Delving into Freelancing

It’s certainly no secret that for the past month, I’ve been looking into working as a freelancer using one of my talents—writing, editing, and/or illustrating. I list all three skills on both freelance accounts I have online, one with oDesk.com and one with Elance.com. Until recently, I thought I would have no luck in the freelance world—that all my efforts would come to nothing and flop.

Then, a client on oDesk.com hired me for a fixed-price job of $20 to draw a cowboy silhouette by the name of “Sancho Pants”. I excitedly took the job and ran with it, hoping to produce something exemplary that would make the client happy. My efforts seemed to fall off the mark, though, as the client simplified the job not once, but twice. My drawings went from full-bodied sketches of bowing cowboys, to silhouette sketches of cowboy heads, to a simple hat and moustache.

I remain quite pleased with the initial sketch—second and third from the left, as you can see. I really do think that particular cowboy was my best work with this job, but as it turns out, my client was happiest with the final product, as seen on the far right. At first, I was disappointed, because when I sent the final image file, I received nothing more than a notification through oDesk.com that my contract for the job had been ended—my only consolation at the time was to look at my payment and see that I had the rest of my money pending my account; this is the only thing that told me the client could have been pleased with my work.

With the completion of the cowboy silhouette, I looked briefly at other illustration jobs, but felt a lack in confidence. I didn’t want another client to simplify their desires  or find me inept. Therefore, I focused more of my efforts on finding jobs in writing and/or editing.

Almost miraculously, I landed an hourly job! The client wanted only freelancers with the lowest rates; based on the average proposals to his job offer, I knew that what I asked by my profile would be too much for him, so I lowered my standards to a mere $1 per hour. It’s not much, but at this point I was simply looking for something to do part-time to get my foot in the door of freelancing and, hopefully, find a client who would give me some feedback so that I might find higher-paying jobs in the future.

It wasn’t until after accepting an official contract with this client—who wanted me to write reviews for textbooks—that I saw that my client for the cowboy silhouette had, in fact, left a feedback for me. It wasn’t just any feedback, either—my profile now boasts 4.6 of 5 stars as a feedback rating, with the words “Job well done” put in by the client himself. I was elated to find this! This was precisely what I was looking for! It also explained one more thing…

Right before seeing my feedback rating from the client who wanted a cowboy silhouette, I received two invitations to interview for writing jobs. The first, I accepted; I then found out that the job, while fixed-price, will pay me $245.00 (based on my proposal and in keeping with the client’s budget) to write a number of reviews for porn websites. Did I have a problem with this? Not at all! If anything, I remain amused, because I’m not the largest fan of porn in general and I certainly don’t pay for the porn I watch. After accepting the porn site reviews job, I received another invitation to interview for a writing job—another fixed-price job, this one for $20, to write a counterargument for something. I don’t know what it was, because I decided to decline the invitation, due to the fact that I now hold two part-time writing jobs and since I’m still technically employed full-time by the military (at least until the end of next week), I didn’t want to overwhelm myself with work.

I made sure to change my availability to reflect that I am not available for new work at this time. I think, though, that when I make myself available again, I will likely receive more invitations for jobs on oDesk.com due at least partly to the one good feedback I have from Sancho-Pants-Man.

Oh, and in my free time, I decided to take my favorite sketch of Sancho Pants and make it into a decent drawing.