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Pricing is a big factor in your venture into the world of freelance duties. Have you ever thought how you should handle this matter?

• Charge at a fixed rate?
• Charge by project?
• Charge by working hour?

However, there are also other factors such as location, timing, your level of desperation, etc. This article will try to discuss the core footsteps that you should think about when you deciding your pricing scheme.

Freelance work is not something that you buy from market or something like a fixed product. The clients may ask you as they walk into your shop and you showcase all your products from the shelve. In reality, the product is a part of you. You are not buying this product from somewhere else and resell it like what you did for common goods.The freelance work you do comes right from your brain, straight out of your heart. Every piece of projects you do, it is completely yours. As you have used your own mind and experience to realize it in reality.

Most of the freelancer may think that pricing based on hour basis calculation is the easiest and straightforward. However, think about the fact that, as days pass by, you will get more and more expert in your chosen field, as skill is only enhanced with time and regularity of implementation.

As your skill is enhancing, you will require putting less time than before to complete the project. For example, think about a freelance programming project in your favourite language, at the start may be you need a day or two to finish up the whole thing. Now you’ve become so experienced and expert that it may only take about an hour or two to build up the project; so now you see, if you calculate by time, you will be paid less than before, thereby reducing your overall income.

The best deal is to claim your price base on the work you are doing. Depending on the complexity of the project and an estimation of how much effort you need to put. If you really charge on hourly basis, you are not only downgrading yourself, but also failing to absorb the benefit that the enhancement of skills brings to a freelancer.

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After talked about freelance jobs tips, it is time to share the winning tips on bidding freelance jobs. This article is extracting the juice from Thanks to Top 5 Tips When Bidding For Freelance Work by DailyWirtingTips.

Freelance work can be of great boon to those who are eager to free themselves from the confinement of regular office work and are willing to accept some unheard of challenge initially. So how you merge yourself into this world of freelance jobs? The most practical answer would be through Freelance Jobsites such as GetAFreelancer.com, AsiaPartTime.com or Elance.com.

Clients first post what exactly is their requirement in terms of budget scale, timescale and description of the work. By reviewing all these details, you will bid on and from multiple bidders, client will choose one as he sees fit. So as you can realize this system is heavily reliant on mutual trust, thus having various loopholes for agreement breach. This article is aimed to admonish those unsuspecting freelancers who may become a prey of many perilous setups:

KNOW THE CLIENT

Get to know the client first, look for their profile in the web site, look for their company web site, and have other freelancers put favorable comments against their ID? Go through all these, besides check if the posted job description seems coherent and detailed. After you finish studying the client, if any of these is missing or sounds unethical or unprofessional, then I guess you better sidestep the offer.

DO NOT DOWNGRADE YOURSELF

Do not lower your bid rate just for the sake of getting more and more work, eventually this trend will make you look unprofessional and cheap target, and you’ll not be able progress forward in the industry, so demand according to the current trade.

BE CONSISTENT

Sometimes you may find that after the deal has been official, the client banked in a payment little less that the agreed upon, from this point you can either choose to accept it, showing a type of kindness or you can vehemently reject it. My advice will be not to bend down with this curtailed payment, instead write a concise but articulate email to the client saying your inconvenience about the payment scale. If the client seem unsure, help him to attain a satisfactory height, making you both content.

JUDGING SAMPLE WORK

Sometimes clients will want some samples (Often free of Charge) of your work, which will effectively express a black & white proof of your potentiality. However, be careful as the fraudulent client will later try to play you away and thus keeping the sample to him, so that he can use it for his own purpose. So in this scenario best you can do is to demand a copyright on the samples, so the client will not be able to make use of it without your consent. If the client happily agrees, then you know that it is for real and the client is actually serious about continuing with the offer.

DO NOT ASPIRE AFTER ILLICIT INVOLVEMENT

By any means do not get into something that is illegal. Such as advertising for something that does not exist, build up reports based completely on falsehood, or directly stealing contents from somewhere without giving credit etc; because if you are indeed targeted for infringement of cyber laws, then it will not take that much effort for the cops (with the aid of networking gurus) to trace you back even if you were under disguise.

Thus by adopting the practices outlined above, you will most certainly manage to skirt unnecessary blows. All the best for your freelance career.

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.