Five Guaranteed Ways to Reduce Your Freelance Earnings

On Habré a lot of topics are discussed about freelance. They give a lot of advice on how to start a freelancer career and how to achieve success by doing everything right. However, all truly successful people do not follow the rules. Each success story is new and unique in its own way. There are no such rules, following which it is guaranteed to succeed. But the failure stories are always alike. This also applies to freelance.
I have my own small icon design studio and the night before, I once again flipped through the profiles of freelancers on a freelance.ru famous site in search of interesting personalities. The five “deadly sins” were carefully compiled into this article and now you have a complete guide to action.
So, in order to guarantee a reduction in your earnings on freelance, you need ...



... reduce the number of employers writing to you. And for this:

1. In the portfolio we shove everything that we have ever done, or are able to. In the art school did you still draw? Great, this is in the "Pictures" section. Have you read the 3D Max book? Oooh. Examples from the book in the section "3D Design". More banners, educational logos from the institute, well, from the last work of printing to put. Ltd. Beauty. Now the customer will look and think what a jack of all trades I am!
In fact, when you go to the freelancer profile, you try to determine who he is, what he knows best and what he specializes in. If in search of an interface designer you go to a page and see that a person does everything that they offer, then you don’t want to work with such a person. Highlight the main specialization and mercilessly reduce everything else. So you will look like a specialist and expert. They are loved more and paid better.

2. Immediately write that we work only on a prepayment or transaction without risk. In order not to ask stupid questions, we can add that in case of failure I leave the prepayment to myself. What? We know these customers. They don’t lie a finger in their mouth, they’ll bite off their elbow ...
When I see such an inscription, I have the feeling that I am not welcome. A person does not know me, but already does not trust me. I’ll write to him, and he will begin to set conditions instead of trying to help me? .. Despite the fact that I understand the need for prepayment, poking his nose into the conditions of prepayment significantly discourages writing.
Plus, customers freelancers throw too. Each side has its own experience. A customer thrown once will not want to make an advance payment, but it can be very promising ...

3. We write a phone, ICQ, Skype and indicate in which cases you can use these contacts. But you never know, they will start calling at night, get me ...
It’s wildly easy to read: “Communication only through PM, Skype only after a personal conversation.” Question: Why do you leave contact details? Is it not clear that from such explanations one can hear: “Do not touch me”? Do not want to write, do not specify contacts. It is doubly wild that all these conditions are described in the main description of the questionnaire. This place is one of the main in the questionnaire, and it is spent on arranging pegs for which the customer should not go?

4. We review unusual works. We make out each small preview in its own style in order to give the profile its own unique style and atmosphere.
Of all such profiles, I did not like more than one. I like practical profiles. I want it to be convenient for me to browse the portfolio, I want it to take me a minimum of time. Oddly enough, a thumbnail generated automatically, as a rule, meets these requirements.
If I am looking for an interface designer, then I want to see the interfaces, not the startup logos for which they were developed. If I am looking for a designer for toolbar icons, I want to see that the freelancer has experience in developing large sets of small icons, and not the three most beautiful in the original size. It will be necessary - I click on the preview and see the original size.

5. If you receive an order, be sure to write in the questionnaire that you are busy. Firstly, it was not for nothing that they did such a function on the site, and secondly, more solidly. I have a queue of orders, many people need me ...
This inscription acts on me like a closed pose in a conversation. Busy Well, I will not distract, I’ll go look far. It’s good that the list of freelancers is long ... Why write it? This inscription scares off customers. Not all of them need work right now (for example, I periodically look for people for the future). Or maybe they will offer you an interesting project that you simply can’t refuse, would you work at night, quit your job? Putting this inscription you cut off some of the promising messages. Even when you are working on a serious project, think ahead. Keep communicating with potential customers. Answer that you are busy until such a date, but do not write this stupid inscription!

These are not all the misses noticed, but perhaps one of the most frequent. Follow healthy logic when filling out the questionnaire and try to take the place of the customer. The customer needs a friendly contractor who can solve his problem for the agreed money. Reliable, responsible, respectful and creatively approaching the customer's problem. Be so and customers will certainly catch up.

Good luck in your hard business, gentlemen freelancers :)