With Labor Day safely behind me, it’s time to start ramping up my freelancing again.  I’ve been working all year, but with the kids home from school I didn’t have as much time to work and so my income dropped off.  But they’re back in school now so I have my time back.

The teens leave for school at about 8:10 in the morning, and my six-year old gets home around 2:45, which gives me about six and a half hours a day to focus on working.  I figure there’s no reason at all why I can’t be productive for at least four or five of those hours.

The only catch is that I’m going to have to do a better job of time management than I’ve been used to over the summer.  The advantage of my light workload was that it was easy to find time to fit my jobs in around things like playing chauffer and listening to the stories my daughter made up.   Once I get busier, it won’t be quite as easy, though I will have to factor in time for kid-based emergencies.

That means I’m going to have to bite the bullet and use time-management software.

Right now I’m looking at using Mozilla Sunbird because I like its standalone nature.

The key is going to be getting started on work bright and early (shortly after the kids leave for school) and also making sure I have time to look for new projects.  Luckily I can probably do a lot of the searching in the afternoon after the kids get home as that doesn’t need the same kind of sustained concentration as paying work.

If any of you have any specific tricks you use, let me know and maybe we can all take advantage of them.

 

Well, you could do some yelling and screaming and run about the house tearing your hair out.  I don’t recommend it, but you could.  You could also send off a nasty email cursing the buyer and all their family to the seventh generation.

Guess what?  I don’t recommend that either.

If they were nice enough to inform you they were going with someone else then I recommend a polite thank-you note and move on.

Nothing you can do is going to get you this job so there’s no reason to worry about it.  However, the fact that they put the time into the original discussion means that they are perfectly willing to consider working with you in the future.

So don’t do anything to mess that up.

One of the most common reasons that this happens is that the client found someone else who was better for this job.

It doesn’t mean they found someone who was better overall, just better for this job.  It may be that when their next opening comes up they’ll immediately think of you and fire off an email.

In the meantime, pick yourself up and work on something else.

Networking and patience are two of the keys to a successful freelance career.

Here’s an example of what I mean by patience.  As many of you know I don’t just work on oDesk, but I use other freelance sites as well.   I recently got my first job at one of those other sites:  after only five months of trying.

I admit I wasn’t spending all day every day looking for work on that site:  there were times I had more than enough work and stopped looking on new sites.  However I was looking fairly frequently and while there weren’t a lot of jobs that caught my eye, there were some that I would have liked to have done that I didn’t get.

So I spent time polishing my profile and figuring out the ins and outs of the site.  I tried a few different methods of bidding and finally won a job.

Yes it took a while, and more than I would have liked, but since I wasn’t depending purely on that site I had the time to spend getting it right and not ranting and raving about the injustice that meant I didn’t get a job there  until now.

It would have been just as pointless as any of the other rants I mentioned at the beginning of the post.

You need to look forward not backward.

As Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam goes:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
     Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

Freelancers need to live by that dictum.  You can’t change the past, only the future.

In other news:  I’m now writing for another blog as well as this one.  If you’re interested in technology why not come over and see what’s going on at Gizmotechnet.   Hopefully I’ll see some of you there.

 

It’s not quite like hitting a brick wall

It was very gradual. I didn’t know I was burned out until it was far too late to do anything about it. In addition, knowing that I was made me even worse. If it had been sudden, it would have been much easier to cope with, but that wasn’t the case.

It all started with having a ton of work. In a professional/career sense, I was doing great. However, I kept piling up more and more work. Then, life interfered with my working schedule. That’s okay because there’s no way to avoid that. The result, though, was that I wasn’t constantly working. I enjoyed having some time off, but I took that time off too far. I never had any time on.

It wasn’t a sudden dropoff, though. I kept working on the projects I had open, finished them up. The bad part was that I stopped applying for new jobs. As a result, I ran out of work. Should that have been a wakeup call? Yes. Did I wake up? No.

Kept going on my merry way. Tried to force the thought of work completely out of my head. I had been under the gun for a long time, and I suppose I was subconsciously trying to keep myself from getting back into that situation.

Pace yourself

I’m recovering now. Taking baby steps. Trying to dispel my irrational fear for all things writing-related. Just seeing an ink pen makes me want to curl up in a ball and wet myself.

How do you keep yourself from crashing like I did? At the risk of sounding like every self-help book to ever hit a shelf, I’ll say this: schedule yourself some “you time.” As corny as it sounds, it actually helps. Treat it like you would treat any project you do on oDesk. If you tell a buyer you’re going to work two hours on something today, it wouldn’t be very smart to go back on that.

Pick a couple hours and stick to them. Turn off the computer. Turn off the phone. Don’t check your E-Mail every 15 minutes. Instead, read a book or watch a movie. Do something you enjoy which has nothing to do with work. The world isn’t suddenly going to crash to the ground if you don’t check your messages. You’ll crash to the ground if you get stuck in work-eat-sleep mode.

Give it a shot. It probably won’t be like you flipped a magic switch which makes life better, but it’s one of many ways to keep you from going crazy.

Not one of us hasn’t had to make one or more changes to a project before a buyer would accept it.  It happens, sometimes it’s because the buyer was vague about what they wanted, sometimes it’s because they change their mind part way through, and sometimes it’s because they wanted something different from what I delivered.

As many of you know, I spend a fair amount of time on the oDesk Community boards, and one question I’ve seen come up more than once is whether or not you should charge the buyer for changes.  Some providers, especially new providers on their first job, are concerned that if they do not make the changes for free, the buyer will give them bad feedback and effectively blacklist them.

It’s a valid fear, especially when someone is just finding their feet and doesn’t feel confident about working within the oDesk system.

The problem is that except in one specific case, making changes for free simply devalues you as a provider.

You, your work, and your time are not free.

Being a professional means you work for money.  That means that when someone asks you to do more work you have every right to ask them to pay you more money.

The only exception to this is when they ask you to fix your own mistakes.

Nobody else should have to pay for your mistakes.

That’s the only time that you should be working for free.  The rest of the time you should be running the oDesk team and working on the clock.  Anything else sends the signal that neither you nor your work are worth money.

If your buyer decides that they really wanted something different, then you charge them for it.  You gave them what they paid for and you don’t owe them more work for free.

Let me tell you a story:  I was once asked to produce some articles for a client for at let’s say 800 words per hour.  I agreed to the rate and then they asked me to make the articles into presentations.  I said I’d do it but that I would like an increased time budget to do it.  They declined and said they would handle that themselves.

There’s nothing at all wrong with either side in that scenario.  As a provider I have every right to ask for more time in order to do more work, and the buyer has every right to say that they would rather not have me do it.  Buyers do have to consider their budgets.

The point here is that I had no hesitation about asking for more money (in the form of a bigger budget of hours at my standard hourly rate) in order to do more work.  Feature creep happens in all fields and the only way to handle it is to say yes you’ll do it, but more work takes longer and costs more.

Remember, part of being a professional means that you value your work.  If you regularly give it away then you are not valuing it.

I’ve noticed a trend on oDesk and other contract writing sites. The trend is to hire as cheaply as possible and then either the buyer edits the material into something usable or hires someone else to do it. (And when they get someone else to take a second look, you can bet the posting will include the phrase, ‘easy job’.) In other words, some buyers set out knowing they won’t get a good product out of the box and hire writers based only on the lowest hourly rate. Editing is part of how they are thinking about the job.

Feeding into this same trend are first-time or amateur authors (of web sites, sales letters and content) who realize, after struggling with a project, the results aren’t what they imagined. They are also looking for editing services.

Finally, a still rare but growing area is ‘freshening’ a website. An older site has gone stale over time; the company or product has evolved or the website just gets a worn-out feel. Although I consider a new set of clothes rewriting, these jobs are seen by some buyers as simple editing.

Can you do it?

It’s very likely that you already do.

I want to point out that ‘editing’ as used here means a skill set that includes rewriting, formatting, and reshaping the tone or spin of content. At oDesk, the term can mean anything from proofreading to an entire rewrite where the final piece looks nothing like the original material. With that in mind, my claim that you already do it should be obvious. Because you edit your own work before you submit it.

You already look for run-on sentences, grammar and punctuation errors, misspellings and poor usage… You do do that, right? Right?

Still not convinced you should bid on editing jobs? Take a look at this cut and paste (part of a cover letter put up on a message board). Read it and think about how you would ‘fix’ it. It’s fairly typical of an ESL (English as a Second Language) writer.

I am one of the serious bidders for the project. With me working on your project you can be rest assured about the quality. I will always keep you informing about the progress so that you can be in loop and relaxed. I am really enthusiastic about the project. We believe in work quality, customer satisfaction and timely delivery of projects for better relations wit customers, Achieving 100% customer satisfaction and proving our best services

I cherry picked that example to make a point. There is a great deal of written material out there that needs help. And you can provide that help.

Can you get a good price?

Yes, if you can inform/lead/educate the buyer. You need to get them past the this is a simple job mindset. And you can do this without being snide (Oh, if it’s such a simple job, why the hell don’t you do it yourself?)

Focus on the end product. This is, after all, the buyer’s primary interest. Don’t complain, just explain. This helps you get hired. You have to get them to understand what you are actually doing for them. If they aren’t writers themselves (which, if they are hiring an editor, they usually aren’t) it’s not easy. Which brings me to:

The Gold Standard

1. Get a copy/sample of the material before you commit to a fee or a number of hours.
2. Take that sample and edit it.
3. Send it back as part of your cover letter.

Why is this so important?

• It tips you off to how much work actually needs to be done and allows you to estimate your time commitment.
• It shows the buyer just what she is paying for and what the final product will be like.
• It gives you a chance to explain the process, the what, why and the how.
• It gets you interacting with the buyer and past the first date awkwardness.

I’ve tried to show you the why you should consider editing for money. In future posts I’ll focus on the mechanics. But one final tip: Never, ever be derogatory instead of calm and factual about an original piece. You don’t know when they wrote it themselves and have an emotional stake. Try to stay professional with your critiques and corrections.

Gaffs to avoid

These are mistakes I have collected from writing I have read or edited (and some I’ve made myself).

• accept/except - She accepted (agreed to) the gifts, all except (excluding) the one from me.
• principle/principal – The principle (rule) of parsimony was the principal (first, primary) reason I kept the article short.
• discrete/discreet – The one means circumspect or prudent (discreet) and the other means separate from some group or category (discrete).
• belief/believe - My belief (noun) is that you believe (verb) things I do not.
• proceed/precede - To proceed is to continue or move on, precede means to go before in space or time, as an introduction might precede the main body of a book.
• illusion/allusion – She mentioned the magician’s illusion (a false impression of reality) when making an allusion (implication or passing indirect reference) to how fake my passion seemed.
• lay/lie - Lay is the action of placing something down (usually horizontally), while lie is the condition of being there. So, if I lay a book down on the table, it is lying there and it lies on the table.
• to/too – The second means extremely, very, or in addition to. I am too (very) short for dancing and I am roundish too (in addition).
• capital/capitol – Capitol is the building where the legislature meets, either in Washington D.C. or in a state. All the other meanings are capital.
• then/than – Then is used for time and than is used in comparisons: I had more sense then (time) than (comparison) I have now.
• accede/exceed – Accede means to agree to and exceed means to go beyond some measure or expectation.
• access/excess – I had access to the secret vault where I found an excess of top secret documents.
• all ready/ already – It’s already noon, are we all ready to go?
• all together/altogether – We were all together on the train, although it was altogether too crowded to breathe.

And now I need a breath.

The confusing pairs I’ve listed so far won’t get caught by your spell checker. Maybe that is why so many slip through. But there’s another type of mistake that doesn’t get caught; one that can be really embarrassing.

It happens when a word is misspelled, but ends up correctly spelling another word, one that wasn’t intended.

When the words are visually similar, a cursory proofreading doesn’t catch them either. For example, decide/deicide. The former is when you make a choice, the latter is when you kill a god. Compassion/compression, pursue/peruse, anyone/any one…

The only answer is to read and reread your submission before it goes out. I am not happy admitting that after I thought I had proofed something to death, I’ve sent blotchy fruit to market. If and when I discover it, I make every effort to fix the problem.

One tip I’ve just started using is reading sentences backwards. I am told that doing this helps give a ‘fresh eye’ when proofreading. I can tell you it feels strange, but does get me looking at words as words instead of parts of a sentence with meaning and context.

The best technique I’ve found so far is to reread a piece a day or two after I have written it. I suppose that puts me more in the reader mode instead of the author mode. Unfortunately I am often too close to deadline for this to be an option.

The only thing I can assure you of is even when one particular buyer doesn’t notice a usage error, their readers will. And there isn’t an upside. When you are selling your expertise, you just have to work as hard as you can to avoid goofs. Because no matter how well you make the rest of the piece, they are going to remember the flub.

Here’s one that appeared in my local paper, in an article about a car accident. “The cars ended up on top of each other.” There’s no spelling or grammar error there, but the impossibility of it made it memorable.

Let them remember your prose for its power and imagery, not because you had a ‘wardrobe malfunction’.

Those days when you just don’t feel like getting out of bed and doing anything.  All you want to do is lie in bed and doze.  The very last thing you want to do is get up and work; or worse yet get up and look for work.

So, what do you do when you do get them?

The first step is obvious:  you have to get out of bed.

But we’re going to assume that you’re already up and moving, it’s just work that you’re having trouble getting motivated for.

One thing I’ve noticed with this myself, is that it’s more common when I come off a big project.  If I’ve been spending several weeks focused on one major project there’s a sense of closure that comes when I finish it.  The problem with that is that unless I’ve got another equally important project on the way it’s all too easy for that feeling to spill over and affect all of my job hunting, and that’s not a good thing.

One of the best ways to avoid this is to find a new project just before the old one ends.  That way you can take a deep breath and then jump right back into the fight on your new job.  It works very well, but if you over-do it you can feel like you never have time for yourself because you’re always going from job to job.

That leads straight into another issue:  burnout.

If you do nothing but work all the time you tend to burn out.  It happens to the best and worst of us.  Not even the mediocre are immune.

So, what do you do about it?

Form good habits:

Habit is one of the biggest tools in your arsenal for managing both your time, and you motivation.  It’s amazing just how powerful it is.  Once you build good habits it’s much easier to keep them up than if you’re just drifting aimlessly through the day.

The way to start building them is to tset yourself a schedule.  Nothing too insane, after all many of us became freelancers because we wanted the flexibility.  However some kind of a schedule is always going to be helpful.

If at all possible, what you want to do is build your schedule around the start of your day, not the end of it.  One reason is simple, the earlier your schedule starts in your day, the less time you have for other things to derail you before you start working.

Another is simple human psychology; we work better if reward follows work than the other way round.  If you start by doing what you want, then you’re less likely to get caught in the trap of running out of time because you just didn’t get around to doing the work.

But what if you don’t have good habits?

That makes it harder; not impossible, but harder.

The big thing to remember here is that everything has to start somewhere.  For online freelancers that means you need to get your butt down in that chair and start either working or searching.  If you’re not in the chair, you can’t start.

So, at the beginning:  sit down and either open up your job, or open up your browser and go to your freelance sites.  Here’s the trick though:  don’t worry about how much time you have.  Just worry about making the most of the time you’re using.

Even if you only start with five or ten minutes work that’s a beginning.

That’s important because it’s always easier to take that second step than the first one.  When you take that first step you don’t have any momentum, with the second you can carry on with your momentum from the first.

It’s why the first piece of advice for would-be writers is to write every day.  It’s the foundation of good habits and it’s also why Alcoholics Anonymous uses one day at a time as a goal.

It’s all about making the job easier.

The easier you make things, the less trouble you have getting started and doing them.  Doing a huge project is hard.  Sitting down for five minutes to do something is easy.  Even an hour is easy for most people.

So if you find your motivation is missing, try to sit down for a little bit of time and do just a bit of work.  Once you’ve got your software open and you’ve started working you might find it that much easier to keep going.

Here’s another average day: I wake up at 7am. Do the same things for timezones close to me. Enjoy free time with friends in the daylight hours.

Another thing I have to consider is the amount of money for a job. The buyer wants to find the cheapest (good) deal they can find, and I want them to take out a second mortgage to pay for my skills. Some buyers will offer a fair price for the work they want. That will garner them the most qualified applicants. Others are holding out for that one provider who is desperate enough to do a massive project for a pittance. So, you have to meet somewhere in the middle.

That’s what freelancing is all about. Freedom. A dichotomy exists which that freedom, however. As a freelancer, you’re able to work when you want, but you also have to work with international timezones. Sometimes, it’s necessary to communicate on their terms, so you have to adjust your schedule to fit with their timezone. There have been weeks where I have gone completely nocturnal. You also have to work inside their budget, or you won’t get the job at all.

By balancing my local clients, international clients, and my lifestyle, I’ve learned a few tips which can help you freelance more effectively. These are they:

Timezones

Often, you’ll find that you have local clients as well as clients across the world. Always, you’ll find that you have to communicate with those clients. Sometimes they are kind enough to contact you at a time which is appropriate for you, but chances are, they’re just as busy as you are! If you want their money, it’s a good idea to try to accommodate them.

So, what do you do if you have clients in Australia, the UK, and the US who don’t want to communicate through E-Mail? You could try to never sleep, but I’ve tried it before. It doesn’t work very well and causes you to start seeing and hearing things which aren’t really there.

Solution #1

Try to schedule the phonecalls/IMs as close together as you can. Then, you can sleep before that time so that you will be awake for the period you need to communicate. I’ve tried this solution, and it works to a degree. There are definitely drawbacks to it.

The problem with this solution is that it’s extremely hard to maintain this lifestyle for an extended period of time. Sometimes, you just can’t sync everybody up to fit a normal schedule. Another problem is that you will be shifting your schedule anywhere from a few hours forward or back to a complete flip of day and night, so it’s hard to go to sleep when you need to. Under this schedule, I never knew what day it was. I even forget the month because days, nights, weeks, and months no longer held any meaning for me. I also found it difficult to schedule meetings with friends to relax. Work, eat, sleep. Repeat.

Solution #2

Napping. It’s a wonderful activity. You get up when you like to get up, and you take naps during the day between work, play, and family time so you can be refreshed when you need to be awake. When you’re done working, you can go back to sleep. Everything else is just like Solution #1.

The problem with this solution is that your schedule is in constant chaos as well, but at least you don’t have the drag you get when you’ve been up for 24 hours straight working. You also won’t need to crash out the next day to recover. This is my current solution. I still am disconnected from the meat-world and have my laptop surgically grafted to my hip to keep up with everything.

Solution #3

This is the most interesting solution, and I’m interested in trying it out. Have you ever heard of polyphasic sleeping? If not, finish reading this article; then, use those research skills I was talking about and Google it. Essentially, it’s taking a set number of naps spaced evenly throughout the day that add up to two hours of sleep. For example, one schedule is to take 30-minute naps at
12:00am, 6:00am, 12:00pm, and 6:00pm. Simple and easy to remember.

But, wait! You’re supposed to get eight hours of sleep in a row every night, right?

In a way, yes. The reason you need eight hours is so that you get the proper amount of rest by going in and out of the sleep cycle. You can force your body to instantly snap into the proper part of the sleep cycle for the 30 minutes you are asleep, and you get all the proper rest without the other time. This schedule has been used by numerous people successfully including one of my close friends. He tried it out for a few months and likes it, but it conflicts with his 9-5 job. As a freelancer, though, you are able to pull this feat off without too much hassle. That allows you to have 22 fully-rested hours a day for work and life. That adds up to a lot of extra time to find jobs and make money! The drawback is that you can’t skip a nap, and you can only move them 30 minutes to an hour away from the schedule, or you’ll feel awful!

Google for Uberman Sleep Schedule to see a few different takes on it. I’m going to try it out for myself because I’m disconnected from society already with my night schedule (so I’ve got nothing to lose) and I can always use some extra waking hours to do work.

In the next installment of this series, I’ll tell you about different methods to manage money better with your clients.

I don’t think I’m alone in that either. We all make mistakes and there really isn’t anything one can do about it except do the best you can to fix it and then move on.

Anyway, here’s what happened in this case. I took a job to write an eBook for someone, got the necessary source material and started to work. In hindsight I think I should have looked more deeply into some of the source material that came with it but that doesn’t matter at this point.

I was about half finished when things went wrong, and my production fell off to near zero. It can be argued it wasn’t entirely my fault. I had the following things to deal with:

I just discovered that my father (who has cancer) had been called into the doctor’s office and told that his chemotherapy wasn’t working. They told my parents they could either continue the therapy and give him a possibility of a slightly extended life, or just manage the pain and other symptoms for a higher quality of life. They had to decide before they left the office.

My partner’s son got in a fight on school grounds and he may be expelled. There’s a hearing coming up this week. The kicker is that the person he fought not only provoked the fight but has been actively trying to start this fight and get him expelled for a couple of weeks now.

In the meantime his father is back visiting us from a military deployment overseas so he can see his children. He needs to see them, but his presence in the house is adding to everyone’s stress level.

Given the situation and all the stress it may not be surprising that my work fell off for some days. The important thing to remember is that none of this was the buyer’s fault.

Anyway, to make a long story short, the buyer decided to cancel the project.

There are a couple of ways I could have chosen to respond to this. The site in question would have allowed me to at least hold up the cancellation, and possibly get into some sort of argument with the buyer.

I didn’t.

Instead I went along with his request for cancellation. The reason I did was that the buyer had obviously lost faith in me, and nothing I would do was going to bring that faith back. The best thing for everyone, myself and the buyer was to get some distance and close the book on the project. The part of the project that I did was good work and I’m not going to move it into my portfolio as I would with unpaid work.

So, where’s the lesson here?

Well the first lesson is communication. There wasn’t as much as there probably should have been and it showed. That lesson is hard to learn and sometimes we have to re-learn it more than once. The second lesson is keep it clean and stay professional. Even when you cannot complete the job don’t waste the other person’s time.

So, if you’re down in the dumps, what can you do to drag yourself out? Well, that’s easier said than done. However, I have some tips to keep you on track.

First off, try to stay busy. If you’re unable to find work, then work on your profile, portfolio, or something along those lines. I call it “pseudo-working,” and often people will ask me what I’m doing, and I’ll say, “I’m working…well, pseudo-working.” I’m doing things to improve my situation. It’s a lot like working on a project except you don’t get paid right now. If you have an awesome portfolio, profile, and you do things to acquire jobs which you really like, you will make more money and be happier in the long run.

Second, try this exercise. Figure out where you want your career to go, and figure out where you are at right now. On a sheet of paper, list your career goals on one side. On the other side, list the actions you are currently taking to pursue those goals. Then, on another sheet of paper, write down an ordered list of the steps you think you need to take to achieve your goals. Make it sequential and detailed.

Now, look at this information. On the first page, you can probably draw several lines between the things you’ve done and your goals. That’s encouraging because you know you’re well on your way to get where you want to be. If you don’t have a lot of items you can connect, then you have several items that you can add to the second sheet to work on.

With that second sheet, put it where you can see it and reference it often. Tape it up to the wall above your monitor. When you’re not actually working, you need to be pursuing those goals actively. The great part about it is that pseudo-working is less stressful, but it’s a vital part of maintaining a healthy career. Any time you feel lost, hopeless, and helpless when it comes to work, you can always look up at that list and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

You’re never helpless, so you have to help yourself. You can’t count on lucky breaks.

Another tactic to make yourself feel better is to help out other freelancers. When you assist another freelancer by giving them advice or referring a job to them, then you are building a network of colleagues who will return the favor and refer jobs to you. Also, the community support will keep you in good spirits when you’re working.

So, try to keep your chin up and your outlook positive because having a good attitude about work makes the day go so much easier.