Making it as an Online Freelancer [Interview]

August 17, 2010 by 9 Comments

For the readers that don’t know, Linda Cherotich is a writer and freelancer extraordinaire. She is available for hire on www.freelancer.com and is already making a decent amount of money working online. Today, we get to learn all her secrets.

Q. You’re quite an achiever, tell us about you
Linda Cherotich is a young Kenyan woman with little to say but a lot to write about. I’m somewhat an introvert. Above all, I have an independent spirit.

Q. How do you make money online?
I write all kinds of articles for online clients; most of them on social issues. I have constant clients who fill my days with work.

Q. How did you start?
WOW…that’s a long story. I have always been reading and writing but until I went to college I considered it a hobby; my favorite pass time. It was in campus that I started writing seriously, being a firm believer in giving my all to what I love. This was the first time I had paid close attention to my writing passion and I sharpened this skill all through my schooling. I wrote short stories here and there and I kept a daily journal for three years. Towards the end of my fourth year, I discovered the potential that the internet had and I decided to exploit it. That was a year ago and I have never looked back

Q. What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?
The biggest problems I faced were internet connection, personal organization, dealing with internet clients who didn’t pay me, among others. It was very hard at the beginning and I recall wondering if I was really up to the challenge. Before I got myself my own internet connection it was hell on earth. The first few months were hard but in no time I was on my feet. I had to discipline myself and make time for work everyday. Before these challenges I was very naïve about the market and freelancing as a career, but there is only one way to learn…take the plunge.

Q. What are the challenges of being an entrepreneur in Kenya?
In this field, getting a good client can be hard; akin to sucking blood out of a stone especially if you are a beginner. You really have to prove yourself and demonstrate that you have the abilities the client is looking for.

Q. What was critical to your success?
Success can only be brought by a change of attitude, and I had to learn that.

Q. What about the competition and marketing, do you need to advertise, print flyers participate to conferences or is it mostly word of mouth?
Since the business is internet based, the only way to advertise is having a profile that outshines the rest. Developing trust with a client is crucial to your success when you are beginning

Q. Do you think that in order to “make it big” online you have to live in a Western country? Or does Kenya offer more or less the same opportunities?
Not necessarily, but you have to agree that they have a wider market and better options than us. Some clients, for example will not hire service providers from developing countries and if they do they will pay a fraction of what they would have paid providers from their own countries. Then, there is the payment method issue, which makes it a liability for them to hire service providers from this part of the world. In order to make it big as a freelancer in Kenya, you have to work twice as hard as a freelance writer in the west.

Q. Where do you see yourself and your business (es) in the next 5 years?
I’m going to be a force to be reckoned with…watch this space

Q. If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently?
Maybe I would have started earlier than I did, but I guess everything has its day and time. I never really knew a lot about online writing before I went into it, so I would read more about online writing.

Q. What advice do you have for internet business entrepreneurs in Kenya?
First, consult with people who have tread the path before you; they have the experience and you can learn from them. Second, be realistic, do not expect too much too fast. Third, be positive and fourth, since you need to have a skill to make it in your internet based business, take your time to develop them. If you have to take a course please do, it will be worth your while.

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Interviews, Make Money, Small Business Tagged With:

Kenyans on Freelancer – Part 2

August 12, 2010 by 3 Comments

If you’re just stepping in, you can gather the first part of this here. Moving on.

I’m on the site as an editor and writer, so the kinds of jobs I bid on are blog posts, copywriting, product reviews, and research tasks. The coolest jobs are the rewrites, where you’re given a story and told to redo it using your own words. They’re pretty easy, but they usually come on batches of ten, and after doing the same thing four times, your brain becomes jaded. It’s hard not to make the tenth article much worse than the first.

You can improve your chances of winning bids by paying the $20 fee to become a gold member. You pay it once a month, and it increases your shots at getting business. You can also choose your jobs carefully so that your toiling is worth it. For example, some jobs offer $30 to do four reviews, while others pay $30 for 25 articles. the word count and complexity vary, but 4 vs 25 … do the math. I’ve seen jobs for as much as $2500, but these are usually longterm jobs spanning several months, while the $30 jobs are for two or three days.

Some tasks are really hard. Yesterday I did 6 blogs in 3 hours and earned just $6, then did 10 rewrites in 4 hours and was paid $10. It’s hard not to pluck out your hair sometimes. But I have a good strategy, I’m pretty well organised, and I love to write, so I look at the words and think hmm, not bad. It helps that I love this work enough to do it for free.  As a professional writer, it seems dumb to be writing critiques on the coolness of Nokia, just to be paid in pennies, but the pennies add up, and you’d be surprised how much fun you can have poking fun at the torch on a China phone.

I started by saying Kenyans on Freelancer, because I’ve seen lots of  Kenyan flags there. When you register on the site, it uses your IP to figure out where you are, and then every time you bid, a little flag sits next to your name to tell people where you’re from. It helps because some clients like workers from specific countries. It could be primal loyalty, or it could be the ability to bid $30, who knows. But I’ve nosed around the Kenyan profiles, and they’re winning quite a few bids, so I think we’re making a name for ourselves.

Freelancer isn’t just for writers. There are thousands of jobs for IT people, architects, designers, anyone really. And it’s really easy to register. Just get on the site, key in your email, choose a good user name, and start your work. Choosing a user name can be hard because the common ones are taken, but you can go with your initials, your first and last names, your childhood nickname, or a description of what you do. You might want to avoid things like Bigbrotherdownstairs or Sexyxyz unless you’re bidding for jobs as an adult worker. If the name you choose is taken, the page will keep refreshing until you get a free name, in which case you could go with Susan365 or something like that.

Word of warning: some people on the site use it to subcontract. They’ve been on GAF for longer and they have more reviews, so they apply for jobs, win, then pimp the jobs to new workers at a fraction of the price. You won’t realise this is happening unless you’re curious, nosy, or have a lot of time on your hands, and they generally target n00bs who don’t know any better. On one hand, you get jobs that you may not have access to because you lack reviews, but on the other hand, why give someone credit for your skill?

Some workers bid online then subcontract the work offline, which is okay. But when you’re all working on the site, nobody cares if your green, pink or yellow. You know each other by user names, and you can’t even tell one’s sex. So the playing ground is equal. You should try your luck and bid, not piggy back off others.

One way to avoid the ride is to sniff around a little. When someone posts a job, look at their profile to see if they’ve just won a bid on the same job elsewhere. A person may bid $30 then offer you the same job for $15. Also, if you possibly can, avoid getting jobs from people in your industry. For example, as a writer, I try to bid on jobs posted by the IT crowd. If I bid on work from a writer, it’s possible she’s being paid for the same job somewhere else.

Another important thing is don’t do too much work for a client who hasn’t awarded you a bid. They may say they’re trial exercises, but it’s possible they’re using your work for free. Writing one or two sample articles is reasonable as part of a bid, but when you’re doing a few days worth of work, and the employer isn’t proving that they plan to pay, it’s time to get worried.

I haven’t been on the site very long and I’m far from the $100 mark – it takes time to get known. When I lost my first bid, I ignored the site for ten days. I decided I just couldn’t hack it. But then I came back, made a new bid, and landed my first job in minutes! The client said he picked me because he liked my English.

I was lucky – I lost only three bids before I won my first one. I’ve won a couple more, but I still lose bids daily, and it can get depsyching. But I pick my own hours and choose jobs and clients. I can do some work offline, and still bring in food for my baby. All at the cost of a month’s fee at Zuku. If you ask me, it’s a pretty sweet deal.

Crystal Ading’ is a professional author, editor, rock lover and mother. Her work is available through www.threeceebee.com.

Filed Under: Cool Sites, Internet Culture, Make Money, Online Jobs Tagged With:

Kenyans on Freelancer – Part 1

August 11, 2010 by 3 Comments

If you’re a regular here, then you know about Freelancer.com, or as some members call it, GAF. No, that’s not some secret subscribers code. It’s just the initials of the site’s old name, Get a Freelancer [Dot Com]. I’ve wanted to join the site for a long time, but I was afraid to try. I was eventually bullied into signing up [bless my bully!] and I’ve been working on this site for almost a month, so I thought it’d be good to do a little recap.

GAF is like a modern day sweatshop. We often complain about little kids in Indonesia being forced to sew buttons for 12 hours a day at 20 cents an hour. GAF is like that, except that we’re all grown adults and we use our minds more than our fingers. We write, design, create … and most of us  have more than one degree.

Here’s how it works. You go on the site and you register as a worker. You study the job board and look at the tasks and projects. You choose the jobs you want and decide how much you want to be paid. You approach the employer and say you’d like to do job XYZ in 123 days and that you’d like to be paid Q amount of dollars.

And then a worker from India peeks over your shoulder, looks at your bid, offers to do the same work $30, and gets the job. I’m not making this up.

Well ok, it’s not really that bad, not all the time. I’ve bid as much as $350 dollars for a gig, and sometimes you get paid what you bid. But the average bid on the site is $30, so you might not want to ask to be paid a thousand.

When an employer posts a job, they tell you how much they’re willing to pay. The usual budget is $30 to $250. As a freelancer, you can bid any figure within that range, but usually, the lowest bid wins, and a lot of people bid just $30.  When I tried for my first job, the prospective client was quite impressed with my work and my samples, but asked if I would be willing to lower my bid. I did. He has paid me a lot more since.

Getting a job is not just about price though. Sometimes, a client will willingly pay more money if he feels that your work is deserving. When you apply for a job, you read the project requirements, then click ‘Bid on this project’. You’re taken to a page where you key in your  price, suggest the duration of the task, and write a little note of 5000 characters explaining why you’re right for the job. You have the option to send a private message to the client’s inbox, where you can whisper sweet nothings and offer kickbacks or a bribe.

I’m just saying that. Nobody offers kickbacks or bribes. I think.

Once you’re awarded a task, you do it and deliver, and then you get paid. The client has an option to put up a public review of your work, saying how good you are or how much you suck. The more reviews you get, the more chances you have of winning bids in future.

So far, I’ve worked with two clients on the site and gotten one review. Both clients seem quite happy with my work and have given me repeat business. But I have to keep bidding for new clients because at $30 per assignment, you have to do  hundreds before it adds up. Sometimes when a client likes your work, they pitch you directly, so you’ll look at the job board and see ‘Job for Threeceebee’, meaning no one else is allowed to bid. Other times, the client will send work directly to your inbox and not post it on the job board at all.

…to be continued…

Crystal Ading’ is a professional author, editor, rock lover and mother. Her work is available through www.threeceebee.com.

Filed Under: Cool Sites, Internet Culture, Make Money, Online Jobs Tagged With:

How To Turn Your Skills Into A Real Online Business

June 24, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Open for businessA lot of the people reading Like Chapaa have a skill set. They are strong in web design, writing, marketing, Web development, or some other different skills.

People with such skills who want to be entrepreneurs often end up selling their skills as services. That usually entails trading money for their time, expertise and experience. It’s the path of least resistance (and risk) and a way to form a source of income. The problem is that while the business might be moderately successful, there is a limit to how successful the business can be. There are only so many hours in a day and only so much that you can charge for these services (no matter how good you are). Since freelancing is not a real business model and does not scale, you should focus these skills on building a system-based business.

Here are some ideas to create a new business based on the skills that you already have.

Scale Your Skills
Instead of doing the work yourself, have 1, 2, 5, 10, or even 50 people do the work for you. Once you have other people doing the work, there is no limit to how big you can grow the business. Start by creating a manual detailing everything that you do and make it a repeatable process that someone else can follow. You will still have to find some people with some ability as you don’t want someone with zero creativity to design high-end websites for your clients. But if you create an efficient process in getting new clients and delivering their service at a reasonable, known cost, you can start scaling the business.

In order to reduce your risk, I would start out with contractors. Pay them on a “per project” basis so you are only obligated to pay when you get paid. Your profits won’t be as high and it can be tough to find reliable contractors with good prices and quality products but once you do, it becomes very easy to scale up your business. Start out with determining your profit margin and you can estimate projects based off of the quote you receive.

Create a “Product”
If your skills are in web design, pick a market and create your best web design that you can sell over and over again. If you create a really great web site with a lot of cool features for restaurants (newsletters, birthday club, email-a-friend), sell it to restaurants operating in different markets. You might charge a lower price for each site but it will require less effort to set up. It’s even something that you could hire a contractor to set up on a per-site basis.

If you are a writer, you can also create a ‘product’ around your writing skills. You just have, for example, to look for something that would benefit by having a well written guide/manual. For instance, many writers make money by writing How-To ebooks for platforms such as Joomla and Drupal. I know others who have created a complete and re-usable business plan which they sell to anyone looking to write a business plan quickly.

If you are an Adsense expert, you could sell a program to similar businesses of keywords and ads that are pre-built and tested to be very effective. Just make sure you don’t sell it to competing clients.

Become a ‘Digital Landlord’
This is very similar to creating a product, the difference being that you do not sell it outright but rent it out and collect a subscription fee. Please have a look at this: Landlord 2.0

The basic idea is to utilise your expertise to create a service. If you are an accountant, you could create an accounting system which you charge a monthly fee for people to use it either online or offline. When most people think of this, they think that it has to be a large undertaking. That is not the case, you do not have to recreate Quickbooks, the secret is to niche – create a simple accounting system specifically for freelance web designers (incidentally, such a system is badly needed).

If you are a marketing guru, you could create a marketing system for very small businesses and freelancers (guys earning 10,000 to 500,000 a month) – a system whereby the businesses completely outsource marketing to you. Again, such a system is badly needed in today’s Kenya (most of these business owners are too busy to market properly and would appreciate some help, as long as it actually generates more business).

Web Site Flipping
basically, this is the selling of websites. It might require a little more investment but you could also bootstrap and start with a small portfolio that you constantly turn over and make more money off of them. But the idea is that you should buy websites, improve them, and then sell them. Maybe it’s a website that just needs a few tweaks to convert better, or a site that needs some basic search engine optimization, one that hasn’t utilized Pay-Per-Click yet, or one that could use all of these changes.

Create systems to effectively find, value, purchase, and improve sites. Most people who flip websites might do it on a “one off” basis. They don’t create systems to repeat the process over and over again. I liken it to real estate flipping companies who have scaled their business so they buy multiple properties, have a select group of vendors they use to improve the properties, and then sell it. They have great systems in place. From the very beginning, they have a set budget and they know what changes they can make and how much value it should add to the price.

Create Software
Ok, nothing too original here but I think this is a case which people think too big. They think the only software worth creating and selling is something that nobody else has created. There are a lot of niche markets for which you can build useful software. You don’t have to create Microsoft Windows, just something that is useful to your targeted niche market.

For example – you could create an online scheduling service for businesses that take appointments like doctors, salons or beauty parlors. There is a lot of scheduling software out there but if you create a product specific for an industry, you have created a successful product.

And the best part about software is that once it’s created, there is very little effort to maintain it. Unlike trading hours for dollars, you can create a mostly passive form of income.

What Do All the Ideas Have in Common?
It probably wasn’t apparently obvious with each of these ideas but they all involve targeting a niche market. You’re not going to be able to create something that works for everyone but if you create something that has utility for a niche market, your system based business can grow quite successfully.

Image courtesy of Pheezy.

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Small Business, Tips Hacking and Reviews Tagged With: , , , , ,

What If The People You Outsource To Are Not As Good As You?

June 18, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Following yesterday’s post, Outsource Everything, I got a few emails from people who wanted to outsource but were unsure whether anyone could get the job done as well as it needed to be. That’s an understandable reaction and it was something that I fought when we tried to outsource some of our work. Sometimes it feels like it’s more work writing up a description of what needs to be done rather than just doing it yourself.

So I put together a list of 5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Care if Your Outsourcers Can’t Do the Work as well as You Can:

  1. So what? – My first response is so what if they can’t do the work as well as you. I guarantee you that they won’t be able to do things as well as you can because they can’t read your mind. The problem is that most people expect the work to be perfect right away. It doesn’t have to be. If someone else can do 80% of the work and you just have to go back and clean up the last 20%, you still saved a lot of time. Unless you find someone you really trust (and that takes a lot of experience), you should do some type of quality control over what’s done. Don’t just think you can hand it off and forget it.
  2. You’d be surprised how well they can do the work – This isn’t always true but it happens more often than you would think. Often times I send off instructions and just know that I will get some horrible deliverable and there will be a million questions along the way. Then I’m pleasantly surprised to see that they exceed my expectations.
  3. Some things you’ll never be able to get rid of – There have been some tasks that I wanted to hand off to someone else to do because I didn’t like doing them but then I realized there was no way to do this. These aren’t tasks that you should be outsourcing because they aren’t something that you can provide step-by-step instructions to. These are things that you have to think about and there is no way that someone else will be able to know what you’re thinking. Just outsource everything else, bite the bullet, and do this one yourself.
  4. Don’t hire them to do everything you do – Make sure you have specific tasks for them. Don’t provide them high-level needs and expect that they will think of everything. If you can’t write it down in steps, it’s not something that you should hire them to do.
  5. Find things that are monotonous – A lot of your activities might have a “thinking” component and a monotonous component. Don’t be afraid of doing the “thinking” parts and handing off the monotonous components. We do this a lot when we outsource web design. We determine what the overall design and feel of the site is and then outsource the actually coding with clear instruction on what needs to be done.

The key is to remember that you’re not hiring someone to solve world peace. You’re just hiring them to do some monotonous tasks for you. It’s not going to be everything you do but you’ll start finding more and more tasks that you can write instructions to and that you can hand off. And don’t be afraid to break it down so you provide most of the brainpower and they do the rest.

Filed Under: Small Business, Tips Hacking and Reviews Tagged With: ,

Nice-guy Politics

May 6, 2010 by 4 Comments

One of the services I provide at 3CB is project management, which mainly involves logistics. For one client in particular, I handle correspondence, i.e. making phone calls and emails to get delegates to the venue in one piece, preferably with their wardrobe intact. It’s a tedious, essential, but unglamorous task.

This particular client has a very firm corporate image. It’s a no-nonsense environment where everyone takes themselves quite seriously. Protocol is followed in debilitating detail. As a result, any communication with customers is stoic, almost cold.

Enter me, with my warm, uber-friendly approach to strangers. Results were mixed at best, and disastrous at worst. My client’s associates began to ask for me by name, and my personality interfered with my client’s detached approach.

Because I was seen as more malleable, I ended up being sought on my own time for this client’s business, which was ineffective for all involved. On the plus side, people I had interacted with on behalf of my client remembered my name and persona. It’s quite possible that the relationships formed could lead to business tangents unrelated to this client. However, the primary client remains dissatisfied with my system, because that’s not who they are.

As a consultant and a businessperson, I’ve had to weigh the pros and cons of cases like this. Being myself may work well with some clients, and it certainly makes my job more enjoyable. But, cliché or not, the customer is still king, and it may mean compromising my attitude, dress code, or ethos to keep them happy. After all, they’re paying for my services, so they should get what they want.

There is a line to be drawn of course. If the client requires you to bend over so far that you end up on your back, you may need to pass up the money and work for someone else. But when you want to be paid, it’s not you that matters, it’s your client. Running your own business has very many perks, but it doesn’t necessarily make you the boss.

One way to overcome this is to pick your specialty carefully. You can’t always choose your clients, but you can choose your field. If you’re into computers and you want to start your own business, you should pick a niche that suits your nature. If you enjoy nitpicking details, you are better suited to programming, where every extra comma changes a swathe of site specs. If you’re a creative, graphic design is better, since it lets you use your imagination. The tinker-types would probably work well in hardware, so they can take things apart and stick them back together. Extroverts may prefer networking, so they can deal with flesh-type people as they explain how the systems work, and so they can be invited to the product launch.

As a writer and editor, I play with words, and I mostly work alone. My nature lets me deal individually with clients, so I sometimes do administration. Other writers prefer to outsource a marketter, publicist, or resident sanguine to deal with the more social aspects of their business. You could hire a personable assistant to act as your ‘social interphase’ so that you can hide in the basement and write. This assistant can be the ‘face’ of your business while you stay rich, anonymous, and less susceptible to kidnapping. Plus, you’re creating employment, which is always a good thing.

You may think you’re too shy, too quiet, or too nice to be in business, but with a little out-of-box thinking and some smart recruiting, you could surprise yourself. Try it, you just might like it.

Crystal Ading’ is a professional author, editor, rock lover and mother. Her work is available through www.threeceebee.com.

Filed Under: Small Business, Tips Hacking and Reviews Tagged With: ,

How To Be A Freelancing Genius

April 16, 2010 by 2 Comments

From my experience on Like Chapaa, lots and lots of people would like to be freelancers. Probably even you, yes?

While it is true that many try and succeed, it is also true that many try but fail. This could be due to many reasons and, probably, one of those reasons is that many people simply do not know what, exactly, to do when starting out. Are you a freelancer trying to set up and you do not know what to do?

This e-book will help you to build the foundation of a prominent and successful freelancing career. Taking you from the first steps in building your name through to a deeper understanding of how your thinking can affect the results you achieve, How To Be A Freelancing Genius Pt 1 will assist you through the most important stages of your growth. All this for for free!

Download it here: [download id=”29″]

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