Landing your first anything is always the toughest job and it’s no different on Elance or any other freelance job board. You’ve got no project history, no feedback, no earnings – in other words, no reputation or credibility. So how then do you get a buyer to eventually trust you enough to hire you for their project?

Before you start bidding for your first project, let’s assume you’ve already done the following:

• You’ve chosen the right category for your skill set
• You’ve written a crackerjack profile description of your business, its main players, the services you’re providing and the skills you offer. You’ve filled out all the profile details in an interesting, unique and factual representation of you.
• You’ve chosen the type of project you want to bid on and understand its requirements.

Okay then, all set? Let’s get started. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Get to Know the Buyer – Intimately
2. Make a Personal Proposal – but Not on your Knees!
3. Offer Custom Samples – with a Twist
4. Slash your Rates but not in the Usual Way!

And now the meat

1. Get to Know the Buyer – Intimately

To get my first-ever project on Elance, I went to the buyer’s website and read her e-book. I then read her blog and started following her on twitter. By the time I got around to writing the actual proposal, I felt like I already knew her, I knew what she cared about, I understood some of her passions and I found some common ground to relate to her with. (Btw, I’m not a stalker in case you were wondering

So know your buyer. It helps to humanize the person behind the project description because then you can find an area that you’re both passionate about. It helps you choose the right words and the right things to say. So please spend that extra time getting to know the person you want to do business with.

2. Make a Personal Proposal – but Not on your Knees!

Whatever you do, please don’t start off writing the bid with descriptions about you or your company – remember that’s what the crackerjack profile section was for! Instead, in the bid, write about the buyer. Be friendly, be warm, be personable. You want to remind them, hey you’re a person too, and not just a username without feelings.

Write as you would to a friend – not your best friend, but a friend you’d like to be closer to, a friend you’d like to help. Be helpful, show them you care about their project and have read all its details, write about how you plan to tackle it, how it’ll help them, how excited you are to get started on it and how much you share the same passions – wordpress, gardening, iphone apps, whatever!

3. Offer Custom Samples – with a Twist

Here’s the thing. There’s this big mantra on elance and other sites that you should never offer custom samples. Never? Really. Well how else are you supposed to get samples? You’re a first-timer remember? You’re new to the field and you don’t have samples to hand out. You can MUST make custom samples!

Now agreed, custom samples may be easier in some professions than others. But you CAN do it if you really try. If you’re a web designer, you’re gonna have to make a sample website for the buyer. Or if you’re an editor, samples of before and after editing of his project. Or if a videographer, a short video of his production. Or if a writer, a sample of the buyer’s writing project.

Now, here’s the twist. You give incomplete samples. Yeah you heard me right. There’s a reason it’s called a “sample” and not an “actual”. You don’t give it all away for free, but you give just enough to (a) prove your ability and showcase your talent and (b) pique the buyer’s interest. This last point is very important. The buyer’s curiosity must be aroused so that if he/she likes the custom sample, he will immediately want more of it. And from you!

You can make custom samples in any field really. If the buyer wants a 10 min video, show him a 30 second one without color correction, professional voice over or editing (or all those other time-consuming tasks). This is what I did with a custom sample video for a company that requested help videos.

If the buyer wants a writing project of 1000 words, write a 100 – 150 words (and make it snazzy!). If a buyer wants a logo, design a vector one and watermark it. And so on.

Now here’s where the real benefit comes along. Once you’ve made a few custom samples to attract your first few buyers, these then become your portfolio. Voila!

4. Slash your Rates but not in the Usual Way!

Most people think going as low as possible in the money department is a sure-fire way to win a project. It’s also a sure-fire way to ensure you get stuck in that low rate rut and forever brand yourself as a low-class provider, no matter how much excellent work you do.

Instead, here’s what you should say to the buyer:

Tell ‘em you’re new to Elance. Tel ‘em your rates are actually X because you have [insert offline experience, education, qualifications, passion here] but since you’re new here you’re willing to offer them a deep discount of say, 50% off your rack rates! Make it sound like you’re doing them a favor and that they’re getting a really good deal (which they should be getting because you should actually be worth what you charge). Please note I am not advocating over-charging!!

This does two things: it makes buyers feel like you’re making an offer too tempting to pass up and it sets you up nicely to raise your rates with the same client later on if they send repeat work your way. Nifty, hunh?

Everyone starts at zero, so don’t make the mistake of assuming that it’s just tough for you. Yes the competition is global. Yes its killer. Yes only the fittest survive. Question is, are you willing to put in the initial extra effort?

Let me know how long it took you to get your first project in the comments below!

Please note this post contains affiliate links (that’s a good thing cause I’m promoting a product I’ve used, loved and made mandatory reading for my team of writers!)

Web content writers and copywriters can make a really great full-time income on the internet. The US Dept of Labor in conjunction with O*Net – The Occupational Information Network conservatively estimates that copywriters can earn $50,000+ per year. I personally know freelance writers who charge $100-$300 per hour.

So the question is: are you ready to make big bucks as an online writer? What are the essentials you need to know to start a writing career or step up an existing writing career a couple of notches?

In her ebook, How to Write Great Copy for the Web, author Donna Spencer (backed by the uber-respectable Rockable Press & FreelanceSwitch) outlines a practical, easy-to-do-and-follow strategy for establishing a niche as a web content writer/copy writer. If you’ve been looking for a step-by-step guide filled with useful, practical information, I highly recommend reading her book.

Here’s what she covers in How to Write Great Copy for the Web:

• Print vs Web: Why writing for the web is different than any other medium (including print). She uses eye-tracking studies and non-linear reading techniques to illustrate her point.
• Page Element: A list of web page features that facilitate and optimize the online reading experience. Examples include page layouts, headings and types, lists and how-to articles, box quotes and hyperlink usage.
• Persuasive Writing: How to write copy that is meant to persuade readers to buy or take specific action. This type of writing is essential if you are selling your own or a client’s products or if you are an affiliate marketer. Buyers pay extremely well for sales writing that is not sleazy, yet makes the sale by making a connection with the buyer. Words can do that. Your words. In the book, Donna shows you how to write persuasively for your audience so that your copy speaks to directly to them. She discusses the principles of writing concise (who has the time to read pages!) yet highly emotive copy to make the sale.
• Authentic Writing: A big part of web writing is to be original. In the book, the author shows you how to write in first and second person without appearing biased or prejudiced. You will learn to write copy that is genuine because that’s what readers want to see.
• Kinds of Web Page Copy: Donna discusses at great length typical web pages and the copy that should ideally go on them. Want to learn how to write the perfect About Us page? Need to know what should go on the Home Page of your (or a client’s) website? It’s all here in this book, presented with examples of actual websites Donna has worked on and results achieved as a direct result of the written copy.
• How to Write a Call to Action: Exceptional web copy is incomplete without a clear and specific call to action (CTA). The book shows you what kind of statements to use to close the deal and where to place them for maximum effect!
• SEO Baby!: The book also has a section on writing for search engines. SEO knowledge is integral to writing web content because every business needs its content to be featured as high in search results as possible in order to attract relevant and targeted traffic to its website. Although I personally feel this section could have been expanded upon, Donna still does a great job outlining the basics (which we so often forget!) and introducing the novice to page elements that are crucial for SEO.

If you are someone looking to join the internet writing community and need a starter guide, How to Write Great Copy for the Web is the perfect starting point. If you already have a few clients under your belt or have written material for your own site with moderate results, this book will show you some simple techniques to up your game. According to the Pareto Principle 80% of your income is generated from 20% of your tasks. Become efficient at what you truly love and make that 20% really work for you. If you love to write, learn how to write better using this book.

Why wait? If you’re convinced you want to read this book and benefit from Donna Spencer’s advice, you can download it immediately for just $15 and start reading it right now! Productivity gurus always tell you to take the first step, no matter how small, immediately. NOW. So if you’ve decided that you want to earn a healthy income writing for the web, then click here to download now!

Remember to leave a comment once you’ve read the book How to Write Great Copy for the Web so that others wanting to read may benefit from your review!

You never really know when the unexpected will strike – an illness, an accident, a natural disaster, a crime – anything that could potentially derail your online business. These kind of personal crises situations can arise when you least expect them do, and when you’re a solopreneur, your online business’s very survival depends on you being at the helm of affairs.

Recently we had a fire destroy most parts of our house – the loss we sustained is great both financially and psychologically. And its taking every ounce of energy to focus on the positives – all lives are saved – which is something we’re immensely and deeply grateful for.

But what of my business? How do I ensure that my business continues and prospers inspite of the calamity thats befallen us? Here are some of the steps I’ve taken to ensure that business runs as smoothly as possible.

1. Keep a Record of All Projects Online

The one big advantage of running an online business is that I don’t necessarily need my own computer system for 90% of my business tasks. My important docs and spreadsheets are on Google Docs, my project backups are online courtesy Dropbox, and my task list and calendar deadlines are on Google calendar.

Its essential to keep all your work and associated files in at least two locations, if not more. One should be your home office PC (or laptop)

what used to be our bedroom

and the other preferably online. Use a facility such as Dropbox or Megaupload to keep online backups. Also keep a webmail account as part of your business account. Although I use salma@wordpl.net as my primary account for business correspondence, I have a gmail account tied in to this account so all mails are synced on both accounts.

These steps have been crucial to helping me return to work part-time from my mom’s PC, since I’m staying with her while my house is being repaired.

2. Build a Team

Its all well and good to think that as a solopreneur you get to keep all the rewards of business, but we often forget that in doing so, we also bear all the risk/loss. As soon as I could, I built a team to help me manage the workload. Granted its a small team right now, but it comprises of capable people I trust. They’ve been able to help me keep the business going and managing their end of the work.

3. Intimate those Affected ASAP

We had 5 active projects at the time of this incident. I sent brief notices to all 5 clients about whats happened and assured them that their work will carry on as scheduled. Along with an email I also sent them photographic evidence. Only 1 out of those 5 projects will experience a slight delay. All my clients wrote back to me saying I could take extra time on their work and that they understand.

I believe that if you’ve spent months (or years) nurturing trust and credibility with your clients, then the real mettle of that trust will come into play during tough times. If your previous work has been above par and you’ve maintained a positive relationship with your clients, there’s a strong likelihood that your clients will reciprocrate and will be more than understanding in your hour of need.

Stuff I Didn’t Do and Wish I Had

I have to admit all is not perfect. I lost a lot of personal documentation in the fire – medical records, educational degrees, investment certificates, and more. I wish I’d exercised the same diligence in keeping online copies of these documents as I did in keeping records of my business. It would have saved me a lot of leg work and hassle now headed my way as I traipse from one government office to another.

The rules of business and life are really the same: plan for the unexpected as best you can so that when a crises strikes you’re not completely debilitated.  Your mind should be free to take care of the emergency steps as you rest easy knowing that once the immediate details are taken care of, you’ll bounce back stronger than ever!

If you’re just starting out in the quest to make money online, the world of online business can seem vast and confusing at first. You may not even know yet what kind of business you want to do on the net! To help you out in the key initial stages of this decision, I’ve put together a post with the basic money-making pathways on the internet.

Note: this post is for beginners so dont get disgruntled all you advanced gurus out there – your turn will come soon!

In this post I’m going to talk about:

• What is an online business
• What it means to build and run an online business
• What does an online business model look like
• What are the different ways you can generate an income online

While this topic is so vast that entire books may be (and have been) written about it, there’s very little starter info out there. So I’m going to cover these topics in the most basic, simplest way in an attempt to give a broad perspective so you can understand the big picture of running an online business.

First let’s define it.

An online or internet business is virtually any for-profit venture that you can run on the Internet. Some or all of the regular business activities – building a product, attracting visitors, product launches, marketing, selling, retaining customers, building brand loyalty, receiving payments – may be accomplished on the internet.

There are 2 different kinds of online biz models:

Sell your own products and services
or
Sell someone else’s products and services

Option #1: Selling your own products and services

Your own product may be a tangible good such as a book or a piece of furniture or an intangible service such as graphic design or web development. What you decide to sell obviously depends on your expertise and experience. To sell your own product or service, at minimum, you need:

• A virtual store a.k.a a website
• Customers a.k.a traffic to the website
• Money received a.k.a payment processors

We’ll go into more detail into what each of these three things mean in just a bit. First let’s take a look at option #2.

Option #2: Sell someone else’s products and services

This is called “affiliate marketing” and is simply based on the concept of commissions. To put it simply, the more you sell another person/company’s product or service, the more you rake in via commission sales. How? You simply employ all the techniques listed in option #1 to sell other people’s products versus your own. So to be a successful affiliate marketer, you still need the basic three:

• Website
• Traffic
• Money

So now that we know the basic formula for selling your own stuff versus other people’s stuff is the same, let’s delve deeper into what these three things (website, traffic, money) mean.

WEBSITE

Just as a regular brick and mortar shop has a physical venue, you too need a virtual store from which to sell your wares or services. This virtual store may be your own website or a third-party website, such as eBay or Amazon.

Some of the ways you can sell your own or someone else’s products and services are:

• Sell info products via a blog or website. Info products can be ebooks, software, podcasts, videos, site memberships, etc
• Sell physical products such as custom-designed t-shirts, jewelry, cakes, confectionary, etc
• Sell services such as freelance photography, design, copywriting, multimedia, coding, etc
• Sell information (in the form of informative articles or such) and earn from an ads-based model (Google AdSense, Chitika, Sponsored Ads, etc)

A professional website adds credibility and oomph to your online business model and is not optional anymore. If you’re using third-party websites (such as Amazon or Elance) to sell, you will still be taken more seriously as a reliable business if you can give a link out to your own website.

TRAFFIC

No matter how good a mousetrap you’ve built, no one will come unless you promote it well. Thankfully the days of expensive advertising are over and as an Internet business owner, all you really need to do is employ the free (albeit time-consuming) channels of online media marketing to promote your product or service.

Some of the ways to attract customers to buy your (or others’) products and services online is via online marketing. You can market using:

• Social media channels like Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube, Twitter, etc
• Online and offline referrals
• Network (visit other communities)
• Join like-minded communities (e.g. a photographer joining a photography membership site)
• Rank high in search results, either organic or paid. Organic ranking is when you appear on search results without spending money on advertising, but rather through use of excellent search-optimized content. Paid results are those you pay for and usually appear as “sponsored listings” on a search engine.

MONEY

What’s the point of all the hard work if there’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, right? One of the main benefits of an online business is that you can be location-independent. However, no matter where in the world you are, you need a fast, secure way to transfer money from sales into your local bank account.

Some of the ways to receive online payments are:

• Developing an e-commerce ready site, with a shopping cart and payment method
• Via PayPal, Moneybookers or other online payment processors
• Through direct deposits, wire transfers, pay orders or checks

Skills to Run an Online Business

• Clear focus and direction: you need a niche and you need to be passionate about that niche.
• Self-discipline and motivation: when you’re your own boss, the will to work comes from you and only you
• Jack-of-all: when you’re starting out chances are you’re a one-man show so you’ve got to learn to do everything from accounting to marketing.
• Delegate and automate: when you can expand your business, delegate or automate the routine tasks so you can concentrate on the life-giving entrepreneurial tasks of your business
• Adaptability and flexibility: the online world is constantly in flux; it’s also unforgiveable since what goes online usually stays online.
• Thought leadership: the more successful you are at branding yourself/your company and being unique, the more people will look upon you as an innovative thinker and leader.

Selling your Own Stuff vs Selling Other Peoples’ Stuff

So now you have a basic idea about the tools you need and the kinds of online businesses you could get into. However, how do you decide whether to go for Option #1 selling your own stuff or Option #2, selling other people’s stuff? Well, it need not be an either/or decision. You can actually do both. Here are the main advantages/disadvantages of both options:

InfoGraphic: How to Start an Online Business

Using the chart above (which encapsulates this post), you can plot a course of action for yourself. For example, you could decide, as I did, to sell your own service (content development) via a third party website (Elance.com in my case), market it via social media (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube) and receive payment via wire transfer. OR you could decide to sell your own service (e.g. web design) via your own website, publicize it on relevant forums and communities and receive payment via direct deposit. OR you could decide to sell other people’s products (affiliate marketing using say, Amazon.com’s products) by promoting it on your own blog and receiving payments via Western Union money transfer.

OR still you could choose to employ multiple strategies at the same time. For example, you could have a website where you sell your own product/service, as well as affiliate products/services as well as have adverts for monetization – a 3-in-one model – the possibilities are limited only by your business acumen.

So many choices, so many paths and permutations and combinations! There’s bound to be one that fits you!

Do let me know via comments below if this online business primer has helped you in any way and if you’d like to see actual tangible internet business ideas discussed here next!

So lately I’ve been lucky enough to land some really awesome clients. And they’re all Australian. And I’m thinking maybe thats no fluke. Australians, I’ve noticed, are typically on the top of the outsourcing game and treat it as a real value addition to their business. Hence they tend to respect their contractors much more. I have no idea how the Australian economy is doing, but based on the work my clients have been sending to me, I’d say things are looking up.

Here are some of the more concrete reasons why I love my Aussie clients (buyers looking to outsource take note!):

1. Lavish Praise

How good that feels. “Salma, you’ve exceeded my expectations. As usual”". Or how about this one “That was perfect! Hope you’re available for the rest of the year” Yups these guys are not shy when it comes to appreciation and how we freelance entrepreneurs love that! A little ego stroking goes a long way, and makes us want to work even harder and give it our absolute best.

2. Courtesy when Criticizing

Show me a freelance professional who’ve never had any criticisms of his work and I’ll show you a cat who thinks he’s king. Really, what is life without its ups and downs and with the praise we also have to deal with criticisms of our work at times. Maybe there’s a misunderstanding between you and the buyer - it happens all the time and without any bad intentions. What I love most about my Aus clients is that even when they want me to re-do or re-write soemthing, they’ll phrase their request just so (yes those devils can get me to agree to just about anything so long as they play nice!). But seriously, they’ll use phrases like “perhaps I’m mistaken but…” or “please let me know if I’m out of line here” or “would you take a look at that again; i’d be happy to pay for extra work”. Sweet music to my ears!

These guys know that respect and courtesy are the basic foundations in getting a great job done and they know that when two creatives are working together, great things can happen. Whoever said though that great things would be easy or problem-free? So it really helps when they dont blow their top at any (minor or major) setback and give their outsourcee the benefit of the doubt. Always makes me want to make things right, instantly.

3. Timely and Relevant Feedback

Since outsourced work is typically performed off-site and communication is in a virtual setting, there’s got to be a constant hum of 2-way communication to keep things moving along. Whether the work is good or bad, freelancers need to know so they can either improve or do more of the same, except better. I love it when a client takes time to give thorough and detailed feedback; shows they value their business and makes me care about providing them the best output possible.

4. Clear Scope of Work

Crystal clear instructions. Everytime. These clients of mine will do anything to ensure their communication is free from ambiguity. If that means attaching screenshots, they’ll do it. If that means giving me a ton of links describing what they’re looking for, they’ll go and find them. They are every bit working WITH me, not above me. We’re a team. And they’re happy to answer and invite questions at every step of the way, in case anything is not clear.

5. Prompt Payments

Ah, the bane of a freelance life. I just love clients who fund escrow without being asked to and release payment when the project is complete to mutual satisfaction. Who in their right mind wouldn’t?

So, anyone out there looking to outsource some work to a freelancer, please take note of the above. These are the things that make a project successful and lead to lasting business relationships. These are the factors that lead to trust being built between two previously wary parties. These are things all outsourcers must do to ensure their outsourcing efforts succeed. Learn from the Aussies, they may be headed out of the World Cup and may have cheesy ads promoting Australia as a tourist destination, but they are essentially good at heart

This is the 6th and last post in a 6-part series on How to Write Winning Bids and Proposals. While I will be giving specific examples of bid writing techniques from Elance, the information in these posts is relevant and applicable to all freelance proposals in any online medium. I hope you’ll be able to use this information to bid smarter and significantly reduce your proposal writing time in the long term as well as attain a higher award ratio.

You’ve finally placed your bid. Now the interminable wait starts. Is the buyer going to award you the project, is he going to reject your bid or is he simply going to do nothing? The last is the most agonizing since you have no way of knowing if the buyer will EVER award the project to anyone! Well, what if I told you there’s a way to significantly reduce your anxiety and ensure that a channel of communication opens up with the buyer?

There is. And it’s called “follow-up”. A follow up simply refers to an action taken (after proposal is sent), to seek dialogue with the buyer. There are ways to do this for maximum effect but first let’s see the advantages.

Why Follow-up?

• It gives you the chance to increase the number of times the buyer’s eye will look at your name/company name/username. Everyone places bids, how many follow-up that bid with another personal message? Exactly.
• It gives you a chance to show the buyer you’re human and personally care about your business and your clients.
• It establishes you as pro-active and confident; traits many buyers look for when they choose to outsource.
• It gives hesitant buyers a chance to talk with you and gives you a chance to add further value/clarifications to your bid/proposal.
• It shows your interest and can-do attitude to the buyer – trust me, they love that!
• It may get you not just the project at hand, but many more projects the buyers haven’t even posted yet

 How to Follow-up

1. One day, or a couple of days before the bidding time is about to close, send the buyer a message via the personal message board re-stating your interest in the project and inviting the opportunity for questions or more info from the buyer.

2. Once the bidding time has passed and a buyer hasn’t awarded the project to anyone, send them a PMB note asking if you can help them in their decision and give all your contact information to them. This may include email, phone, cell, skype ID, messenger IDs, Twitter & Linkedin IDs, etc. Chances are most buyers’ interest will be piqued and they’ll click on a link out of simple curiosity and appreciate the diversity of options available for contacting you.

3. If a buyer responds to your follow up messages, immediately put them at ease by talking as though you’ve already been hired to understand their problem (”our” project instead of “your project”). But also remember that there’s a thin line between helping someone and harming yourself; be sure the buyer understands you’re not going to do any actual work beyond understanding the scope of work until they formally award the project to you. So your goal at this pre-award dialogue stage is to be helpful, courteous and above all, show them how you’ll add value to the project. It could be because you have world-class equipment (for an audio/video project), or because you can help them in various areas (SEO as well as content). The most important thing to remember is to keep the channel of communication open. You might be surprised at the results. 

I once bid on a project worth about $3000. I didn’t get the job but because of the excellent channel of communication I’d opened with the buyer during the follow up phase, they contacted me a few days later for another small job. Then a few weeks later they gave me some more work. This buyer is now a regular client – I’ve already done work worth about $3000 for them with bookings of $25,000 (no typo) more over the rest of the year.

I’m just saying; don’t underestimate the power of communication. It really goes beyond the bid. The bid is just a starting point; the follow up is where the value is at. In a social context, the bid is the hello + handshake; the follow up is the ice-breaker. Or in this case, the deal-maker.

Do you follow-up with buyers? Share your best communication strategies by leaving a comment for the community!

This is the fifth post in a 6-part series on How to Write Winning Bids and Proposals. While I will be giving specific examples of bid writing techniques from Elance, the information in these posts is relevant and applicable to all freelance proposals in any online medium. I hope you’ll be able to use this information to bid smarter and significantly reduce your proposal writing time in the long term as well as attain a higher award ratio.

So you’ve decided what your hourly rate or fixed fee for this project ought to be and are all ready to place your bid. But wait a sec, did you know that on Elance a very high percentage of bids gets rejected because they fall out of the buyer’s budget? So how then are you going to ensure that (a) your bid price is competitive and (b) that you only bid on projects with a high chance of the buyer being able to pay your stated fee?

Even if you’ve followed the steps of bid writing to a tee, your bid can still go awry at the pricing stage. Therefore it’s extremely essential to not just determine what a fair price for the project would be, but to also have some level of confidence that a buyer will be able to pay your asking rate.

There can be huge disparities in pricing expectations. For example: a buyer posts up a project expecting to pay $.01 per word for 20, 250-word blog posts (ridiculous I know but bear with me for illustration purposes). Hence he prices the job as falling below $500, expecting to pay $50 for the entire project. You rate is $0.1 per word; hence you’d make the bid for (250 x0.1×20), i.e. $500 (not counting Elance fees and any other expenses). You can clearly see the disparity now, eh?

There’s no way you’d be able to convince somebody to shell out $500 when they’ve determined that $50 is the fair price offer. So ideally you want to skip projects like this because you’d just be wasting your time writing a bid for it since the project won’t come to you unless you drastically slash your rates.

There’s at least 4 ways (maybe more) to weed out the buyers who aren’t willing to pay your asking price:

1. Match the buyer’s stated budget with the buyer’s tone to gauge seriousness
2. Find out how much the buyer typically pays or has paid in the past for similar work
3. Gauge the buyer’s reputation for paying on time, paying bonuses, etc both on Elance and on the Net in general
4. Consider whether the buyer has larger sponsors backing him

Budget + Tone = Willingness to Pay

Conventional wisdom would state that you place bids within the stated budget range and while that’s probably the best technique 99% of the time, there are instances when you should bid higher or lower. These instances are when:

• The project’s scope (in your opinion) seems to be greater or lesser than stated in the description
• The value addition and effort on your part justifies the rate

For example, I placed a $1440 bid for a project whose stated budget was less than $500 and got the job – why? And more importantly, why didn’t the buyer just say their budget could go higher so they’d attract quality bids? Here’s what I think happened: I bid that price because the project entailed creative writing in another person’s voice and “tone” and required research of places I’d not personally visited. As to why the buyer started with a low budget, one theory is that often on Elance and other freelance job boards buyers are unsure of the budget themselves (they may not be the expert, you are!) and they may be wondering if there are any quality providers on these sites.

So I bid. But how did I know the buyer would be willing to pay my bid price? After all, it seems like such a gamble, right? I looked at the buyer’s tone. She used phrases like “show me what you’ve got” and “name your price”, indicating she was a serious buyer and not just a “proposal scout”. I went with my hunch and it worked, again proving how crucial researching the buyer is.

History of Payments

This is so easy and do-able; everyone should do it for every project before bidding. Go through a buyer’s feedback history watching for what they’ve paid in the past, both for similar work and for other work. Their willingness to get the best quality will shine through in each and every project they’ve commissioned.

Buyer’s Repute

Gauge the buyer’s performance in doling out bonuses and paying on time. Do more than 90% of providers recommend them for paying on time? Recently I worked with a buyer who promised a bonus for the addition of images. I added non-copyright images and provided them in the file format he’d asked only to never hear from him again – my fault since this milestone hadn’t been added nor escrow funded for it. Lesson learned. If a buyer promises bonuses, add it in as a milestone and have them fund escrow on completion of the bonus task. See how they’ve treated other providers on this issue and you’re less likely to get burned.

Who’s Pocket is the Money coming from?

Some buyers are actually scouting for providers to outsource jobs to from their current clients. Some are the end clients. Determine which is which because in the former case your buyer will be taking a commission cut and will want you to reduce your prices as much as possible. I prefer working with clients who are the end client since they’re much more likely to pay asking fees and want quality work.

So, in a nutshell…

You’ve determined your price. Now determine if the buyer will pay that price to the best of your ability and resources. If you don’t you’re just wasting time on making bids that won’t be accepted and then complaining about how your bids constantly get rejected. And then whose fault will it be?

Let me know in the comments section if you intend to use any of these approaches to determining whether a buyer is likely to pay your price. I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

So. Just came back from attending Pakistan’s first ever blog awards.  *significant pause*  It was so great to see and meet in person all the wonderful people I’ve been following on twitter and it was especially nice to win the Best Business Blog category. In fact, if anything I feel a teensy bit guilty for not updating and adding more value to the blog and the award makes me renew the pledge to give readers and casual surfers something worth bookmarking and sharing, so thank you all.

If I’d been asked to give an award-ceremony-style speech (haha), here’s what I would have probably said:

If I had to choose a single person to dedicate the award to, it would have to be my daughter because it was only after she was born that I decided I wasn’t comfortable with the two choices laid out in front of me: to re-join the corporate world and put her in daycare, or stay at home and give up my business goals. I made a third choice for myself, to work from home and adopt the freelance entrepreneur’s lifestyle, and a whole new world opened up to me. And that’s the world I aim to share through my blog.

Of course its possible to achieve success in life without any support (especially if you’re seriously dedicated) but I’m glad and thankful for the support of my husband and parents in helping me build my business, excruciatingly slowly, brick by virtual brick, but hey! Its happenin’.

You know before there was twitter, before Facebook, before YouTube, there was the good ‘ol way of community interaction on the internet via bulletin board and later through discussion forums. In fact community-based forums are still, in my opinion, the hottest and most useful places to network and make amazing connections.  The amount of support I received from my fellow freelance writers at Suite101 , has been enough to make me realize and truly appreciate the value of those connections. Thank you fellow Suitees for all the votes, you guys are the best!

And of course a huge shout out to WordPL “fans” (wherever they may be), Rabia Garib & the entire team at CIO, Pakistan’s Google head Badar Khushnood, the judges, sponsors, and fellow nominees!

And here’s the part where I’d have run out of time, and they started up the music in an effort get me off the stage.

Thank you all, means much.

The science of what makes a perfect proposal can be baffling at times. But recently I found it can be quite simple too. I placed a bid not so long ago for a project on Elance to which the buyer responded:

“Your proposal is perfect, Salma. You clearly understand what we are looking for, and you articulated your understanding very well.”

I’m going to reproduce the exact bid here for you and then dissect it to find the 3 main take-home points that I believe made this bid such a success.

Here’s the project description:

“We are looking for a talented researcher/writer to develop timely, interesting and even controversial topics that can be used for blog posts and articles. The subject matter of all topics must be nutrition related, preferably protein related.

The topics should be timely (e.g., ‘breaking news’ in the world of dietary protein or nutrition). The topics should be interesting so that they encourage a reader to ‘click through’ the title to learn more. The topics may be controversial as they relate to social issues such as health care, economy, or any other popular social issue.

We are also looking for the writer to draft a short article (less than 300 words) about each approved topic. The first paragraph of the short article should provide a summary of the entire article.

Each article should reference some connection to our company, so that the article is relevant to our company and contains references to our company and our products.

The format, style and quality for the articles should be comparable to articles seen in either the Wall Street Journal, or other reputable journals.

This is an ongoing, long-term project, and we are looking for at least 50 articles each month. We will provide you with information about our company and our products. Each article must be unique, original and expertly written.

We want to avoid over-promotion of our company and our products in the articles, however, our company and our products should be referenced [for example, you may add information into an article that either (1) delivers a message that profiles our company's understanding of a challenge in the field of nutrition, and our unique value proposition for addressing that challenge, or (2) discuss a case study that demonstrates how a specific customer's use of our products helped them. In either case, our product and company should be subtly (not too overtly) promoted in the article].“

And here’s my bid:

“Hi Steve*,

After reading your project description, I did some quick internet research on breaking news topics in the field of nutrition (especially protein-related). I came up with some ideas and I’ll appreciate if you let me know if this is the direction you were looking for.

Example 1: I could tie the breaking news in this article American Diabetes Association Helps Moms Find The Right Balance (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/184956.php) to how [name of product] can be used for when moms haven’t been able to strike the perfect nutritional balance for their family (and we all know moms have days like that!).

Example 2: This news story on Middle-Age Americans Less Mobile than Ever (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_97320.html) can be related to how [name of product] stimulates your metabolism & reduces fat stores.

As a professional content developer with a dedicated team of writers and researchers, I can offer you at least 50 expertly-written, error-free, 100% original, informative and click- and share-worthy articles every month. All articles will be approximately 300 words and contain a short intro summary paragraph. The articles will be written in an unbiased journalistic style.

Please see some sample reference articles attached with this bid.

If you require more samples, I shall be happy to provide them. I am available to discuss your project on Skype (username below) and am very responsive via email. I would really welcome the opportunity to work with you on a long-term basis to our mutual satisfaction.

Thank you so much for your consideration – I hope to hear from you soon!”

* named changed to protect privacy

3 REASONS WHY THIS PROPOSAL ROCKS

1. It Connects with the Buyer

Notice how I addressed the buyer by name even though I’ve never worked with him before, nor does he mention his name in the project description. Researching his name was a simple matter of scanning the buyer’s feedback history and reading the reviews, one of which addressed him by name. A quick Google search of the company verified that a person by that name was indeed part of the firm. (Note: I also scan buyer feedback to get a sense of the buyer’s work ethic and payment history).

So addressing the buyer by name immediately caught his attention, personalized my bid and (hopefully) made the buyer feel like I was directly talking to him since I had taken the time to find out about him and his company.

2. It Prioritizes the Buyer/Project’s Needs

Notice how in my proposal, I barely talk about myself. No reasons as to why I’m so great for this job, no hoopla about my experience or qualifications. Nothing. Just a straight-forward approach to showing the buyer that I understand his project.

This can be achieved in many other ways, including providing a short re-cap in your own words of the project’s needs, scope and depth.

Just make sure you communicate to the buyer that you understand the project and can add some real value to it.

3. It Gives Specific Examples of How I (Provider) Can Help Him (Buyer)

The examples I give in the bid are really the crux of the entire proposal. They instantly show the buyer that I know what I’m talking about, have the goods to back it up and have actually spent some time and effort on his project, thereby indicating that I’m eager and willing to put in the required effort for this project.

Elance doesn’t allow specific-to-the-project, custom samples and I wouldn’t really spend my time making them either. But simple research such as this, which took me less than 5 minutes to do, is a definite, concrete and professional way to show you care.

This buyer is now a steady client. We’ve increased the number of articles each month, and its regular continuous work for my team. 15 minutes. That’s all it took for me to research and write this proposal and now I have a long term client on board who I’m very happy to work with.

Your perfect proposal need not be long, wordy, full of your qualifications, or impressive in any way. Just be sure to provide real value and address the buyer’s and the project’s needs. Your only role is to figure out how you can best help. Articulate that in the clearest way possible and you’ve got it made.

Did this case study sample of writing the perfect proposal help you? Drop a line below in the comments box with your thoughts!

This is the fourth post in a 6-part series on How to Write Winning Bids and Proposals. While I will be giving specific examples of bid writing techniques from Elance, the information in these posts is relevant and applicable to all freelance proposals in any online medium. I hope you’ll be able to use this information to bid smarter and significantly reduce your proposal writing time in the long term as well as attain a higher award ratio.

Hopefully you’ll have used the techniques described in Part III How to Write a Winning Proposal or Bid to craft a highly intuitive and custom proposal for your would-be client. After reading your tailored proposal, a buyer will eagerly look to review your work and turn to see your samples. If you don’t attach samples, you’re going to be in ample hot water and will potentially lose the lead. Simple as that.

Attaching relevant samples is not an option. After writing a winning proposal you must follow up with relevant samples to accompany your bid – no exceptions.

1. Make Samples Relevant & Appropriate to the Job at Hand

The ideal scenario for a buyer (and which will make it easy for him to choose you) is to view highly relevant samples to his posted project. Obviously the closer your sample is to his project, the easier it’ll be for him to visualize you in the role of hiree.

So for a logo design project, that may mean you’ve got to attach previously completed logos that match the industry, the product category, the branding, the styling and perhaps even the size. For a writing project it may mean that you have to match the subject matter, the writing style and the end product (web content, article, e-book, etc). For other categories of work (finance, web design & development, sales & marketing, etc) it’ll mean having a portfolio of samples relevant to those categories.

2. Three is the Magic Number of Samples

On average try to include 3 samples of work. If the project is very specific and narrow and you’ve got a sample that exactly matches the buyer’s requirements, then perhaps you can get away with just one sample. But in general, 3 is the magic number. Most buyers won’t have the time or inclination to wade through more than 3 attachments and if they’re really interested in exploring your work further, they’ll click on your website or portfolio link. But for the initial bid keep samples up to 3 so the buyer can see enough of your work to judge diversity, competence, skill and style.

3. Do Include Web Links Instead of Attachments

It’s okay, even advisable, to attach links instead of document samples. It’s easier for buyers to click once on a link that’ll take ‘em directly to view the sample instead of the 2+ clicks it’ll take to open an attachment. If you can maintain an online portfolio of work, that would definitely work in your favor.

4. Keep Ready a Portfolio of Varied Samples to Save Time

When you’ve been freelancing a while you’ll have built up several projects to be used as samples – make sure they’re organized according to the types of jobs you usually pitch for – e.g. for my writing content my sample categories are web content, articles, SEO content, e-books, training and user guides, newsletters, etc. So anytime I want to bid on a project I just need to pull 3 relevant samples from the appropriate category. If the buyer is looking for published works, I just give a set of 3 hyperlinks to my online work. The entire process takes me about 2 minutes to do and presto relevant samples attached!

If you’re not yet a seasoned freelancer and don’t have a portfolio of samples, MAKE SOME. This is so obvious; I’m genuinely surprised when people lament the lack of samples as a reason for not winning any jobs. You can either make samples as you go along or if you know what kind of work you want to do, just make samples that’ll reflect that (e.g. write travel articles if you want to break into the travel writer industry).

5. Explain Complicated Samples

Anytime you’re attaching a file format a little out of the ordinary, ordinary being .doc. docx, .xls, .pdf, .mp3, .gif, .jpeg, etc, follow it up with a brief tutorial on opening and viewing the files. For example every time I send buyers samples of training content developed in Articulate, the system makes 3 files, which I then zip and send. I always let the buyer know they have to unzip it and open the .html file within the folder. (Yes I know you’re thinking I need to upload my training content online so I can just give a link – will get around to that in a bit!). But until you find a simpler solution, explain your attachments if they’re complex in any way.

6. Protect your Samples!

In this world of plagiarism and blatant stealing, its imperative to guard your samples as YOUR SAMPLES, which means a client may not use them in any way whatsoever except to view to make a decision about your abilities and skill. You also need to protect the client whose sample work you’re using. On documents and images it’s best to add a propriety watermark saying “sample” or the “property of” or “do not distribute”. It’s also best to save all regular docs as PDF files or JPEGs for use in samples since that adds an extra layer of protection. Always be sure to just use an excerpt of a client’s work as your sample (as opposed to the entire project) and always with the client’s express permission. Do not use samples from work that you’ve previously signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) on.

Samples are a chance for you to project and showcase your best work and best fit for the job by demonstrating that you’ve already done similar work. Use them wisely and to your advantage!

Do you have any tips for attaching samples with your proposal or bid? Please do share them in the comments below so we all benefit from the community’s advice.

This is the third post in a 6-part series on How to Write Winning Bids and Proposals. While I will be giving specific examples of bid writing techniques from Elance, the information in these posts is relevant and applicable to all freelance proposals in any online medium. I hope you’ll be able to use this information to bid smarter and significantly reduce your proposal writing time in the long term as well as attain a higher award ratio.

Writing a winning proposal or bid on Elance and other freelance sites is probably the cornerstone of your business. After all, if you can’t sell yourself, your services, and your business, then what chance do you realistically have of winning new clients and sustaining your business?

Knowing how to draft a proposal that speaks to a client is a skill, fortunately one that can be learned and perfected with practice. One of the best ways to learn how to write great proposals is to see how others have written them.

Hot TIP: On Elance, check out projects awarded in or before 2007; most of them had open bidding so you can see the great and not-so-great bid examples.

Components of a Winning Proposal

Here are my top 10 tips for putting together a rocking proposal for any freelance project.

1. Personalize it
2. Match the tone of the buyer or the project
3. Start strong with your main USP
4. Make it easy to scan through
5. Make it benefits-oriented
6. Answer all the questions – asked and unasked
7. Restate main points
8. Discuss samples attached
9. Proof-read
10. Signature and links

1. Personalize it

As I outlined in Part II How to Investigate a Buyer, start off your proposal (whenever possible) with a personal greeting to the client. Hello Samantha versus Greetings user01.

2. Match the tone of the buyer or project

Match the tone of your proposal to either the buyer’s tone or to the nature of the project. A proposal for a serious technical writing project should be logical in tone and factual in substance, whereas a fashion blog’s proposal should be upbeat, use modern colloquialisms where appropriate and portray you as someone already “in the zone”. The tone of your proposal will show prospective clients a sampling of the personality needed for the execution of a project. Moreover it’ll also make buyers feel comfortable with you if you’re already speaking their language.

Here are two examples of completely different styles that I used while bidding for two completely different projects:

For a project on razor-sharp, edgy travel content:

“You want witty, humorous, original, upbeat, and slightly wacky? It’s here. I’m an online entrepreneur who believes in the notion that to be successful (financially or otherwise) you’ve got be a little crazy. How else are you supposed to think outside the box, right?”

For a project on online education:

“As a former e-learning specialist, I have been intrinsically involved in developing course material to be sold through online distance learning programs (please take a look at the verified work experience section in my profile). I know the industry, I know its players, and I have insider knowledge about its workings. “

3. Start strong with your main USP

The first paragraph of your proposal usually makes or breaks the deal. No one has the time to read through a clichéd, boring, irrelevant, egotistical or banal set of statements. If you’ve ever been guilty of starting a bid with the following sentences, STOP immediately!

“With great pleasure, we would like to introduce us and offer our services as a professional Writing and Editing company. We have been writing on different projects for five years and have a reasonable exposure to these markets and audiences.”

Bah, who cares? It sounds like a generic bid template with poor grammar!

“Hello, I am the owner of XYZ freelance writing services. I am a talented freelance writer with an Honors Bachelor of Arts degree in English and …”

*yawn* boring! They’ve lost me already.

“I am very happy to learn that you are seeking a professional to help you with your work.”

Really? Well I’m very happy for you but how are you addressing my needs (thinks the buyer)?

The above are all examples from actual bids I’ve seen that have not won projects. The buyer is thinking “what’s in it for me” so stop starting your bid with statements the buyer has no interest in!

Instead try starting your bid with your strongest and most relevant points first. Project the most compelling reason a buyer should hire you right at the start, just after your greeting.

Examples of some great opening paragraphs are:

For an e-book on breastfeeding:

“I am bidding on this project because the subject matter is near and dear to my heart. I nursed my two-year-old son until he was 17 months old, participated in nursing support groups, worked with lactation consultants, and conducted my own research. I am intimately familiar with the ups and downs, the tricks for solving problems, and how nursing affects every area of a new mom’s life.”

For financial website reviews:

“I’ve completed more than 300 reviews for various websites and products on Elance alone. Attached are just 5 samples of our debt consolidation site reviews which appear on this website: link”

When you use this approach, the buyer is immediately drawn to your skill set and how it can help propel his project, which is what he’s really interested in knowing about you anyways.

4. Make it easy to scan through

Proceed convincingly from your beginning sentence and incorporate the following elements into your bid to make it easy and fast for buyers to read and scan through: (remember its all about making it convenient and obvious for the buyer to choose you)

• Use bullets to highlight points
• Use links to direct buyers to your online portfolio
• Use short paragraphs where each para discusses one aspect of your bid (1 para for experience, 1 for price, 1 for samples, etc)

Example:

“With me as your provider, you’ll get someone with:

a) 4 years of instructional design and content management experience
b) An eye for aesthetically-appealing design combined with user-appropriate interactivity
c) Software skills for Captivate, Presenter, Photoshop and PowerPoint
d) Exceptional attention to detail, especially important in an e-learning project”

OR

“Please see my published works at the following locations:
Elance Blog: http://bit.ly/aCpRTb
Suite101: http://www.suite101.com/profile.cfm/salmajafri
My Blog- WordPL: http://www.wordpl.net“

5. Make it benefits-oriented

Use active, first-person, action-oriented language and make the bid about the buyer, not about you. If they want to know your education, your company’s history and other side details, they can take a look at your Elance profile or your resume – don’t include these details in your bid unless they relate directly to the project. Buyers are busy people too – they don’t have the time to sift through the irrelevant stuff; they want to know the main benefit of hiring you instead of the 50 other applicants for the job; give them some solid reasons. You can only do that by writing a benefits-oriented bid as opposed to a self-centered bid. Instead of saying “I can do this” say “you’ll get this”.

Example:

“You’ll receive a fully formatted and saleable e-book which you can immediately offer for purchase on your website.”

Or

“These articles will help in establishing you as the go-to authority for financial markets explained in simple, clear and non-technical language.”

See how the language is focused on the buyer (as opposed to the freelancer) and how your services will benefit him or her? So find out what benefit the buyer is looking for and then show him a way to get that with your services. It could be anything – traffic, sales, goodwill, convenience – it’s your job to figure it out.

6. Answer all questions – asked and unasked

Answering all the buyer’s questions and being honest and upfront about your responsibilities shows that you respect them enough to read their project description and answer accordingly.

Perhaps one of the most important things freelancers don’t do is answer the unasked questions. Recently I had a buyer who needed web content but didn’t yet have a website. Although the project didn’t ask for it, I went ahead and offered a site map consultation to build the web pages that I’d write the content for.

Also, since I have digital artists on my team, I can usually also offer images to augment the web content or e-books or what-have-you. Not every buyer goes for it, but those that need it (or want it) but haven’t asked for it, are immediately drawn to the value addition of my proposal.

So think about what else a buyer may need and see what extra services you can offer them to seal the deal. If you don’t know what else a buyer may need, ASK! Asking questions is the number one way to build rapport with clients. The percentage of projects I’ve received because of establishing a line of communication with the buyer is 50% more than I would have gotten had I not bothered to. So ask questions. Seriously.

7. Re-state main points

I was watching Top Chef one day and one of the contestants won the quick fire round simply because she repeated each order that came to her during her stint as a short-order cook. Repeating the order not only gave her confidence that she’d heard it right, it gave the waiter confidence that the right order was being executed. The same principle applies to your bid.

Re-state the scope of the project in your own words to demonstrate that you’ve understood the scope and terms of the project and to avoid any ambiguity that may arise later. Sometimes it could be a simple few lines like:

“I understand and accept all of the requirements you have posted in the project description. The e-book will be at least 100-page-long (300+ words each), grammatically correct, typed in MS-Word format, delivered in a zip file, 100% original, unique, informative, useful, uncomplicated, interesting, and based on your basic outline as well as on my research.”

8. Sell your samples

Most people just attach samples without ever explaining them. This leaves the buyer to motivate himself/herself to take action in clicking, opening and reading them. You want to make the buyer WANT to click on your samples and for that you’re gonna have to sell ‘em – it doesn’t take much, just a line or so explaining what’s attached and how its relevant to the project.

Example:

“I’ve written over 30 e-books on this subject; please see relevant excerpt attached matching the style and tone for your project.”

Another reason why it’s important to tell a buyer what’s in an attachment is because people are usually wary of clicking on unknown links or unexplained attachments (especially those with suspicious-sounding file names). So make sure your attachments are named correctly and explained in your bid. Why give buyers a reason not to explore your bid in more detail, right?

9. Proof-read your proposal

So obvious, yet so many of us overlook it in haste or carelessness. You have to keep in mind that your proposal is your first impression, it’s the basis for any further decisions that the buyer will make about you. Your proposal is the first thing a buyer sees, even before your profile, your work history, your feedback, your testimonials, your ratings, your earnings. Make sure you read and re-read it to edit for typos, grammar, sentence structure, complete info, answering all questions, and an overall polite and inviting tone.

10. Signature and links

Your signature should contain your full name (and if there’s any confusion about your gender, that info as well!), your position within your company (even if it’s just a one-man shop for now), your company’s name, your website’s URL and when allowed (Elance doesn’t allow email), your email address, daytime phone and skype/IM contact details. The idea is that the more contact information the buyer has about you, the easier for him to choose a channel to contact you on.

I’m going to end this post with a quote from Elance CEO Fabio Rosatti’s interview with Tory Johnson of ABC News; he said “The most successful people on Elance think of themselves as businesses”. That is so true. When you write a bid or proposal, you are marketing your services as a business, make no mistake about it. To survive the cut-throat competition you’ve got to learn how to market yourself effectively and writing a winning proposal is the first step in that direction.

Writing targeted proposals on Elance or any other freelance site takes some practice, but once you start implementing the tips outlined here, you’ll immediately see your award ratio rise and buyers contact you as a direct result of your impressive bid and the sincerity and passion displayed in it.

Are you a successful Elance bidder? Please do share your bid writing strategies in the comments section below. Have a specific question about what to include or not to include in your Elance proposal? Send me your questions via the comments section – let’s discuss!

This is the second post in a 6-part series on How to Write Winning Bids and Proposals.

While I will be giving specific examples of bid writing techniques from Elance, the information in these posts is relevant and applicable to all freelance proposals in any online medium.

I hope you’ll be able to use this information to bid smarter and significantly reduce your proposal writing time in the long term as well as attain a higher award ratio.

The thing about online work is that typically there’s so much distance between you and the buyer that there’s plenty of opportunity for miscommunication and mismatch. It’s important not to just be a good fit for the project you’re working on as discussed in Part 1 How to Find your Niche and Bid Exclusively in It, but also to evaluate whether you and the buyer would be a good fit to work together. And then there’s that pesky matter of ensuring that a buyer is legit and serious about the work.

In researching a buyer, I would go so far as to say that you need to be a little bit of a detective and ask all the right questions and look in all the right (and sometimes improbable, yet obvious) places. You may not be able to do this for every single project and in every single instance, but it’s important to know what you’re looking for so that even when you’re not consciously looking for clues, your subconscious radar will pick up on them – that’s how finely tuned you need to be and can be with the help of this handy guide.

Step 1: Find Out the Buyer’s Name

No, seriously. Do you have any idea what a huge difference it makes to address a buyer directly in your proposal by his or her name? Hello David vs Hello hwueyb67. Get the picture? So how do you go about finding out a buyer’s name if they haven’t given it in their buyer profile?

• Do a Google search on their company name (if they’ve given that) and read the About Us section to find out who’s who in the company
• Look through past buyer feedback and see if any providers have left feedback addressing the buyer by name
• See if the buyer uses that same username on any other site, like Twitter, and then look up their profile to see their real name

This is not sneaky, nor underhanded. You’ll be pleasantly surprised how well buyers respond to being addressed as a person rather than a random alphanumeric word, even though they have deliberately not divulged this information in the project description or in their buyer profile.

Addressing a buyer by name also shows them that you’ve got pretty dandy research skills, and that you gave their project enough importance to look them up and read up on who they are and what their needs might be – an important point that we’ll follow up on in Part 3 of this series.

Step 2: Look Up and Read the Buyer’s Website

For my very first project on Elance I looked up the buyer’s website and studied her style of writing, learned what she was most passionate about, found out where she was based geographically, and was also able to download her e-book for more information on her and her business.

As a result I was able to write a personal and friendly bid addressing her passions and needs directly and also showing her that I was passionate about the same things. She saw in my bid that not only was I resourceful enough to know all this about her, but that I shared her vision and would therefore be the perfect writer to help draft her next e-book.

There’s so much info you can glean from a buyer’s website, I don’t know why anyone would miss out on this crucial chance to really connect with the buyer.

Step 3: Analyze the Buyer’s Past Feedback

There are many things you should look for when reading past feedback:

• What has the buyer paid in the past for a similar project?
• When giving feedback, positive or negative, what is the buyer’s tone?
• Is the buyer notorious for leaving unwarranted negative feedback?
• What do other providers say about the buyer – do they leave one line comments or more in-depth, descriptive comments?

From analyzing the above items, you should be able to effectively gauge:

• What the buyer will be most likely to pay you
• Whether the buyer is courteous and professional in his or her dealings
• Whether the buyer is grumpy, difficult to deal with and never satisfied with anything
• Whether the buyer understands the rules of doing business on Elance and is aware of the policies and procedures, whether he pays on time and whether he is clear and precise in his directions and expectations

Using all this information, you should be able to determine whether it’s worth your time (and money) to even place a bid on this project. If you feel uncomfortable about any aspect of a buyer’s portrayal of himself online, then trust your gut instinct and stay away from the project. If you feel a connection, then go ahead and place a bid – your bid will come off sounding that much more genuine because you really do feel a spark, having read up on the buyer and knowing him/her a tad better.

There are a few more generic things which you should look for in every buyer that you work with:

• Do they write out a detailed project description or work order covering all the relevant details you need to place an accurate bid?
• Are they responsive communicators and answer queries posted on the public message boards and in pre-bids?
• Are they aware of Elance’s policies and rules, and if not, are they willing to be educated about it?
• How long have they been a member of the site?
• How many projects have they posted since being members?
• What is their award ratio – how many projects awarded?

The richer the buyer’s history, communication and past performance, the more reason to take them seriously.

If you liked this post and want to know how to get to the next step in writing proposals, please read Part III: How to Write a Winning Bid or Proposal

Did you have any aha moments from reading this post? Or do you have your own buyer detective work tips to share? I’d be delighted if you leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts!

This is the first in a 6-part series of posts on How to Write Winning Bids and Proposals.

While I will be giving specific examples of bid writing techniques from Elance, the information in these posts is relevant and applicable to all freelance proposals in any online medium.

I hope you’ll be able to use this information to bid smarter and significantly reduce your proposal writing time in the long term as well as attain a higher award ratio.

One of the first things you need to do as freelancers is to look for projects that match your skill set. The way I see it, if you don’t care much for the topic you’re writing on, you won’t write with enthusiasm, passion or dedication. Although good writers can research and write on just about anything, great writers write about what they’re genuinely interested in.

Your passion for your topic will come through in your bid. And that’s what clients are looking for: someone to treat their project with the same (or more) care and attention than they themselves would treat it.

If you’re an established freelancer who already knows his niche, then that’s great! But if you’re a beginner who’s unsure about what topics and what kind of projects to handle, then read on.

Why it’s Important to Have a Niche

A niche is a specialty area. The logic behind having a niche market is simple: it’s easier to excel in one dedicated area than be average in several different areas. In others words, be a specialist rather than a jack of all trades.

If you have a finance background, start off with financial writing; if you’re a mommy blogger, start off with parenting articles; if you’re into cooking, write about that.

Find what your passion is and channel it with your writing. Don’t yet know what niche market you’d like to claim? No problem. Read on.

Step 1: Identify your Skills

The first step in determining your niche is to make a list of all the things you either love to do (or talk about) or that you have experience in.

Fill out the table below as honestly as possible. There may be some overlap, but that’s okay. So long as you can clearly identify the stuff that gets your motor running, you’re on the right track to finding your passion.

Your past or current work experience: ____________________________________

Education: ­­­­­­­­­­_________________________________________________________

Hobbies: __________________________________________________________

Passions in life: _____________________________________________________

Things you’re interested in: ___________________________________________

Stuff you have unique insights on: ______________________________________

Awards won or recognition received: ____________________________________

When filling this out, think about what you like to do, think about what people say you do well, think about what past jobs you’ve enjoyed the most.

Here’s what a sample filled out table might look like:

Although this is just an example, you can see that a typical person has many varied interests in life. How then do you determine what your niche is to be?

My advice is to pick 2 or 3 topics from the above and experiment with them, carefully analyzing what you have the most success with. It could be that while your three passions in life are parenting, cooking and tennis, you’re only good at the first two as a business opportunity and prefer actually playing the third.

It’s OK to have more than one passion. You can experiment with different niches and see what you have the most success with. But know this: chances are that you will have the highest success rate doing what you’re most passionate about.

Step 2: Match your Skills with a Project’s Requirements

Next up, identify how well you fit in with the project’s requirements. Use the following checklist:

-      Do you have the experience needed for the project and can you prove it?

-      Do you have the expertise needed for the project and can you prove it?

-      Do you have the passion needed for your proposal to stand out amongst many?

One of the most important things you can do to demonstrate your passion, ability and experience is to have relevant samples. It’s so important a point that I’m going to give it its own blog post when we come to section 4 of this series.

Step 3: Set up Alerts for New Projects in your Niche

Setting up alerts is a great way to receive info whenever a project is posted in the niche area that you’d like to work in. Alerts also help you be more productive by cutting down your freelance job search time and replacing it with qualified leads to follow up on.

• How to Receive RSS alerts

On Elance simply sign up to receive the RSS feed of the topic areas you’d want to receive new job posting info on. Just click on any Elance page, click the orange RSS icon on the top of that page and subscribe using your favorite RSS reader (mine’s Google Reader).

• How to Receive Twitter Alerts

Simply set up a twitter alert using your key terms and prefacing them with hashtags. So if you’re a graphic designer looking for logo design jobs, those could be your search terms. If you’re using TweetDeck, which I use, simple add a column for your search term (e.g. #logo #design #freelance #jobs) and the software will automatically update and notify you when those terms are used by anyone in twitterverse.

• How to Sign Up For Google Alerts

Perhaps the most widely-used alert service, Google alerts, is accurate, free and easy to use. Simply go to http://www.google.com/alerts and fill in the search criteria in the box. Remember to put your search query in “__” (double quotes) to get accurate results otherwise you might be inundated with trivia and irrelevant items. An example alert query could be “technical writing jobs” or “freelance technical writers”. Google will send you an email when it finds results that meet your criteria.

Well, that’s it. The easy way to identify your passion, carve out a niche from it and start bidding ferociously in it. Once you find projects that speak to you, you’ll be racing to write that proposal for them and your words will flow with enthusiasm at finding something that resonates with you. Your mind will be full of creative ideas on how best to tackle the project and your heart will be racing to see if you got the job or not. That is the best kind of work to do. And really, isn’t that why you became a freelancer in the first place?

If you liked this article and want to know more about writing effective bids and proposals, please read Part II: How to Investigate Buyers.

Hi all! I’m excited to be starting a new (ok the first) series of posts on how to write winning bids and proposals. As freelancers, we spend as much time (sometimes more) marketing our services as we do actually working on gigs, so its essential to be able to sell yourself convincingly for online customers.

When you take up freelancing, it isn’t just about the next gig or the next paycheck (who’d want that hand-to-mouth lifestyle anyway?). No, it’s about building a business. And that means first building a professional reputation. Everyone has to start somewhere right?

So ladies and gentlemen, bloggers and writers, business owners and professionals, I present to you a comprehensive 6-part series on How to Write Winning Bids and Proposals, which will comprise the following sections:

1. How To Find your Niche and Bid Exclusively In It
2. How to Investigate the Buyer Thoroughly (yes there’s some detective work involved in this one!)
3. How to Write a Custom Proposal (24 carat gems inside this one)
4. Attach Relevant Samples and Other Information
5. Determine a Fair Price that you’re Confident the Buyer Can Pay (whether he WILL pay or not is an altogether different matter!)
6. How to Follow-up and Why it’s a Game Changer

And if I’m feeling generous, I might just throw in an additional post on the first things to do when you land that job. Kidding. I will actually do a series on this next.

So have I got you salivating yet?

What? You want more and you want it now? You want it all? Ok, Ok, I hear you. Instant gratification coming up…

So without further ado, head on over to read the first post in this series: How to Find your Niche and Bid Exclusively in It

The other day I had a short twitter exchange with Chris Brogan regarding the new book by Michael Pollan called Food Rules. In the book, Pollen offers simple techniques for eating right with the overall aim of curtailing America’s health care crises.

Here’s the verbatim twitter exchange:

chrisbrogan: Wow. Want some simple rules for eating? – http://bit.ly/5bqjYe
salmajafri: a little too simplistic, no? like the ones abt kids eating their vegs if in front of TV-my 2yr-old doesnt fall into that trap!
chrisbrogan: I love simplistic. Complex is where I fall off.
salmajafri: true but simple to a point is good. gross over-generalizations tend to become inaccurate.

Although I’m sure Chris meant to imply “simple” instead of “simplistic”, I’m amazed how many people actually deliberately use the word simplistic.

So what’s the difference? Aren’t they just one and the same thing? Well, no! And this might come as a surprise to some people.

Here’s a definition of “simple” from the Merrium-Webster dictionary:
“readily understood or performed[simple directions][the adjustment was simple to make]“

And now here’s a definition of “simplistic” from the same dictionary:
“of, relating to, or characterized by simplism” where a search for simplisim reveals “the act or an instance of oversimplifying; especially : the reduction of a problem to a false simplicity by ignoring complicating factors”

Often people seem to think the term “simplistic” is good! I’ve seen variations from an email received for a job stating “Hi, I’m a simplistic writer” to a newspaper reviewer positively commenting on a book by saying “the author has a very simplistic style”. Gosh, simplistic has negative connotations people!

Now don’t get me wrong; I’m all for simple. After all I love speed-reading, I love relevant lists, I love getting to the bottom line quickly and I love writing targeted web content and focused SEO articles that get to the point succinctly. But turns out, you can sometimes go overboard on the simplicity wagon and be simple to the point of being ridiculous and inaccurate.

After all, wasn’t it Einstein who said “Make things as simple as you can, but no simpler”?

What does that mean exactly? How can you go beyond simple into simplistic and inaccurate? And what is simplicity?

A web quote I found (I’ve adapted it a bit) phrases it perfectly by saying: “Simplicity is knowing when one more word would be too many, and one less word would be too few. But it’s not just knowing the right number of words, it’s also knowing which words are right, and how to arrange them.”

Therefore, simplicity implies the right combinations presented in an easy to understand, yet factual manner.

When you write for the web, your aim should be to present information in as simple a manner as possible without losing meaning and context. When writing web content, for example, being simple means getting the point across with compelling, thought-provoking words which are also a true reflection of the fact. Over-simplifying means that you’re just deleting important and relevant facts.

The beauty of simplicity is that it’s so intrinsically complex, yet so easy to understand. Want an example? You! That’s right; human beings are the most complex organisms, yet we have the simplest desires: a parent’s need to protect their child, a person’s will to survive, our collective need to evolve. These things are practically hard-wired into our system. And that’s the beauty of simplicity

I’ve been getting many questions lately regarding Elance’s payment procedure and its legalities from many interested first-time Elancers based in Pakistan and so thought this post might be of help to those who have either just recently set up their own Elance account or are wanting to do so. All of the information contained in this post is applicable to the residents of any country – the only difference may be in payment processing times.

When you set up an Elance account, you have 4 membership plans to choose from: Basic (free), Professional ($10/month), Small Business ($20/month) and Large Business ($40/month).

Assuming you start with the Basic Plan (which will give you 10 connects to place bids with), you do not need to use your credit card at all since the plan is completely free. The flip-side is obviously that you’ve got to use those 10 connects to bid wisely and even so, statistically, there’s a slim chance of landing a project with just 10 connects and no Elance experience (although it can be done).

If supposing you are one of the lucky ones and manage to land a project (or more!) with those 10 connects, the next thing you’d want to know (apart from doing the work) is how you’re going to be paid. Well, Elance couldn’t be simpler really. You do not need a PayPal account, you don’t need a credit card, and you don’t need a foreign bank account.

All you need is a local bank account.

Elance will wire transfer your money to you as a direct deposit into your local bank account! You can then withdraw it immediately using your ATM card or whatever method you prefer. Simple, isn’t it? So how does it work?

Before we proceed on Elance, you must go to your local bank and ask them for the following information (write it all down EXACTLY as the bank tells you):
————————
A/C Holder Name
A/C Number / IBAN
Bank Account Type
Bank Name
Bank Country
Bank ID Type (you will choose SWIFT here for international wire transfers)
Bank ID Number (8-11 characters)
Bank Address
Bank City
Bank Province
Bank Postal Code
———————–

Now come back to Elance. You will first need to tell Elance the particulars of your bank account. Once signed in on Elance, navigate to Get Paid > Financial Accounts > Enter a New Bank Account

You will be taken through a 3-step process to Enter Your Bank Information. Fill in all the particulars on these three forms using the information your bank gave you above. Choose Destination Currency as the default US Dollar; your bank will automatically convert it to Pak Rupee if you have a Rupee account or keep it in US Dollars if you have a Dollar account.

Once you have correctly entered your financial information, Elance and the payment processing team can take anywhere from 2-4 weeks to verify your bank information (although it states a much longer duration on the website itself for Pakistan). The time periods will differ according to the country and also according to the calendar, discounting for any holidays or other disruptions in normal financial activity.

Once your bank information has been entered and verified as authentic, you can then begin receiving funds for work done. The above process is a one time thing only; you do not need to go through this every time to withdraw funds.

To withdraw funds, you simply navigate to Get Paid > Withdraw Funds and enter the account to which you want it withdrawn (the bank account you added in the steps above), along with a dollar amount. Elance will ask you for your password once before proceeding with the withdrawal. As soon as a withdrawal has been initiated successfully, you will get an email notification from Elance.

Note: There are payment processing fees associated with withdrawing money from your Elance account. So a Basic account holder has to pay $10 for withdrawing funds, while a Small Business account holder gets a free withdrawal every month. Elance also deducts service fees, which is the Elance commission for using the website. Again these service fees vary depending on which membership plan you have and can range from 6.75% to 8.75% of the project’s value. You must keep these and the payment processing fees in mind when calculating your bid amount for projects.

Well, that’s it! Now go and get your first job, gloat about it here and withdraw your first-ever international payment. It’s a heady feeling

A few days ago I spoke with Elance CEO Fabio Rosati. It was an interesting conversation on many levels but one particular thing that he said stood out in my mind – he said (and I’m paraphrasing here) Salma you will always remember the day you and Ali chose to make the New Way to Work video and it will be a pivotal point in your business.

I believe what he was referring to was the ecstasy of reaching out to people and the power of a personal, yet universal story to inspire and evoke responses from all across the globe. The response has truly been overwhelming. Some numbers: over 1200 YouTube views in a month, a 233% increase in traffic to my website, scores of people sending me Facebook, Twitter, and e-mail messages, lots of potential clients and hopefully lots more people who have been inspired enough to want to take charge of their lives.

It seems like the New Year started a little early for me

So what have I learnt from all this?

Two things:

1. Build good content
2. Promote the heck out of it (but in the right channels)

Well, point #1 first. It goes without saying that the Internet is full of, pardon my expression, crap. To find anything relevant and meaningful you must sometimes sift through a lot of non-sense. That’s why good content is so valuable. Businesses shell out good money for compelling SEO web content that will drive more traffic to their site – they understand that it’s the content and its authenticity and uniqueness that will keep people coming back for more.

So if you want to build a successful online business, put out good content. You can do it in whatever way you’re comfortable with and good at, be it text, multimedia, video, audio, presentation, design, whatever – just make sure it’s really you.

Point #2. You know that old saying of build a better mouse trap and they’ll come? Doesn’t hold true any more. It’s not enough anymore to just put great content out there; you’ve got to make sure people actually see it.

At first I was shy, like many people, about self-promotion. I didn’t want to send out links, I didn’t want to send e-mails, and I certainly didn’t want to be that obnoxious person spamming links to friends of friends of friends. So I took the safe way out. I e-mailed a select group of friends and family members and asked them to pass it on if they liked what they saw. I updated my Facebook and Twitter statuses and posted it in the online communities that I’m a part of. That’s it. That’s all I did.

Google Analytics, my trusty web companion, tells me that to date I have had over 61% referrals to my site through social media channels and email referrals. That’s 61% more people who’ve been affected in some (albeit small) way who might never have seen my content otherwise, never gotten inspired and never known that there are business-moms like me out here (esp in Pakistan) trying to make a go at running an online business from home.

So I urge you, get out there, show the world what you’re doing, believe in your work, tell people who matter and they will promote you and your message if they find it to be sincere.

First do something that will get people talking and then ride the momentum with all you’ve got! Here’s to a prosperous 2010! *clink*

Added on Dec 18: We won 2nd Place in the New Way to Work competition! Check out the Elance blog for more details!

Added on Dec 10: Our story is now a Top 10 finalist in Elance’s New Way to Work Contest. Thank you all so much for your appreciation and support!

Follow your passion – make meaningful connections – be fulfilled!

Although I work really hard every day, it never feels like work to me because I’m constantly doing things that I really truly love. I love being with my family, I love writing, I love making money, I love building my business, I love reaching out to help others and I love making valued connections!

My New Way To Work video shows that working online, freelancing and outsourcing are not simply jobs or career choices. The new way to work – with greater control, flexibility, options and freedom – is now a conscious lifestyle choice.

Thanks to embracing this lifestyle and utilizing all the tools and resources available at my disposal, I am able to enjoy a full life – a life with quality family time and the natural high of helping others succeed in their online business ventures.

Today when I tell people that I run an online content development company from home, I get puzzled looks. The concept of being an internet entrepreneur with flexible timings is difficult to grasp and not very prevalent, especially where I live. Thanks to Elance, there is now a huge scope in the market for professionals to freelance and businesses to outsource. I do both. I freelance for Elance, but I have a team of specialist writers based all over Pakistan and abroad who I outsource projects to. Everyone in my company, WordPL, works from home and enjoys the triple benefits of financial freedom, flexible work hours and no commute time.

Two years ago, if someone told me that I could work with international clients and team members without ever having to leave home, I would have probably laughed at them. Today this concept is a reality. Cultural differences, physical locations and geographical boundaries no longer separate the two arms of business: buyers and sellers. The lifestyle opportunities that technology and companies harnessing that technology, like Elance, offer are both overwhelming and awe-inspiring all at once.

Most people want to find international clients but don’t know how to do so or where to find them. Elance has put it all at our fingertips. Now with a click of a mouse button, I can browse through a seemingly endless list of buyers specifically seeking exactly what I offer and immediately connect with them. That is nothing less than magical.

If I, someone from a developing country with limited resources, and grave security and safety concerns, can build a sustainable life around the world of outsourcing and freelancing, then really anyone can! It just takes a lot of determination and the will to succeed.

I’d like to add my heartfelt gratitude for people who either directly or indirectly have helped make my online business dreams a reality and have truly inspired me:

• My husband Ali who helped film and edit my new way to work video and is my soul partner and moral compass in all that I strive to do.
• My parents for babysitting duties whenever I asked them and for supporting me in every way possible.
• Author Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn for giving me my first break on Elance and who continues to inspire me on Twitter.
• Self-made millionaire Gill Fielding who helped me think out of the box by saying “statistically financially successful people are not normal”.
• All my excellent clients on Elance for their professional standards and for believing in my work.
• Elance itself for making my new lifestyle choice possible. And a special thanks to Elance Alex for promptly and courteously responding to my mails in a professional manner.

If there’s any one thing you can take away from my story, it’s that “Do what you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life” – Confucius.

Most businesses need articles for the web written to help their company make more money. One of the ways their business makes money is by directing relevant and targeted traffic to their website.

What is Relevant and Targeted Traffic?

There are millions if not billions of people surfing the net, actively searching for content online. They typically use a search engine to find the information they seek. Not every internet users wants what a particular company has to sell. And businesses don’t necessarily want uninterested people coming to their site. Instead businesses want to attract only those people who are already interested and have a need for that business’s products or services. In other words, they only want to attract relevant and targeted users to their website who are genuinely interested in their offer.

For example, a company selling lawn mowers is not interested in having apartment dwellers reach its website. Most people looking to buy lawn mowers live in their own house, not a rented apartment, and have a lawn which needs to be mowed. Geographically, lawn mower firms will be targeting suburbia more compared to city dwellers.

Therefore it’s important for the business to get those customers to its site who are interested in the products it is selling. It will want all those people who type in search queries like “need to buy lawn mower” or “which is the best lawn mower to buy” to reach its website.

Here is where keywords come in.

What are Keywords?

Keywords may be a single word or a phrase typed into a search engine to yield search results. Typically a web user clicks on a search result (or many results) to find out more information about the issue he is concerned about.

Since you use the web, you already know that you typically click links only on the first page of search engine results. Every company wants to appear on the first page search results to maximize visibility and clicks.

In order to do this, they use a strategy called “search engine optimization” or SEO.

What is SEO?

SEO is the art and science of increasing the chances of having your website indexed and ranked high on search engine results. There are many variables that determine search rank, but for the purposes of this article, we’ll consider “keyword content” to be the primary factor.

Writing SEO content means that you put in those keyword phrases in your content that a user is most likely to be searching for when he types in a search query.

Luckily most of the guesswork has been taken out of keywords by tools such as Google AdWord’s Keyword Research Tool and Wordtracker. These tools help you determine the most-searched for keywords around the globe and revolving around a particular topic.

So if you type in “lawn mower” in Google’s tool, you’ll get results like “electric lawn mower” and “lawn mower repair” which will in turn help you choose the right keywords to use on your site to attract the right clientele. They will also tell you how many people are searching for that keyword, so for our example, electric lawn mower has 90,000 global monthly searches, while lawn mower repair has 110,000 global monthly searches.

So how does all this pertain to writing for the web?

Writing for the Web Means Writing SEO Content

In writing for the web, you need to know how to incorporate keywords into your writing in such a way that the article flows smoothly while making good use of the keywords that you have identified as crucial to your content. This is called SEO-enriched content.

Some clients might have a direct need for SEO articles, while others might simply need web-friendly articles.

What are Web-friendly Articles?

The web is an active medium (as opposed to TV or print where you sit back and watch/read). On the web you need to actively search for content, click on content, and follow links and so on. Web readers are impatient, want content now, and will click away quickly if they don’t find what they’re looking for on your site.

Therefore web-friendly writing needs to be structured in a way so it is fast to scan and read, gets the main points across quickly and succinctly, and is interesting enough to hold the reader’s attention.

The main characteristics of an article written for the web are:

• Gets to the point quickly and without preamble
• Is easy to scan and easy to read
• Has a catchy SEO title, subtitle and subheading
• Contains bullets and numbered lists where relevant
• Is written in an active and energizing tone rather than a passive, tired one
• Evokes a desired reaction or action from its readers

Anyone looking to become a freelance writer on the web must know how to write articles for the web. It’s a whole new medium which allows expression in direct active tones, almost simulating an actual face-to-face conversation.

Are you just learning to write for the web – if so did this little tutorial help you to understand the basics? Share your thoughts below.

Much has been said and written about low-balling in the freelance community. Essentially low-balling is used to describe the (unethical) practice of pricing a project way below its fair market value. It is done by both freelancers who wish to compete on price (although they just end up hurting themselves and their fellow freelancers) and by outsourcing clients (who want to get the lowest possible price for their project).

I recently had my first brush with low-balling on Elance from the client-side. But thanks to numerous freelancing sites discussing low-balling tactics, I knew exactly what I had to do and say to this buyer.

So here’s the thing: he came through a referral and wanted X number of articles. I placed a bid, quoted my price, delivery time, etc. I got back a response saying the price was too high and he has another writing service lined up (URL provided) that is willing to do the project for a third of the price and would I be willing to “close the gap”?

Well, thanks to the fact that I am now confident about my abilities and sure about the value of my services, I was able to compose (what I thought was) a fairly level-headed, professional response: (edited to exclude specific names and amounts).

I started by thanking him and letting him know right away that I was prepared to stand my ground and give a solid reasoning for doing so:

“Thank you for your response. I do understand your need for cost-effective articles and to that end wish to reassure you that my costs reflect both my experience (both on and off Elance) as well as expertise in completing a perfectly turned-out product.”

Next I regurgitated my excellent feedback and history with providing quality work:

“I started on Elance at [amount deleted] and have since then built up a reputation consisting of 100% satisfied clients in the past year and testimonials which state that ‘Wonderful provider and none of what she provided needed any tweaks at all. That is rare’ and ‘All of the articles were very well written and exactly what I was looking for.’ I have worked hard for these accolades and that is because each project I take on gets my individual and customized attention.”

Then I backed all that up with the fact that I have reached this price fairly and that it is an accurate estimation of my time and effort involved in the project. I ended by outlining the long-term benefits of the content to him.

“The money invested now in article marketing will generate long-term dividends over the months and years in directing targeted, relevant traffic to your business. Since I too, run my own business, I am familiar with the need for great SEO content, perfectly positioned articles and a focused marketing campaign. Hence my current rates reflect the above traits.”

I also offered him a way out of the deal gracefully, by letting him know that I would fully understand if he decided not to award me the project and scout the market further but that I hoped he made whatever decision worked best for his business needs.

At that point I had pretty much given up hearing again from this buyer. So imagine my pleasant surprise when I received a “Congratulations, you’ve been awarded…” notice a few hours later!

Essentially, the buyer (now a client) responded by saying that my confidence in my abilities (backed with facts) gave him confidence in me and that he would be willing to award me the project at my stated price.

I guess it just goes to show that there are genuine buyers out there on Elance and elsewhere who are willing to be convinced if you have the confidence in yourself to be able to convince them. I really dislike it when perfectly talented freelancers let themselves get sucked into accepting projects at lower than their fair market values simply because they don’t believe in themselves.

So my advice to a beginner freelancer (especially on bidding sites like Elance) would be to start with hard work, keep your nose down and build up an excellent case for yourself. Once you’ve become established in your field, make sure you respect yourself and your abilities. Others will respect you more because of that.

Have a low-balling story you’d like to share? Tell us how you got out of a low-balling pickle – would love to hear some interesting takes on this rather unfortunate aspect of freelancing.

Probably the most scammed and written about topic is the allure of making money from the comfort of your home using nothing but the internet to do so. So what’s the answer, can you really make money from home or is it just a pipe dream?

Short answer: yes you can.

Long answer: you can, provided you find legitimate sources to work with.

Detailed answer: I’m going to list here in this post, and in general in this entire site, legitimate ways that you can work from home and support yourself and your family. How can I say this with such surety? Because I’m doing it. I work from home and that’s how my spouse and I run a 2-income household. But I’m going to be talking exclusively about online work (as opposed to setting up a home business) and most of the items on my list do not fall into the job category but really the career category. I’m going to show you ways to build an online business and a career while working from home.

A word of caution before I provide the list.

There is no easy, quick and effortless way to make money online. And anyone who tells you that is a liar and a scammer. Making money online is almost exactly the same as making money in a regular brick and mortar world; it takes hard work, dedication, perseverance and smarts. But once you get the ball rolling, the internet allows you to make money with many different kinds of income streams (which is not possible in a 9-5 job). Some of these streams can even be residual in nature, meaning that you earn while you’re not actively working (but you’d have already put in the hard work to set it up).

Oh and another quick word: the list I’m going to show you can work anywhere in the world. That’s right you don’t have to worry about which country you reside in. So long as you have a computer and an internet connection, you’re good to go in the online world.

Right so let’s get to the list of ways in which you can make money and build your online business:

1. Freelance Bidding Sites

Bidding sites such as Elance, Guru, oDesk, ScriptLance, Get-A-Freelancer, Rent-A-Coder etc all function in basically the same way. Think of them as auction houses; they bring together buyers (companies or individuals) who have work to outsource and providers (like you) who are looking for work in their specialized field. Bidding sites are the middlemen in this exchange; they will hold the money in escrow, they will provide a place for the buyers and providers to talk shop, upload files, negotiate disputes and conduct their business by providing some level of confidentiality and security.

Bidding sites are called that because again, like an auction house, you must place a bid to be considered for a project. The buyer selects the winning bid and work commences.

Some bidding sites cater to one specialized category while others offer work opportunities in several different fields such as graphic design, web development, web design, content development, engineering, finance, law, sales and marketing, etc.

Some sites offer a free membership with limited views or limited access to projects, while others don’t have any free option. Most offer membership categories, which can start from $10 – $20 per month. You use your credit card (or PayPal account if you have one) to buy a membership.

The money you earn is usually deposited directly in your bank account (via SWIFT code for international transfers). Or again if you have a PayPal account, you can choose to have the money sent to that account. Once the system is set up, bank transfers can take as long as a week or be as quick as 24 hours, depending on where in the world you live.

Since I work mainly on Elance, I’m going to be sharing many of my Elance experiences with you here. You can start by reading the 7 Secrets for Elance Success.

2. Content Sites

Examples of content sites are Suite101, eHow, Helium, Associated Content, About, Examiner, Constant Content, and many more!

These sites usually incorporate either in part or in full the concept of residual income. They are sites which hire freelance writers to create content for them. Writers get paid either upfront for each article, according to the page views their article receives or according to a revenue ad-share program. The ad-share program basically displays relevant ads to your article. When a reader clicks on an ad, you get paid a percentage of what the advertiser is paying to have his ad displayed on the site.

This type of earning is usually a slow trickle in the beginning but it can really add up with some time investment and learning the tricks of writing for the web to generate maximum revenue.

Payment is usually made via PayPal. If you’re in a country where PayPal doesn’t operate, you can look into options of having someone trusted in a PayPal-approved country set up an account for you, using your email address so you get all the notifications, etc.

Since I work mainly for Suite101 from the above list, I’m going to be sharing my experiences writing for them and will detail all the pros and cons for you.

Content sites can exist in areas other than writing too; for example, photography sites which pool together photos taken by different photographers and offer them as stock images work on the same principles as the writing sites mentioned above.

3. Blogging

To be a successful money-making blogger, you must own your own domain name website. No ifs and buts to this rule! Don’t think you can successfully monetize your blog using a free site such as Blogger.com or Wordpress.com (see this post for the distinction between wordpress.com and wordpress.org). While you can earn some moderate amount from free sites which allow ads to be displayed (such as Blogger now does), there are limits to your earning potential.

To make money as a blogger, you need to be operating in a niche market that you are familiar with and can offer unique insights on. You will earn money mostly through online ads, your own product sales (such as an e-book), your own membership sites and anything else that you can successfully monetize.

This route to online riches is anything but easy and obstacle-free. The amount of discipline required is immense since no one is driving you to work hard (or work at all), and the pressure to drive traffic to your site (so people can click on your ads or buy your stuff) is pretty intense. You’ve got to know or learn about search engine optimization (SEO) and how to rank highly so that people interested in reading what you’re offering will find your site. You’ve also got be a master promoter and learn a bit of marketing since you’ll mostly be doing it all yourself.

Successful bloggers, like Darren Rowse or Brian Clark, who make a living via blogging have been at it for years and are only now reaping the rewards of their hard work. It would be a good idea to study them and their blogs, read what they have to offer, and soak up all the useful advice and tips presented on their blogs.

4. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing works on the same concept as a referral program. In the brick and mortar world, you can earn a commission based on recommendations. In the online world, you can earn commissions based on directing traffic and sales to the company or product you choose to affiliate yourself with.

Here’s an example: suppose I really liked a book I read recently and thought it would help my readers in setting up their online business. I would go to where this book was being sold and become an affiliate for it. Once approved, I’ll write an honest review of the book containing both its benefits and any criticisms. In the review I will place my affiliate link. When someone clicks on my affiliate link and buys the book based on my recommendation, I get a percentage commission of the sale.

Affiliate marketing can be incorporated into your online business ideas in 2 ways: either via blogging where you place your affiliate links in your blog posts, or via a dedicated product review website which reviews affiliate products.

These were the big 4 ways in which to start making money and building an online business right now. Obviously there are many smaller schemes and many sub-schemes within these niche areas, but if you can master even one or two of the above, you’re off to a great start! And remember it’s never a good idea to keep all your eggs in one basket, so as soon as you’re comfortable with one money-making idea, start exploring how you can use the others.

Got a tip you want to share about making money online the legitimate way? Have a question about any of the freelance sites outlined above? Want to add your own success story to building an online business? Drop me a line (or several lines) below!

The transition from working a 9-5 job to becoming an internet freelancer can be pretty scary. Some fears might be inflicted by self-doubt, while others might be a result of societal pressure and norms. There are, however,  many reasons you might want to make the decision (leap?) to venture into the world of internet freelancing.

Here are some of the more common ones:

• You’re stuck in a dead-end job
• You wish to be your own boss
• You wish to explore your own creativity
• You’ve been laid off or think you might be soon
• You’ve heard all sorts of great stories about freelancing and think it might be your cup of tea (coffee, soda, or whatever jars you!)
• You think it will make you a millionaire overnight!

OK, so the last one is a joke. But it’s amazing how many websites sell that concept (*work from home and make millions* sound familiar?) and how many people get trapped into paying some small amount – $20, $50, whatever, to get access to these *amazing* offers.

Right, so apart from the scammers and their scams,  there are many legit reasons for you to want to work online.

But taking that first step can be real daunting. Trust me, I know.

I stumbled onto freelancing and making my living online through pure chance: I actually got laid off and pregnant in the same month and it couldn’t have been a better beginning! And even though I was offered my job back, I decided that the constant backache sitting in unergonomic chairs and being cloistered in a cubicle was really not something I wanted to return to.

I started exploring work from home opportunities since I wanted to stay at home and spend time with my baby and a completely new world suddenly opened up to me! Sometimes the worst things in life (like losing your job) and the most career-disruptive things (like being pregnant) can result in the most wonderful opportunities.

Here are some reasons why you might be feeling hesitant about changing your life and what you can do to shrug that initial fear and take the leap:

The Fears we Face

• I wont be able to do it
• I wont be able to continue/keep it going
• It wont be popular or accepted, no one will like it
• I wont ever make money from it
• What will people think?
• What if I fail?
• It’s just way too risky
• I’m being selfish
• Add your own fear here (cause I’m sure there are many more insecurities than I can list)

How to Overcome your Fears of Starting an Online Business

1. Make a Plan

This is probably the best way to overcome your fear. Write down what your fears are. Make 2 columns on a blank sheet/screen. In the left-hand column right down all that you love about your current work and in the right-hand column, write all that you dislike/hate/detest about your current job. Then address each dislike with a counter point: how will working for yourself change things for the better?  You might even reach the conclusion that by tweaking something in your current job you could be more productive/happy/enthusiastic, etc. But if you can clearly see the benefits of freelancing and setting up your own shop, then you’ll go ahead with it more confidently.

2. Start Part-time and Build up Gradually

Who says you have to take the plunge all at once? Some of the best businesses were set up as a result of working on weekends, working evenings and working part-time. This way you get the best of both worlds: you still keep your day job while experimenting with what might work for you in an online capacity.

3. Develop a Thick Skin

There will always be nay-sayers, no matter what you do or where you go. It’s practically human nature to not want others to succeed. Some nay-sayers will even go so far as to say they’re doing it because they care about you, and shockingly this comment may even come from people like your parents or your spouse. Here’s what I would say to them: “If you really care about me, then you’ll let me succeed or fail on my own terms”. Simple to think; not so simple to execute, i know. But you must say it or deal constantly with negativity, which will be a damper to your creativity.

Here are some other ways to get over that initial fear:

• laugh off other peoples’ snide comments
• educate people; tell them the benefits as outlined in your plan above
• ignore people; sometimes the best strategy when dealing with  narrow-mindedness
• believe in yourself
• find others who believe in you; build a support group
• take the plunge without over-thinking it
• drive yourself in a corner so you’re forced to take action (resign from your job or do something totally unexpected & risky)

If you’re currently thinking about leaving your 9-5 job for a freelancers’ lifestyle, leave a comment below and let me know what your fears and hopes are. Lets discuss this and maybe you’ll find there are more people with you than against you

Cheers!

Bidding sites – the very term causes some professional freelancers to frown in disdain. But I was introduced to the world of freelancing via Elance and so far have had nothing but great buyers and positive experiences on it. Yes it’s true that if you stay on long enough, there’s bound to be some bad apples in the mix and I’m sure my day of negative/neutral feedback will come (gasp!), but so far I’ve been lucky.

I first joined Elance as part of a company in May 2008. In January 2009 I formed my own account on Elance with a business partner and in July of the same year I went solo. Best decision I ever made! Since then I haven’t looked back. Granted I don’t have a humongous list of projects under my belt yet, but I’m building up my portfolio slowly and steadily, taking on as much work as I can handle at any given time and not over extending myself.

So, here’s in a nut shell, what a savvy freelance businessperson needs to know to start building an online business with Elance:

Invest In Your Freelance Business

There is really no point in wasting time with a free account if you are serious about your business. By all means start out with a free account to test the waters, but when you decide you want to make money at Elance, be willing to invest some first. Small business membership fee costs $20 per month which gives you 40 connects. Connects are used as barter for placing bids on projects. You must buy more connects (at $5 for 10 connects) if you want to place more bids in a given month.

Build A Solid, Credible Profile

Even if you have no or little experience in the marketplace, you can build up your profile page to reflect an honest impression of you as an ethical businessperson. Your profile should contain, at the very least, compelling facts about your expertise, experience, qualifications and skills. Take some skills tests in your designated area – these help you rank higher in search results when buyers are looking for a particular skill. Look into verifying your credentials as this adds some small measure of credibility, but there’s no rush to do this.

Scout Projects Carefully Before Considering Bidding On Them

You want to look at various factors such as: is the project in your specific area of expertise, is the budget appropriate, does the buyer have a good rate of awarding projects, does the buyer have positive feedback from other freelancers who’ve worked with him/her? If the answer to all of the these questions is yes, get to work drafting a proposal for the project.

Never Use Boilerplate Proposals

Write a well thought-out, customized proposal for each project. It’s okay to use a template so long as you customize it for each project. In your proposal, outline why you’re the best fit for the job, what you bring to the project (experience, enthusiasm, etc) and follow up with relevant samples and a closing statement outlining your course of action.

Address The Buyer’s Questions Directly

This shows that you have taken the time to read the project description. Answer both the buyer’s stated questions and his unstated questions by reading between the lines. Does the project require a certain task which he’s neglected to mention? Spell it out, let him know why the task is important, and if it’s menial, how you’d be wiling to do it for no extra charge (e.g. I offer SEO content to all my clients, since it’s easy for me to incorporate it – this way I can offer it up as a value-addition if I feel it will benefit their project)

Get Your Foot In The Door Any Way You Can

It can be really difficult to win that first project on Elance. Many people go months before they land their first project! Don’t let that happen to you. Slash your prices, offer more than you normally would, be extra courteous and extra accommodating to requests to not only snag your first project but also garner positive feedback on your first project. I started at $8/hour and am now up to $20/hour with future rate hikes as my experience (and portfolio) builds up. It’s possible to get well-paying jobs, but you have to be ready to start at the bottom rung of the ladder.

Follow Through

Make sure you do what you’ve written in your communication with the buyer. Make sure all communication is done with the private message boards (which Elance can view in the event of a dispute). Communication takes on magnified importance in a long-distance working relationship so be sure to keep your client informed of the project’s progress at all times.

This list is by no means exhaustive and I’ll be adding to it as my experience builds. What success have you attained using Elance? Do you have any advice to give to newcomers to the world of freelancing in general and Elance in particular? Or are you new to Elance and considering whether you should use it or not? Either way, share your views with a comment below; I’d love to read (and respond) to your thoughts!

Writing for Suite101 is a long term game plan: one that can result in a nice steady income stream coming to you even when you stop writing. Suite allows you to earn residual income from your articles based on Google AdSense revenue. Each time someone clicks on an ad that shows up with your article, you earn.

The three main advantages often discussed about Suite are:

• They have excellent standards (two test projects required for entry);
• Higher than average revenue payouts ($3.90 per 1000 page views on average according to Suite’s Editor-in-Chief Colin Smith); and
• Great editorial support (every article is reviewed by an experienced editor)

But apart from these basic reasons, here are some more nuggets of information which make Suite a good place to write for the long term.

You Learn to Write for the Web

Suite is hands down an excellent place to learn to write for the web, which in turn will benefit you in all areas of your writing. You can experiment with different keyword combinations and see results within 24 hours on how your tweaking affects your page views and revenue. You learn the importance of keyword placement and density along with the benefits of structuring your article for an online audience, all of which results in higher page views and therefore the potential to earn more from each article. At Suite you also learn to write in a journalistic style versus a blogging style, which can be very useful for knowing how to write unbiased articles, interviews, reviews, etc with proper citations and references. New to SEO writing? Start at Suite – that’s what I did.

Use Suite to Build and Promote your Written Work

Suite provides a great place to showcase your writing to the world and helps you build an online portfolio – I’ve directed many a client there! Suite also gets lots of Google juice so if you write with carefully-chosen keywords you have every chance of seeing your name and your article on Google’s first page of search results – an impressive thing to tell your other clients!

Suite Wants to Promote You

From the editor and assistant editor down to the contributing writers, everyone will re-tweet, comment on your post, write out a thoughtful answer to your queries, and forward your article to their friends when relevant. You can promote yourself and your work, sure, but Suite does a great job of promoting you! The Suite staff and team will encourage you on all your accomplishments, big or small. Just join the official Twitter profile (@suite101) to join and see for yourself.

Suite Forums are Friendly, Supportive and Chock-full of Insightful Ideas

You get to be part of a supportive, friendly writers’ community to whom you can pitch your website, article, story, etc to and who will give you their honest feedback. Starting a new website and need traffic? Want to know which freelance sites are the best? The answers all lurk in Suite’s forums You can learn about some of the best ways to make money online or the best tools for writers thanks to the active community which is eager to share their experiences.

Suite Allows you Creative Freedom and Control over your Published Works

Your article belongs to you, simple as that. All rights reserved. You can re-publish your Suite articles in print, and you can re-publish your Suite articles online after one year of the article post date. Suite lets you write in any category and any topic of your choosing so there’s a lot of creative freedom there. Writing articles sometimes helps to flesh out story ideas and gauge reader responses; articles can literally be used as a sounding board for creative ideas.

Suite Reduces Writer Isolation

Being a work at home freelancer can get lonesome at times; the suite community does a lot to assuage that isolation and makes you feel you’re not alone in the big (bad) world of freelance writing. So whether you want to talk about your cat or your work at home style, there’s a group of friendly like-minded people just waiting to connect with you.

Some Added Benefits Which Seal the Deal

• Suite gives you the chance to earn up-front cash via  monthly contests; they’re working on making the contests open to international writers soon.
• Suite will promote you to a Feature Writer (FW) position (if available in your choice of category) if you meet their standards; the position comes with a nice little bonus and your own Suite blog. FW positions also add credibility and authority to your online portfolio.
• Minimum quota is light; 10 articles in 3 months is easily doable, even for the busiest person
• They accept writers from all over the world; which was a big factor for me!

Although I don’t have many articles up on Suite as of writing this post, nor do I have a FW position under my belt (yet), the rewards for me have mainly come through community encouragement, motivation and support and through learning to write for the web (with added SEO tricks and tips thrown in). Another plus for me is the exposure it gives me when I pitch to new clients, especially if I’ve written articles in their niche. Suite writers are known to be offered book deals, long-term article assignments, interview opportunities and much more.

Any way you look at it, Suite offers you a great way to earn while you learn!

Want to start writing for Suite and need some help? Already a Suite writer and want to share your experience. Go ahead and share below.

WordPress is a free software and platform for blogs and websites. It is content-driven and works well if you have a website or blog with lots of text-based content on it. Multimedia is supported on this platform, but it is usually not the best for e-commerce enabled sites (sites where you sell something directly from your website). WordPress is the number one software choice for bloggers and companies with blogs.

What is WordPress.com?

WordPress.com is the FREE place to put your blog or website online. The distinction is that when you sign up with WordPress.com, your website’s URL will contain the words “wordpress.com” (e.g. wordpl.wordpress.com) . You dont have to worry about private hosting because the site is hosted by WordPress itself.

To use WordPress and start your blog IMMEDIATELY, just sign up for a free account at www.wordpress.com and you’re good to go.

Whats is WordPress.org?

WordPress.org is also FREE, but instead of hosting your site on WordPress, it just gives you the WordPress software to download and install on your own web servers or buy third-party hosting.

To set up a blog or website on WordPress.org you must:

1. Buy a domain name (e.g.www.wordpl.net)

2. Buy a hosting package or host the site on your own web servers

3. Install Wordpress

4. Customize WordPress

In return you get a website that has its own unique domain (e.g. www.wordpl.net)

The Differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org

WordPress.org obviously takes more time, more technical know-how and costs more (due the costs associated with buying domain names, hosting packages, premium themes, etc). But the rewards can be great, especially if you wish to earn from your website.

Which WordPress platform will you choose to start your blog today? Have any interesting experiences with setting up WordPress and want to share? Lets discuss!