Skip to main content

A Freelancer's Guide To Meeting Project Deadlines

-



When it comes to meeting deadlines, one way to manage your timetable effectively is to divide the large jobs and farm them out to several freelancers.

Let’s say you’ve been awarded a writing job to write an e-book on childcare with 10 chapters for $2,000 over a 45 day period of time. Bid out each chapter separately among 10 freelancers and allocate, say, $100 for each chapter over a 25 day period. This way you don’t have to worry about the deadline because you’ve given you...



When it comes to meeting deadlines, one way to manage your timetable effectively is to divide the large jobs and farm them out to several freelancers.

Let’s say you’ve been awarded a writing job to write an e-book on childcare with 10 chapters for $2,000 over a 45 day period of time. Bid out each chapter separately among 10 freelancers and allocate, say, $100 for each chapter over a 25 day period. This way you don’t have to worry about the deadline because you’ve given yourself a 20-day buffer and you stand to earn $1,000 for your efforts.

If you are going to handle a project in this manner, then you must be able to rewrite the articles to make sure the entire book “flows” seamlessly and that the same style and tone of voice is consistent throughout.

1. Cultivate a strong talent pool

In many cases, this is the most important asset you need to subcontract work to others. Here are a few additional tips to help you out in this regard:

a) Know how to hire a good coder

There are four things you should look at when hiring a coder – their resume, their samples, their rating, and their client testimonials.

The last two are critical because it is easy to prepare a bogus resume and samples, especially on the Internet.

If you look at those four things and feel you have found the person you are looking for, hire them.

b) Know how to keep them happy

A happy coder always delivers better work than an unhappy one, given the same skill level. You keep your freelancers happy by dealing in a polite and professional manner, paying them on time and understanding them when they fall or falter (and believe me, they will miss a deadline now and then). Give them respect and they will give you their best.

2. Nurture your current roster of clients

Here is the main reason why quality counts – it is quality, more than anything else, that will make your customers come running back to you again and again. Always put a premium on quality. First-class work is sometimes hard to find, especially given a limited budget. If you consistently deliver first-class work, you assure yourself and your freelancers of a prosperous business well into the future.

There is a popular saying in sales which says that “It is eight times easier to get new business from your current clients than it is from cold calls.” In other words, make sure you ask your clients for referrals from people they know or work with who may need the service you provide.

Some freelancers hesitate to ask for referrals because they feel it is unprofessional. They feel asking for referrals is like asking for a favor. That is not the case. If you have faith in your ability to deliver good work you are actually helping your client because of your willingness to provide quality work to their friends or business associates. That will reflect well on them too. It is a two-way street.


-

Popular posts from this blog

Moz: Google’s New Quick Answer Box Now Showing 98% More Often

Moz: Google’s New Quick Answer Box Now Showing 98% More Often According to a Moz tracking study the new formatted quick answers box you find in Google for queries like [what is seo] is showing up 98% more often than a week ago. Overall, general answer boxes, including stock quotes, weather forecasts, box scores and so on are showing up 44% more often. What are direct or quick answers from Google? Here is a picture of an example; but keep in mind it may or may not show images or photos within the box. However, they are different from the Knowledge Graph panel in that they are at the top of the search results. Moz: Google’s New Quick Answer Box Now Showing 98% More Often Moz said the day-over-day increase from September 25-26 in new answer boxes was +98%, almost doubling the total number in their data set. Here is the graphic: Moz: Google’s New Quick Answer Box Now Showing 98% More Often This is not to say that these answers show up for 50% of the search queries you do; they do not. But ...

21 Link Building Ideas That Have Nothing To Do With Guest Posting

21 Link Building Ideas That Have Nothing To Do With Guest Posting I think we’ve gotten better at not relying completely on guest posting as the only way to get links. I think. At least, I sure hope we have. Don’t get me wrong: Guest posting done correctly still works really well – note the emphasis on “done correctly.” I’m not recommending you remove it from your tactic list, but a little tactical diversity never hurt anyone. Note: I’m keeping these high level and vague on purpose in order to inspire as many starter ideas as possible. I find this to be ideal for brainstorming. It’ll be up to you to take the ones you like, add your own twist, and flesh it out to make it work for your company. (C’mon, I can’t do all the work for you!) PR Boilerplate. Press releases aren’t dead. Make sure you have an optimized boilerplate at the end of all of your news releases that talks about your company. It’s almost always included if/when your release gets picked up by another source. Executive Bios....

Google Launches Mobile Friendly Test Tool

Google Launches Mobile Friendly Test Tool The new tool is at google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly and it basically gives you a pass or fail grade. Either it tells you that you are mobile friendly or you are not mobile friendly. The messages I was able to generate include: Awesome! This page is mobile-friendly. Not mobile-friendly In each output, the yes, you are mobile friendly or no you are not, Google may or may not give more or less advice depending on the site. For example, for this site, we got an “Awesome! This page is mobile-friendly,” but it did add that “this page uses 9 resources which are blocked by robots.txt. The results and screenshot may be incorrect.” It then listed out those resources it had issues with, so you as the webmaster can decide if it is something that needs addressing. Here is a screen shot: Google Launches Mobile Friendly Test Tool I then tested a site that I know what not mobile-friendly and Google explained what the issues were including (a) text t...