The Art Of Bidding For Freelance Jobs
How to Start Bidding
Once you have honed down certain projects to bid upon, it’s time to roll up
your sleeves and get ready for some action! Bidding is a three-step process.
1. Understanding the Bid Request
The key to successful bidding is to understand what the buyer is asking for.
Try to put yourself in the buyer’s shoes and ask yourself what the buyer really
wants to accomplish. Has the buyer indicated a tight deadline and if so, can you
reasonably meet it? In many cases, you will be able to convince a buyer to extend
the deadline. The best way to do this is to talk about the quality of work and the
time required. Tell them if you cram 10 days into 2 days, quality will suffer.
2. Researching Past Bids
Most of freelance exchange website offer ways to research the history of a
writer or a buyer. Use it extensively!
The first step is to look at the buyer’s rating and any past projects the buyer
has accepted. This will give you a wealth of information about the buyer’s typical
price range, past problems and how quickly the buyer accepts projects after they
were completed.
3. Preparing Your Bid
If in the bid the buyer has requested samples, don’t forget to mention it in the
bid. If you don’t, there’s virtually no chance you’ll win the bid because you’re
basically telling the buyer that you can’t be bothered.
Never criticize the buyer’s bid request or appear judgmental about what the
buyer is asking for. This is the surest way to NOT be the successful bidder.
How to Write a Bid
Your bids should include the following information:
Salutation: Always personalize your bid. Right away, this tells the buyer
that you’re a cut above the others because you’ve taken an extra moment to write
the bid. You’d be amazed just how important this is!
A salutation is simply a greeting such as, Dear Mr. Edwards, Hello Jim, or, if
the buyers screen name is impersonal, even a simple “Greetings,” is equally
effective. Avoid using “Dear Sir” unless you are 100% certain the buyer is male.
1st Paragraph: Introduce yourself in the first paragraph.
2nd Paragraph: This is where you go into the detail of the bid request, e.g.,
ask any questions and give suggestions to let the buyer know that you’re interested
and that you’ve actually read the bid request.
Last Paragraph: In your bid, tell the buyer why you're qualified to handle
the project and direct the buyer to your portfolio where he can see samples of
previous work. If your ratings are good, invite the buyer to look at what others have
said about you and your work.
You can say something like: “If you have a few moments, I’d also like to ask
you to review my online resume and past client comments regarding my
performance on their projects.”
Warning: Do this only if you have a good rating!
Closing: It can be as simple as:
Best Regards,
{Your Name}
After writing your bid, make sure you do a spelling and grammar check. If
you have MS Word available, this is a good choice for preparing your bid. You can
copy and paste it into the bid comment box. Lastly, always remember that your bid
is a personal statement about yourself and your abilities.
The way you write a bid can have a great impact on howmany bids you
win. Take the time to personalize your bids; it’s worth it.
How to Price Your Bid
Writers use an hourly rate to calculate their fees. Some charge $10 an hour;
others charge $250 an hour. For example, if you take a project of writing an e-book
on dog training and estimate it would take you around 25 hours to finish it and if
you have an hourly rate of $20, you could price the e-book at $500.
The hourly rate is determined by:
- Your expertise in a niche. Writers who specialize in a particular niche are
paid more than others. For example, if you are an expert at writing email
follow up campaigns, you can charge much more than other writers for
such a project .
- Your reputation. Are you known to deliver what you promise? What are
others saying about you?
- Whom are you charging (Corporate and business clients generally tend to
pay higher than others).
The whole game of increasing your hourly rate is increasing your reputation
and expertise in a particular niche.
If you are a newcomer, there’s no magic number you should set as your
hourly rate. Look what others are charging with your experience and copy them.
Jennifer Mattern , a PR consultant based in Pennsylvania and owner of the
popular website allfreelancewriting.com gives some excellent advice on setting of
rates the right way in the following article:
Setting FreelanceWriting Rates the Right Way
Common Freelance Writing Rate Strategies
What They Have in Common
Whether you prefer to charge your freelance writing clients per word, per
project, or per hour, you’ll still need to account for an hourly rate. Finding the most
appropriate hourly rate is really the key to setting freelance writing rates. Once you
have that number, you’ll simply charge accordingly. If you charge by the hour,
that’s easy enough to do. If you charge by the word or by the project, you’ll need to
estimate the amount of time a project would take or how many words on average
you’re able to write (not just how quickly you can type).
Working Hours vs. Billable Hours
In order to find the best hourly rate for yourself, you’ll need to understand
the difference between working hours and billable hours. Working hours include
every hour you work (assuming a “typical” full-time work week, we’ll say that’s 40
hours). Billable hours, on the other hand, are the number of working hours that you
can actually bill out to clients, minus the hours spent marketing and on
administrative duties.
Billable hours are often approximately, or a little more than, half of your
total working hours if you’re not neglecting anything on the admin and marketing
side. To simplify the numbers, let’s round it to exactly half, and say that out of a 40
hour work week, you would have 20 billable hours. Now we have something to start
from.
Salaries vs Yearly Freelance Earnings
It’s easy for a freelance writer to say “I earned $50,000 at my old day job and
I got by fine, so I want to set a goal to earn the same amount from my freelance
writing full-time.” What’s harder is understanding that the two numbers truly aren’t
comparable, and they can’t be interchanged as easily as that.
To get a more realistic number, you would need to figure out your real “cost”
in your former full-time job. Think of it from the company’s perspective instead of
yours (because as a freelancer, you’ll be playing that role). For example (assuming a
US-based writer)…
Your full-time gross salary would have included your portion of taxes,
benefit payments, retirement savings, etc. on top of the net take-home pay. Use that
as a starting point. Now add on any Medicare and social security taxes the employer
had to pay for you as their employee, any contributions they made towards benefits
or retirement, the cost of any supplies or other expenses they covered that made
your work possible, etc. Now you have a more realistic number regarding what you
would need to earn as a freelancer to be in a comparable situation. That number can
be significantly more than your gross salary - in this example, let’s say it works out
to around $70,000.
You Won’t Always be Working
We’ve already covered the full-time working hours versus billable hours and
the real salary you would need to earn to live a comparable life, so you may be
thinking that setting an hourly rate is now as easy as dividing $70k by 52 weeks in a
year and then by 20 billable hours (which would work out to a little over $67 /
hour). But you would still be missing a vital part of the equation.
It’s highly unlikely that anyone is going to work 40 hours per week, for a full
52 weeks in a year. I always suggest deducting a minimum of two weeks to cover a
short vacation and a handful of personal or sick days. So at a maximum, I would
suggest you factor your hourly rate based on 50 working weeks rather than 52. In
my own case, I prefer to take more time off when possible (for short trips, seeing
family, getting things done around the house, etc.), and try to account for extra for
holidays, so I base my own goals on 45 working weeks.
You Will Have Slow Times
It’s highly unlikely that you’ll never have a slow period in your work.
Because of that, the rest of your billable hours throughout the year need to account
for any possible lapses. I’d personally suggest that you tack on 10-20% to your
income goal we established earlier, or subtract another few weeks from your
expected working weeks to get a more realistic calculation that won’t leave you
scrambling for extra income later.
Let’s Crunch the Numbers
Given the example we’ve been talking about, we have a freelance writer
who’s looking to set their freelance writing rates based on 20 billable hours per
week to earn $70,000 with an expectation of 45 working weeks (using that rather
than 50 to account for the slow periods instead of adding a percentage onto the goal
gross salary). So the hourly rate would be calculated like this:
$70,000 / 45 working weeks = $1555.56 per week
$1555.56 per week / 20 billable hours per week = $77.78 per hour
or
Salary Goal / Working Weeks / Weekly Billable Hours = Hourly Rate
Adapting Your Hourly Rate
You now have an hourly rate established which you’ll need to earn to reach
your yearly income goals as a freelance writer. Now all you have to do is adapt that
hourly rate to fit the pricing model you prefer (per word, per project, etc.).
For example, if you want to charge per project, and you know that it takes
you an average of ten hours to research and write a comprehensive business plan for
a client, given this scenario, you would charge $777.80 per business plan. I would
actually suggest that you round it up to $800, not only because it makes for easier
billing and marketing, but also because rounding up a bit helps to account for any
“problem clients” who may take an unusually large amount of time to get you what
you need for a project, or who may demand excessive edits compared to others. In
this case, if you really wanted to round up more to account for those things, you
could charge a flat $1000. Keep the risk level of each type of project in mind when
you figure out your per-project rates.
As another example, let’s look at setting a per-word rate with the above
scenario. Let’s assume that you know you can write about 1000 words per hour
within your niche specialty with proper research and editing. Simply divide the
hourly rate by the 1000 words you can write per hour on average, and you’ll get a
per-word rate of approximately $.08 / word. Again, I would suggest that you
increase it slightly to account for any slow periods where you may not be able to fill
your full 20 billable hours - so in this case, let’s say $.10 / word. So if someone
hired you to write a 500 word article, you would charge them $50.
Keep in mind that these estimates are going to work much more effectively
for a freelance writer who’s a specialist in their niche (because they’re intimately
familiar with the best research sources for the topic and how much time the research
on top of their existing knowledge would take) as opposed to a generalist who can’t
always know the amount of research needed or where to go for it, who won’t be
able to write as quickly because they’re familiar with a topic, and who will likely
have to spend more time editing and fact-checking. It would seem then that a
generalist should charge even more. However, clients are rarely willing to pay more
for a general writer than an expert in a niche (meaning niche specialists can choose
to charge a premium rather than just what they need if they want to). It’s just
something to keep in mind, and another case for specialization in your freelance
writing career.
Article By Jennifer Mattern , allfreelancewriting.com
Pricing on Freelance Websites
Bidding on freelance exchange websites has certain intricacies that need to
be understood. It goes beyond simply setting up an hourly rate.
While working on these websites, you would be working in a global
marketplace. Your competitors would be writers from Romania, India, Pakistan,
United Kingdom, Australia and more.
While in the United States an annual income of $36,000 can be considered a
middle level income, in South Asian countries, the middle income starts at around
$5,000 per year. This is because the cost of living is much less in these countries
(manpower is very cheap because of a huge mismatch in demand and supply in
these economies). You will often find yourself competing with equally qualified
and talented writers willing to work at 1/5 the price of a writer based in the U.S.
The truth is freelance exchange websites can be a very easy way to find
assignments but to find boat loads of work you need to build a reputation. In the
beginning, you probably won't be able to charge the rates you'd like to charge.
Instead, you'll have to lower your bids, possibly quite a bit, just so you have a
chance at getting a fair share of the available work.
For most buyers, getting the work done is the first priority and second is the
price. Many buyers report frustration over the quality of work given by lower fee
freelancers.
Not all freelancers are bad, but some are just not serious about what they do.
They want to make a quick buck without giving a great service. They will simply
cut and copy content from web pages and give it to the buyers.
If you can build your reputation on a freelance exchange website with good
rating and past client testimonials, you can easily increase your hourly rate. But to
do that, you will have to pass through a phase of working for lower fees.
Lowering your bid and providing compelling reasons why you're the right
person for the job usually is the best way to increase your chances that some buyer
will accept your bid. After several projects done, great ratings and comments, and
an impressive online portfolio, you can increase your bid and buyers will still come
to you.
To help price your projects visit your competitor writers profiles and see how
much they are bidding for.
The First Bid
Getting the first bid is a major hurdle for new freelance writers. Buyers are
often reluctant to award a project to a writer with no testimonials and past record
because they do not know what to expect. I got my first bid by bidding so low that
the buyer was shocked! Even flea markets are better! Here are a few strategies to
win the first bid:
- Bid low but explain to the buyer why you are bidding low. Many buyers
will award you a project if you can convince them that you would do a
good job at lower rate because you want a good ranking.
- If you are desperate and things are not working out for you, here’s my
proprietary trick. Call a colleague/friend or even your mom in another
state and ask them to post a project on the website. The project need only
be $25. Let them award you the project. After a gap of 3 or 4 days, send
them the articles and tell them to post a specific and suitable testimonial
at the website. That’s it; you’re in business.
Make sure the computers from where you accept the project and from where
project was created are different. Similar IP addresses could alert the system.
Getting the first bid is aminor hurdle you need to cross. Don’t feel
disappointed after a few unsuccessful bids. Remember, you will be
racing forward soon.
To give you a better idea on the bidding process, I posted a small project on a
freelance website and invited some bids. This is the screen I see when I have to
select a writer. (Names have been edited out to protect privacy)
Imagine a buyer sometimes have to select from 20- 30 writers. Make your bid
powerful!
After Winning the Bid
Once many freelance writers have posted their bid, the buyer will select one
of them. If you follow the guidelines outlined in this guide it won’t be long before
you receive the following message in your e-mail:
“Congratulations, your bid was accepted.”
Yippee! But wait. You didn’t get the dollars; the buyer accepted to work
with you on this project. In the background unknown to you this is what has
happened: The buyer accepted your bid and placed the amount of money you bid in
escrow with the freelance website. The money will remain in escrow until you
deliver satisfactory work to the buyer.( Some freelance websites such as Rentacoder
even call up first time buyers on their telephones to confirm the identity and prevent
fraud !.)
Once you have received the email notification of the bid acceptance, what’s
your first step? Nope, it’s not to start work. It’s to open a dialogue with the buyer.
Send a message to the buyer thanking him or her for the opportunity.
Acknowledge the buyer's deadline and then let the buyer know when you intend to
start working on the project. If you have any questions regarding the project, you
can also clarify it during this time.
Why is this step important?
- It lets the buyer know he is dealing with a responsible person.
- It gives a personal touch in a virtual environment. I would definitely
never feel comfortable if I give $500 to someone and hear nothing from
him. Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes and dispel all fears they may have.
- Let’s you clarify any specific requirement of the project
The Importance of Communication
Apart from delivering good work, the second most important factor in how a
buyer will rate you is how you communicate. Remember: Communicate,
communicate, communicate.
If you have a small project such as writing 5 articles, you don’t need to
communicate often. However, if you are writing an e-book or numerous articles, it’s
always good to keep the buyer informed about your progress on the work.
Some buyers will post in their bid request that they need frequent updates on
the status of the project. It might seem as a hassle, but always pay attention to it.
They want to see for themselves that progress is in fact being made. So show them.
If you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, this really shouldn't be a problem.
When communicating:
Remember your manners: Don’t get overtly personal with a buyer until
you develop a long term work relationship. Be courteous and friendly, but keep a
formal environment to your communication.
The buyer is always right! Never ever get angry with a buyer. Like real life,
you would come across many types of people on these websites. Some keep on
complaining. Your job on freelance exchange websites is not to get into human
altercations. Earn a bid, do good work and get a good rating and move on.
When I was a novice, a buyer gave me 20 articles to write on a topic for
which very scarce information was available on the Internet. I, however, spent hours
and hours researching, gathering all tidbits and wrote the articles as best I could.
After sending the articles to him, he wrote: “I have never seen such low quality
work in my life.”
When I read the statement, this is the uncensored instant thought that came to
my mind:
“I will take the healthiest fleas from the most stinking camels of the Atacama
Desert and shove it in your armpits.”
And this is what I wrote to the buyer: “I apologize if the articles didn’t meet
your expectations. I will rewrite the articles. Please let me know what I can improve
upon.”
I rewrote the articles and after the project was closed, the buyer rated me
10/10. Hola ! I was glad I didn’t send the camel message across.
You will be amazed how buyers give you a constant top rating if you are a
good communicator.
The problem with communication ... is the illusion that it has been
accomplished.
~ George Bernard Shaw
Doing the Project
Okay, you got the project, now it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get ready
for some real action. If you can write at a basic ninth-grade level, this won’t be a
problem. That’s what online writing demands. It’s like writing research reports in
school.
A few tips you could use during writing:
1. Don’t fall in the perfection syndrome. A big mental block that prevents
writers from earning an explosive income online is that they become prey to
the perfection syndrome. They want to write the perfect article. It can cost a
lot of time and frustration. Instead of writing a perfect article in 4 hours,
write a good article in 45 minutes. A rule in writing is that don’t go back.
Once you start writing, don’t stop. Never hit the back button. Let the ideas
flow. Once you have made a basic outline then go back and edit it.
Perfection is a byproduct of experience and writers naturally pick it along the
way as they write assignments in different fields.
2. Never cut and copy. Buyers use programs such as CopyScape to find if
sentences in an article have been copied directly from other websites and
what percentage of the article is original. They do this because if an article
has the same content as that on another article on the internet , search engines
such as Google , Yahoo and Msn devalue such articles and do not include
them in their search listings. If you do copy from another website, make sure
to modify each sentence so that it’s not 100 % same. So a sentence like
“boxer dogs are known to be affectionate and intelligent” can be modified as
“boxer dogs are affectionate and intelligent.” This way you may copy the
sentence and still remain under the radar.
3. Always time yourself. Before sitting down to write an article or other
assignment, make sure to time yourself. Having a clock in front and working
with deadline jumpstarts productivity.
4. Cross check your work prior to submission. You may have spent 20 hours
writing an e-book, but if the buyer sees a grammatical error on the first page,
it lowers your rating. If you use word processors like Microsoft Word with
spell checker on, spelling won’t be an issue. What needs to be taken care of
are grammatical mistakes and formatting.
Project Completion
Once you finish the project, it’s time to send it to the buyer. A buyer may
take anywhere between a few hours to a few days to approve the project. In the
meantime don’t forget to bid everyday on other projects!
Once the buyer has gone through the work, he may contact you with simple
modifications or may be delighted with your work. If you have worked hard, expect
it to be the end.
After he accepts your work, the freelance exchange website automatically
delivers the agreed bid amount into your account. Believe me, those numbers look
magical once you see them for the first time.
The buyer would also rate you during this time. You don’t have to worry on
this issue. If you have done a decent job, expect good ratings.
If somehow a buyer gives you an unexpected very poor rating, don’t worry.
Most freelance exchange websites allow you to post your side of the story.
However, in your explanation, never criticize the buyer. Other buyers would read it
later. It would reflect the kind of person you are.
Write something like, “I respect {buyers name}’s decision to rate me poorly.
However, I feel I deserved a better rating. We had a little misunderstanding on the
scope and the end deliverables for the project, which led to…”
Increasing Your Rankings
Most of the freelance exchange websites rank writers on a simple scale. The
scale is the amount of bids you have been awarded multiplied by the ratings given
by buyers.
So if you have been awarded $1000 worth of writing work and your average
rating is 9.5 you will have a score of 9500.
Getting a good rating is crucial if you want lots of work on freelance
exchange websites. It’s simply a two-step process:
- Getting as much bids as possible
- Getting high ratings for the bids
Higher rankings generally attract more buyers fromfreelance
websites. A high ranking boosts the number of bids you win by a large
factor.
Can You Make a 6-Figure Income with Only Freelance Exchange
Websites?
To answer this answer this question, we need to understand the working
dynamics of online freelance writing. Writing online content is a little different
from offline writing.
In an offline environment, a reader usually relaxes and holds a book or a
magazine in a relaxed position. On the Internet, a reader is sitting on a chair and
leaning to read content on a bright screen which causes strain to the eyes if done for
a long period of time.
Therefore, the attention span of a reader reading online is much less than the
attention span of an offline reader. It is for this reason you would find most articles
on freelance websites are in the range of 300 to 500 words.
Online articles are not written with the purpose of winning a Pulitzer or a
Nobel Prize; they are written with the purpose of giving a reader the information he
is looking for in a brief, step-by-step manner.
If you have the knack of writing clear, to the point articles at a fast speed,
freelance exchange website can make you a good income.
Some writers naturally write fast and can still maintain a good quality of
content. They can complete articles and bid at very fast speeds and still get good
ratings. Top earners usually finish a small article on a known topic in about 30
minutes, and if it involves research, in about 1.5- hours.
However, most writers are slow in articulating their thoughts into words. If
you are a slow writer, there are two areas you could work on:
1. Improve your writing speed.
2. Start looking for higher paying assignments. (Discussed later.)
But even if you are a fast writer expect to have your income to be around $2000 -$
3500 if you settle for writing articles at cheap /medium rates. If you go to many
freelance websites you would find some writers make around $ 2, 50,000 per annum
writing articles at medium prices. These writers however, do not go solo and have a
writing team under them. A few pages later you read the concept of leverage, if you
want to take this approach to make a six figure.
Going solo… bidding, researching and writing articles all alone will drastically
limit your income. You would be too overloaded to work efficiently.
In my opinion Freelance websites is not where the gold is. (Please remember this
whole manual is geared towards making a six figure. Many writers still make a
good income on freelance websites)
