How to Interview and Quote for Freelance Jobs

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In the last article, we went over a few tips on how to secure freelance work doing IM task. If you missed it, give it a look over because this one  is  a follow up to that. To give you a quick recap, no, I am not going to tell you to join Odesk or Fiverr. To be honest, I have never done any work on either of those sites. They are jam pack with people that are ready to work for pennies. You don’t want to compete with those people, we are looking for high paying jobs that you deserve. We also told you that you should be contacting them and directly and as quickly as possible. Don’t give them time to find a replacement for you. Be who they want when they want.

Now we will get to the advanced tips.

When you are in the interview process, have previous work examples ready. Don’t send them one word document of a writing sample, send them a zip file of 10. They are not going to read through them either way but it looks a whole lot more impressive. You are also going to want to focus on highlighting the skills that relate to this specific job but on the side, show them non related work examples as well. For example, send them an Animoto video that you made, articles, back linking etc…

Now back to the job. Send them your diverse group of work samples and then focus back on how you are the person for the job. Tell them how you are capable of completing each task that is required to complete the job until they stop you. When you are giving them all this information, give it to them in a large article chunk. Remember how we talked about breaking the article up into small paragraphs to make it easier to read? You will want to do the opposite here. It creates the impression that

Now it is time for the tip of all tips. This is how you should handle price negotiations. First, get as much information as you can from them. Find out whether this person is a small IMer with a niche site or part of a team that have the funds to fund large projects. Once you get that information, they will most likely ask you for your price. If you can, get them to state their budget but if not, take a moment to think about what you want to charge.

This is what I do. I start with what I will be earning if I don’t take the job. For most people, this is $10/hr writing on a content mill site. $10 here vs $10 there is the same thing so we want to ask for more than that. Also, aim high. The higher you price yourself, the better value the employer will perceive you to be. If you say $20/hr, he may try to work you down to $15/hr. If you say $15/hr, he may try to work you down to $10/hr. Either way, price yourself high because that is what your time is worth. Now take all that information into account and come up with a final price. Once you have your price, multiply it by 150% and send over the quote. Don’t worry about being too high, it works more times than you would expect thanks to the reasons that I mentioned above.

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