As a relative newcomer to the freelance world, I have been taking baby steps whilst I find my feet. When I first started out on my freelance journey, I was told about a site called PeoplePerHour – a website where people could list either the jobs they needed doing where people could send proposals for the job or they could list the jobs that they could do for people (called Hourlies) and be hired that way.
I have had a steady stream of work since signing up and was recently asked how to use PeoplePerHour to its full potential. Firstly, sign up and complete your profile with your qualities and achievements – plus add some items to your portfolio if you can. Once this is done and you are happy with it, you can start searching for jobs or posting Hourlies for people to buy.
This is a screenshot of my home page. Ignore the Cert4 notice – this is just telling me how close I am to achieving it – your cert increase with each job you do. The dashboard is fairly simple to understand with options to buy or sell jobs at the top plus sections for notifications, messages and your profile. All pending jobs and previous activity are shown in the middle – as you can see, I am currently in the middle of two jobs.
Once you click Sell Services, you have a few different options. Promoting yourself can be done in a variety of ways – via email, social networks or embedded on your blog. People can endorse you in the topics you are skilled in and you can do the same for them. Let’s just click on ‘Post an Hourlie‘ for now.
Posting an Hourlie couldn’t be any simpler – just write what you are willing to do and for how much; how long the job will take you and if possible, upload some of your portfolio to really pull people in – if they can see your work and they like it, you have more chance of getting the job.
If you want to search the job listings to see if anything takes your fancy, simply click on the Jobs option in the Sell Jobs drop down menu. You can view all the different jobs available or whittle them down by category. I generally whittle them down to writing – I may also check out the social media and extraordinary categories sometimes. I do take a look at all the listing sometimes as you never know what you may found – I have had a few quick jobs from there before which I could possibly have missed.
What if you’ve found a job you would like to apply for? Then you need to send a proposal.
At the bottom of each job, there is the option to send a new proposal. Write about what you can offer the buyer – really sell yourself and your skills. If it is a job to write blog posts and you have written a blog for a couple of years, include that. If you ran the social media for a couple of months at university, write that down. If you don’t list all the skills and experience you have, how will the seller ever know?
You can also set your rate for the job. PeoplePerHour always make sure to keep a deposit in your Escrow – they generally work out a ballpark figure from whatever figure you propose. You do get a lot of awful jobs on there where people expect you to essentially work for nothing – I tend to avoid these but there is no harm in applying with your normal rate. I have done on a few jobs now and been successful.
There is also the clarification board where potential sellers can ask questions of the buyers. Buyers can sometimes be vague in their listings so if you are unsure about something, ask them! Once all queries have been resolved, send over your proposal!
Next time, I shall talk you through what to do once you have been accepted for a job. I hope this series helps someone!