How I booked my first freelancer
As someone who’s done their 💰online for a while now, I often toyed with the idea of booking freelancers, to get to know how the market works, but also to get accustomed to it as a tool. It’s always good to know how to go get something done.
And after I started working for Coderstrust, where we basically gear people for the online market, I figured, maaan I better get super friendly with all these platforms, see what happens, what kind of interactions are customary, the pitfalls, what catches attention and what pushes one away. Although I had similar experiences, none were within these specific frameworks. I wanted to get an educated opinion. So here I was ready!
Nek minit:
I knew Upwork and Fiverr already so I just went with those. A quick search around made me figure out that these are some of the things to explore:
- Client’s side:
- Pick someone and order a job.
- Post a job and have people bid for it. - Freelancer’s side:
- Create profile and tasks I can do
- Bid for jobs.
I’ll leave the freelancer side for the future, so let’s go in as a client.
1. Picking someone and ordering a job
On top of the 2020ENTERpreneur logo, I wanted to get a logo for my mum.
She’s been my first client ever, as I made her a webpage. She never asked for it, but I was jealous of the dude who did it for her. So I just made one, and told her look mum I made a website for you. She liked mine more (because you know, parents put their children’s drawings on the fridge). And so I’ve been her official designer, photographer, web developer and software engineer since.
So, I searched for logo design and opened a whole bunch of tabs, a few on Upwork and a few on fiverr. Fiverr was easier to navigate because peoples’ work examples were on top of the page, and I could see it right away. I sorted the options by price, low to high, of course, making this a cheap-toe-dip. As fiverr says it, a fiver. And then I looked at the peoples’ portfolios and checked which one made me feel the most (positive). And then I saw this:
And so I said, yes, gimme more of this!
I filled in a form with a couple question: “what work field”, “what colors”, “any ideas”. Almost instantaneously a message appeared: “we got your order, looking forward to working with you”, and a few minutes later: “I am your project manager and we looked through your answers, we’ll get someone to work with you soon” and then in a couple hours I had two logos sent back. I opened the two concepts, and although one was fairly poor, the second stopped me for a moment and made me go “hmmmm, nice”.
Didn’t think of it myself, but I really liked it.
It was swift and amazing, it opened up a whole new world and meaning to online shopping.
I had two revisions included in my package so I sent back a few little tips. The revisions were less successful and got creepier with pointy fingers, but the gentle and thoughtful icon from the first go (without some brains that were included too) was good, so life was good!
2. Post a job and have people bid for it
Decided to go with Upwork for the bid. Just because it was opened. It’s amazing how when you are a searching / first time customer, whatever comes up makes a big difference.
So I selected the job-category, the $ amount and wrote the simplest description:
A fun logo for my website, from the words “2020 enter preneur”, basically entrepreneur, but misspelt for enterpreneur.
Any combo of the words 2020 “enter” and “preneur” goes. You can also drop the 2020.
On one hand, I wanted to see what happens with so little info, and on the other hand, I want to practice working quickly and see what gets sent across.
Then on the next page, the client gets to add a few interview-like questions e.g. “What excites you most about working on this project?”, “Have you worked on any similar project?” and “Do you have any other questions”.
I posted the job and in 2 hours I had 4 bids for this project.
In 20h it was 10.
(I got busy in the week after, so nothing happened)
But I looked through the profiles a few times in that week. It’s always interesting and somewhat heartbreaking to see lives go by. There were some that have never done jobs before, some that had personal portfolios, some that sent me their ideas drawn by hand, and some with thousand examples of previous jobs and examples.
I finally sent some messages back. I could have done science and sent all 10, but I sent just a couple, and then got one (accepting) back. He was my top two to begin with, so it was easy to go ahead.
Pick someone and order a job — pt 2
At the same time I ordered another job at People per hour, again for my mum, she liked the logo and mentioned business cards. It’s holiday season, so it’s a good way to get her a present!
So I did the usual, looked through a few portfolios, picked a few, and then I went with one that had no previous jobs. I liked this person’s portfolio, so I was curious to see how that goes.
Well that didn’t go that well.
The “direction” and “color schemes” and “type of business” were absolutely not in line with the letterhead and business card designs the person sent back. I tried giving a bit of feedback, but it did not get much better.
I felt at loss, as it wasn’t going anywhere. On one hand, I felt that I paid and should be getting something at least in line with what I wrote, on the other, it really wasn’t getting any better, and I did not have the energy to try to communicate more. He probably lost my trust outright, and I wasn’t feeling it. I was thinking that if I paid more I would feel like having more agency over it, but here I was letting it go. I was a bit busy, so did not really feel like dealing with it. But I do wonder, should I leave a bad review, should I have asked for half money back, should I have been more strict with my requirements.
I just went for a similar job and ordered a new set. That was relatively satisfactory, but I went on holiday, so I wasn’t really involved with it.
The app paid both out automatically (Fiver does that too I think, but I was ready there and it wasn’t a surprise). So all in all this left a strange aftertaste and a lot of things to think about, among others:
- how to share requirements while still leaving space for creativity,
- how to give a bad review??? to someone who is just starting on a platform?
Should I even?
Post a job and have people bid for it (continued)
But I was still pretty hyped about my future logo.
We finalized the requirements after a bit of back and forth and the first “on the job” message I got said “Happy to work with you! I’ll get it done in the next 3 days!”, then a few days in I got a message “I am sick, apologies, might take a bit longer”, no problem no problem. Then I got another, saying “I’ll get to it soon, sorry been feeling pretty bad.” Abosultely no problem take your time. “Sorry, I still haven’t finished, if you ever order again I’ll give you 50% off”.
All good I have time.
And then after a few weeks, I got a refund notification from my bank app.
😢
I didn’t mind him taking so long, but quitting without a message felt a bit rough. Worst combo: postponing and then: pulling out.
So this didn’t go that well either.
But it’s a good lesson in communication, and all that. So lessons learned, this one for free, even!
So I basically went back to the first group on fiver, and asked them to do a logo for me too…
Final words:
Swinging between “AAA soo cool!!” and “Uh, interesting experience.”
On one hand it opened up the creative world market to me, I can order anything, from anywhere. I can ask someone to make my ideas into reality.
It’s probably what got me to ask a person posting drawings on Facebook, if they’d sell me one. And she did! So I bought that! And now I have it!
And on the other hand, it showed the saturation when scrolling through the endless profile, the unlimited competition, but at the same time the hopes on the freelancer’s side, and then some helplessness (for the same reasons) from the client’s side too.
I am waiting for my 2020 logo, and looking to get those business cards done. I am also toying with the idea of getting an assistant. What for not sure, but all in the name of practice. I still did not give (negative) feedback, or figured if I even want to do something about my (not so positive) experiences, but as time goes by, what I could do better (at the start) becomes clearer, and isn’t this what it is all about. So I am pretty excited to spend my monthly freelancer budget for some new experiences and lessons!
Any ideas on what kind of jobs I should order?
Entrepreneurs make money sometimes, help me be the money making kind on Patreon.com or Paypal. Or use a referral code for either People per Hour and Fiverr, you can get some discount for the first job you order (and let me know how it went).
And of course check this out: 2020enterpreneur or submit a project here!
Stay tuned for some other episode, when I put myself on the market.
