We continue to work on oDesk

    A couple of months ago I wrote an article on how to start working on oDesk for people who are accustomed to regular freelance exchanges like free-lance.ru, weblancer, getafreelancer, etc. The time has come for the next article with tips for people who have already started and want to spin on this exchange.

    Everything stated in the article is my opinion. You can agree or disagree, but for me these rules work.



    Before you say “OK. we begin ”...

    1. Follow the customer’s track record.
    When viewing the project description, the customer’s track record is displayed at the bottom of the page. This list indicates previous customer projects, the duration of these projects, their results and mutual feedback / ratings. Look carefully at these indicators. If you see that 10 previous performers working with the customer said that he was a goon and tyrant, then think about whether you want to work with such a person. You can even make some money, but if he gives you low marks after completing a well-done project, then you may have problems finding the next order. Therefore, before saying the final “I agree”, restart the computer, and while OS logs flicker on the screen, think again about the decision you make.

    2. Underestimate but do not underestimate the hourly rate
    Suppose you decide to first work "for reputation" to the detriment of your wallet. Having completed a couple of orders, you finally decide to make money and put your usual rate. Customers disappear. They ask themselves the question: “If this comrade did the same job for N, then why should I pay him 4 * N for the same job? He wants to throw me? ” Remember that many customers come to freelance to save money and increase in rates makes them pay attention to your competitors from India and China who are ready to work for rice and water. Even if you decide on such a sharp increase, be prepared to answer the customer’s question “Why should I pay much more?”
    Some time ago, hourly rates for previous work in the profile began to hide. However, remember that “the old customer is better than the new two,” and these old customers are well aware of your previous rates and may be upset when they see a significant increase.

    3. Do not put all your eggs in one basket.
    Do not agree to work full time. If this single customer leaves for some reason, then you will be left without work at all. Find yourself two or three independent customers and work for them for several hours a day. In this case, if one leaves, then you can work for the others slowly looking for a replacement for the departed.

    Communication skills

    Here, for all residents of the former Union, the position is initially unprofitable. For example, many oDesk customers live in California. California is in the GMT -08 time zone. Ukraine is in the GMT +02 zone. Thus we get a 10 hour time difference.
    On the other hand, not only football and carnivals are developing in Brazil, but also IT. Moreover, in some areas of IT development is very rapid. If you look at the globe, you will see that Brazil is located in approximately the same time zones as the United States.
    The time difference is a big deal. Very much. Therefore, in this part I will try to tell how (try) to compensate for these inconveniences.

    4. The rule of the first paragraph.
    Americans and English only read the first paragraph of the entire text that you sent them. Moreover, in this paragraph it is desirable to state all thoughts in the first three lines. In the second paragraph, you can write your favorite joke and they may read it. In the third paragraph, you can write codes for launching long-range missiles - the birthplace of security.

    5. The rule of the first question.
    The Americans and the British answer only the first question that they encountered in the text. Why it happens - I don’t know. Perhaps having answered the first question, they get a sense of the work done and they, with a clear conscience, click on the Submit button. They somehow forget the fact that they need to “answer the letter” and not “answer the first question”.

    These two rules (4 and 5) apply to ordinary mortal customers who are not techies.

    6. Rule of 100% response.
    The customer should receive an answer to all questions. It is very important. They may not say anything to you once or twice if you do not answer the question, but they will look askance and tilt not only your head but also your hourly rates.

    For the 6th rule, the opposite also works: if for some reason the customer does not answer serious questions or even just letters, then you should think about your mistakes lately. Somewhere you could go to bed. Think.

    How to work considering these three rules. In each letter, ask one question or answer one question. If the question was asked in some context, then you need to very briefly recall this context and immediately write your answer. In the mail client, make it a rule not to close the letter from the customer until the moment the answer is written to it. As a last resort, create one draft for each question / topic. Your email client in bold “Draft” will remind you of unfinished letters.

    7. Rule of English
    . You need to know the English language . Firstly, when filling out a profile, it is desirable that there are no significant errors. For example, if a person writes about his expiriencethen immediately there is doubt about the quality of this experience Yes. Secondly, for a competent presentation of yourself-magnificent during the initial negotiations. Thirdly, during routine correspondence with the customer.

    8. Customer - singular noun
    When working with Americans, I personally had a case when it was necessary to coordinate a document with several people in the company of customers. The company itself was distributed in different parts of the United States. Next, the steps:
    1) I wrote the first version of the document
    2) I sent it to the first representative of the customer, say, John
    3) John wrote what to fix.
    4) Corrected and again sent the document to John. John was pleased.
    5) I send the document approved by John to the second representative of the customer. Let's say his name is Mike.
    6) Mike finds errors and says what needs to be fixed.
    7) I correct and send Mike a new document. Mike is pleased.
    8) I am sending the document approved by Mike for approval to John.
    9) John asks to correct the changes requested by Mike
    10) Go to step 4.

    Is the idea clear? To prevent this from happening before starting work, identify one person with whom you will deal. Your business is work, not the internal political / organizational squabbles of the customer.

    In the ideal case, the person you have to deal with should be a techie. That is, the system administrator or the head of the support service. You will not be lucky if it is a lawyer or an accountant, but even in this case, it is better to have one lawyer than 10. It is easier to beat with an edge and dad. © So the dad in this case will be you.

    9. Daily reports.
    Make it a rule to send a report on the work done to the customer every day. It does not have to be some specific reporting form. A brief description of specific things done today is enough. The keyword in the previous sentence is specific. No need to "pour water" of the type "conducted a deep comprehensive study of the business logic of the application in the field." Write about the results that the customer can see: changes in the template / layout for designers, commits notifications in SVN / git for programmers, links to new page layout files for layout designers, etc. The customer will be glad to know what exactly he received today for the money he spent on you.
    By the way, the customer most often will not require such reports from you in explicit form, but you still write and send. I have not yet met a single customer who would be opposed to receiving such reports.

    10. Cultural differences.
    In the late Soviet times, foreigners were sometimes given access to Soviet computer centers. These lucky people were very, very surprised when they heard about how often workers talk about the VC (WC - water closet, VC - computer center). Do not forget that the attitude to many things depends on the culture of the interlocutor and on his position. Many things that are obvious to us may not be clear to Americans. Many things obvious to project managers may not be clear to the average developer. It is better to clarify the terms and definitions at the very beginning of the conversation than to find out at the end that everyone meant something different.

    oDesk client

    11. Monitor your status in oDesk client.
    If you do not work, turn off (Exit) or stop time tracking (Suspend). Separately, I want to note that disconnecting (Disconnect) from the server does NOT mean that time tracking is stopped and you can go read the hub In a disconnected state, all data will be stored locally on your machine and will be sent to the server the next time you connect. However, it is believed that you are still working for the good of your customers even in this disconnected mode. Do not let your customer doubt your honesty. If you stupid and / or forgot to turn off the client, you can go to Work Diary on the site and remove screenshots for the period when you actually did not work.

    12. Who are we working for?
    If you work for several customers at the same time, then carefully make sure that the customer on the project you are working on is selected in the oDesk client. You have every chance to quarrel with the customer if you take money from him for the time when you worked on someone else's project. Even if you do not quarrel with him, you will have to manually add time to the project on which you really worked and convince the customer to confirm this time. Do you need this hemorrhoid?

    oDesk as a service

    13. Get ready for the unexpected.
    oDesk is evolving and changing. Sometimes these changes are annoying. For example, in October-November, there was such a feature in the customer’s interface that, when the application was rejected, the reason for such an action set “Spam in the application” by default. This refers to the fact that the application was put down automatically by some script. This caused a storm of emotions among users who were unreasonably called spammers. This trouble was later corrected, but add the fact of the occurrence of such surprises to the bookmarks.
    To react to such things is calm. If what you encountered is clearly a functional error, then immediately create a ticket for the support service. If you doubt this bug or feature, then read the forum. You can write to the forum if no one has created such a topic before you.

    14. Tests can (and should) be taken more than once.
    If you did everything right and completely filled out your profile and passed all the professional tests that concern you, this does not mean that you can rest on your laurels. You can improve your performance in the tests by passing them again and again. Typically, the test can be taken once a month. Do not lose the chance to improve your professional qualities in the eyes of the customer.

    15. Explore oDesk and take advantage of it.
    Hourly billing and automatic billing due to oDesk client free your hands. You do not need to negotiate with the customer for a long and tedious price of a new feature, draw up and approve TK or an addition to the main TK. You do not need to write down the hours of what you did and provide evidence of your work. These all tasks are automated. You just have to do your favorite work. Acting on the usual prepaid or escrow schemes is much more inconvenient, in my opinion.

    16. Rating
    Rating on oDesk is calculated taking into account the money paid by the customer. The more money the client paid, the more significant his score will be when calculating your overall rating. For example, you have two reviews. For one job you were given $ 100 and a rating of 4, and for another 200 $ and a rating of 5. Your average score will be (100 * 4 + 200 * 5.0) / (100 + 200) = 4. (6). The conclusion from this is very simple: hold on to normal customers for as long as possible, and get rid of abnormal ones as quickly as possible so that good relations with the former affect your overall rating as much as possible and, conversely, that the rating given by an inadequate customer does not spoil your picture.

    17. oConomy statistics
    ODesk has excellent statistics on salaries, types of jobs, demand for workers, etc. It is located in the main menu -> Find Providers & Jobs -> oConomy. These statistics are good, but when considering these data, always clearly understand the data source. Remember the existence of a wild army of Data Entry workers who are willing to work for pennies. This is their right, but this work strongly pulls the general hourly rate schedules down. Therefore, either look for separate charts for your narrow field of activity or make corrections for Data Entry rates.

    Organization of your work

    18. Never hope for the last day
    Never think that you can get together on the last day and do 90% of the work. Plan your work so that you finish one or two days before the deadline. In this case, when the customer wants - and he wants to - to change something an hour before the end of the work, you will have enough time for these pre-release changes. Remember the law of “five minutes before release”: testers / customers find all high priority bugs five minutes before release. Most likely only at this point they begin to seriously check your work. So here. They will need a couple of minutes to write to you about the error. You, in order to fix it, are at best an hour. Get ready and pre-plan for pre-release problems.

    19. Superman no one needs.
    When working on a project, you don’t need to save the galaxy. You need to do all your work correctly and not interfere with your project colleagues. All & Right. Do not think that it is simple and that many do it. If you can help your colleagues, it’s good, but this should be your personal initiative and, most importantly, it should not affect the quality of your duties. Tales about “not $ # @ * but an active life position” leave for HR and horny bosses. Your task is to do your job qualitatively. If you can do all your work efficiently and on time - honor and rating. If you can’t, then no one will remember that you once helped someone — you’ll get both a scandal and a reputation.

    In the comments, you can add your own rules and tips. If they are logical and reasonable, I will add them to the article.

    ps My profile on oDesk.

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