Search
Recommended Products
Related Links


 

 

Informative Articles

Use Job Search Hacks to Get Hired Faster
Baffled by the latest U.S. Labor stats about jobless claims? Two-sided confusion; cautious optimism and wolf-criers. No need to spin your wheels wondering. There’s a no-hassle solution to the unemployment news blues. You’ll have to run your search...

JobSniper.com to provide Professional Career Evaluation and Career Tools for BizjournalsHire.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- Tucson, AZ – JobSniper.com, the Internet’s number one rated jobs meta-search engine*, and BizjournalsHire.com, the new media division at American City Business Journals, today announced the deployment of JobSniper’s free...

Zudora.com Launches IT Job Search Engine Indexing Over 20,000 New IT Jobs Per Day
Zudora allows job seekers to search IT jobs across the web, with unprecedented levels of ease, accuracy and relevancy (PRWEB) March 9, 2005 -- New IT job search allows job seekers to search all major IT related job web sites in the USA with one...

College Degrees and Online College Degrees
College degrees are a necessity in today's society where education is needed to make a livable salary or to receive a promotion before another degreed employee receives it. Many professionals are returning to school via the Internet to get their...

How Important is Your Resume?
How Important is Your Resume? Getting hired is tough in today's world of job layoffs, downsizing, outsourcing and cost crunching. Businesses no longer have the money to view people as simply bodies to fill a position. Instead they look for the...

 
Google
The Modern Freelance Worker

Life Before Freelancing

When I first quit my job as a full-time Product Specialist at one of the World's leading XML software companies, all my friends and family thought I was insane. I was making a lot more money than most people and I didn't work any harder than them. In fact, in my second year of employment, I was making more than either of my parents who had both worked their entire lives in cushy government jobs. So why did I quit? Someone told me about freelancing my talents on online job "marketplaces".

Steps to Making a Real Living with Freelance Work

1. Create a business plan.

2. Market yourself like a real business.

3. Expect promotional expenses.

4. Work specific hours and turn off all distractions.

5. Complete all projects to the best of your ability within a reasonable time frame.

Online Tools to Promote Your Freelance Career

Use freelance services that are specific to your profession such as PostBidWin.com for creative/graphic design


jobs or InteractiveVoices.com for voice actors. Stay away from the big freelancing sites like elance and guru. You will only get lost in a sea of freelance workers where the ratio of jobs to designers is downright depressing.

Some of the newer services are offering marketing solutions for your profile or portfolio to drive traffic to your personal website. Take advantage of these services before their true value is discovered and the prices sky-rocket.

Putting It All Together

These tips, along with a solid Portfolio of your sample work will build a strong foundation for your freelance career to flourish. I've gone from working 8 hours a day plus a 1 hour commute to less than 4 hours a day. And now I make almost twice what I did when I worked full-time. Try It.

About the author:

John Sutherland is a freelance creative artist with a background in graphic design, web design, programming, software design, painting and voice acting. He also moonlights as a bass player in a popular rock'n'roll band.