Freelance Heroes

Aug 02, 2012

Hi, and welcome to the "Freelance Heroes" thread, a place where Articulate Freelancers help each other. Got a question about freelancing? Or perhaps you have an e-learning asset that may be valuable to those "doin' their own thing"? This is the place to share--to give.

To start things off, I'd like to share a short list of questions that help me figure out what kind of training a potential client wants. (So often they have no idea what they want.) The list is far from exhaustive, but may be of some help. Looking forward to meeting you. --Daniel  

1293 Replies
XAn Choly

Jerson, I would dearly love to add that clause for the number of times clients have made me wait or cancelled out...

Jerson campos said:

I'm not sure if it was in this forum or not, but someone also put in a clause that stated if the client missed an appointment the would be charged an additional $50, after 3 missed appointments it would go up to $100. They said they never had a client miss more then 1 appointment (or be late)


The flip side is that they demand a $50 discount if I'm ever late...

Kevin Thorn

Like Bruce, I just define in the contract that all source files will be packaged and sent to them at close of project with an 'acceptance of responsibility' note. 

As for rights, it depends on the work. Sometimes during initial scope there may be general graphics or animation that I determine I may want to reuse in future projects. I'll add that to my contract on what our agreement defines on whether I retain the rights to certain pieces or not. 

Sheila Bulthuis

Bruce, consider yourself lucky!

To clarify: when i say "contract" I really mean anything from a short Statement of Work to a 20-page master services agreement (the latter being something foisted upon me by a couple of large cpmanies - not something I would ever ask for myself).  At its most basic, my Statement of Work has details of the project plus just a few Terms & Conditions - payment terms, ownership of materials, etc.

I think I'm going to add something about it being the client's responsibility to maintain backups, thanks for bringing that up!

Belen Casado

Yes, I agree that Bruce is lucky.

In my case I send a "proposal", that is both a budget and a short project definition, with some clauses in it that I have added with time, everytime something went unexpectedly wrong. For example, I have new clauses about the number of versions I'll do with that budget, and how much will I charge per hour when I have to do things out of the scope.

But still, I don't talk about source files or author rights, it hasn't been necessary yet.

Cathrine Pedersen

Sheila Cole-Bulthuis said:

Interesting article, Bruce, thanks for sharing!  Now I have a new blog to follow.  J

 

Good reminders about a few things, including: “While you may think that returning to a traditional job is more “secure,” remember that there are no guarantees. Even traditional employees are losing their positions.”  I was just talking about this with someone the other day; once you have an established freelance/consulting business, your job security is just as good as most people with a “regular job” – your income is usually less stable, but there’s almost always at least some income.

 

Like the author of the article, I have also noticed a lot of people jumping into freelancing, often with very low hourly rates.  I use this as part how I explain the value I provide: I am more expensive than those people (in some cases, a lot more!) but I have a track record of juggling multiple projects, dealing effectively with clients, and producing high-quality work; and there’s no risk that I’m going to abandon a project halfway through because I found full-time employment. 

 

And Daniel, thanks for starting this thread – I’m thinking about what I can share that might be useful/helpful to others!

 


I agree with you. First of all i think the situation every country is in at the moment, we can't bet all our money on the same horse if you understand what i mean. It is healthy to earn money on several different jobs, freelance, temp, full-time, consulting or any other part time job, and don't offer our self too cheap. It is not a competition on price but quality. 

Cathrine

blog / reading eggs

Kevin Thorn

Hey XAn,

First, clearly define the requirements in your scope document and statement of work (SOW) on deliverables and responsibility. I state that I will test for SCORM compliance on SCORM Cloud and will set up login criteria for anyone on their end to view the completion log files and imsmanifest.xml file. If it works on SCORM Cloud, then it should work on any Fort Knox LMS. If it doesn't, that's not your problem.

Daniel Brigham

Cathrine Pedersen said:

Sheila Cole-Bulthuis said:

Interesting article, Bruce, thanks for sharing!  Now I have a new blog to follow.  J

 

Good reminders about a few things, including: “While you may think that returning to a traditional job is more “secure,” remember that there are no guarantees. Even traditional employees are losing their positions.”  I was just talking about this with someone the other day; once you have an established freelance/consulting business, your job security is just as good as most people with a “regular job” – your income is usually less stable, but there’s almost always at least some income.

 

Like the author of the article, I have also noticed a lot of people jumping into freelancing, often with very low hourly rates.  I use this as part how I explain the value I provide: I am more expensive than those people (in some cases, a lot more!) but I have a track record of juggling multiple projects, dealing effectively with clients, and producing high-quality work; and there’s no risk that I’m going to abandon a project halfway through because I found full-time employment. 

 

And Daniel, thanks for starting this thread – I’m thinking about what I can share that might be useful/helpful to others!

 


I agree with you. First of all i think the situation every country is in at the moment, we can't bet all our money on the same horse if you understand what i mean. It is healthy to earn money on several different jobs, freelance, temp, full-time, consulting or any other part time job, and don't offer our self too cheap. It is not a competition on price but quality. 

Cathrine

blog / reading eggs


Cathrine: Welcome to Freelance Heroes. Good point about quality being the more important criterion. Really, in the end, it always is. 

As far as freelancing and security goes, I think that if you can be better than most e-learning pros (in the core stages of instructional designs at least) and you stick with it, your future is about as secure as an unknown future can be. Look forward to your insights. --Daniel

Kai ...

Thanks for all the valuable information thus far! I am really lucky to be part of such a great group

I may have a prospect of FT employment since the freelancing thing is not quite profitable for me at this stage. I have mastered the art of SL with the help of all the heroes and everyone else. A question was posed to me today and I realized that most hiring managers just grab onto titles and googled job descriptions for the hec of it. I also realized that social media means different things to different people.

Hense the questions was asked and my interpretation was of course different. I am glad I asked for clarification based on that premise.

This is the Q: Can you describe something you have built that involves social media? 

How would you have answered it knowing that eLearning and mobile learning has more of a common denominator than FB, twitter etc. I basically just explained infographics, course announcements etc.

Thanks!

Karen

Kai ...

That is what I thought. Good idea about the linking. I sent some examples infographics and how it can be linked directly to the course. As mentioned the response I just got back proves once again how people feed into frenzies and they have no idea what the concept actually means. I am very glad I asked them to clarify by providing examples of how it means different things to different people. I didn't give them all my ideas because experience has taught me how people do these interviews to just take your ideas and not hire you. I asked to expand in person so it can be more relevant to their industry and product lines.

Sheila Bulthuis

I thought my fellow freelancers might be interested in this short blog post.  I'm not sure I agree 100% (I know I definitely don't want to be average in terms of the quality of the work I do!) but it's food for thought...

http://freelanceswitch.com/general/why-being-an-average-freelancer-might-just-be-enough/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FreelanceSwitch+%28Freelance+Switch%29

Bruce Graham

Thanks Sheila!

FWIW - my reply to that post...

Bruce

PS - light the blue touch-paper and run away fast...... 

Wow...
Never heard such a lot of nonsense in my life I'm afraid.
1. Try putting "I'm not great - I'm average" on your website - see what happens.
2. As the economy fails - more and more "suboptimal" freelancers are entering the market. "Average" is getting worse.

If the "message" here WAS "strive for greatness...but do not allow it to consume you"...then fair enough - however, in that case the message was written (IMHO) in a very "average" way.  Remember - this was first posted in 2008. Perhaps it was true then. Nowadays, we have to fight for every £/$ of what we earn, and personally, I think that advocating people to be "average" is commercial suicide.
Be average if you want - it lets those people who want to be "better than average" get all the jobs, leaving the others wondering why.

Just my opinion.
Bruce

Belen Casado

@Sheila, thanks for the article.

I'm not sure what is meant with the word 'average', but it made me think about two authors: 

  • Ernie J. Zelinski, who said in a book that 'ordinary people get extraordinary things'.
  • Nassim Taleb, who wrote a whole book (The Black Swan) explaining why it's not possible that all of us are above the average.

I like your point, Bruce, even if I think that the definition of 'optimal' or 'suboptimal' is given by the market itself. I think that, the more the market is global, the more differences will be among instructional designers or any other professions: the standards of quality or the price per hour is very different from one country to another.

What I liked from the article is how self-deceiving can be the statement that 'you have special and unique talents that no-one else has and you can do anything you want'. I think that anybody can do almost anything if he/she practcses enough hours a day.

Belen

Daniel Brigham

Thanks for posting, Sheila. 

Freelancers, in my opinion, do have to be quite good (which I guess might be construed as "exceptional") in at least one aspect of their work. Two is even better. ID offers so many places to be quite good, so there's tons of opportunity.

Though I'm not sure most IDs want to be quite good.

Another idea the post evokes is the idea of excellence. People talk about the abstract idea of excellence like it's some religious state. But becoming really good (i.e. excellent) consists of simple and small actions. Reading about ID, building exercises on your own time, perhaps blogging about your ideas, presenting. All pretty simple things, really. Doable

When people start talking about "passion" and "excellence" I often have to suppress the inward sigh I'm sighing.--Daniel

Patti Shank

I don't think you have to be extraordinary. You have to be able to do what you say you can do well and you have to be able to do it efficiently and with great communication (that's where you have to be better than average, especially if you are at a distance).

Where I find some freelancers fall down is that they try to learn on others time and money and that's not fair. You also need to overcommunicate so the client isn't worried or anxious. I also find that some freelancers don't watch out for the client's best interests. Sometimes, the client doesn't know what their best interests are but we need to help them understand what they are. For example, we need to explain how the approach taken affects maintenance and rework. Doing something extraordinary may make maintenance expand and may not be needed.

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