You’ve decided that going to the office five days a week is not for you. You also understand that working from home means you may often have to work in the evenings, sometimes late into the night, and, at first anyway, you may have to give up relaxing on public holidays and weekends.
Knowing that it takes hard work, even bravery, to give up a secure job to begin working from home is a good start, for without determination to succeed, rather stick with your day job. However, don’t let the daunting prospect of finding that first online freelance job put you off trying to do it. If you go about it correctly, it won’t be that difficult, and you’ll soon be enjoying the advantages of doing freelance work, such as being more available for your children, saving on the cost of transport to work and back, and even watching a movie in the middle of the day if you feel like it and your work is relatively up to date!
There are many websites that offer freelance opportunities. Browse through a few of them before deciding on which one suits you best. Many offer a variety of categories and you are sure to find something that suits you. It is best to start with joining just one, familiarizing yourself with it, and actually doing some work through it, before entertaining the thought of joining more sites like it. As a freelancer, you don’t want to disappoint the people who hire you by taking too long to complete a particular job, or rushing through the assignment and delivering below standard work, just because you’re busy running around the Internet looking for more opportunities.
You find a site that suits you, and you join, doing the bare minimum to prepare your profile. You’re so excited to have found a site that suits you that you can’t wait to start applying for jobs. A week later, after applying for thirty jobs, you’re in tears because you don’t yet have work. How could this happen? You have good skills, you wrote about them when applying for all the jobs you knew you could do, and your bids were the lowest. Why doesn’t anyone want to hire you? You’ve already left your daytime job and this was supposed to work!
Relax. Be patient. And start again.
Spend more time on creating the perfect profile before applying for even one job. Sometimes there are thousands of freelancers on a site and you need to make your profile stand out from the rest as much as possible. View other profiles to get a better idea of how yours should look. Even if it takes you as long as two weeks, get your profile up to scratch!
Read through all the frequently asked questions on the site, and totally familiarize yourself with the site, so that when you apply for that first job, you can do so with confidence, knowing that you’re doing everything correctly.
Then apply for jobs! Don’t go for the highest paying ones at first. Choose smaller jobs to gradually get you into the process. Employers are also more likely to choose a first time provider if the job is quite small and easy to do. Once you have established yourself as a good worker, through receiving favorable comments from your employer once the assignment has ended, you can start going after the bigger fish.
Carefully read the job description. Can you really do everything required? Refer to the content in the job description when writing your application letter. An employer isn’t interested in “I can do this work. Please visit my profile.” An employer wants to see that you understand the job description, and also that you’ve read it and are not just leaving the same message for all jobs you apply for. Be honest in your application. Don’t say you can do the work in seven days just to get the job, but knowing that it will probably take you three weeks. Taking longer than you should will result in a bad comment from the employer at the end of the assignment, making it more difficult for you to find more work. Of course, not being honest in an application can also result in the buyer not paying you, and who can blame them if the work they hired you to do is not being done exactly as they requested?
Be careful of bidding too low. A low bid seems like you are just desperate to get a job. This may be true, but a low bid may also indicate that you are not fully qualified to do the job perfectly. At the same time, for your first few job applications, don’t bid too high. Keep this for when you have a better work history on your profile.
Check your grammar, punctuation and spelling. If you write a really good application and it’s very similar to another application letter the buyer receives, the buyer will most likely choose the person who wrote the one with the least errors in it.
Don’t apply for just one job and sit back and wait for a response. Accept that there will be many jobs you don’t get. Don’t waste time waiting to hear about one before applying for another. Apply for many. If you happen to be lucky enough to get four or five jobs at the same time, but know that you can manage only two of them in the time allocated, choose your favorite two, and apologize to the other buyers, being totally honest, and as polite as possible. Honesty and good manners are remembered, and the buyer may hire you at a later stage.
Don’t always wait for an email from the site informing you of the latest jobs available. Check the site regularly for new posts. Sometimes many service providers will apply for a job and you want to be in the first few on the list. If you were a buyer faced with sifting through forty or more applications, it’s most likely you aren’t going to go through them all. If you find exactly what you’re looking for in a service provider within the first few on the list, you’re not going to view the rest of the applications.
Stick to the rules of the site, be honest and polite, and always do your best work. Good luck!
