This is the third and penultimate part of our review of some useful freelance resources:

ProFreelancing

A web site completely dedicated to freelancers. Though the design is not really a very attractive one, but it starts up right-away with some extremely useful articles. In the ‘About’ section you can get a nice background of the web-sites overall development. The resource section contains a huge number of resources on every possible topic such as ebooks, Blogs, Job Postings, Online Publishers, Recent Press Releases, Photos, payment Issues, etc. All in all it’s a great site on many kinds of freelance information.

Bootstrapper

It comes with a nice start page and without any specific home page. It houses a lot of articles on some unconventional divisions of freelancing and delineates them with commendable effectualness. The articles are arranged in monthly order as well as category wise. You can be a subscriber through it’s RSS feed feature.

Jarkkolaine.com

Well, this site is also like the previous one, but it has a bit messy design, and also the categorization is done based on category and monthly basis. This we portal has resources that targeted at programmers and software designers. All in all if the design is modified a bit then the whole site becomes a really good one.

CreativeBehavior

As the name suggests, it’s a site mainly dedicated to the freelance designers. In fact, the design of the site is pretty clean,neat and unconventional. However, the web lacks of any depth in article repository. The news section is also quite outdated. All in all it seems that the site maintenance issues has gone adrift for the time being.

PartcleTree

It’s also a pretty straightforward site for mainly people who is looking to start a business around any freelance theories. Also got some good articles on design issues and general Internet activities. The good thing is the articles are quite extended covering many sides of the title. You can subscribe to it’s RSS feeder if you decide.

If you miss out the previous parts, check out the Part 1 and Part 2. We will be coming out the Final Part in two days times. Just Sign up with our Auto-Feed Manager to deliver the next part to your Inbox automatically.

Freelancing has become a popular choice for many new starters. This article will focus on 20 most helpful web resources on freelancing. The first part contains first five of these:

FreelanceSwitch

In the world of freelancing, the usefulness of this site can not be stressed more. It is a site by the freelancers themselves. When you open the homepage you will be struck with a beautifully and professionally designed home page which will fuel your expectations. You will find that the site contains almost everything a freelancer needs to support his career. Everything from advices, jobs and resources to even rarest of tips and tricks that you will hardly see in other sites. With 22,400 subscribers till now, the site is flourishing rapidly.

WakeUpLater

Another well-designed web site for freelancers, web-hosts, marketers and online business individuals. Alongside the advices and tips for freelances, it has a repository of Flash and audio elements which the freelancres can use for their own web site development. It also encourages the sharing of ideas through Interview with different levels of “Working in the Web” individuals. Total subscribers for this site is also quite impressive, totaling around 1873 till now.

Garrett Dimon

This web site is also dedicated to freelancing but is more sort of a personal information repository for the creator G. Dimo. Nevertheless, it also has some useful contents and is subdivided in to Resources, Reading and Events sections. The reading section contains helpful hints abut some books which the G. Dimon deems really good. The Event section contains a listing of recent events. It has few good articles on Server Relocation and Documentation and Interface Designing.

AndyBudd Blogography

This site is actually gigantic resource of nearly every web related content, such as Accessibility, Blogging, Training & Conference, Design, Film and TV, fun stuff, Web designs, Travel, business, etc. You can find some greatly useful articles on Freelancing in the section titled “Business”. The design of the site is quite simple and relax, thus navigation around the archives is also quite simple and intuitive. If you want, you can also contact the author through email by selecting “Contact” option.

Mashable

As soon as you open their homepage, it may seem cluttered with adds and other linking stuffs. But is you look at with a little concentration, then you can see that it actually is a great pointer to some really exciting freelance stuffs. It holds pointer to myriad classes of freelancing opportunities such as writing, programming, auction, photography to name a few. A very useful site for having a glance of all kind of freelancing opportunities at in shot..

We will be coming out the Part 2 in two days times. Just Sign up with our Auto-Feed Manager to deliver the next part to your Inbox automatically.

The one and only pillar to captivate client interest and intrigue them to such a scale that they continue to keep coming back with new projects, is to entertain all those previous assignments with all your aces. This is a market strategy that will not fail and doesn’t fail. However, you are not a programmed machine, as a soul with flesh and blood, your desires in exchange of your work must commensurate with proper rewards, or in simple declaration.

The client also must reflect generously, so that your inner-self becomes suffonsified, sharpening and streamlining your talent to deal with more and more projects with constant proficiency. Below are a catalogue of 28 (25 from FreelanceSwitch + 3 from AsiaPartTime) genre of repayments you should ask from your client:

Asks from AsiaPartTime

1. KNOW THE CHAIN: Ask the client how did they came to know you, from where they’ve heard about you and your work, this helps to select more marketing options and fortifying the ones you’ve now.
2. ARRANGE THE PAPERS PROPERLY: You should write a formal contract paper where it must be stated that if they retreat from payment then what should be done, make it signed and stamped.
3. EXPORT THE EXPERIENCE WITH YOU: Ask the client to share the experience working with you to his friends and other contacts, they will remember and when they will need, they’ll contact you.

Asks from FreelanceSwitch.com:

ASK FOR A DOWN PAYMENT: No paucity of fraudulent clients in the venture of haunting down freelance figures and their privation. So, be smart, arrange a down payment and refund papers in case you fail to comply. This way, you save yourself from a probable debacle, and in any case, genuine clients will not voice any grievance. Normally, we request 50% of the total project cost as down payment.

ASK FOR EXTENSION OF DEADLINE IF REQUIRED: Sometimes you can get overboard with the assignments, thus declining your performance. If that happens, then take a break, do something fun, but do not lax too much, least you miss the deadline, but in any case if you do, then do not hesitate to ask for an extension, keeping yourself perked up is as important as dong the work itself.

CLARIFY THE REQUIREMENTS: You must be able to glean the exact expectations from the client. Client may not always be able to express it clearly, but aid him, assist him by asking things that may not seem obvious to him at first the place. This is a vital step of basically any project.

ASK FOR REGULAR EXPECTATION: To client, the product may seem ground-breaking some day and average the other day. But if you believe your work is consistent, then ask your client to have a consistent expectation. But ensure that you have some kind of quality measurement installment installed in place.

ASK FOR RECOGNITION : When the client is really over the moon with your performance, ask for some kind of recommendation letter, this will indeed help you in the future to get more assignments.

SEEK FOR REFERRALS: Ask your clients if they know anyone who could utilize your service, and ask if you are permitted to contact with them and introduce yourself.

SEEK FOR TESTIMONIALS: If you have a black and white proof of your work, from your satisfied client, then it boost your chances of getting more work, some good words written in a mere paper do hold a lot of strength. Please you like our community, please do give us a testimonial as well.

ASK FOR ANY SUGGESION: Develop a friendly relation with the client, feel free to ask for if anything he deems worth changing or enhancing.

CHURN OUT EXCLUSIVE TIME ZONE: If the client is always sticking like glue, then you may feel constrained and thus may not perform optimally, do not lay back, tell your client that you too need some time alone.

UTILIZE CLIENT’S BUSINESS: You can do freelance works in exchange of not only money, but also you can trade your skills with their own business or service they provide.

FEEDBACK IN THE FORM OF SURVEY: One great way to get feedback from client about your work is to prepare a survey and get it completed, and you also preserve it for later comparison. Here is some online survey templates you may try out.

CLEAR PAYMENT ISSUES: Do not keep those important payments for your work pending for too long. The client may have been forgotten, in that case it is your duty to remind him in an amicable manner.

SOCIAL NETWORKING: This is as important as normal life networking, create a profile in few popular social networking sites, and send its link to your clients who already have this kind of profile, then you’ll get to know people in a much quicker rate and vice versa. This is a much cogent way to get and manage contract outside your current country.

ASK FOR BONUS: Ask for a bonus of your work which you think you can do it in a very very professional diction with splendid offshoot. And obviously in a tactical manner.

TRY TO TIE UP A CONCRETE CONTACT: If your work is grand, client is satisfied to the brim, ask if you can also be taken as the permanent choice for that specific skill.

KNOW CLIENT’S EMAIL: Always good to have a way to communicate other than phone, and in modern days, any professional person do hold an email address. I would recommend you to use a CRM tools to keep track all your customer information. One of the best CRM tool are Zoho-CRM. It is a free CRM tool and it is comparable to SalesForce.com.

ASK FOR REFERENCES: Before hitting a deal with client, ask them if they’ve worked with other freelancers before or not. If you see a long list and most of them unhappy ending, then you better think twice before running into any paperwork.

ASK FOR A SHOUT-OUT: If the client already have any kind of blog site or ezine article, then ask them to put a shout-out on behalf of you.

LOOK FOR TIPS: If your client runs a successful business ask for tips from them, try to get more knowledge about how things flow.

ARRANGE A PROPER DEADLINE: Fix the deadline with enough time on hand, do not pressurize yourself, that may hamper work quality.

ASK FOR BUSINESS CARD : Don’t hesitate to ask for their business card, it’ll project what is the actual occupation of the client and will also show professionalism.

GET PHONE NUMBER: It is important that you hold on to client’s both office and personal contact number.

ASK FOR RECONSIDERATION: If the requirements look to gaudy and convoluted and the final objective can be achieved through a much simpler form of design of requirement, then approach the customer with your idea.

CLARIFY THE REQUIREMENTS: How much obfuscate may be the client’s idea seem, clear first.

LOOK FOR COMMENTS: If you run a blog or participate in social networking sites, ask the clients to leave a positive comment about your work if they are satisfied.

Following these steps can bring the best of performances out of you, and out of your client too.

Starting a new blog in a caprice may not always be a great idea. Every aspect must be taken care of before realization of plan.  Here we will illustrate few questions that should be properly analyzed beforehand, this could result in a cessation of an attempt to fire up a project that can only incur loss in the long run:

1. What Are My End Goals With The Project:

   First Decide what is the scope of the blog? Will it serve a very large participants spanning over variety of subjects? Or will it be a small one with particular focus on few specific topic.

2. Things to Reach The Goals:

   Strong Base is prerequisite of any substantial investment. To reach up to the goal , few things can be done, such as if you choose to serve a small group of blogger, you have to build up an energetic forum, and through blogging process you must be able to convert these bloggers into forum member. But to do that, you may confront obstacles such as your inexperience in promoting a forum, you might have to open blog topic on which you are not that well conversant, or may be that you fear the topic you want serve is already served by some other blogging site. These are some of the blockades, but not so intransigent that you can not overcome. The ideal thing would be to break up these chunk and proceed accordingly.

3. Having Enough Ideas and Inspiration:

   Ideas are heartbeat of a blogging site. You must be able to constantly think up new form of topic and must be willing to write about those. Though it may seem difficult to do on a constant basis, but this is the thing that will keep your site alive. You should be able to think about high number of contents in a short span of time, and even before starting, you must be able to write down fully about six to seven topic. Then you know that you may be able to sail the ship.

4. Time Management:

   It is also an important part of overall business. If you are going through more than one project, you must be able to divide your working time as such that you can conveniently carry out your blogging tasks, without hampering the other project. Remember to find The Balance between Blogging and Daily Life

5. The Impact on that other project:

   This question clearly arises out of the previous one. It may seem that, it may hurt the other project, but if you are launching a new blog site, and your other project is already on the run, then you may think of sacrificing some time out of that to invest in the new one, that may be worth giving a try. But if you can see if it is possible to take the time out from something of not great importance. Thus managing both the projects properly in the end.