Tasklog: Simpler Freelancing

Trust is the most valuable currency in freelancing. Unfortunately, you don’t have much of it while looking for your first client. It also happens to be the answer to Google query, “What are the biggest problems freelancers and their clients face.”

Freelancers differ from employees. Not just because of the work hours. Successful freelancer has to wear many hats. Be a jack of all trades, as they say. But most importantly. A great freelancer has to be reliable and trustworthy. If you say you will deliver, you deliver. No matter what.

Did you notice I didn’t mention anything about skillset? That was intentional. Top-notch hard skills don’t make you a good freelancer. Communication, punctuation, and people skills do. Anyone can buy a book, online course, or read a manual to a new, shiny framework or graphic design software. Continuously delivering slightly above expectations, that’s harder.

What are the options to bill your clients? Which one is better? What’s the difference, anyway? And are there any other alternatives? Let’s take a look.

First, we should lay down some ground rules, aka what does it even mean getting paid by the hour or by the project?

Getting paid by the hour

This one is easy. You spend 50 hours building a website; your invoice will show 50 hours * your hourly rate. Plus any extra maintenance fees, of course.

This option is a perfect fit for:

Single client continuous work,

uncertain project budget,

predictable cash flow,

unpredictable or new clients.

It directly projects your skillset and how confident you are in your abilities.

On average, charging per hour favors freelancers over customers. The risk here is that you are directly selling your time to someone. This means there is little motivation for getting more effective as you could actually lose money if you run out of work or switch context too often.

Getting paid by the project

This one is also easy but a little tricky at the same time. What I mean is, if you want to get paid for the whole project, you have to create some kind of pricing process first.

Most people will come up with a guesstimate of how many hours they will need to complete the project, then multiply by their desired hourly rate. Optionally add some safety net on top of that.

This is certainly a way of doing things.

However, by finishing a project, you deliver value to your client. It is this value you should consider during your pricing process.

How much time will my client save?

How much extra money will they make?

How many unnecessary expenses will this project prevent?

These are the things to incorporate into your pricing as well.

Per-project pricing is also great for beginners who are still unsure about their hourly rate or have no portfolio to back up their knowledge and experience.

Which one is better?

So you’ve just started to plan your new online business when realizing you have no clue how to accept online payments. I don’t mean earning money, but how to allow people to actually pay you.

You are not gonna ask everyone to do a wire transfer, are you? Ain’t nobody got time for that!

It doesn’t matter if you wrote an e-book, created an online course, started freelancing, or opened an online store. You have to set up some kind of payment provider or gateway. If you are not from a western country, this could be an even bigger pain than usual.

Let’s take a look at the services which allow you to receive and/or send online payments with ease.

Getting Things Done (GTD) is a time management method, first described in the book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by productivity legend David Allen.

Today I’m gonna show you that you don’t need any specialized software except the one you already have (right?!) to boost your productivity and reduce stress by implementing GTD directly in Tasklog.

A time tracker is an essential tool for almost any freelancer. It doesn’t really matter if you are paid by the hour or by delivered project. You still need to track your most precious commodity. At least if you are serious about your work.

Let’s dive in and explore the best time tracking software available in 2020. But before we get to the list, there are some things to consider.

As we all know, 2020 wasn’t exactly a great year for many reasons. But how about we just make a lemonade from all those lemons everyone got? Let’s talk freelancing.

Sure, getting stuck at home and not being able to travel or socialize properly sucks big time. But it just gives us the right opportunity to rethink many aspects of our lives.

One of them could be starting a new career – online. Career without office. Without any bosses. Without the daily commute. Let’s finally live in the information age and ditch the old structures. After wasting countless hours on commuting, coworker arguments and office drama, we surely deserve it.