Freelancers -- where do you find most of your work?
Jun 14, 2012
I know that question is sort of like where's your favorite fishing hole. Hi, all -- I've been a freelancer for about a year and a half now, and for the first time, things are slow. I guess I'm on the famine side of the feast-famine freelancer cycle. Two questions:
1. Are there e-learning groups (besides Articulate of course) that have helped you generate leads/work?
2. How much of your work comes through cold calling? (I have an aversion to cold calling, but will pull up the big boy panties if need be.)
I'm guessing that your work comes from a little bit of everywhere (traffic to your site, repeat business and referrals from clients, cold calling, etc), but I don't really know that till I ask.
Thank you in advance for your time and input. --Daniel
213 Replies
Well - back to the very original question.
I am going to add another +1 for "I get freelance work by being active on this forum..."
Have just had a magnificent unsolicted phonecall from a company employing over 25000 staff in the UK who want to explore Storyline as part of a blended training solution.
We meet up in a few weeks to move forward.
Bruce
Congratulations, Bruce.
Great news Bruce - It just goes to show how important visibility (and helpfulness) is. Keep it up!
Congratulations, Bruce!!
And to keep on the essence of this thread, I got my first freelance project, that it's already finished and the client was very happy with the output.
So... you can call me freelance, baby. :-)
Belen
Well done Belen
Great news.
Bruce
Congratulations, Belen on your completed contract and Bruce for the super hero status.
Colin: you have a good idea there. We learn something new with each contract. Perhaps every once in a while, freelancers just coming off a contract can share what they learned.
And so...Belen: what did you learn?
Thank you, Daniel and Colin,
Well, I learnt a lot about how to do some things in Storyline that I only had saw in screenr tutorials... I also had to manage 3 projects at a time, with different time schedules (I mean, international with those strange things such as UTC -5.00, UTC +6.00,...).
But I think that there's something more important: I learnt (or remembered) that the timing is usually below the real time it takes to do something, so better adapt to what you're asked to do, instead of trying to do everything perfect. It's like the 80/20 principle... Leave the 20 till the end or you'll put an 80% of extra work to try to finish that 20%...
Hope it helps!
Now, a well deserved vacation
Belen
Freelancers:
If any of you are in the Baltimore area, there is an Emerson Wickwire who is looking for an Articulate freelancer. You can find his post on the Freelancers where do you find work thread.
Nope - 'coz that is this thread
It's over on the "Freelance Heroes" thread
I told you having 2 threads would get confusing!
Bruce
Thanks to Holly, Bruce, Daniel and all the others who contribute to this thread.
I am also a freelance consultant, and my specialty is industrial energy efficiency. I was able to put together a 90 minute course with quizzes, activities etc. with the help of a talented assistant and a professional audio engineer.
Now I need to get it "out there" - but how? Given the scale of my business and the niche I work in I would consider the course wildly successful if I sold 200 seats at $50 a pop over the course of a year. Should I
1. Buy an LMS and host it myself?
There are a dizzying number of LMS software packages available, but at my scale would it be cost effective to spend thousands more on an LMS package, shopping cart, username, login, etc. to upgrade my website to handle it all?
2. Hire a service to host it for me?
There also now seem to be quite a few providers who would host, but there is a huge range of quality, cost and capability. I have been in negotiations with some online training providers and settled on one called bizvision, but we are having difficulties actually getting the modules to run. Do you have a reliable provider you would recommend?
Any advice here on the forum or privately posted to my wall would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Hey Ron,
How about using a service like Open Sesame? https://www.opensesame.com/
I think they have an LMS service and are a kind of a brokerage. I haven't ever used them but might be worth a look rather than buying a LMS for one course.
Just a thought.
You might also want to take a look at http://www.ruzuku.com and http://www.pathwright.com/. These are tailor made for course pathways made for folks that want to sell courses. Another cost effective option if you're comfortable configuring and hosting your own installation could be http://www.learndash.com.
Hi Ron, Have you considered selling the course to a professional association who could distribute it for you? Cheers, Julie
Hi Ron,
I am interested to take this project but unfortunately, I couldn't find your project in GURU.COM .
I shall be glad if you kindly PM me the details of the project.
MH
Mohammed - to which thread are you referring, I could not find it?
It may be that the post is quite old, in which case it may have been filled.
It may be better to PM the poster directly rather than make a post here in order to find out?
We are looking for someone with experience publishing Storyline content for desktop browsers and iPads and to be hosted and tracked in Moodle.
If you have done this before and you are available, please send me a PM.
EG
We are still looking for someone. More details in next post.
Does anyone have experience deploying Storyline content in Moodle for iPad? (not using the articulate player)
Please read below
http://community.articulate.com/forums/p/51018/274138.aspx#274138
E-lance has gotten a lot more active for people with e-learning skills.
I wouldn't consider eLance a realistic place for getting consistent work unless one is used to lowballing themselves beyond belief.
Alex
All, I was wondering if anyone was able to shed some light on writing proposals. There were some comments in this topic which mentioned that you sometimes write up your own.
In the case where you're essentially your own E-learning business, I can see that creating proposals for the project is ideal, so that you can come to agreement with terms of the project (as Kevin mentioned: scope, requirements, deliverables, fees, tech considerations, etc.), and come to agreement on contract.
So the question is, does anyone have any complete examples of proposals they'd be willing to share that outline these items, and how to write one? (or possibly a basic template, or any type of resource - as am fully aware that all E-learning proposals are vastly different)
I'm familiar with working on E-learning (and all of the requirements, deliverables of the project), though not necessarily writing and creating the full proposals for the beginning of them (although I have done negotiating in other forms for other digital Web projects before, so not completely new to the idea.
I know there are books, and other resources out there on writing proposals and contracts and such - though not specifically for E-learning proposals. And as there are a lot of unique specifics that go into E-learning projects, that's where the question / request stems from!
Hello, Jay!
This seems to be a frequent topic on the forums, and a number of excellent suggestions have been posted over the years.
Perhaps the easiest way to track several of them down is to open the Google/Articulate search engine (http://articusearch.com/), and enter search terms such as "proposal template." I think you'll find quite a few great ideas in the posts, which you can then combine or modify to suit your needs.
Best of luck with your proposal writing!
Adele