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Having a website is useful but essential - all of my freelance contracts I have gotten were via contacts (friends, family, acquintances). Recently gotten one f
by kellros 14y ago
Having a website is useful but essential - all of my freelance contracts I have gotten were via contacts (friends, family, acquintances).
Recently gotten one from a friend who I consulted a couple of months ago and told them (he's a part owner of the company) that they don't need a website (yet - unless they never plan to make money off it). Now they're back with a budget and a plan ready to get things rolling - and I've managed to get 10% share in profits generated by the website.
I'd suggest you approach it differently - consider your freelance team a business. One of the reasons I dislike Freelancer/ODesk is because they tend to treat website/software developers as commodities.
That generally works out bad for everyone. Build me a facebook for 50 dollars? Heck no.
Convert an entire website to Joomla and replace "Live Chat" functionality for a fixed price of 5 dollars? Haha.
As a business doing 'freelance' work you shouln't opt to work for less than 40-50 dollars an HOUR. Looking over those requests you can easily judge ones that are worth it.
Avoid the el cheapos - it's usually the people that can't make up their minds, always extends deadlines to 'add in last minute features' or refuse to pay you (only offering 10% payment for work done).
Find out their budgets beforehand and guestimate them if their specs are within their budget. Don't work for charity, unless it's for your mother or for charity - which then you should be looking at http://www.hackersforcharity.org/ http://www.hackersforcharity.org/ not on ODesk or Freelancer.
Also, aim for local freelance projects. Your clients will be much quicker to react if you can make time to sit with them to discuss their strategy and goal. (Agile over e-mail doesn't work)
Be sensible and be honest with your prospective clients. They just might be sending more work your way (that's how freelancers get 'set' with a steady flow of work).