FREELANCE:

 “Like it or not, you’ll have to create a decent amount of time in your schedule to start a freelance business (and grow it)”.

A freelance job is one where a person works for themselves, rather than for a company. While freelancers do take on contract work for companies and organizations, they are ultimately self-employed. Freelancers are not considered “employees” by the companies they work for, but rather “contractors.”

The event was organized by Robotics and Automation Club (RAC) on August 5, 2020, from 11am to 12pm. The session handler is Mr. VYSHAK P P, the founder of Motify.in. He shared his views and said about his freelancing work experience, around 25 members gained the freelancing knowledge from this session. This enlightening session was started up with a welcome speech by Mr. PRAKASH G – (18BEE206) and moved on to Mr. Vyshak P P. The session went on well with an interactive mode where participants cleared their doubts regarding freelancing in both online and offline modes. 

The glimpse of this talk is emphasized below,

BASIC THINGS TO CARE ABOUT?

1) Choose your works and get clear on your service offerings

The works you choose can be of your interest and it should be mastered and likely to bring best output from others. We should be clear and able to list out the services that we can provide to the clients. And we should have gained some experiences beforehand which we believe that we are good at providing those services.

2) Define what your Ideal Client looks like

For our areas of interest to work and services we provide, it is also good to define/imagine how our client should look like as we have to understand our client’s expectations. It will be helpful for us to decide whether we can work for him or not.

3) Negotiate with your client

Both we and client should be convincing to each other for synchronization of the expectations and delivery of service. For an example, our client should be clear, able to express his/her needs and have some basic knowledge in it so that we can easily communicate our works.

4) Create a High-Quality portfolio site

Our portfolio should be showcasing our ability to finish/satisfy our target client’s needs. It should be in an organized way where our clients can easily go through our skill sets, unique services we provide, previous work experiences. It should build trust on clients on our capabilities. The clients will compare the portfolio of the freelancers with their expectations. Hence it is important to have an updated presentable portfolio. 

NOTE: For beginners, many free portfolio links creating sites such as Firebase are available to explore.

5) Level up your skills

“Price yourself based on the value you deliver, not what your competitors are charging.”

Be consistent and always enhance your skill sets. We need to explore, learn and apply new things in order to stand out from the competitors and demands of clients on the emerging things of need. With more experience, we’ll be able to deliver our services faster. 

6) Build your credibility

“Don’t build networks, make real connections.”

Our skill sets, previous works and experiences can increase our credibility on our potential clients. Emphasizing even a small skill or exposure in portfolio can work in increasing the credibility and will add more values to us in building on our experience. 

7) Determine your pricing

“Price becomes a secondary concern if a client already convinced, you’re perfect for the job.”

If we stage our freelancing in online platform, the pricing charges depends on working per hour and the expertise that we have gained. And in offline approach, the pricing can be high and can expect more routine customers due to trustworthiness. 

8) Leverage your network to introduce

Once our work gives satisfaction for our clients, we can get regular freelancing works from the same clients in offline mode. It will increase our networking and freelancing opportunities and on compounding effect with their connections can actually be advantageous in many ways.

9) Perfect your pitching

“Be good in the way you expose yourself. Gesture is more important in today’s life.”

Pitching is very important in your freelancing path. We have to do a lot pitching practice to be clear and effective to the clients and even contractors. Pitching among the contractors needs to be trustful. 

10) Blog frequently

Keep on updating your status and skills in your blog which can give the confidence to your contractors and the blog can be pretty good which can impress the contractor. By this we can receive lots of projects.

Conclusion:

These are all the points were covered in this session . Also he said some of the websites for using freelancing such as –  freelancer, ifreelance, project4hire, Fiverr, Elance, Toptal and so on. So by this, Mr. Vyshak  had concluded with his mindful thoughts and motivated the participants to do freelancing in offline which is better than doing in online. Then he gave tips on how to build network connectivity among people and the contractors. 

At last, the session was concluded by Mr. RAKESH D-(18MC032) with his wonderful words. 

If you want to see the recorded video of this Session – click here

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DNXIRLps-IQj8KDbBXSNDyiLb6epAHnJ/view?usp=sharing