I came to a dramatic conclusion today. I need more income. As you all know, I’m a digital marketing consultant and trainer.
My contractual consulting work has dried up for the year and the exciting new IT start-up that had offered me 3 months work has been dismantled by their board and abandoned. Bye, bye guaranteed income.
So here I am, a self-employed geek, in need of consulting work in order to pay off a very large tax debt and keep me in coffee and French doughnuts for the foreseeable future. What’s a girl to do?
I had heard that marketing and IT specialists could make a nice little income on the side of their *real* job by using sites such as Elance, oDesk, Freelancer and Guru.com. I immediately thought “I can do that”. I’ll just have to take on enough freelance projects to provide a full-time income. How hard can it be?
So I’ve decided to spend the next 30 days totally immersing myself in the seedy online job market and pimping my services as a freelance geek-for-hire. I thought my experience might make for entertaining reading, or at the very least provide an example of what not to do for future freelancers. So I’m going to blog about my experiences right here. Watch me as I fly or fail. Or quite possibly both.
If you’ve got any burning questions about freelancing in the digital / IT space, please post them in the comments and I’ll make sure I cover those off during the month. Any words of advice (warning?) for me would also be welcomed.
Wish me luck!
Good luck. I’ve tried Elance and others for writing work. They are filled with those who want to pay not the 50 cents per word or more that a real writing job provides, but $5 or less for a 500 word article, and there is plenty of competition. The whole thing was enormously dispiriting and discouraging.
I’ll be interested to know if you can make a go of it.
Thanks Miraz. That sounds disappointing! I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you. I’ve heard mixed things from different people, depending on their specialization. Hoping it will be a learning experience at the very least.