Faith and Finance

Here I was, all exited about the new part-time career I had ventured into. After extensive research I had joined a few popular and rewarding online job sites. As any other starter would do (or so I consol myself) I went ahead and browsed through the projects and after eyeing all the competitors bids, very confidently I went ahead and bid a decent amount and the leisurely number of days it would take for me to finish the projects. Oh, did I forget to tell you that I did same with a lot of interesting projects.

It took me a couple of days to realize my folly. Especially, when I saw that I managed to obtain ‘none’ of the projects. I cannot say I can blame anyone else than myself, the reason being that all the research I mentioned before was on the website, projects and the profitability of the whole idea of online jobs. I took the big plunge than the baby steps our parent’s advice on when you start on a new venture. Boy, Did I learn my lesson!

Suddenly wise on the subject, I decided to do some investigation on my own and found that most of the service providers who beat me on acquiring the projects had these tiny little stars next to there Id’s, which obviously stands for the ratings on the reviews they received from the owners of the projects they have already completed, some of them had hundreds of reviews!

I decided to hone my management skills (I may not be an MBA but I certainly have managed my life for a few decades without disastrous results!) and make a sales plan to land some online job projects! And here are my findings.

First of all I did nothing extra to gain the project owners attention. I did everything usual, resulting in not being able to stand out in the crowd. They don’t know you, nor can they see you, so that you can explain to them why you are the best candidate for the job, so how do you grab the attention of the employer? The answer is, by sending the project owner a personal message on the message board. Explain to him that you are new to the site, lack reviews, but is willing to work hard to gain those references and a promise to meet all the deadlines of the project is always a plus point.

Secondly, explain your skillfulness and aptitude towards the project. A personal explanation is always better than a numbered list of skills of the trade you possess. Give some ‘samples’ of your previous work. If you don’t have any, make a sample of work as per the online job requirements.

Lastly, though I bid very less I did not bid the lowest. So why would the project owner pick me when he had others with great reviews bidding a lesser amount that I was. So I learned the hard lesson and started bidding lowest.

So here I am working on great projects of my own choice with the flexibility of time to work around my other hectic daily activities! Hopefully I have managed to rub off some of my experiences to you too to go get those first few projects.