Use Your Common Sense When You Read Freelance Advice Articles

I cannot lie and I must say that I am quite mad to see that there are so many articles that offer freelancing tips that simply suck. I will only offer one example. There is this general tip going on that states you should never do work for free since you are opening yourself up to not making money and clients will take advantage for you. This is simply rubbish. If you use your common sense that will never happen.

One of the best ways to land a job as a freelancer is to offer your services for free. This has one huge advantage. You get the opportunity to highlight your skills and you basically take the interview to a brand new level. Instead of focusing on portfolio and your CV, you get to show the client what you can do. It is so rare to find a client that does not agree to seeing a special free sample of the work that you are about to do. However, it is obvious that you should only send something small, not the entire project.

You Need At Least Basic SEO Knowledge As A Content Writer!

I will never forget the first online job interview I had on Freelancer.com. The first question that I was asked was:

“What do you know about SEO?”

The job was quite simple in theory since I just had to write a daily blog post on a health site but I was not actually considered after phase 2 of hiring process because I was honest and answered: “Nothing!” Many content writers lie and will try to say exactly what the employer wants to hear. This is a huge mistake and you will be caught every single time if tell a lie. I do believe that it is always better to be honest. My honesty got me a lot more work during the almost 10 years working as a freelancer.

How Do Cheating Clients Take Advantage Of Newbie Freelancers?

There are so many things that can be said here. No matter how much I will write in this article, it is a guarantee that I will forget so many things that can be mentioned. Unfortunately, just as there are some freelancers that try to take advantage of clients, there are various clients that try to take advantage of freelancers. The basic principle is usually simple:

Cheating clients either want to pay less for the work done or want to get work done for free!

Other things can be mentioned but there are some things that do keep coming up. I will try to offer some advice for freelancers so that they can avoid as many cheating clients as possible.

Keep Your Eyes And Ears Open As A Freelancer!

This is very good advice that you need to take into account at all times. We are faced with a really tough “job” when our main goal is to work as a freelancer. There are various opportunities that are basically missed because of the fact that we are not attentive to what happens around us. In the beginning I missed out on so many different opportunities because I was focused on getting jobs on ODesk and Freelancer.com. I kept bidding and bidding and I particularly remember one opportunity that I totally missed out on Facebook. A friend was looking for someone to write some SEO articles for a gaming site. I love games and I would have loved that task. When I talked with him it was too late as the position was already filled. I will never forget what he said:

“Man! WTF? I would have hired you in a sec and would have paid more than I do this guy now!”