How much to take for work: 5 tips for beginners freelancers

What about your work? How is it the right approach to financial matters and whether it is possible to secure a decent income, being "free spearman", or is it - just a way to make extra money? Here are 5 tips to help novice freelancers determine the worth of time and effort.

Novice freelancer always faced not only with how to organize the work properly and to plan working hours, to avoid the "efficiency traps"But so what price to charge for their services. Deterrent in the first place - is the fear of asking "too little" and to be at a loss, or "too much" - and left without customers. What about your work? How is it the right approach to financial matters and whether it is possible to secure a decent income, being "free spearman", or is it - just a way to make extra money? Here are 5 tips to help novice freelancers determine the worth of time and effort.

1. Write a personal business plan

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Set goals: expected / desired earnings, the amount of the costs, the average value of orders. With the sight of a clear plan and financial goals, it is easier to build a working process itself with customers.

2. Copywriters should forget all about the bet, "so many cu for word / number of characters "

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You would think that when you pay by this principle you will earn for the article of 1500 words a few thousand "green"? Prepare to be that any revision will reject your first version of the article, make it to rewrite at least five times, and - in the end you will spend a week working time, write no less than 10 000 unique text characters - and get your $ 150 instead of a thousand (assuming that we are talking about serious Western publications, and not the small / large domestic blog: here the prices are much below).

3. Instead of paying for the number of characters and the number of letters / thumbnails go to pay for your time spent

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Set the rate of hourly pay and stick to it in dealing with new customers. At the time the cost includes not only work on the finished version, but also meetings, negotiations on Skype, editing and revision, updating and reworking of the product ordered. All this should carefully fixed with time tracking and time tracking applications. At the end of the month to show the account on the basis of time spent. So you can see clearly, which takes you time and how much in terms of money it costs to you and the customer.

4. Sometimes a little work you can do for free for the lines in the portfolio

... or getting a bigger pay-project. Participation in the charity project, in preparation for an exclusive column of great stuff, writing a personal essay or author's column for the famous publication, Design for known brand - all this can be for one reason or another / arrangements are not paid, but can serve for you the best recommendation for your future employers / customers. Time between image, portfolio and achieving popularity among a wider audience is sometimes more important than a few tens or hundreds of dollars for a small project.

5. Never write / do not do projects for content farms / etc photostocks

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Yes, many freelancers do that, but the vast majority receive a penny for all their labor spent - and anything useful in return (not to mention the fact that often such articles, photographs, sketches, designs for months "hang" in the general catalog of the thousands of similar proposals, and nobody buys even for the small price, which for them assigned). Platforms and exchanges freelancers lure newcomers with promises of easy passive earnings and prospects of rising incomes, but in practice, none of this happens. If possible, try to avoid these questionable methods of earnings, based on - a simple operation of your potential with very low wages and a complete lack of professional development for you. It is not necessary to participate in the "pyramids for kontentschikov / designers / copywriter" - better to create something original and really demanded.