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Published 30. March 2012 at 2:26 am - 3 Comments
Martina Mercer has years of experience as a Freelance Copywriter, Journalist & Editor who has used PPH on numerous occasions to build up a team of assistants. We suspect that Martina could write with her eyes closed & still produce something compelling!
As a freelancer and an employer of freelancers PeoplePerHour is invaluable to me, as not only do I receive 50% of my work through the site, I also advertise for assistants when I need to outsource web designing, bulk orders or translations.
Every client I’ve had through PPH has become part of my daily working life, as once a job is completed, if done well they often return the next time they need a copywriter or journalist. Lately a few have asked me a simple question and I hope that by highlighting the answer for the community here, other clients will benefit too.
As many of my clients are new to using freelancing services, they’ve asked how they can make sure that their job posting is as clear as possible in order to attract the best designers, translators and SEO experts and after posting 5 jobs and creating a good team of assistants, I think I’ve finally got the answers.
This applies to any client advertising for any job, as through trial and error I realised as a client myself that communication can get lost along the way. After much frustration, and a lot of amended job postings I finally worked out how to avoid some common issues.
Make the Commitment Clear
If you have a strict deadline or need constant communication you need to state this in your posting, otherwise you’ll be climbing the walls when you miss your deadline due to someone else’s commitments.
Check the Feedback
Some freelancers are new to PPH and so may not have any feedback as such, however if feedback is lacking an experienced professional will be able to direct you to live copy on the web through links, or attachments. No good freelancer will be against proving their ability, it gives us a chance to show off our skills, and we all love a bit of that.
Mention a Bizarre Word
I use the word Banana, as it’s the name of my dog, and makes me smile, however it’s a great tool for sorting through bids quickly when I ask bidders to mention the fruit right at the end of my posting. This ensures they have read all of my requirements and understand exactly what is expected.
Ask Questions
You can use your posting as a tool for an interview, asking questions that you would if someone was sitting in front of you in an office, such as why do you think you’d be the best person for this job? How much time can you commit? When will I have the work by? When freelancers answer these questions in a bid, they’ll not only gain an idea of the commitment you’re looking for they’ll also provide you with black and white answers you can refer to.
Give a Clear Budget
Although it’s tempting to leave the budget for the job blank just in case you receive lovely low bids from experienced freelancers, this only serves to annoy people as they have no idea what you expect and many freelancers will actually lower their price if they realise your budget is tight.
Use the Clarification Board
The clarification board is intended to clear up any confusion. You can delete any messages that you don’t like, as well as ignoring ones that don’t ask any particular question. Yet, answering questions will not only help the freelancer who posted the question but others will use it to gain a better insight too.
Above all communicate, using the private messaging board, ask for as many details as you need and aim to answer any questions that arise. In my experience PPH is much better than other freelancer sites as quality work is almost guaranteed as long as you take the time to check feedback and read a few pieces from a portfolio.
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If you wish to guest blog for us, please contact our Community Manager Dea-Marie: info@peopleperhour.com, thank you.
This entry is part 1 of 14 in the series Getting started on PPH
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Published 26. March 2012 at 10:47 am - No Comments
Guest Blogger Ben Brown is the Creative Director and founder of Citizen Design. He has worked with the likes of Apple, The BBC and Universal Records; and he has kindly agreed to add us to that list, taking up a regular slot here on the PPH blog.
When you’ve trapped the spider under the glass, the question is what to do with it? Once teetering on the brink of terror I accidentally threw the spider and the glass out of the upstairs window, luckily nobody (except, probably the spider) was hurt.
So once you’ve trapped your designer under the glass, what do you do with them? How do you make sure your job goes smoothly, and you develop this contact into a long term relationship that’s going to save you money, and be an asset to your brand? Well, there’s a few things you can do, and each job generally has 4 stages, so let’s look at how you can best manage each one without throwing your designer out of a window.
1. The Brief.
There’s an old saying; ‘a designer is only as good as their brief.’ Obviously it can’t be that old as designers are a product of the modern age, and being totally honest I know how old it is, it’s about 42 seconds old because I just made it up. That, however does not make it invalid, every job starts with a brief and I’ve seen them all, from throw away comments sketched on the back of a fag packet, to a brief so detailed that is was like following a set of IKEA instructions.
The truth is your brief needs to be somewhere between the two. A good brief will be strong enough to identify your needs, but also have enough room in it for the designer to add their expertise, and it’s really important that you allow this, as this is what you’re paying for. A designer is more than someone that knows the right software to use, to get true value out of a job you have to allow them to put an imprint on it.
So here’s a check list for briefing; (some of this may not be relevant depending on the size of the job)
Try if possible to speak to your designer about the brief on the phone or in person
Make a short briefing document and consider:
- WHAT exactly are you selling here?
- WHO you want this piece of work to appeal to?
- WHY you’re selling this, what is your USP?
Outline how many iterations of ideas you’d expect to see
Set some timeline expectations
Establish how many rounds of amends are included in the price
Follow all of this up with an email that works as an action plan for the project.
2. First Pass
The first pass is a worrying time for both sides. As a designer waiting to hear back on the first piece of work for a new client is always terrifying, and as a client, opening up that first PDF is nerve racking, as both parties find out for the first time if they’ve made the right appointment, and delivered against the brief.
The important thing to remember here is, it doesn’t matter, either way, unless the work is so bad that you feel the designer can never achieve the standard you’re looking for. If you’re not happy with the work then you need to have a conversation with the designer, and believe me they’re used to it, hitting a brief perfectly first time rarely happens, however good the briefing process, and this first pass is best used as a marker in the ground to establish parameters for the job, and develop the brief further.
Communicating visual ideas is a very difficult skill, so don’t think you’ve messed the brief up, or the designer is going to spiral into a cycle of depression, if you criticise the work. Look for the positives, and develop the job around those, this happens all the time, as long as you follow these next steps it’s all going to be fine:
Choose from the concepts which is closest to what you’re looking for & what elements from the other ideas could be used
Identify what works and what doesn’t work
Identify what’s missing and which bits can be removed
Find examples online to help articulate new ideas
Stay positive.
3. Amends
Once you’ve developed things into one concept, you’ll start to work through rounds of amends that tinker with the work, resolving issues, and making everything perfect inline with your vision and expectations.
Now amends are annoying, I’m sorry but they are. Most designers will offer unlimited rounds to completion, but some of them will set a limited round at the beginning of the job, so make sure you know what you’re dealing with as extra rounds could cost extra bucks.
I’ve seen some amends in my time, I’ve worked on jobs for under £50 that have had over 30 rounds of amends on them, and I’m sure there’s designers out there that could tell you the same, but it’s part of the job, and if they’ve done the job properly then things should be relatively easy to change, consider these thoughts when feeding back:
Keep amends concise, if they’re too complex, then you might be better talking them through on the phone
Don’t amend, amends and then amend them back
Don’t be fobbed off, remember you’re paying for this, it has to be right
Be constructive, and if things are getting missed, remember it might be your briefing process that’s the problem.
4. Sign Off
When everything’s done, and you’re happy with the work then it’s time to sign it off and process the invoice. Before you do this, make sure you’ve got everything you need and expected from the brief. This means for example, all the files types you might need if it’s a logo, the ‘Collected Files’ on print jobs, and the access to CMS passwords for web work. It’s super important that you consider this before closing the job, as going back to a designer and making requests once a job is done might mean putting you at the back of their queue.
On payment you have ownership of the work, so make sure you’ve got everything you need. I once had to supply a logo to a client in all of it’s constitute parts, everything from the dividing line and the full stop had to be suppled as a separate JPG, this might be going too far, but I did it all with a smile blazed across my face (whilst punching myself repeatedly in the eye).
The key lesson I’ve learnt working in this field for the last 10 years, is it’s about clarity of information at every level, it’s about knowing what you want and articulating this as clearly as possible, it’s about being honest and clear with your responses, and it’s about understanding and expanding the ideas that your chosen professional has to offer. Great work only comes from a flexible relationship on both sides, and the only way for this to happen is to be open and clear at every step of the journey.
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What advice would you give your clients for briefing jobs & how would your dream brief be delivered?
If you wish to guest blog for us, please contact our Community Manager Dea-Marie: info@peopleperhour.com, thank you.
This entry is part 2 of 14 in the series Getting started on PPH
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Published 14. March 2012 at 12:04 pm - No Comments
Louise Witt is a VA, Blogger/Avid writer who specialises in SEO content, she has kindly agreed to write this frank & open blog post about her experience as a single mum of 4 & tells us why Freelancing saved her life! Her words not ours!
As a mum of 4 bossy yet adorable girls, I freelance full time as a VA, working mainly with new start ups, and as a writer working primarily in SEO articles but also covering web content, copywriting and blogging. I hate cooking (toast rules!) but love terrible reality TV shows which makes me feel more ‘normal’.
In the past I have been inspired by autobiographies – believe or not, my first book was Jeremy Beadle’s autobiography that I bought in the 99p bargain bin as a joke for Secret Santa one year. I decided to read it before I wrapped it and I was mesmerised with this insight into another human being’s world. I have read hundreds since and the one piece of advice I have learnt is truly successful people harness negativity around them and use it as a tool to push their limits and do well against the odds.
However my biggest inspiration has been my eldest daughter. She is totally amazing. Gorgeous inside and out like no one else I have ever met, she deals with every challenge in life with such bravery and courage. I have total respect for her and she makes my life complete. Having her by my side makes my life richer and more meaningful. She has had some huge obstacles to overcome in her personal life, but she has the depth of character to do this in a way I never could have. I admire her strength and compassion every single day. I adore her with all my heart.
Freelancing saved my life!
As an intelligent woman, I knew my life was destined for good things. I was happily married, working in a bank and decided to make a move to France. A hellish couple of years over there, an expensive divorce and a return to live with the parents in the UK completely put me back to square one mentally and financially. Every challenge thrown at me since has seemed intent to push me into a dead end of claiming benefits – I have resisted and resisted but after a huge bout of depression it seemed giving in was the only option available to me. I had run several small businesses from home but nothing seemed to be workable with a small house (no room for stock), 4 kids and no capital outlay. So with a heavy heart I sat at the computer to investigate how to claim social security and I saw an email from PPH advertising new jobs. I had signed up previously, had a look round the site and decided it was for professionals and not normal people like me. However 2 years on, PPH were still persistently sending me updates so I decided to have a browse.
That one moment changed my life. Since then, I have got 60 jobs, made more money per month than working as a team manager in the bank and I do it all sat at home. As a single mum of 4 kids, I need flexibility with working hours and the type of work I take on. PPH allows me to do this. Without PPH, I think I would have lost all my fight and I truly believe PPH has allowed me to step away from the crippling depression and feelings of failure and allowed me to blossom and develop as a human being and a mum. It may sound dramatic but PPH did more than save my life – it has given me a completely new one.
My one piece of advice to impart on all working mums.
“I can’t think of one piece of advice. I think working mums need to deal in the extremes. Be your own worst critic, but ignore negativity from others. Don’t overload yourself, but push the boundaries. Work is incredibly important, but so are the kids. Don’t punish yourself for wanting to be the best you can be, but don’t lose sight of enjoying the simple pleasures in life. Juggle those balls anyway you can, but don’t compromise your morals and integrity. Maybe, the one piece of advice should be enjoy yourself, whatever you choose to do. Savour each and every moment knowing you are creating your own destiny.”
Happy Mother’s Day!
If you wish to guest blog for PPH or share your story, please contact our Community Manager, Dea-Marie: community@peopleperhour.com
This entry is part 3 of 5 in the series Countdown to Mother's Day
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Published 13. March 2012 at 12:53 pm - One Comment
Julie Sherwood, Mother of two & Freelance PR/Marketing Consultant took time out of her busy schedule to offer some words of wisdom to all you working mums out there in the run up to Mother’s Day!
What advice would you give to any working mum?
“There’s no manual, so never apologise and be proud of all you do. Working mum’s work so hard at supporting family life and holding down a job. Never try and do it all, be up front and honest, learn to say no (in work and social engagements) and learn to be proud of juggling your hours and working around family life – there are thousands of other working mums doing the same and often breathe a sigh of relief when we connect together. Ask for help too, whether it’s in childcare for an extra hour a week, using a milkman or getting your ironing done by someone else.”
Is there anything you would add? Please let us know what advice you would give & how we can help our PPH mums to connect more, any suggestions are welcome!
Happy Mother’s Day!
If you wish to guest blog for PPH or share your story, please contact our Community Manager, Dea-Marie: community@peopleperhour.com
This entry is part 2 of 5 in the series Countdown to Mother's Day
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Published 12. March 2012 at 3:13 pm - 4 Comments
Mary Roberts is the founding editor of working mums magazine Work Your Way and is also a Freelance VA here on PPH. When we found out that Mary helps mums who want to achieve a work-life balance, we thought we must pick her brains & she kindly offered to share her opinion of what she calls ‘The Rise of the Mumpreneur’.
Don’t you just love the English language? Have a browse through any modern dictionary and you will find a host of words which give a fascinating insight into how British culture is evolving.
‘Marmite’ – that delicious, brown gooey stuff which, clearly only very intelligent people spread on their toast in the morning, is now used as an adjective to mean something which evokes a strong feeling of like or dislike. (If you remember their ‘Love/Hate’ adverts, you will understand why).
‘Unfollow’ wouldn’t normally be accepted as ‘proper’ English, but now that we have Facebook and Twitter, we all understand exactly what it means.
Ever heard of ‘clicktivism’ or ‘clicktivists’? Thanks to social media, campaigning is also rapidly evolving with smart, media-savvy activists using the power of the internet to galvanise online protest and successfully bring it offline.
There’s more. ‘Boris-bike’ the bike-sharing scheme launched by London’s much maligned mayor; ‘casino-banking’ for bankers who risk investors’ money to gain maximum profits; ‘alarm clock Britain’ – an odd one, but evidently referring to workers who rise early, get the kids off to school and then go off to work; and ‘mumpreneur’ – definitely a Marmite of an expression if ever there was one – the term used for a woman who combines running a business with looking after her children.
People have conflicting opinions of the word ‘mumpreneur’ some feel that the term does them a disservice by dumbing down their laudable efforts in single-handedly building a mini-empire (with a cup and a cake on the top of their hat, two books, a fish, a little toy ship and some milk on a dish …. “Cat In The Hat” has nothing on these gals).
I think the only disservice and real shame here is when people try to pretend our little angels don’t exist, for fear of not being taken seriously. The whole point of being a mumpreneur is that a woman can choose to spend more time with her children as opposed to spending hours away from them. One could of course present the many arguments that exist for and against ‘feeling guilty’ about being a working mother (and us mums are good at guilt), but the fact is that many find a better alternative is to become self-employed, become a freelancer or indeed create a mini-empire.
No-one would pretend that being a mumpreneur magically makes our work-life balance easier. A common problem among home-workers in particular, is an inability to ‘switch off’ as well as not necessarily working smarter or more profitably. Work Your Way was founded with that in mind, to provide freelance, self-employed and entrepreneurial mums with tips on how to work smarter with kids in tow.
In spite of this, being a mumpreneur does tend to mean that we have greater flexibility around our working day and certainly more time to be a hands-on parent at the end of our child’s school day, as opposed to at the end of a commuter day at 6,7, 8pm (or God forbid 9pm).
I wonder what people will think in 50-60 years’ time when they stumble across the definition: “Mumpreneur: A woman who juggled running a business with looking after her children.”
Happy Mother’s Day!
If you wish to guest blog for PPH or share your story, please contact our Community Manager, Dea-Marie: community@peopleperhour.com
This entry is part 1 of 5 in the series Countdown to Mother's Day
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Published 12. March 2012 at 4:20 am - No Comments
Let me share a secret with you… Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is not magic brewed in the dungeons of marketing companies; nor is it complex, scary or even costly. Quite simply, SEO is the art of making it easy for your own and potential clients to find you on the internet.
Every day businesses and individuals all over the world are pouring a never ending stream of content into the World Wide Web. Without order, without some kind of structure, the chances of finding any single piece of information on the web would make finding a needle in a haystack look simple. Therefore, search engines such as Google and Yahoo employ rules which help people and businesses to find relevant information.
Some of these search rules involve basic information such as when the information was posted, the location of the poster and certain key words. Applying these rules, for example, allows a searcher to be successful when looking for Italian restaurants in London. However, in order for the search engines to find you, you need to make sure that the key information relating to your business is showing in the right places on your website. That is the essence of SEO.
In the last few years SEO has developed tremendously. The search engines have moved on from “any mention is a good mention” and now give preference to sites containing fresh content which is well written. This means that SEO has expanded and now tends to encompass social media such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn with social media posts complementing and boosting web site content. Blogs, articles, video and tweets all allow you to have a conversation with your clients, to appear knowledgeable and at the same time to rise to the top of the search engine tree. So don’t be scared by SEO, just chat to your clients, include the right keywords and see the benefit.
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Published 28. February 2012 at 2:47 am - No Comments
Sitting the in the cold and fiddling about with maggots has always seemed like a pointless activity to me, if you’re so desperate to get out of the house that you’ll spend your time partake in this a kind of thing, maybe it’s time for a life appraisal.
I suppose the appeal is that the longer you sit there waiting, the bigger the sense of joy is when you do land a catch, even though that potentially means you have to touch a cold slimy fish. No, my blog this week is not about fishing, it’s about networking, and that analogy worked on two levels, the first about landing clients and new business, and the second, catching your attention.
Here’s a few tried and tested techniques to landing new business.
PPH
I’m not just saying this, but there’s nowhere better to meet prospective clients than PPH, they’re looking for designers, you’re looking for clients. I’m not going to waste your time by telling you what a great site it is, but just to say it helped me to leave a pretty secure job, set up on my own and start my own company which is something I always wanted to do.
Even though Mr PPH is a small smiling face with no nose or mouth, he’s a great friend to me.
Linked In Fishing
Each week I play a little game called ‘Linked In Fishing’ – here I choose an industry I’d like to work in and work my way through my ‘suggested contacts’ sending them invitations. Once these invites are accepted I get a notification with the person’s email address on, and from that mail I send them a carefully crafted email to introduce myself and my services.
It’s been pretty successful for me, landing me my biggest client this year, I’ve also met some very weird people who think I want to build them websites for free. This is similar to when you catch an old boot, and toss it back in the water.
Blogging, Twitter and Social Media
If you talk like an expert, then people are going to think that you are one. If you identify a problem a client didn’t know they had, then they’re going to come to you to fix it. If you can make people feel engaged with your content then you’re going to stick in their heads and these are the main reasons why a good blog is so important.
Some people are worried that they’ve got nothing to say, most people probably aren’t but all anyone wants out of a blog is a good honest opinion, real experience and a genuine voice, and everyone’s got one of those. If you use your blog regularly and properly then clients will start to find you through the Social Network, if you’re reading this, then you have to admit it works!
EDM and the Chimp
EDM’s are pretty hit and miss, and gathering the data for a mail-out is time consuming, but limited runs to addresses you’ve collected from your web site can be really useful to remind people who you are. Try to keep it interesting and if you’re going to offer any kind of deal, make it worthwhile, in my experience customers find anything under 15% insulting.
The important thing to remember here is make sure the data you use to send against is legitimate, if you’re using Mail Chimp, don’t be fooled by the cuteness of the monkey, if your data is phony he turns into an Infected Lab Chimp and closes down your account, I’ve heard it’s pretty horrific.
Nano blasting Facebook Ads
If you don’t have a suite of Facebook Ads targeted at Marketing Managers, and professionals in your chosen markets then you’re missing a massive trick, this kind of advertising allows you to put tailored messages in front of exactly the people you’re looking to meet and draw them into your network at a cost you can control.
For as little as £1 a day you need to be on the front line of the future of marketing, you can’t be doing your job properly if you A: don’t understand how it works, and B: aren’t leading your customers by example.
Mini Mailers
Remember physical mail outs? Stamps, envelopes, FRANKING MACHINES! Ringing any bells? Me either.
Well, they do still work for freelance designers, but the trick is to have a brilliant idea, which is supposedly what we do for a living, so should’t be too hard. Your mailer needs to say “you opened this, you read it, so give me a call to make sure your customers do the same.”
I actually hand wrote about 200 letters saying pretty much exactly that last year, the response was pretty good, but my hand was so crippled from actual writing that I had to turn the work down. (That’s not 100% true).
The Little Things
Always be prepared, you never know who you’re going to bump into, so always carry a Business Card. Exploit all of your friends and let people know you’re looking for work on Facebook and Twitter, you can bet one of them will have a contact, or be holding the purse strings on a marketing budget, and they’ll probably won’t remember what nerd you were in school anyway. Also, I’ve heard it can be really effective to leave business cards in public toilets and phone boxes, not sure what kind of clients you’d get from this though, actually maybe forget that one.
Of course, there is another way to generate contracts, and that’s to be massively successful and do everything for free, but of course that’s not going to happen. The truth is you have to be patient and hope for good timing, honestly your odds are not great, but they’re not impossible, if your message reaches a client the day their agency has let them down then there’s a good chance you’re going to get a response.
So how do you generate new business? What tips do you have for grabbing potential clients attention, and why do some fishermen put maggots in their mouths, are they really that desperate for contact?
Guest Blogger Ben Brown is the Creative Director and founder of Citizen Design. He’s worked with Apple, The BBC and Universal Records. If you wish to guest blog for us, please contact our Community Manager Dea-Marie: info@peopleperhour.com, thank you.
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Published 22. February 2012 at 2:29 am - 7 Comments
OK, I have no idea why I’m doing this. Part of what makes a good designer is their resources, and to give them all away is probably career suicide, but that’s how much I’m desperate for your love. So, please take a look through this list and take what you want, you should find them really helpful for a range of uses including image management, customer response, inspiration and word play, then, when you’re done here pop round my house and you can take the shirt off my back, and my cat.
1. Dover Press
I’ve been a member of the free samples mail out that Dover Press release for nearly 5 years now, and I’ve built up a massive arsenal of royalty free images, the range of imagery they supply is amazing, from Abraham Lincoln in his pants through to Chinese Dragons and 1950′s Fridge Freezer ads, all hi res, and all royalty free. Get it every Friday and download everything, you never know when that ‘President in their pants’ brief might drop.
Cost = FREE Weekly Samples
2. Kuler
Making a colour palette stuck in a white office can sometimes be difficult, often you’ll be drawn to the same old bunch of colours, and end up thinking ‘there’s only 4 colours in the world, how can I make a good brand out of that?’, well take a look at Kuler, thousands of preset palettes you can search for based on names, base-colour or feelings .
Cost =FREE Registration Required
3. Phrase Finder
Do you work with someone that always comes up with a snappy headline for a campaign or advert? Yeah, they’re probably using Phrasefinder. There are free versions of this kind of tool online, but this is the best I’ve found, and can literally save you hours when trying to come up with that perfect line. Bang in a key word and get a list of every phrase containing that word, then copy and paste them into your ad and tell your client you’ve been up all night. ‘Get your Mojo Working,’ see easy!
Cost = SUBSCRIPTION £28 P/A
4. Survey Monkey
Sending your customers a short survey after a job can be really helpful. Find out if you’re over priced or over sensitive and gather customer quotes that you can use on your site. Survey Monkey is a great tool for doing this, and the great thing is you can export the HTML and plonk it right into your site keeping it in a branded template.
Cost = FREE Basic Use
5. We Transfer
There’s loads of transfer sites out there, and they’re getting bigger and freer all the time, at some point you will be able to send someone the whole internet and get a £10 book token for your troubles. WeTransfer is my favourite though, because it’s so beautiful, as a standard user you can take advantage of everyone else’s imagery and photography, but it’s also possible to set up your own branded channel, which looks really slick to for customers when sending them big files.
Cost = SUBSCRIPTION $120 P/A
6. Visual Thesaurus
Sometimes there’s a word right on the edge of your mind and however hard you crack your nut on the corner of your desk, you just can’t pull it back in, this can lead to intense headaches, and be utterly distracting. VisualThesaurus is a really smart tool that visualises the whole process of thinking and can be really helpful when honing and compacting copy lines, spurring new ideas and trimming clunky copy into snappy sentences; unlike this one.
Cost = SUBSCRIPTION $19 P/A
7. It’s Nice That
Sometimes you just need to look at some amazing work to get the juices flowing, INT, is a great resource for just that. ‘It’s Nice That has one main mission in life – to champion great creativity’ and it does just that, fashion, packaging, print, branding, anything they deem exceptional gets a mention, and they also publish a quarterly magazine, which is so nice you probably won’t even want to touch it.
Cost = FREE
8. PPH
PPH, yep, PeoplePerHour.com, ever heard of it? For the record, I’m not contractually obliged to put this in here, and the PPH man definitely did not ring me up and threaten to remove my ‘Stars’ if I didn’t put them in the list. You know that couldn’t have happened because he hasn’t even got a mouth. However, I would have mentioned them anyway, use PPH to break free of the chains of your 9-5 job, and set up on your own, it can literally change your life. (Happy now?)
Cost = FREE Basic Membership
9. Copy Paste Character
OK, stop looking for that Copyright sign right now, it’s been like 20 minutes, you could literally have hand drawn it by now! Copy Paste Character is a really handy toolbox site for quickly copying and pasting that annoyingly shy little character that likes to hide away on the keyboard and drive you mental trying every combination of every key until you’re just mashing the keys and hoping for a miracle.
Cost = FREE
10. QR Code Generator
Everyone loves a QR code at the minute, they’re the big ugly, retro future. For a relatively new technology they are probably the most hideous looking thing I’ve ever seen, and they can destroy a piece of design with a wink of their pixelated eye, but they have their place, and clients love them, plus if you’re clever you can build them into a design gracefully.
Took me two minutes to whip this up!
Cost = FREE
Right, I’ve shown you mine, now let’s see yours (oh god put that away, absolutely not what I meant), what online resources do you use to support your work?
Guest Blogger Ben Brown is Creative Director and founder of Citizen Design. He’s worked with Apple, The BBC and Universal Records. You can follow him on Twitter @citizenBB. If you wish to guest blog for PPH, please contact our Community Manager, Dea-Marie: info@peopleperhour.com.
This entry is part 6 of 14 in the series Getting started on PPH
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Published 14. February 2012 at 9:37 am - 2 Comments
Life is complicated enough as it is, so we thought we’ll make it easier for you here on PPH.
We are pleased to announce that posting a job on our main page has been carefully tailored to make it easier and quicker to use, especially for all you new clients discovering PPH for the first time!
Here are some of the changes after clicking Post a Job on the main page:
This entry is part 4 of 14 in the series Getting started on PPH
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Published 9. February 2012 at 4:20 am - 3 Comments
After time travel, time management is the next really interesting topic about time. If Doctor Who was really good at time management, maybe he wouldn’t need to time travel, it’s worth thinking about, then maybe we could get rid of that moon-faced buffoon, and get a more solid business man in the role. I think we’d all be happier with that.It’s a tough topic, because it straddles the mundane, and the patronising and plotting a path between the two is time consuming, which really means I’m not managing my time very well, and begs the question should I really be writing a blog about this? Anyway…There are 5 steps to managing your time as a freelancer.
1. What is your time worth?
The first thing you need to do is work out how much an hour of your time is actually worth. To do this you need to sit down (always best), write down how much money you need to cover in a month and divide that by the average number of working hours in a week, which is approximately 40. Once you’ve done this simple sum you’ll have a figure to aim for, add a little on for tax (17-20% unless you’re thinking of pulling in the big bucks) and there it is, the number that destroyed guess work, the number that made all your customers suck their teeth, the number that will give you sleepless nights.
Having said that, you probably want to have different rates for different kind of work. I have a rate for Creative, Artworking and Account Management on a sliding scale, that means I can charge less for simple amends work, and always be covered for the time it takes to meet a client and set a job up, it’s really important that this isn’t dead time and you’re covering as much of your working day as possible.
Remember you’re not going to sell every hour of every day, but the bigger jobs are going to cover over the gaps, just be honest and don’t charge your clients 44 hours work to do when the deadline is tomorrow.
2. Estimate jobs on experience
You know roughly how long it takes to design a logo, but what about a logo for that client, you know that that client? The super, super fussy one who is so meticulous over their brand that once it’s finished they put it in a glass bell jar and nobody even looks at it. Well that client is probably going to need a little bit more time. This is why fixed fees are dangerous, every job is different and needs a differing scale of attention, it’s painful to under-charge for a job, it gives me an actual migraine.
Make sure quotes cover a set number of amends, this way you’re covered on the 47th round. There is nothing worse than when a job starts to cost you money, it’s very demotivating and leads to bad work. Most of my clients have been quite understanding when the scope of the quote has changed, and as long as you’re fair and honest they always will be, after all, if you’ve followed a brief and delivered accurate amends, then it’s the client making this extra work.
3. Plan your work meticulously
You want to know the secret of Time Management, it’s managing your time. Yeah that’s probably going to become a new motivational business power-phrase now, so remember where you heard it first.
Julius Caesar didn’t say ‘Nobody achieved anything without a plan’, but he probably thought it. You need to know what’s happening tomorrow, and to do that you really need to have a simple system for planning where your weekly work is all going to fit in, and when it needs to be done, there’s plenty of online tools for this kind of management, but you know what works best, a chalkboard.
The chalkboard is amazing. You can write on it, but unlike paper, you can rub the writing off (which admittedly is a bit like paper). My chalkboard is the hub of my planning, I break all of my days into AM and PM and block my jobs into these sections at the end of each week. This means I know what’s in, where I have gaps and how quickly I can turn work around. It sounds obvious, but without that kind of clear oversight it’s impossible to track your time effectively.
Another important tool is project timelines, you need to use these to put the emphasis on the client, by this I don’t mean to be difficult, but if a project is going to slip, make sure it’s not because you’ve missed a deadline. By managing the timeline on a project carefully and hitting all of your own milestones, you can avoid the difficult situation of delivering a Christmas campaign in January.
4. Work at least proper hours
Dolly Parton was right about almost everything she said, but 9-5 was her great masterpiece. Except, I’d make it 9 to 5.30, but I can’t make that fit into the song, plus she notoriously left work half an hour early to beat the traffic.
You need to be doing at least a ‘Parton’ to make this whole thing work, generally clients expect work to be delivered within office hours, and for you to be responsive to their requests relatively quickly, and you can’t do this if you’re working on ‘Stoner Time’, waking up at 3pm slipping your jellied flip flops on and working in the nip until 5 in the morning, The Dude got away with it in the Big Lebowski, but he was a special case, plus he didn’t have a job.
5. Don’t take on too much
You look at your beautiful chalkboard, and all AM and PM slots are filled for the rest of the week, but a job’s come in, so what are you going to do?
Well obviously you’re going to take the work, work late and try and cram everything else in, but there does come a point where you have to stop taking on work if it means you’re going to gently let a client down. So consider this when you’re stockpiling work, you need to make sure you’ve realistically got the time to do everything properly, especially on PPH jobs, your PPH rating is one of the key factors in you winning work on the site, protect it by being brilliant and don’t let those standards slip.
So what are your tips for effective time management? How do you make sure everyday is full of work, and every deadline is met? Please don’t say time travel?
Guest Blogger Ben Brown is Creative Director and founder of Citizen Design. He’s worked with Apple, The BBC and Universal Records. If you wish to guest blog for us, please contact our Community Manager Dea-Marie: info@peopleperhour.com, thank you.
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