Last week, I received a review invitation from Wei Tat, the co-founder of Soskod.com. We always happily to share the new source of freelance jobs with the community. Here is our review:-

Freelancing has become a great boom to many individuals who has the zeal and capacity to go along with this fast-paced mode of independent occupation. The Internet has also become a real powerhouse to back this freelancing flourish and as such many freelancing web portal has stepped on the scene till now. Soskod.com is a recent addition in this ongoing trend.

It’s a Malaysian based online freelance portal dedicated to all kinds of IT related freelancing jobs opportunities such as Programming, Software, Framework and API, Multimedia, Technical Writing etc. Besides all these you can find other non-IT areas of freelancing such as Accounting, Legal Advice, Quality Assurance, Advertising, Surveying, Data Management, Copywriting, Blogging, Proof Reading, Translation etc.

Though the design and the colour scheme of the web portal is not so attractive at the first look, but content-wise the portal is very deep. Moreover, there is no chance of scamming, as there is no service fee associated to either post jobs or become a member as a freelancer.

However, Soskod.com will not guarantee the quality of service as it claims just to be a platform between the client and the service provider. If the client and the service-provider (the freelancer) are happy, Soskod.com urges them to help spread the name all around. Signing up requires a valid email address and in fact the member gets a free copy of an eBook called “PC protection Guide”.

The FAQ section is generally quite detailed and contains all the major customer queries. It has a mini news section that includes all the latest churn-outs regarding online marketing and freelance issues.

The portal has partnered with different other freelance sites such as Webbies Resources, Career Site Links, Free PHP Scripts to name a few. If any member of Client breaches the terms of uses the account, their account will be deleted. Moreover, all the other partners of Soskod.com will be informed about the particulars of the perpetrator’s account.

Though the Web portal is a recent annexation and yet to take off for the league of big players in the field of freelancing work providers. As a partially competitor for them, AsiaPartTime wish them all the best and have a success in this freelance industry.

I just came across this article How To Get Paid Freelance Work While You’re Still A Design Student by FreelanceFolder.com. I think it is very useful guide for design students to get more design related freelance jobs.

Working part time in student life can be of great advantage if the work is related to the field of study! But it is not so easy to find out work which does relate to your study field. And if you are a student of graphic designs then it is actually quite difficult to really get that desired freelance jobs.

Your Problem:

The basic problem for a design student is that they are still learning and do not have any required knowledge of client management and a reputable portfolio. This article specifically points out few problems and solutions that you can take to enhance your chance of involving yourself into some professional work.

Your Solution Tips:

• NO BASIC DESIGN SKILLS: This is why you are in designing course, but you should not just follow the course structure. You must enhance your knowledge in the theories and practices by your own effort. Then the people see the potential in you, and you avail yourself more and more new job opportunity.
• LACK OF COMPUTER SKILL: As a designer, you will be needed to perform using various graphics designing software. So you must need the required skills. You can learn from books, from tutorials which you can download from various websites such as Download.com. Althrough offering your already learned skills to some graphic design companies, may be they will not pay you or may be very less, but you get that required touch of professionalism in your work.
• ABSENCE OF A REPUTABLE PORTFOLIO: Having a convincing portfolio is the first step of securing any kind of designing job. If you can have a commendable portfolio even for your freelance work, it will highly enhance your chance to get that work. If you lack items to enrich your portfolio, put some fictional stuff, but just make sure they are of good quality and worthy of applaud, then the studios will accept it even though it is fictional! I would suggest you to create a blog to showcase your portfolio, just like what BelKoo did for his design portfolios.
• LACK OF CLIENT MANAGEMENT SKILLS: This is an extremely important skill that many designing graduates lacks. And the only way to gain this is to work in real life somewhere. So just proceed to the local design/print shop and they’ll accept you happily.
  These tips may help you on managing your freelance deal:
  • How to Bid Freelance Jobs Successfully?
  • 28 Things Your Must Learn to ask For Your Freelance Job
• GETTING THE CLIENTS: When you feel confident enough that you can work as a freelancer, go look out for clients and companies, get involved into various freelancing blog sites and forum. Mix with people a lot to expand your list contacts. Thus gradually you will see a lot of places to apply your skills. Check out the Freelance Sources For Graphic Designer

So by following the aforementioned points, you can overcome the stated problems and will be able to stretch your chance of getting that desired part time by an extended scale.

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.

Life can be hectic with work and stuff! But even from that tightly scheduled cage of responsibilities, people must bring out some spaces for the fulfillment of those other responsibilities, without which the true joy and satisfaction of life is lost, is perished.

Freelance work, when started, is relatively of slow progress, but when things do pick up, you start to get a lot of clients, then the real turbulence start to crop up, you do not seem to find enough time that you can spend with your family, you do not find enough undivided moments to play with your children, you do not seem to find that extra hours to spend in gym, cause you are so furiously busy with keeping the customers gratified and managing new contracts, however, you want to move away for a little while, but you fear the loss that can be incurred, you fear to lose the focus, and you know you can not let this happen, you become more and more involved, ignoring all other tasks; and days go on, time passes on, slowly and gradually, relationships start to soar, health starts to attenuate, social life seems to break down, and suddenly, you find yourself in a sate of never ending ambivalence, you now understand that it is too late, the threshold has been breached, the damage has been done.

The above paragraph delineates a scary projection right ? You should not let his scenario to transpire in your life, you must know how to balance your freelance work life and personal responsibilities. Below are some tips to follow :

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