I’ve been busy these last couple of days with the redesign of my home office. Two months ago I celebrated 1 year of full time freelancing and self-employment. During this year, I didn’t make any major investment in furniture or hardware.

So last week I said goodbye to my old home office and created a brand new IKEA working space. I also retired my old PC and bought a new Dell XPS M1530.

Here are some before and after pictures:

Before

After

I’m glad I finally took the time and made this move. My new home office will help me be better organized, more efficient, more productive.

Photo by powerbooktrance

Freelance Switch has an interesting article about Passive Marketing for Freelancers. My freelancing work really took off in the last couple of months, so I want to share with you my thoughts on topics such as: How do I find new work? How do I manage to convince people to come back to me again and again with new projects?

The strong portfolio

When I made the switch to full-time freelancing about a year ago, my best tool for finding new clients was my web design portfolio. I had quite a few designs to show, considering I used to work as Flash Designer and then Creative Designer for almost 5 years before making the switch.

Although this is still working for me, I feel that my portfolio and services aren’t properly marketed on my website right now. That’s why I’m working on a redesign and writing some more content, so that the website can really work as a passive marketing tool.

Here’s my advice to freelancer / bloggers: build a website, add a killer portfolio, describe services, add a bold, very visible “hire me” link, then just sit and watch your Inbox fill up with project requsts.

The happy clients

After one year of working as a freelancer, I met quite a few people, worked on quite a few projects, and I have to say the thing that works for me best is repeat clients and referrals. Don’t mean to brag or anything, but my clients are always happy. If you want to have happy, returning clients, the first thing you need to do is improve your people skills.

What do I mean by that? I mean listening to your client’s needs, being polite and most of all being patient. For most of my clients, an important aspect (next to the quality of my work) of working with me was the fact that I was patient and listened to their every problem. For me this is not a big effort to make, because this is who I am: I like to help my clients make the best of the website or blog that I create for them. But if you do have to make an effort, then by all means… do it! You’ll be surprised how that will affect your referrals ratio.

There’s one other thing that’s crucial to having return customers and even getting new referrals: when things go bad or you’re just not getting through to your client, DON’T start burning bridges!

The honesty

As a freelance, it’s a good idea to blog about how you work, about how you handle a project, even about more sensitive aspects like pricing or client relationships. Talking about all of these things in a sincere manner will help your potential clients see you for who your are. That way, they can make an informed decision about whether your’re the guy for the job.

As you can imagine, this also works the other way around, meaning you will be able to filter your potential clients, by making an upfront statement: “Hey, this is how I work, this is who I am. If you don’t like it, sorry, but it will difficult to work together”. This way you can work only with the people that are as dedicated to a certain project as you are.

In conclusion

Combine all of the above and you’ve got instant addiction. To your services, of course.

Photo from iStockphoto

Like I said before, if you want to win the good projects on Elance and make some real money (not just for peanuts), the first thing you need to know is how to choose your battles. Just bid on projects worth bidding on, or at least can turn into a project worth bidding on (some buyers don’t know how to come up with a useful brief, but sometimes you can help).

That being said, below are some types o projects you DON’T want to bid on. In fact, you should run like crazy when you see posts similar to these.

I made some comments too, so if you are a client looking to hire me, you might want to read this posts first. Don’ take it personally… it’s for your own good.

1. “I have many projects for you, so bid accordingly” - What does “bid accordingly mean”? I know what it means… means you want me to work for peanuts, don’t you? In this case, let’s not hide behind fancy words and false promises. Just say “I’m looking for cheap work and don’t care about image, so if you do this one for a nickel, there’s more where that came from”. I think I’ll say pass!
2. “I need a clone of the following website” - You also don’t care a lot about image and I have a feeling you expect this to cost you close to nothing. After all, you provided all the “creative input”, right? I just “did some HTML”. No, I don’t think I want to be associated with plagiarism and cheap work. No thanks!
3. “I want blue rounded corners with a 2px white border” - Wow, I’m amazed! You seem to know so much about web graphics. I’m sure we’ll get along great and you will be able to help me with a thing or two. I always love to hear a good Photoshop tip from one of my clients. NOT!!! Sorry, my friend, but this is not the kind of brief I expect from clients. I expect the kind of “tell me your needs, your goals, your expectations” kind of brief. Throw in a site structure, the website content and maybe some style preferences and we’re good to go. Give me too much design related details and I know for sure that you’ll make my life miserable in the next couple of weeks.
4. “I need a website for my company” - That’s good to know. I was afraid you’re gonna need me to build you a space shuttle or something. Duuhh! Of course you need a website! After all, your project is listed under Website Design & Development. To such a project description, my estimate can only be this: it will cost between $500 and $50000 and it will take between 3 and 365 days to complete. Come on! Give me something to work with. This is the exact opposite of point 3.
5. “We had a good designer who designed themes in WordPress for $150 each. That is a comfortable price point for us” - Can I have his number? I have a job for him! Now seriously… even free themes are worth more than that. But I guess it’s true what they say: you get what you pay for. Sorry, but I’m more “comfortable” with clients who appreciate my work.

And a little bonus: 2 more quotes, with no comment. I think they fall into the funny / weird category:

• A client’s idea for a blog header: “Animation of a mechanic opening the hood of a car to check out the engine”
• A client’s request: “I am looking for someone that would be prepared to come to my home for a few hours - to go through the basics of Wordpress with me”

Take care and bid wisely!