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How it works: Freelance work
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If you type the word “freelancer” in the Google Images search box, you will see several hundred photographs, half of which depict a contented young man with a laptop on his lap and a smile on his face. As a rule, he sits not within four walls, but on the beach, on a park bench or somewhere else, but not indoors. Unfortunately, reality does not always coincide with the pictures, and the laptop screen tends to glare very strongly in the sun. So if, as a freelancer, you hope to spend your working day under a palm tree, then I have to disappoint you ... However, freelancing has many positive aspects.
Personally, it all started for me with the fact that during a cold student time, I was puzzled by the search for additional income. There was only one problem - a few weeks ago, 2008 ended successfully, which was remembered by many not only for the war with South Ossetia, but also for the economic crisis, which imposed its financial curse for many months. So, at the very beginning of 2009, having frozen my eyes on the Ural web labor exchanges, I realized that work in Yekaterinburg is tight, and there are simply no vacancies for students. After being sad for a couple of days, I nevertheless found the strength and entered into Google a couple of cherished words: "remote work". This is how I came across several popular domestic freelance exchanges.
The freelance exchange is an Internet platform where employers describe the orders they need to complete, and freelancers hurrying to help from different parts of the world click the "Respond to the project" button and announce their conditions. After both parties discuss the project and agree to cooperate, each of them takes up their own business - the freelancer does the work, and the customer pays for it.
In runet, the most popular freelance exchange is Free-lance.ru . Recently, this resource has had minor problems with the management, and therefore sometimes not very convenient functions appear on the site. But in general, it is Free-lance.ru that is the unequivocal leader in the domestic freelance market. Looking ahead, I note that this is where I find most of the orders. In other cases, interesting tasks come across on " Freelance ", or the customers find me themselves. By the way, it is quite natural practice when, thanks to my portfolio and blog, customers themselves offer participation in projects.
In general, having registered on several freelance exchanges and choosing the one that I liked the most, I began to actively swim in the lake of orders. Frankly speaking, at that time I could not do anything professionally, but I wrote a little and knew English. A few days later, I found a client who needed a freelancer who knew English and was able to master the word. So I found my first employer, who brought me my first remote pay. To be honest, these were mere pennies, but it was also the answer to a question that has long worried me - you can make money on the Internet!
As a text maker, I realized that freelancing offers several paths, but for the most part, they all boil down to writing articles for online publications. You have the opportunity to do copywriting, which means writing advertising texts, creating traditional articles, rewriting, that is, rewriting other people's materials in your own words, or preparing translations of texts. I started by translating materials from foreign blogs and adapting them for a domestic audience.
After some time, I gradually began to get a taste. With each new order, my confidence in my own work increased, and with it the cost of services. It was then that I began to face the first problems that simply cannot be avoided if you are starting your career as a remote worker.
For more information about: freelance service technician