you for hooky, for failure to fulfill the project, for embezzlement. You can work 14 hours today, and tomorrow 2 hours and no one will tell you anything.
+ You earn more at times. The level of wages in the province is several times lower than in Moscow. Being engaged in freelancing will have to mainly work with Moscow, and earnings will also be at the Moscow level.
+ The level of your salary depends on you. How many have worked, and received so much. When working for an uncle, when an emergency happens, well, if they say “thank you”, compensation for processing is not often the case.
+ You work anywhere. In theory, you need a computer and a network connection, at least on a modem, that's all. If you want to be at home - two steps from the bed and you are at your workplace. If you want to travel - fly in an airplane or lie on the beach and complete the project.
+ When you have a reputation, you choose projects that you are interested in.
- In the case of personal problems, you lose money and reputation. The child got sick, got into the hospital, flooded the apartment, the computer broke down - it doesn’t interest the employer, he just needs the result. No result - no money.
- You have to take care of yourself. Working at the enterprise, you are provided with insurance, pension contributions, meals, coffee, etc. The freelancer must do everything himself or spend the money earned on it.
- Not very far prospects. The world is changeable, in a year your specialty may be less in demand, you will lose income.
- Self-organization is necessary, you have to force yourself to work. It happens that after receiving an advance or earning a certain amount, you relax.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/3076/
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