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.

I’ve been writing about money a lot lately, and not just because it’s one of my favorite things.   Today’s topic is a grab-bag of tips that can help you make more money for your work on oDesk.

Let’s start with one obvious fact that doesn’t always seem obvious to some of the posters in the Community:

oDesk wants you to bill high

That’s right, it’s in oDesk’s best interest for you to have as high a billing rate as you can manage to pull in.  They don’t want you to get jobs by underbidding everyone else, they want you to get jobs by proving you’re worth more to the buyer than everyone else.  oDesk gets paid by the buyers just like you do.  They want you to make more money because the more you make the more they make.

They have an even greater incentive for providers to raise rates than most providers do because they only get ten percent of the bill rate.  So if I make ninety dollars they make ten.   If I’m working at a charge rate of $1.00/hr they only get $0.10/hr and that’s not really worth it for either of us.

So if someone tells you there’s a conspiracy to keep rates low just laugh at them.  oDesk isn’t going to have anything to do with a conspiracy to make oDesk less money.

Okay, now that we have that squared away, on to the tips:

Tip 1) Don’t Do Data Entry

Lots of people put data entry down as one of their skills, and in some ways it makes sense.  for the most part it’s a job anyone can do if they just take care and pay attention to what they’re doing.

It’s also the lowest paying job category on oDesk

One reason it’s low paying is that it’s essentially commodity work.  There’s no way to put your own unique stamp on data entry so you cannot build a reputation as being the best person for it the way you can with some other fields.

It also doesn’t require any special training or even skill at the English language.

I don’t mean to disparage the job, but if you want to make a lot of money on oDesk it’s one category you should avoid.  The money isn’t there.

Tip 2) Don’t Lower Your Rate On An Invitation

Here’s an example of how lowering your rate can come back to bite you.  A provider with a very high rate (twice the category average and it’s a high average rate category) received an invitation to a position.  When they accepted the invitation, they offered to do the job for about a quarter of their billing rate.

What happened?

They were turned down because they charged too much.

Personally, I never lower my rate on an invitation and here’s why:  Anyone who invites me to do a job has already seen my rate before making the offer.  They wouldn’t have offered if the rate wasn’t acceptable, so why should I drop it?

Also, if I do drop my rate, I’m sending at least one of two messages:  a) I’m desperate; b) I have no confidence in the value of my work.

I don’t want to send either message.  The other thing that might happen is that if I do drop it the buyer may push to see how low I am willing to go.  If I drop my rate by seventy-five percent, maybe I’ll drop it by eighty percent, or possibly even more.  I don’t want to get caught in that trap.

The other problem is that the amount you were paid stays on your profile.  If you quote $50.00/hr and all your jobs are at $15.00/hr there’s no reason any buyer will ever pay you $50.00/hr.   You’ve sent the message that your real rate is $15.00/hr.

Lower rates on past jobs don’t hurt you if they show a steady pattern of increasing rates.  There’s nothing wrong with showing a few jobs at $5.00/hr, then $10.00/hr, $15.00/hr and so on.  That shows a normal upwards progression and doesn’t make the buyer think you’ve been undercharging all along, but rather that your rate has been increasing with time.

Tip 3) Let Your Profile Fit Your Description

Provider profiles are a huge subject, and I could go on for hours about them.  Right now though, I just want to focus on one aspect.

Make sure your skills reflect your area.  If you’re a writer who dabbles in programming, list your writing skills first, not your skills coding Flash or debugging HTML.  Further to that, if you have multiple areas of expertise, list the one you most want to work with first.  That’s the one you should be focusing on.

This doesn’t apply if your preferred skill is data entry and your other is voice-over, since those have the lowest and highest average pay rates respectively.  If one skill is going to pay you much more, focus on that one.

Okay, I’ve started you off.  If anyone has other tips for raising their average rate feel free to send them along.  Everyone wants to make more money and as long as your work is worth it there’s no reason you shouldn’t be working at the top of your category.

Truth be told, it’s a little from column A, a little from B. Seriousness aside, I want to discuss one of the most neglected topics in the Freelancing World. Your butt (I said what, what?). If you’ve been at this a while, it’s probably getting bigger. For some, a lot bigger. As I said, I’m very busy, but there is always time to improve your health no matter how busy you are. Read the rest to see how you can improve your fitness quickly and make massive gains for both your health and your career.

Why You Should

Drawing your income primarily through the internet guarantees one thing: you’ll spend quite a bit of time in front of a computer. Probably more than you would in a regular job. Along with that sedentary time comes a whole host of problems. One of which is rapid weight gain. With rapid weight gain, there’s diabetes, depression, heart disease, and more subsequent issues that arise.

Programmers are notoriously stereotyped as asthmatic, overweight nerds teetering on the verge of either dying from a massive coronary failure or going on a shooting spree after never finding that last critical bug. Okay, maybe that’s going a little too far, but it speaks of a problem that exists for all outsourced and freelance workers. Chances are, you don’t get enough exercise.

Aside from death preventing you from pulling a check, poor health can impact your career in other ways. Poor health will make you depressed and lethargic, so you won’t be as motivated to work as you would if you were healthier. Also, you can take all that money you made as a motivated, healthy person and use it to go out and participate in activities you couldn’t before. Go rock climbing, canoeing, or run in a marathon.

A marathon? That may sound pretty far-fetched depending upon your condition, but it’s entirely possible. People have gone from very poor health to running marathons before. It’s a matter of conditioning your body every day with just a bit of work.

When You Should

There’s a million and three-point-five excuses why you don’t go out and get a little exercise right now. One of the most common excuses is that you can always do it tomorrow. You’re busy right now, and you’ll get to it once this project is done. That’s not a very good excuse. Some of the people I’ve spoken to say that their version of taking a break is essentially going somewhere else to sit for 15 to 30 minutes. You could take that time and convert it to exercise time.

Another excuse is that you’re old/too far out of shape/a devoted Mac user/etc. You can still do it. It’s no excuse. If you are able to sit up in a chair under your own power and use a computer, you are very likely able to do some sort of exercise–possibly sitting up in a chair, laying down, and sitting up again.

How You Can

Push-ups. You heard me. Drop and give me twenty.

Some people can’t do a single push-up. That’s okay, you can still do push-ups (what?). Visit HundredPushups.com and read the information on that site. They have alternative exercises for people of all strength levels. If you follow the program, you should be able to do 100 consecutive pushups at the end of six weeks. Maybe a few more if you’re really out of shape, but the point is that you now have a plan to get into great shape quickly with comparatively little effort, no cost, and you can do it in your own home.

That takes care of the upper body. What about the lower body? Start walking. When you’ve done a bit of walking, start jogging. After that, start running. It’s difficult to get started, but it’s easy to set aside X minutes a day to run.

Here’s a tip: don’t worry about the distance. Just set a timer for X amount of time and run/walk for that amount of time at a pace you can handle. Like with the push-up program, you will notice quick gains in strength, and your speed and endurance will increase as well!

Even better, combine the two! On three days in the week, do the push-up program like it suggests. On those other days, walk or run. You will be amazed at what these simple activities will do for you. Try it out and ask questions in the comments here if you have any, and I’ll do my best to encourage you and provide you with any other information I can.

Other Considerations

Aside from shedding fat and adding muscle, you should also consider what you put into your body. If you’re anything like me, you drink coffee by the pot, not the cup. I’ll go through three pots in a few hours some times. Other times, I’ll go through an equal amount of soda. That’s even worse when you mix in the sugar.

Watch when you’re eating. It’s very tempting to buy a bunch of instant food or snack food that’s high in calories. It’s also very tempting to keep it within arms reach while you’re working and mindlessly graze all day long. Separate your work and eating, and it will help you immensely.

Watch what you’re eating. It’s like mommy always told you: fruits, vegetables, bread, meat, etc etc food pyramid can-I-have-some-candy-now? Follow the iconic food pyramid, and you won’t go wrong. Also, by cooking your own meals, you will save a lot of money and enjoy your meals since they don’t taste like microwaved cardboard.

Fit body, fit mind, better life, better career. It’s a chain reaction.

His biggest point was that the only way to keep your dream alive is to actually do something, that just wishing and hoping isn’t enough.

He’s absolutely right.

Having said that, I do want to take a jump sideways and look at both serendipity and the so-called ‘power of positive thinking.’

Serendipity has an interesting history, being a word coined by Sir Horace Walpole from a fairytale called The Three Princes of Serendip, and referring to the kind of good luck that leads to making beneficial discoveries by accident.

It’s what my mother calls ‘The Luck of the Prepared Mind.’

Her take is very simple:  Good luck is everywhere, the trick is recognizing it.

People don’t always recognize opportunities when they see them.  One thing that ‘positive thinking’ can do is keep your mind open to the possibility.  It’s always easier to find something if you’re looking for it.

Here’s an example:  I have been a science fiction fan for most of my life.  I really enjoyed reading anthologies of short fiction from the fifties and sixties, and still read some of the magazines to this day.  Anyway, one of my great desires was to get some of the old magazines, preferably from the fifties and earlier if possible.

I looked for them when I could, and most of my friends knew I was interested in collecting them.

One day a man went into the used bookstore where a friend of mine worked, and commented that he had some of those magazines and nowhere to store them.  My friend knew the store owner wouldn’t want them, and this was before eBay.  So he called me up and gave me this man’s number.

I got another friend and we went over there together, figuring we probably couldn’t get all we wanted, but we could probably get at least some for about a hundred dollars each (all we could really afford at the time.)

The guy didn’t want money.  He just wanted the magazines gone.  My friend and I got three car loads of magazines for nothing more than the price of dinner, and we had to convince the guy to accept that.

I don’t have the magazines anymore– I sold them a few years later to finance a move– but that doesn’t matter.

What matters is that the only reason I got to own and read and enjoy those magazines was because I was looking for them.  I was looking and ready to find them.

It’s the same way with a lot of other things.  If you convince yourself it’s not there, you are never going to find it.  You won’t see the opportunity when it stares you in the face, reaches out and tweaks your nose.

If you convince yourself that all you can find on sites like oDesk are low-paying jobs, then that’s all you’ll find.  If you don’t believe you can win the good jobs without bidding very low then that’s the only way you’ll get the jobs.

You need to have faith and confidence in yourself, and also believe that the good jobs are out there.  Once you know they’re there, you just have to recognize them when they come up.

Believe in yourself and opportunity and hard work will take you a very long way.  Don’t believe in yourself or opportunity and nothing will ever change.

Keep your eyes and mind open.

If you have any similar stories feel free to add them in the comments.  It’s always a morale-builder to see how other people have succeeded.

How To Lead a Buyer

First, you want to identify the style of the buyer. If they’re speaking in short phrases with a monotone pitch, you don’t want to bounce into the conversation with Shakespearean monologues. Instead, just pace them for a couple minutes. Once you know what their style is like, become more involved in the conversation by asking more detailed conversations and adding in commentary. As the conversation progresses, slowly (and I mean slowly) increase the length of your sentences, make variations in the pitch of your voice, and establish a regular cadence in your speech pattern. Just bump each factor up one notch and see if the buyer follows you and becomes more excited. If the buyer follows you, keep working them up until you both can’t wait to get started! If you notice that the buyer isn’t following you after you bump up the enthusiasm a couple notches, go back down. You haven’t established a solid connection with them yet, and you need to go back to pacing for a while before you try again.

It’s important that this process feels natural. If you try to force it what-so-ever, you’ll fall on your face and make the buyer very uncomfortable with you. To make the progression natural, you need practice. It needs to become a basic communication skill to you, and you should do it without even thinking. Practice everywhere and on everyone. If you have friends or family who seem down, try to cheer them up in this way. Remember, though, that to lead, you first must establish a connection with the person you’re speaking to by meeting them on level ground. It’s a call and response method, so you need to start by speaking the same “language” as the person you’re trying to influence.

How It Can Be Integrated Into Your Daily Life

The benefits of being able to effectively lead a conversation are innumerable. For the freelancing situation specifically, you will gain the confidence of buyers quickly, and they will be happy to hire you over the other providers if you appear to be excited about the project and make them excited as well.

For everyone else that you interact with, you will find that they respond to you better and will seek you out. If you know how to motivate people and create an atmosphere of success and fun, they will flock to you. It’s a skill which helps you form connections with people who can help you. It will make you more popular in your social group. You can even get discounts and things for free at stores if you’re good enough. It’s happened to me a few times because I established a connection and improved the other person’s mood, and they reciprocated by offering me assistance to a greater degree than others.

Now, go out there and practice.

The first thing I want to talk about is using phone interviews to your advantage. I hate phone interviews, but lately buyers have wanted to contact me via Skype, an internet-based phone/voice chat service. If you don’t already have Skype, you should get it. It’s free for Skype-to-Skype calls, and there’s several buyers who use it. For international calls, it’s very cheap as well. You can go pretty far on just 10 dollars. Just Google for “Skype” real quick, and you’ll find the place to download the program.

As I said, I do not like phone interviews, but they’re a fact of life for freelancers who want to work with larger companies. I’m more of a face-to-face person as I like to be able to read body language and respond appropriately. So, how do I use phone conversations to my advantage? Here’s how:

Pacing

It’s a basic salesman technique, and it’s highly effective when performed properly. Many people don’t know how to pace a buyer correctly, and it can hurt you if another provider naturally meshes with the buyer. It’s not hypnotism like some people think. It’s all about making the buyer comfortable with your voice and identify with you. Most naturally effective communicators do it without even thinking, and those people are most successful in endeavors that require working with others.

Here’s a story to show what bad pacing (or no pacing) can do to you. I was in a phone conference interview which included three people total: me, the buyer, and another provider. Due to my fantastically wacky sleep schedule, I had only been awake for an hour or two before the interview started, so I had to prepare quickly in addition to getting my brain to function. I’m naturally low-key and laid back, but I was a little more so that afternoon. It worked to my advantage. When I entered the interview, it was just me and the buyer, and since the other provider was late, we started without her. After we got in a little ways, she showed up, and we backtracked and he covered the material up to that point a second time. That worked to my advantage too as it allowed me to identify some key terms so I could mirror him. More on that later.

So, this lady gets on the horn, and she’s super perky. Meanwhile, the buyer and I are laid back and speaking slowly. Around the third sentence, my brain had a Sam Kinison moment. It screamed, “AHHH! AHHH! I’M IN HELL!” We heard a high-pitched, fast-talking, ultra-perk voice after our slow and fluid discussion, and it really stuck out. In a bad way. It didn’t follow the dynamic that was already established, so it was incredibly jarring for me.

When you’re interviewing with a buyer by phone, you watch to match their rhythms, pitch, and speed as much as you can. It helps you identify with the buyer and communicate on their terms, and if you follow their lead, it shows that you’ll be easy to work with. Don’t do it to a point where you’re mocking the buyer. Just adapt to the conditions of the conversation so you won’t stick out like a blaring beacon of disruption. The key is to be subtle and try to create a synergy between you where communication becomes easy and naturally flows.

How It Can Be Integrated Into Your Daily Life

You’ll find this technique to work wonders while you’re talking to people face-to-face. You’ll find that people will be more relaxed around you, more forthcoming with information, and they will like you more. People enjoy being around people who are like them. That’s why you see depressed, moping people clustered in groups at coffee shops wearing vintage T-shirts and discussing obscure bands. The rest of society shuns them for being vapid and generally annoying, so they’ve adapted and hang out with each other. If you ever need to talk to people like that–and I hope you never have to–you can’t just run up on them with a smile on your face and expect them to react positively towards you. That makes you an outsider. Instead, you have to drag your feet as you walk, stare at the ground with a frown on your face, and start the conversation with something like, “I cut myself because my parents took away my allowance.” In that extreme case, you’ll be putting on an act (I hope), but you’ll get better results by identifying yourself with the group instantly.

To learn how to pace people better, just try it in your everyday life! Go up to strangers and practice on them. Use it at the store. Try it on your friends and family. Any time you talk to someone, make an effort to match their style of communication and see how well it works for yourself!