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FREELANCE - FREELANCING - FREELANCER - FREELANCE WEBSITE - FREELANCE PROJECTS - .........FREELANCER RESOURCES ....... A freelancer or (freelance worker) is a self-employed person working in a profession or trade in which full-time employment is also common. The word's etymology derives from the medieval term for a mercenary, a "free lance," which literally described a knight who was not attached to any particular lord, and could be hired for a given task. Fields where freelancing is especially common include journalism and other forms of writing, computer programming and graphic design, consulting, and many other professional and creative services. Freelance practice varies greatly among its practitioners. Some require clients to sign written contracts, while others may perform work based on verbal agreements. Some freelancers may provide written estimates of work and request deposits from clients, though for others this is not practical or necessary. Payment for freelance work also varies greatly. Freelancers may charge by the day or hour, or on a per-job basis. However, large clients such as businesses may have internal policies regarding freelance pay, so a freelancer accustomed to charging by the hour may be asked to accept a lump sum payment for a particular job, although if a client's conditions are undesirable, the freelancer often does not hesitate to attempt negotiation before accepting or rejecting the job. You can read more about this in Wikipedia.   Webmaster as a profession Webmasters are practitioners of web communication. Typically, they are generalists with HTML expertise who manage all aspects of Web operations. Webmasters typically know scripting languages such as PHP, Perl and Javascript. On larger sites, the webmaster will act as a coordinator and overseer to the activities of other people working on the site and is usually an employee of the owner of the website, hence webmaster can also be listed as an occupation. If the webmaster is hired by a larger website, or promoted to the position, they could do things from web design, to project management, or employee supervision. In the early days of the use of the term "webmaster" (a take-off on the term "postmaster", the administrator of an e-mail system), this role encompassed all aspects of planning, coding, production, and user interface. The webmaster may have many of the duties of an information architect, including ensuring site usability, user experience and menu taxonomy. However, since the late 90s, this type of webmaster role was typically only found working on small Web sites that could be managed by one person, or in environments where there was not a great deal of role definition. The current model tends to be more team oriented with a website manager or online producer leading a team consisting of web developers, designers, programmers, QA lead, Adobe Flash developers and often at least one usability expert or a UI/UE team. In established web development companies, especially those existing since the 90s, the term webmaster may be used by senior officers of the company, and may include usage such as "Webmaster-in-chief." A broader definition of webmaster is a businessperson who uses online media to sell products and/or services. This broader definition of webmaster covers not just the technical aspects of overseeing Web site construction and maintenance but also management of content, advertising, marketing and order fulfillment for the Web site. Core responsibilities of the webmaster include the regulation and management of access rights of different users of a website, the appearance and setting up website navigation. Content placement can be part of a webmaster's responsibilities, while content creation is typically not. Typically, the webmaster is the agent who reads user feedback and complaints about site functionality.   Things to consider while pricing your freelancing service The following points will help you determine what price you should set for your freelancing services. A. Your skillset and proficiency: There are many ways to look at this, for starters if you are beginner you may charge less and as you become efficient in the field you can charge more. The other way to look at this is you may charge more when you start out and use some portion to update your skills. You can give back free extra time back to the customer in such case. If you quote more hours for the work you may not win the projects, so a prudent approach would be to charge like your peers and convey to the customer that you will use some extra hours at no charge. Once again this approach has backfired for some freelancers when they used this in time sensitive projects. The proficiency you have at the subject matter to get the job done will determine how fast and efficient you will get the job done. We have seen some freelancers do a quick job and use the rest of the time to hone their skills even further and some who will pass back the free hours to the clients for an extra free job. There are those who struggle to finish their job in time due to lack of proepr skillset. So your price should account for your skillset or the lack of it. B.Cost you incur for providing the service: This is one main point where freelancers make major mistakes. You should include the cost for the softwares and tools you use. You should add the cost of time saving equipments you use to get the job done. Dont forget the time it takes to find jobs and do the write ups and communications you have with your client. Do you have a fax line available for the clients to use, dont forget to add a portion of that cost to each project. Also inclue all your advertisement costs and stationary expenses. The point is you should price your service so that you will get back all the costs you incur for running this freelancing business. Now last but not the least try to add the profit factor slowly but surely. Some folks tend to offer discount to make their clients repeat customers. C. Your Experience: Although covered a bit in the skillset portion this is a critical factor to add a premium on your service. The more proper you have the less likely you will add hidden costs to the client like a buggy software. Or you may use techniques and suggest ways which worked for others efficiently. These the novice would have to wait to slowly add this premium. Now you have to consider the experience the client will have with your service. Are you providing constant updates? Are you available through instant messages? Are you providing guarantees and free updates if errors are found later? These and many more you add as you gain experience can help you increase your price. D. The Market Factor: Well anyone in any business understands the concept of supply and demand and its affect the price as well. if you are offering service in a flooded market with no differentiation and obtaining clients is very difficult you should think about pricing your service to win more customers. In places where there are more clients you should price the service a bit more. As part of this you should find the price others charge in your market segment. This should then be combined with the exposure your business gets and the price should be set according to the market demands. As always try to diversify and expand your services while constantly getting yourself up to date in your core competency. E.Flexible pricing: Although having fixed rates help keep things simple, it is always good to plan for flexible rates. Study the needs of your client do they want more to be done in a short duration and can have tradeoffs in quality. Or they want perfect results and time is not a main factor. If you provide price per hour you should consider the above in your pricing strategy. Also the other factor you want to consider is your current workload and create a way to increase your price when you have more work, this may help motivate you as well get more money for your business. Or this can help keep away the smaller projects which may distract you from the major projects you are handling. There are many more smaller points one should consider while pricing but we thought the above five main factors can help you price your service.   How to Work with different types of Freelance Clients/Webmaster As in any business understanding the Freelance client/webmaster and their requirements should be one of your top priorites. Well we know the different types of people we deal with everyday, likewise the clients who provide freelancing jobs to you can be categorized in many ways. In this article our focus is not to identify the client charecteristics but to help you work with different characters and make the most of your freelance business. Clients we love to have: These clients are easy to spot and easy to work with. They are flexible in their requirements and willing to pay the right price for the right job. They are easy to please with the work and certainly wont pester you to make many revisions. They are very important to boost your morale as well to keep you interested in the freelancing industry. This breed of clients are not easily found and hence should be kept happy with decent efforts by you. Since they are loved by all they can easily be swayed by a better job from a competitor. So try to add in some goodies and freebies which they would appreciate and try to make them good as well. Clients you should avoid: Like those good hearted folks arounds there are those sharks lurking in the industry. These types are more into legal agreements and have more Do's and Dont's and payment clauses than the project requirements. Avoid them if you are new to the industry and dont sign anything for them. Unless you are big enough to have your own legal counsel and have the resources to complete job you would be better off avoiding these projects. The second type you would want to avoid are the ones whow dont know what they want. These are the folks who would say get me a logo for my business you create some variations and I will see if i like one of them. These are very bad for business because they are hard to understand they expect you to create something they would like. Ah if it were that easy. And the same folks are the ones who would complain later if they find any problems and wont pay you for revisions. Try to avoid or ask them to be more specific and get your terms right with them. The other type of people to avoid is folks who think their project is the only project you are working on and what they provide is the most urgent always. These folks will drain your energy and make you work long hours, unless it is a lean month avoid them. Regular clients: Now that we have covered 20% of the potential clients you will have, now we will take a look at the clients who will be the bread and butter for your freelancing business. We will keep it simple in this article as we will be dedicating a full session in the coming months on this topic. So we wont add variations to the types we discuss just the main characteristics are dealt with here. Clients looking for a discount in the advertised prices: These clients are the easy to please as they can live with a reduced service level. IF you have added the price for some of the premium services we can take them off and provide a discounted rates. Have you seen the hotels and how they price their rooms you may want to try and mimic them. Inorder to work with these clients be specific on what type of service will be provided. You dont have to convey what they wont be getting at the discounted price. You may want to ask them to be flexible on their schedule and try to engage them in your lean months and time of the year. Clients looking for a babysitter: they are not so tech savvy and want you ro hand hold them through the project. You should bill every hour you spend in helping them along with the project hours. You should be upfront about this and before rendering the needed help you may want to politely say that the time you spend helping them will be billed. This would avoid confrontations later and if you think the projects are good you may want to thow some extra hours to them to win future projects and referals. These folks typically have a word of mouth network which cannot be targeted by any advertisements but just by good work. Clients who tell you what they "exactly" want: This type of clients are often outsourcing because they dont have time or they think they can do something better with their time. They will be very specific on what they want and dont anticipate your expertize in pruning or updating the requirements. The best way to deal with them is to tell them you will be doing as told and stick to what they want to get done. You can try to suggest a few changes but if they are in a dont care mode then just forget this and get the job done as quickly as possible. We are on a "tight budget" type client: There are clients who are genuinely on a tight budget to finish some of the projects due to lack of cash flows or due to some outside commitments they have. You should evaluate if the requirement can be finished on budget in the time alloted. if you cannot please be upfront and try to reduce the amount of requirements that should be met. If they are not flexible and the money involved is very less or you dont think they will bring repeat business just be polite and refer someone else for the job. Then again there are those folks who are trying to look for deals and prey on the light hearted freelancers. They are the ones to watch out for, they would ask in different ways to get more done for free or pay less than committed. Deal with caution when you handle the second variety. Now that we have seen some of the client types we will be dealing with in the freelancing industry you can apply this knowledge the next time you deal with your clients appropriately. More to come real soon on this topic, so stay tuned.   Benefits of using Freelance Consultants / Trainers for your projects Copyrighting Basics Business Plan writer