Author: DoNanza Team

30 Sep

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How to Bag your First Ever Freelance Virtual Assistant Assignment

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freelance admin support

The scenario in bagging each freelancers first freelance job assignment, regardless of their expertise, is never easy. In fact, it is always very tricky. The competition is as stiff as ever and if you are not up for the challenge— landing your first freelance job can make you feel very frustrated. One of the many areas in freelancing which poses these challenges is Virtual Assisting.

Virtual Assisting is a freelance job which has lots of field of specialization. To name a few there are data entry, appointment setting, word processing and bookkeeping. These are jobs that were traditionally done in an office setting, but are now being outsourced for practical reasons such as business cost-cutting. And, if it is a common job in the ‘real world’; it should be relatively easy to do it in the virtual world. Needless to say, if you are aiming for this job in freelancing, you can be confident that you are in for a greener pasture out there. Below are tips that will help you jumpstart your Virtual assistant career so you can eventually enjoy the good opportunities this new line of business pursuit has to offer.

  1. Define your interests and know your skills. Be certain of your goals and work on it. As mentioned earlier, you can specialize in this kind of freelance job and specializing will do you good. Not only will it allow you to set your own boundaries, it will also allow you to build a name and brand as a freelancer in the long run.
  2. Do your homework. Research and study to prepare. Be familiar with industry terms and be aware of your job description.
  3. Redraft your resume to satisfaction. Make sure to emphasize your relevant skills and work experiences. If you lack a relevant work experience, make sure to note any possible relationship to any of your activities and work experiences to the freelance job that you are aiming for.
  4. Prepare your place for success. Even if you are not yet hired for a freelance job assignment, make sure to already have the essentials handy— folders, cabinets, a printer— these are you investments. These are fairly cheap as compared to the hassles of travelling to and from work.
  5. Set up a realistic rate. By realistic we mean a rate that is affordable, but is also enough to pay for your own resources that you used for the freelance job (electricity bill and your time). You may have saved on travel fare, but these things replaced it. However, make sure to offer a competitive rate that a client will not dare refuse. A balance in this aspect of your career will back you up for a good and fair competition with other freelancers.
  6. Build your name by offering a service that buyers will be crazy to deny. Go the extra mile if necessary. Make sure to impress a future employer. Do it right the first time!
  7. Finally, be excellent and remain excellent. Landing your first freelance job assignment is no reason to be too self assured and be lousy. Remember that your feedback score counts in your pursuit for a constant stream of work. Similarly, a client’s feedback towards you can cost you a stable continuous business with him or her.
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15 Sep

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Global Freelance Market Trends – Aug 09

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If you are to consult a fortune teller just to be able to tell the future of freelancers, she will surely give you one ‘predictable’ answer— there shouldn’t be any worries at all on these home based workers’ end as earning opportunities through freelance jobs are here to stay. We suppose you remember this exact line from last month’s Global Freelance Market Trends – July 09′ post— well, we are surely not in a lost of words. We are just simply trying to put emphasis on an important fact: Freelance Jobs are a great source of stable income provided that you know where to get projects when you want them. Below are the lists of Top Demanded Skills and Top Searches for the month of August that will help you determine where your freelance career SHOULD be heading now.

50 Most Required Skills

There has been a sudden turn of events for Data Entry as it was replaced by MySQL on its spot on Donanza’s last month’s Top Demanded Skills. MySQL proved to be a rising freelance job as it moved from the sixth spot to the fourth on our current list. SEO also gave way to it by moving from the fourth spot to the fifth. Indeed, freelancers who are skilled on database management, particularly on a system such as MySQL, are undeniably in for some more freelance job opportunities in the coming months.

The movement in the trend is not that drastic at all that it is best to refer to it as a shuffle. This only implies one thing: If your skill is on a high-demand now, it is highly recommended that you continue to hone it in order to be a better value provider for the freelance jobs available for your skill rather than to consider a shift to a different skill that you find interesting at the moment. This is of course just an intelligent suggestion to a freelancer who wants a constant stream of work and income. However, if you do freelance jobs for the sake of being able to use your skills and to self-gratify, this piece of advice won’t really be for you.

DoNanza’s Index Skills Trends – August 2009
#Rank Skill #Rank Skill
#1 PHP (-) #26 Illustrator (+4)
#2 Website Design (-) #27 XHTML (+8)
#3 Graphic Design (-) #28 C/C++ (-3)
#4 MySQL (+2) #29 Blog (-2)
#5 SEO (-1) #30 XML (+2)
#6 Flash (+1) #31 Data Processing (-9)
#7 Data Entry (-2) #32 Research (-4)
#8 CSS (-) #33 Excel (-)
#9 Copywriting (-) #34 Script Installation (-3)
#10 HTML (+1) #35 Sales (-6)
#11 WordPress (+1) #36 iPhone (+1)
#12 Javascript (-2) #37 Link Building (-14)
#13 Photoshop (+1) #38 Proofreading (-2)
#14 Logo Design (+2) #39 e-Commerce (+3)
#15 Joomla (-) #40 ASP (-2)
#16 AJAX (+1) #41 Technical Writing (+35)
#17 Marketing (-4) #42 Video Service (+2)
#18 .NET (+1) #43 Linux (-4)
#19 Content Writing (+7) #44 Facebook (-1)
#20 SQL (-) #45 Drupal (+8)
#21 Web Promotion (-3) #46 Lead Generation (+5)
#22 Social Networking (-1) #47 Telemarketing (+1)
#23 JAVA (+1) #48 Internet Marketing (-7)
#24 Advertising (+23) #49 Animation (+23)
#25 Article writing (+9) #50 C# (+34)

You may be wondering what the green and red numbers across each skills are for. These numbers are the movement determinants. Through them, you will be able to tell which skills made tremendous leaps on freelance job demands (the green ones) and which ones failed to maintain a good standing on clients’ needs. Amongst those who have made noticeable improvements are technical writing, c#, advertising and animation which number climbed up our list by 35, 34 and 23 slots respectively. Temporary poor performers for this month, however, surprisingly include link building, data processing, internet marketing and sales which demand dropped from our list from the relatively high number of 14 down to 6. This should be no cause for any apprehension though because as it was already mentioned; freelance jobs are here to stay. A favorable trend or a sudden decline on a demand for a skill is perfectly normal— what’s not is you taking it against your own career. No matter how limited your skill has to offer, you are still the manager of your profession. Look for work; they won’t look for you.

10 Most Popular Searches

10 Most Popular Searches
#1 Graphic Design
#2 Writing
#3 Software Dev.
#4 Web Dev.
#5 PHP
#6 Translation
#7 Web Design
#8 iPhone
#9 SEO
#10 Multimedia

Now, we’ve come to the moment of truth. What do you think is the best way to determine if your skill has its appeal to clients? Check our month’s Top Searches! Similar to Donanza’s August Top Demanded Skills list, our Top Searches list has not had much movement. It has just been literally shuffled. It is, however, notable that admin support has been replaced by multimedia on our top ten, but this does pose any possible source of worry to admin support freelancers at all. This simply appears to be a ‘seasonal’ movement to be expected from time to time. After all, freelance jobs never promised stability.

Constant stream of work and earnings are still highly dependent on the freelancer’s competitiveness and resourcefulness. Needless to say, no matter where your skill is on Donanza’s Top Demanded Skills and Top Searches list, it is still entirely up to you to be able to find and ‘bag’ freelance jobs and gigs for yourself. Therefore, equip yourself with the knowledge and proficiency your career field requires— and explore bidding sites such as www.donanza.com which collectively gives you all the opportunities available across the web— and you are surely going to be staying the world of freelancing for a long time while loving it.

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10 Aug

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Classes For the Freelance Graphic Designer

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Graphic design

Some of us may have studied graphic design back in school but then never used it in the business world and lost some of our skills along the way. The new freelancer can feel slightly intimidated at the lack of experience and knowledge of the newest design program updates, but luckily, there are many solutions to these kinds of problems. Here are a few:

1) The Refresher Course

There are plenty of Adobe Photoshop classes being taught all over. But in order to save a bit of money, because this is most likely a time where saving would be important, you can look around for graphic designers who are interested in giving some one-on-one courses at a discounted price.RaeDesign, for example, recently wrote on her blog that she is interested in providing just that. She suggests the potential student bring their own laptop equipped with a recent version of Photoshop installed and ready (preferably CS2 or CS3). Her course meets for one hour, once a week and lasts 6 weeks.

2) Learn Online

While it’s easiest for most people to learn one-on-one with a physical person, some prefer to be alone in the process. Learning online is perfect for this type of person. There are many free, online Adobe Photoshop tutorials including this very easy-to-read and well layed out site called Web Design 101 of Digital Web Magazine. This particular tutorial is geared towards those who barely know Photoshop, but would like to become more familiar with it or ?nd out what sort of things to look for when it comes to the palette system, layers, styles, effects, various tools, and saving or exporting their work. They essentially cover the basics.

3) Read the Book!

As many of you know, Adobe creates a huge array of training books. You can choose from a huge selection of comprehensive titles from their specialty imprints. Adobe Press also offers a wide array of project-based how-to and techniques books, including the popular Classroom in a Book and Training from the Source series.

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03 Aug

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Global Freelance Market Trends – July 09

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Freelancing Industry is indeed here to stay— this is what Donanza’s Search Engine Results and Rankings imply. If you are in doubt that this is for real, check out these three categories which can show you how the virtual home based scene has evolved from an unemployment option into a fulltime home based position.

50 Most Required Skills

Together with Donanza’s mission to expose all the freelance jobs available over the web comes a need to monitor market trends, provide statistics and present these data in an organized and unbiased manner. This category, together with the rest that will appear in this post, are going to be a constant content of this page as Donanza continually gives you a bird’s eye view of the freelancing industry’s movements. Below are the 50 Most Required Skills based on all the freelance websites’ job posts collected and tabulated.

DoNanza’s Index Skills Trends – July 2009
#Rank Skill #Rank Skill
#1 PHP #26 Link Building
#2 Website Design #27 Sales
#3 Graphic Design #28 Script Installation
#4 SEO #29 C/C++
#5 Data Entry #30 Illustrator
#6 MySQL #31 Excel
#7 Flash #32 Proofreading
#8 Copywriting #33 Research
#9 CSS #34 XML
#10 Javascript #35 XHTML
#11 Photoshop #36 Blog
#12 HTML #37 Article writing
#13 WordPress #38 iPhone
#14 Logo Design #39 Translation
#15 AJAX #40 ASP
#16 Joomla #41 Telemarketing
#17 Web Promotion #42 Market Research
#18 .NET #43 e-Commerce
#19 Social Networking #44 Linux
#20 Data Processing #45 Video Service
#21 SQL #46 Shopping Cart
#22 English #47 Visual Basic
#23 Content Writing #48 Admin Assistant
#24 JAVA #49 Internet Marketing
#25 Marketing #50 Facebook

Topping our 50 Most Required Skills chart are Php, Website Design, Graphic Design, SEO and Data Entry— all of which happen to be working together as a team to come up with an ‘attractive’ webpage. By attractive, we mean pleasing to the eye and search engine friendly.
An increasing trend on content-related skills (Copywriting, HTML, WordPress, Content Writing, Link Building, Blog and Article Writing) is also notable. This is obviously brought about by the increasing number of businesses with online presence which requires regular content updates for marketing purposes. Needless to say, content is a critical part of any webpage which may even determine a page’s affectivity over internet browsers and site visitors.

15 Most Popular Searches

10 Most Popular Searches
#1 Writing
#2 Software Dev.
#3 Graphic Design
#4 Web Dev.
#5 Admin Support
#6 Translation
#7 PHP
#8 SEO
#9 iPhone
#10 Web Design
#11 Java
#12 .NET
#13 Logo Design
#14 Android
#15 Paython

The best part of reading this is that you get to know which amongst the 50 Most Required Skills are consistently on every prospect clients’ watch list. Here is a table showcasing the top performers in Donanza’s search engine.
Landing the top spot is writing, which is a common freelance job, outsourced by clients from around the globe. Admin Support also finds its place in our list’s Top 5 as more and more people are already outsourcing administrative freelance jobs which includes (but are not limited to); web research, e-mail correspondence, diary management, blog posting, article submission to directories and business call handling.
Our Top 5 Most Required Skills also made it in our 15 Most Popular Searches. A common factor simply implies that there is more to come for these industries for a long period of time. Therefore, if you have the gift of gab or competitive programming skills, you are surely going to be in for some great freelance job appointments!

Funniest/Weirdest/Most Romantic Freelance Job Post

The last, but surely not the least category will be Donanza’s Funniest/Weirdest/Most Romantic Freelance Job Post. Let us cut out some slack and entertain ourselves with a job post which will have you wonder how a future bride would feel if she knew that her future groom’s efforts to make his marriage proposal to her extra special has even made its way to the virtual freelancing world!

image

This is a proof of how limitless freelance job opportunities can be. This is not unique at all. Sure it is separable from the lot, but if you’ll care to browse some more, you will know that almost anyone can go on freelancing through the use of their valuable skills and a little self promotion.

Watch out for next month’s Search Engine Results, Rankings and Market Statistics, and continually make use of these data to be able to properly strategize and demand-proof your freelance career goals.

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30 Jul

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5 Wise Tips for Busy Freelancers

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Some of us fall into freelancing by accident. We lose or quit our jobs and the only kind of work we can find right away is freelance. We don’t realize that freelancing is somewhat of an art form that we can all become masters at. Instead our eye in only on the prize… in this case, money and paying the rent. What we should all learn is that freelancing can actually become a fantastic and fulfilling career move, as long as you remember the following basic wise words:

1) Build your skills and portfolio before quitting your day job
If you have the luxury of time to wait until you have built up your skills and portfolio before quitting your day job, then this is ideal. Make sure you are ready to put yourself out there immediately so you waste little time. If you are a graphic designer, a writer or a web designer, for example, you should have your skills honed and ready with a portfolio to show for it. If you dream of being a writer but have nothing to show for it yet, open your own blog.

2) Start/Continue networking and making friends
Don’t be a “No” man/woman. Helping out a friend almost always comes back around. So next time someone asks you to help them move or help them with a task they’re struggling with, help them out. Almost every job I have gotten was through connections. Having good connections is one of the most valuable things a freelancer can attain. If you don’t have any, open up a Facebook and Linkedin account and start right away. If you have some already, keep up with them regularly and build upon them.

3) Eliminate Clutter
This may sound like an unrelated tip but it’s actually quite important. Most freelancers work from their home or personal office space. If your home and personal office space is a mess, it will most likely reflect upon your work and general organization . Create a clean and clutter free surrounding for yourself so you can be comfortable and free to work without distraction. This also means your computer desktop, your email organization and your computer file organization. Do not let your emails accumulate and take control over your desktop environment.

4) Learn to single-task
If you’re generally a multi-tasker, it’s important to take it back to the basics and learn how to single-task. Multi-tasking is overrated and usually just causes confusion, stress and less accurate or poorer quality work. In order to successfully single-task, create a to-do list right away, have as few in-boxes as possible; one physical and one email is sufficient. If you have multiple email addresses that you use, be sure to direct them all to one main inbox. Another good tip is to plan your day in blocks to keep yourself organized and working efficiently.

5) Stop Procrastinating
Procrastination is something that debilitates us all, and it’s certainly not an easy thing to stop. The main reason why we all procrastinate is because we feel overwhelmed by a particular task or tasks, so make sure to eliminate all but the essential jobs. Create accountability. We put things off for ourselves but most of us hate to look bad to others. Use this simple feeling to drive your work quality and efficiency. Make sure to focus on the small steps, create a deadline and think one task at a time.

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30 Jul

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How to achieve constant stream of freelance jobs

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How to achieve constant stream of freelance jobs

There is no doubt that freelancing will continue to bloom in the coming years as more and more jobs are being outsourced and the virtual world continues to revolutionize. The catch, however, lies in the known fact that freelancing can’t offer long-term security. What can we do to counteract such risks? Read on and find out how the secret of achieving constant stream of freelance jobs are just right at your fingertips.

Have a Signature

Admit it—finding your first freelance job is as difficult as keeping existing ones. Sooner or later, income-generating assignments will end and you will be left to look for another project. This is a cycle and a fact that you should learn to accept from the time you have decided to plunge into the waters of freelancing. Don’t fret over it because there’s simply nothing you can do about it. Instead, have your previous clients come back to you for more projects (or even referrals) by keeping a signature of your work. Simply put, deliver quality and on time outputs, so you will be remembered and become a first choice whenever a need comes up.

Build and keep a network

Most freelancers are independent and this is one of the trickiest aspects of doing freelance jobs. The solitary of working-home-alone sometimes tends to cut you off from your social network. You need not worry though as you are not alone. There are plenty of freelancers around the globe who are almost already tied on their desk in their home offices doing freelance work. Meet them up by signing up with social networking websites such as facebook, twitter and a lot more. Not only will you be able to end your loneliness and keep your sanity, but your chances of finding freelance jobs are also increased through them.

Improve your visibility over the web

Online presence is crucial for freelancers. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you invest in a website that will showcase your services as soon as you can. This will not only improve your visibility over the web, but will also take part in your signature-building campaign. Additionally, it will also help to sign up to three or more job market platform websites such as oDesk and Elance. Create a professional profile and build a value provider reputation on these sites to enjoy a less time chasing, more time working freelance career.

Achieving constant stream of freelance jobs is not that difficult at all if you will take some time to come up with an action plan that will guide you through the rough times of freelancing. As mentioned earlier, everything is already right at your fingertips; you have your computer! Visit us at www.donanza.com and completely eliminate dry days from your freelance job calendar.

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