adictoaloshombres: Freelance

Showing posts with label Freelance. Show all posts

Finding Freelance Projects

Keywords:

freelancer, project, freelance, freelancing

Article Body:

Being a freelancer is a tough job for anyone. Whether you are a writer or a web designer you know that the competition is fierce and you must always be on the look out for more jobs when working on one. This is part of the course when freelancing. Most often there is no stability or guarantee when freelance is involved. You are hired on a project basis and will be kicked to the curb once the project is complete unless you happen to earn another project right away which is rare to say the least.

To help fill the gap between those needing skilled labor and the freelancers that provide the labor there are several web sites that have sprung up. These sites allow employers to post projects of a wide variety and then the freelancers can bid on those projects. This has become an effective tool in maintaining a steady flow of work for the freelancer, but there are several downfalls to some of these sites.

For one thing, there is normally a fee that is charged for using the service. How much and how often varies by site. Normally you will pay a monthly membership fee as a freelancer wanting to bid on projects. This fee can be as high as eighty dollars on some sites, but the average is twenty. One should be careful when working with a site like this as it will be much harder to turn a profit when you consider the amount of money you have spent on the monthly fees.

There are also sites that work on a commission basis. This works by paying a percentage of the money that you earned from a project to the site for successfully bidding and completing a project. The commission charged is different with every site and averages around 10%. This system of payment is a lot more popular as the freelancer can simply add the commission amount to their bid to ensure they are getting the amount they need to complete the project.

The services offered by these sites are normally wonderful. A project manager is a great tool for tracking the projects that you have bid on and those that you have won. This ensures that nothing gets swept under the rug and forgotten about thus tarnishing your reputation.

Other sites offer safe payment resources. These payment options are basically escrow accounts where the money is held until the project is completed and approved. This works to provide security for both parties. The employer does not release the money until the project has been completed and approved. The freelancer is guaranteed to get paid for all their hard work.

There are some sites that offer all of these services and remain free for the freelance worker and the employer. They maintain the site through advertising and do not charge a commission or a monthly fee. This has become a very popular occurrence as freelancers can earn more money without having to spend so much in the process.

Freelance strategies in the translation business

One of the main challenges for freelance translators is to find suitable clients, and once they have found them, one of their main concerns is how to retain them. As a freelancer you may well find that working for translation agencies rather than for private clients offers both peace of mind and a more reliable flow of orders.

Keywords:

translations business, translation agency, freelance translator, Translation Dutch English, translation English Dutch

Article Body:

Freelance strategies in the translation business

Working for an agency or for private clients?

As a professional freelancer you are doubtlessly well aware of the many benefits of freelance work. Most of these will be associated with themes such as independence, freedom and - if you are lucky - considerable revenues. However, you may also have discovered a number of serious downsides to this kind of work. The one cited perhaps the most frequently is the ongoing pressure to attract clients. Although we know of no research to verify it, there is a law in the translation business which states that a freelance translator who has no work, is not a good translator. The opposite is also true: a good translator will never be at a loss for work. Even so, your order portfolio as a freelancer will also depend, at least in part, on your commercial skills in attracting clients, offering your services to potential clients, and building up networks. Once you have found enough clients for a sustainable business, moreover, you may find it difficult to balance your capacity with their needs.

In view of these considerations, it might be a good idea to offer your services to translation agencies as well. The rates they offer may not be as high as those of private clients (understandably, as the agency will need to safeguard its own profit margin and deduct a suitable amount from the client’s payment before passing it on to you), but once you are well established in their files you may find their constant flow of orders a great relief compared with the situation in which you have to attract business yourself.

In fact, working for a translation agency offers a range of significant advantages. One has to do with capacity. When you work directly for a large private client, capacity is clearly a limiting factor, as you will not be able to take up all their translation requests - especially as you have other clients to tend to as well. Of course you would not have any more capacity when working for an agency, but the agency itself would. By spreading translation work over different translators, agencies can obviously absorb far more work from individual clients, which makes it possible to develop a more or less exclusive relationship with them and for you to gain specific experience of their organization and terminology without necessarily having to do all their translations. This suggests that, overall, not only your capacity but also your professionalism will benefit from working for agencies. Freelancers will usually not be able to benefit from the type of feedback supplied by colleagues and quality supervisors at an agency. There are also advantages for the client, as companies that hand out translation orders to different freelancers will not benefit from any coordinated effort to safeguard consistency in style and terminology that an agency can offer.

Another true advantage of translation agencies is that they will enable you to specialize in particular areas of preference. With private clients this is far more difficult to achieve, as the pool of clients to pick from would obviously be much smaller compared with those in a larger agency's files. For example, a successful translation agency that specializes in tax law will probably have all the major tax firms on its files, which means that by working for that agency you would be introduced to a broad spectrum of practitioners in your field of specialization.

If there is one disadvantage to working for translation agencies it must be the word rates that they offer, which are usually lower, considerably lower even, than those a trusted freelancer would receive in a direct relationship with a private client. This is obviously not unreasonable, as the agency has its own overhead, provides added value services that both the client and the freelancer will benefit from (terminology management, layout and editing tasks) and, most importantly, provides you with work without any need on your part to attract clients. And don’t forget that while the rate per word may be lower, the constant flow of orders that reliable freelances tend to receive from the agencies they work for should more than make up for that in terms of sustained and sometimes even more or less predictable income levels.

One further drawback of working for an agency is that it will not be considered ethical for you to establish direct contact with their clients with the purpose of working for them directly. To the more entrepreneurial of freelancers, this means that the more they work for agencies, the smaller the number of interesting companies they would still be able to work for independently.

To sum up, as a freelancer you basically have two options when it comes to attracting orders: working for private companies directly and working for them indirectly through translation agencies. Either option brings benefits and disadvantages, especially as regards pay and professional development. Private clients tend to be more lucrative, but you will have to attract them, convince them of your qualities, and retain them while the chances are that your capacity will not be sufficient to fill all their orders. On the other hand, translation agencies usually offer lower rates, but they take all the marketing off your hands and will offer you as much work as you want once you have established yourself as a reliable supplier. In addition, you will be able to benefit from coordinated feedback from the client, the agency’s experts and fellow freelancers alike. The preference for either option depends on your commercial appetite, and your need for security and feedback from peers.

Freelance Design tricks - How to get away with murder in the workplace

Keywords:

graphic designer careers, graphics software, graphics tutorials, graphic designers, logo creation, freelancer resources, graphic designer jobs, employment, web page design, free graphics, website desi

Article Body:

Every large design company whether it's a multi-national branding corporation or a regular down at heel tatty magazine publisher needs to fill holes in the workforce. If the canny freelance designer plays his or her cards right, he can earn a tidy sum while essentially loafing at home. Here's how...

Have a handy repotoire of excuses lined up
Everyone has heard of the line 'the dog ate it...' or 'I left it in my jeans when it went into the wash' to avoid handing in an assignment but how often do we actually use them? Some of these old well worn excuses are due for a renaissance period. A boss is far more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt when you use one of these old dogs as they will question your sanity for attempting to use such an audacious excuse. Reverse psychology. Use it to your advantage

Backstabbing - Is it so wrong?
A favourite trick to pull on another member of staff is to sow the seeds of doubt in the rest of the full-timers minds about your chosen fall guy. Office politics can play a huge role in screwing with their heads. Why not try surreptiously planting somebody elses scissors or staplers in the victims drawer and asking to borrow them. When they can't find them say you saw so and so using them earlier. Sit back and watch the tension build.

An apple a day...
Being a teachers pet can sometimes work wonders when you haven't bothered to layout those pages that were given to you 3 weeks ago. Coming into the office armed with a nice rich chocolate gateau for everyone will smooth over any resentment for your tarde lackadaisacal attitude to work. Another good idea is to be the coffee gopher at regular half hour intervals. When you're gone they'll really miss you and because of the caffeine withdrawal will be snapping at one another.

Outsource and reap the rewards
Everybodies doing it so why not you? If you've landed a hefty long term design job that is a regular payer, why not bump your rates up and get somebody in India or China to knock out the work for you. Unethical? Perhaps but since when did you consider the plight of individuals in far flung places? You can explain away the discrepances in language and grammar by claiming you've been working all hours

Getting away with murder
There comes a time and place when despite your best efforts to cover your ass and blame others for your laziness and ineptitude, you are going to be found out. At this stage with disgruntled colleagues lining up to put in a bad word about you, there may be no other option left but to use the failsafe rear guard action of killing someone. This will have the effect of distracting attention from your less than honest approach to handing in graphic designs on time. It's probably best to avoid murdering the boss as questions are likely to be raised and you may find the new apointed editor will not see you as part of the new team format. No, go for one of the more replacable members of staff such as Ian the sub-editor, the resulting fracas will buy you enough time to work on some new scams at another organisation

So there you go, use these tricks as and when you feel they may benefit you. But be careful the cops are sometimes pretty keen to clamp down on office genocide - only use this last option under extreme duress.