Swart said that competition for talent is rapid, despite economic woes. He specified two big problems: getting work to workers, and the hiring process, in terms of investment of time and resources. How to deal with both those problems has been steadily evolving: Work 1.0 was rigid, single-employer, and on location, probably what describes your grandfather’s career. Work 2.0 was about more flexible work schedules, better collaboration between remote teams and some ability to take work home with you. It’s sort of the model that’s still in place at big tech firms in Silicon Valley.

Work 3.0 is where we’re at now and where a good chunk of work is heading, according to Swart, and it’s only just getting underway. It means “access to the best people no matter where they are in the world,” and the “ability to work with those people as if they’re in the room with you.” Swart says it’s a transparent process, one that takes place primarily online using tools with built-in reporting elements. It’s a very situation-based, ephemeral mode of staffing, too: He applied a movie production analogy: the team comes together to accomplish something specific, then separate again.

He discussed examples of companies forming in order to source and staff remote work projects. Thumbtack is one, which serves 170,000 customers today, Swart says, and provides access to the services of 230,000 service professionals in discrete areas for on-demand, just-in-time labor requirements.

In short, we’re moving from rigid, structured, non-specific workforces to on-demand, targeted transparent freelancer-based staffing. Doing so saves on infrastructure, by cutting back on costs like transportation and facilities, and also leverages talent on a global scale that otherwise might go unnoticed and unappreciated. Swart sees Work 3.0 as just getting started, with its most significant effects on how we do business yet to be felt.

Photo by Pinar Ozger.

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How much you feel you should pay remote workers is one thing; what your payment is worth to them — and how its value changes over time — is another.

Recent global financial strife continues to cause some economies to suffer, including that of the U.S. Many digital freelancers earning U.S. dollars are now receiving substantially less for the same work, as their own nations’ currencies gain strength against the U.S. dollar.

The rates that U.S. companies offer to remote workers may no longer compete with firms that are more local to the freelance web worker. For U.S.-based organizations, this may make sourcing good remote workers much more challenging. It may also be a challenge they haven’t had to face before.

Of course, currency fluctuations don’t just affect pay rates. In theory, web workers buying goods from the U.S. should enjoy exchange rate benefits as the U.S. dollar weakens, but this is rarely the case.

Late last year,  for example, I bought a $35 piece of software from the States on a day when the U.S. dollar was worth 1.015 Australian dollars. The software should have cost $35.53 AUD, but my receipt shows that I was actually charged $1.40 AUD more. The effects of a stronger currency aren’t usually reflected across the board.

And of course, your remote freelancer’s local costs don’t fluctuate with your currency’s value. So what could be a great rate for them this month might be a very lackluster rate in a month or two. You may need to consider offering other perks or advantages to procure the remote talent you really want, rather than accepting that which you can get cheaply.

Freedom and fun stuff

If your remote freelancer has some ideas they’d like to trial on your project, or extra suggestions that they feel are worthwhile, can you give them the freedom to implement those ideas?

The extra work may take extra time, but if you can see real value for your project, the extension of scope could be beneficial to the remote worker as well as to your business. It could also ensure you get a top-notch job on the key parts of the project, rather than settling for second-best.

Software and systems

Can you reduce the cost to the freelancer of taking on your project by giving them a license to use necessary software, or providing access to specific systems?

Finding ways to make their lives easier — and more cost-effective — could help you to win the remote worker.

Team involvement

Some remote workers really value the opportunity to work with a team — particularly if they’re solo operators, or work from home. Showing them how you’ll involve them in the project team, making them feel welcome, and communicating their value to their new colleagues are a few ways to help cement good relationships with valuable remote workers.

The promise of close working relationships with like-minded pros is likely to appeal to more than a few web workers — especially those who are interested in collaborative, on-the-job learning, and in building networks.

Credits or kudos

Kudos matters. Can you give credit to the freelancer you’re pursuing, perhaps through social media, LinkedIn references, linking to their site through your organization’s blog, or some other method?

Most freelancers will appreciate being publicly named for their contributions — especially if that recognition can help them win further work, or gain them exposure among peers who matter to them.

These ideas may not win you the remote web worker you want, but they might help sweeten a deal embattled by global financial tumult. Are you finding it harder to land good remote talent in places where your currency has weakened?

Image courtesy stock.xchng user OmirOnia.

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By allowing managers to source talent from just about anywhere, technology makes it easy to take advantage of disparities in pay and cost of living to get the same services for cheaper. Just look at the trend of rural-sourcing, where companies are looking for skilled workers in unusual, less settled locales. It’s a boost to struggling rural communities and allows firms to save a few bucks too. What could be bad?

But not everyone sees paying according to the prevailing local wages as without its moral complexities, especially when companies begin to look overseas for additional help. Blog Freelance Switch recently ran a post on the issue, with writer Thursday Bram (who also writes for WWD) musing on her compunctions about paying significantly less for the same services from providers based overseas:

More than a few freelancers have a sore spot about how hard it can be to get paid what we’re worth by clients who see freelancers as a way to get cheap labor. When you turn that around, it’s easy to draw comparisons between what a freelancer might hate when a client does it to her and what she’s willing to do to a sub-contractor based overseas. It’s going to be a personal decision, no matter what. Your priorities decide whether or not you’re willing to pay a sub-contractor more.

For me, the personal decision comes down to what the person I’m working with is actually worth. I know plenty of people who live in places like Thailand and charge rates on par with what folks living in the U.K. might (with no problem getting those rates). If someone comes to me and tells me that’s what they’re worth, I have no problem paying it.

But if the person I’m working with needs training, requires extra explanation or simplified English and generally can’t finish a project without hand holding, I’m going to pay a lot less… I have worked with a virtual assistant based in the Philippines and paid him about $270 a month for his work. I don’t have a problem with doing so — he was doing fairly basic work and didn’t have a skill set that I’d be willing to pay more for.

Bram identifies the key factors in deciding how much to pay someone, including their skill level and your level of comfort with the arrangement. Perhaps added to that should be the cost of living where the web worker is based. After all, $270 probably goes much further in Manila than in Mountain View, just like a salary that barely covers the basics in New York might comfortably provide for a family of four in a more rural area.

How do you weigh location, skills and personal compunction when deciding what to pay web workers in various locales?   

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Infusionsoft

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In last week’s post, I talked about how technology is creating an “always on” social media world. Like it or not, these days, if you’re in public (i.e., out of the safety of your own house and/or in the presence of a another person with a camera or camera phone), you’d better be comfortable with anything you do being captured and possibly even posted online.

For this week’s post, I thought I’d provide some tips from the PR industry to help you feel better prepared for those impromptu publicity events.

1. Stay (at least somewhat) presentable. Make sure that you’re at least presentable most of the time. My solution is to keep my closet up-to-date so that I feel “put together” enough, no matter what I might wear on a given day.
2. Get comfortable with public speaking. Fear of public speaking is often reported as the #1 fear of most people, so it’s no wonder we’re a little resistant to having video of ourselves broadcasted to the world. A public speaking or improv class can help alleviate anxiety and instill confidence for those times when you’re placed on the makeshift stage of the World Wide Web.
3. Spruce up on interpersonal communication skills. Learning to manage facial expressions and body language and to maintain eye contact can greatly improve how you feel, as well as your effectiveness, when communicating with others.
4. Control your energy and attitude. Sometimes we leave the wrong impression with people, even our loved ones, simply because we aren’t in the best of moods or because we’re not quite feeling up to par. Doing things to better manage how we feel overall can improve how we handle stressful situations.
5. Mind your manners. I often wonder about celebrities who are dismissed as rude, thinking, “Did they just have a bad day and get caught on camera at an inopportune moment?” Bad habits, poor manners and language, and being less than courteous can be a big turnoff for prospective clients and business associates, so it never hurts to err on the side of caution in this department.
6. Try not to appear defensive or guarded. If you come across on video like you’re fighting off paparazzi, it can easily be taken out of context so that others think you have something to hide or have a bad attitude. As nerve-wracking as it can be to appear on camera, try your best to relax and be natural.
7. Get comfortable making smooth transitions. You can expect to be asked a question at some point that you either can’t or don’t want to answer. Learn to make smooth transitions to another topic so that you avoid sticky situations or avoid coming across as uninformed or elusive.
8. Watch what you say and do. As many celebrities can attest, one careless slip in judgement can quickly put you front and center of a debate or media firestorm. Even if you think you might not be that powerful or important to warrant that kind of attention, you could still get into hot water with friends or family, your clients, or your boss, so be careful not to do or say anything that might be insensitive or offensive to someone else.

While it was once the job of publicists to manage the images of high-profile individuals and companies, these days, with the ever-present social media and devices to share content like photos, audio, and video, it’s becoming increasingly necessary to take charge of our own publicity and image as it’s presented online. Fortunately, a little preparation goes a long way to keep you in the good graces of clients and business associates online.

What other tips do you have for preparing for social media close-ups?

Photo courtesy Flickr user Carnoodles

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Here are a few reasons why side projects make good business sense.

1. New skills. I love to use side projects as a way to stretch myself and learn new things that I wouldn’t normally do as a result of my regular work. In the past, I’ve had side projects where I co-founded a nonprofit to organize community technology events, co-founded a location-based startup, wrote a book about community, wrote a cookbook, started blogs and much more. Out of each of these efforts, I’ve learned many new skills that I’ve applied in my day job. I’ve personally benefited from each of these efforts, but the companies I’ve worked for have also benefited from the skills learned in my off-hours.
2. Connections and networking. Most of my side projects have given me an excuse to meet new people. I’ve made friends and valuable industry connections that I can talk to about new ideas or trends. Especially for those of us working in technology, many of these connections bleed over from one project or company to the next. Having additional contacts in your industry gives you a broader base of people to talk to about new side projects or interesting things that you are working on in your day job.
3. Sense of accomplishment. While many of us are lucky enough to have great jobs where we get a sense of accomplishment from our regular work, it isn’t always the case. There is nothing quite like launching a fun project to boost your overall mood and give you a sense of excitement. For me, the accomplishments from my side projects tend to have a positive impact on my regular job, too, since my improved mood makes me even more productive when it comes to other work. Employees with improved self-confidence from a big accomplishment can often become better workers in other areas.
4. Safety net. In today’s economy, we need to be prepared for a potential job loss. The people who have wrapped their entire identity and life around their job at a company can be devastated when they lose a job. Those of us with healthy side projects can throw ourselves into these existing projects and maybe even generate a little income while we look for a new gig. Having some projects to fall back on and keep your skills current can help to maintain your sanity and prevent you from becoming despondent over your loss.
5. Fun. Most importantly, side projects should be fun! In many cases, side projects can be hobbies that you enjoy spending your free time on. If your side projects start to suck the energy out of you, then it’s time to find a new side project that leaves you energized and with a sense of enjoyment. This is part of why I organized tech events in my spare time for so many years. They were hard work, but it was great to get all kinds of different people together and create an amazing and fun experience. After a while, I had done so many of these that it ceased to be much fun, which is when I dropped them from my side projects and moved on to other projects.

What types of side projects do you most enjoy?

Photo courtesy of Selena Deckelmann

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It’s impossible to provide specific advice for any given situation, but are there general tips for web workers worried about international tax issues to make sure they find a quality professional to help them, and keep that relationship running smoothly? Fred Corso, head of the international tax services group at Marcum LLP, has some basic tips to help you navigate your tax stresses:

• Personal connections make the difference. Corso suggests you turn first to your personal and professional network to find someone to help you with your tax issues. In an area as broad as tax law, someone with experience in your particular industry or region is often best, and friends and colleagues are a likely route to finding such a person. And it’s not just your network that is useful; your tax professional’s is as well. “Become familiar with the practitioners’ professional network. It is impossible for an individual to know everything about United States tax law in the area of cross-border taxation. You can imagine the challenges of becoming familiar with the local law of one or more foreign jurisdictions,” says Corso. “A practitioners’ capabilities are only as good as the strength of his or her network of professional resources overseas.”
• Stay loose.  You won’t know exactly what details of your case are relevant to your new tax pro, so following unexpected conversational alleys can pay dividends, according to Corso. “People often arrive with a preconceived notion of how their issue should be resolved. While trying to be well informed beforehand, be sure to keep an open mind. Common sense very often does not apply in international taxation, which is often shocking to people. Focus not only on the question as you see it, but inquire about other considerations that you would not necessarily have reason to know about.” And be aware that when it comes to international tax complexities, there is often more than one way to skin a cat, “so you want to have confidence that you will be comfortable with the practitioner’s general approach to tackling an issue.” Whatever approach you choose “be flexible and understand that the scope of a project will likely change to some extent as work is performed.”
• Don’t expect miracles. “Leniency has been on the decline,” Corso warns, so don’t be taken in by other people’s stories of dodging their tax bills. “Be wary of cocktail party advice. If it sounds too good to be true it probably is. ‘Everyone else is doing it’ is not a sound basis for making a decision in international tax.” And understand that extreme efforts to reduce tax are not always cost-effective. “Although businesses often employ tactics and structures that help reduce taxes, such methods are usually not cost-effective or lack business sense for small to mid-sized businesses,” Corso concludes.

Image courtesy Flickr user alancleaver_2000, CC 2.0

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Source: Elance

It should be noted that because this study is the result of an online survey conducted on the Elance site itself, there will likely be considerable selection bias distorting the results towards freelancing, so it would be wise to take these  findings with a pinch of salt. I doubt that a more wide-ranging survey of recent college graduates, for example, would show such an overwhelming number of respondents in favor of freelancing over traditional employment.

While some people may argue that freelancing has only become more popular as jobs have become harder to come by following the economic downturn, the Elance study shows that many millennials actually choose freelancing over traditional employment. Only 27 percent indicated they would prefer to work as an employee, while 42 percent stated they prefer the freelance lifestyle. Web working is popular, too, with 54 percent saying they plan to telecommute at least some of the time — a lifestyle choice probably made easier by freelancing. It seems freelancing is making these millennials happier: 53 percent say they are happier when freelancing than when working as an employee. Encouragingly, despite a somewhat weak jobs market, particularly for younger people with less experience, 78 percent of respondents said they were either “Optimistic” or “Very optimistic” about their chosen career path.

Source: Elance

The study also looked at millennials’ job search habits. Unsurprisingly, many respondents reported they use online methods to find work. Online job ads (Monster.com and Craigslist, for example) were popular with 94 percent of respondents, but social media (Facebook, LinkedIn) was also used by 40 percent. The study also shows that 56 percent of respondents think that a digital resume (a LinkedIn profile, for instance) is the most effective tool for landing a job, compared to 44 percent who prefer a more traditional resume.

Despite the selection bias that’s probably skewing these results, it’s interesting to see such a positive attitude towards freelancing in younger people. Attitudes toward freelancing have shifted over the past few years, with many more people now prepared to consider it as a long-term career choice. It’s a shift that has certainly been helped by online freelance marketplaces such as Elance and Odesk, which have made it much easier for freelancers to find work worldwide. While some people may have initially tried freelancing out of necessity due to the economic downturn, many people now choose to freelance because it gives them the flexibility to pursue their lifestyle of choice. If more younger people really are actively looking to freelance rather than take up traditional employment now, it could point to an even bigger shift toward freelancing in the years to come.

Photo courtesy Flickr user {Guerrilla Futures | Jason Tester}, charts courtesy Elance.

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Solo’s main screen is its dashboard, shown in the image above. It’s dominated by a message display that offers things like tips and updates about upcoming deadlines, with infographic-like charts below that provide at-a-glance details of project status, as well as turnover and hours recorded over time. You can also start and stop the task timer from this screen. Accessing the other areas of the app, such as the planner, timesheets and invoices, is done through the tabs at the top of the screen.

Designers and other creatives who take aesthetics seriously will appreciate Solo’s beautiful interface. That’s something I rarely get to say about project management apps, which are usually functional rather than pretty. Microproject, a scheduling app I reviewed recently, also has an attractive and well-designed interface, but it really can’t come close to Solo’s data-first design and attention to detail.

Solo’s a lovely product to look at, is quite easy to use and has a good set of features for freelancers, but there are a few potential issues with it. First, there doesn’t seem to be any way to export data, nor is there integration with any existing accounting, CRM or invoicing apps, which is disappointing. There isn’t even seem a way to import contacts from CRM or email apps that I can see. Second, it’s unclear how the product will scale if a freelance business expands to take on additional staff. Thrive’s Jerome Iveson says that the company is working on a multi-user PM app called Studio; hopefully it will be possible to migrate accounts and data between the two products. Finally, once you move beyond the dashboard into other areas of the app, some areas aren’t quite as polished and aren’t all that intuitive in use. It’s not clear how recorded hours are moved from timesheet to invoice, for example. Hopefully, those areas will be cleaned up over time; the app is still in development with several new features due to be added, such as a client area, blog feeds and messages.

Solo costs $10 per month, with a 14-day free trial available.

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The quarterly survey of job postings and online contractors revealed that more than a dozen cities that are still struggling with an unemployment rate higher than ten percent rank among the highest-earning locales on Elance. So while job seekers in Los Angeles may still be fighting 12 percent unemployment, web workers based there are among the highest paid on the platform.

What else did the Elance data reveal? Unsurprisingly, it’s still good to have tech skills, with the increased use of smartphones upping the demand for developers. Also less than shocking was an increased demand for tax preparers as April 15^th looms.

Less expected was the city given the crown of America’s geekiest metropolis. Move over Mountain View and San Jose, geek is now being spoken with a southern drawl as Austin, Texas took the title of top city for tech nerds. The home of SXSW now boasts the highest contractor earnings for IT skills on Elance’s platform. Amarillo continued its (also unlikely) reign as the top spot for creative talent, with the most contractor earnings in the “Creative” category.

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According to the SMB Trends Report, since 2008, the number of SMBs using more than 10 contractors at any given time through oDesk has grown by 214 percent, while at the same time, the number of contracting assignments lasting longer than six months has grown by 540 percent. oDesk says this points to an increasing number of SMBs using contract — rather than in-house — staff to grow their businesses.

This demand for highly-skilled freelancers has led to the emergence of  the “career contractor.” The oDesk data shows demand for contractors with management experience has grown by 489 percent since 2008, and also, the number of “highly-paid” contracting assignments paying at least $20/hour has grown 162 percent. While I’d question whether $20 per hour counts as being particularly highly paid, it does seem that the type of work being sourced through sites like oDesk is moving away from being primarily smaller, cheaper projects that can be carried out in a very short period of time, to more longer-term positions.

As always with such reports, it’s wise to look at the figures with a healthy dose of skepticism. The data comes from just one marketplace (albeit a fairly large one) and the company clearly has an interest in making contracting look like an attractive option. However, looking at it in tandem with other data — the Bureau of Labor Statistics agrees that there’s been a long-term trend of an increase in the number of contract workers, with a higher proportion of them being highly-skilled, for example –  it does seem that there has been a shift in the workforce in the past few years, perhaps precipitated by the downturn, with a growing number of people moving away from regular long-term employment and becoming contractors.

As I’ve pointed out before, this represents a significant change to the way that we work, and it will have implications for workers, the businesses that employ them and policymakers, particularly in terms of healthcare benefits and retirement planning. Additionally, if oDesk’s report is correct and many SMBs are now preferring to using contract staff in lieu of employees, employers will need to consider both legal and taxation issues. If, for example, the IRS (and similar agencies in other countries, like HMRC in the U.K.) can determine that contract staff should be classed as employees, it will charge back taxes.

Photo courtesy Flickr user Ross Hill.

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One interesting nugget of information from the oDesk report is that people from small towns (with populations of smaller than 15,000 people) are outperforming their big city counterparts like San Francisco and New York, both in terms of online work activity and number of hours worked per contractor. That’s probably because in smaller towns job opportunities are much more limited, and marketplaces like oDesk and Elance provide access to employers regardless of location.

Overall, it seems that the jobs market overall is recovering more slowly than economists expected it to following the recession, while these reports show that the freelance jobs market is growing quite substantially. With the economic recovery still looking fragile, it seems that some businesses are preferring to turn to temporary contract labor, rather than risking taking on permanent staff. But as the economic outlook improves, will we see a return to the situation where most people have regular paid employment, or has the downturn precipitated a permanent shift to freelance work for a portion of the working population, particularly in areas where traditional jobs might be harder to come by, such as in small towns and rural locations?

Of course, the Elance and oDesk figures should be taken with a pinch of salt. The data is from just two sites, and even though they are both fairly large marketplaces, they still only cover a tiny subset of the working population and cannot be considered to be representative of the freelance jobs market as a whole. The Freelancers Union, a nonprofit advocacy organization, is currently gathering data for its annual survey of freelancers; it will be interesting to see if its results also show a large increase in the amount of freelance work being carried out.

As guest author Ray Grainger noted last week, the landscape of the workforce is changing, with some estimates predicting that freelancers will make up 40 percent of the workforce by the end of the decade. A shift to freelance work for a significant portion of the population shouldn’t necessarily be feared — there are, after all, many benefits to being a freelancer, not least of which is much greater flexibility — but it would have implications for both policymakers and businesses to consider in areas such as access to healthcare, taxation and retirement planning.

Photo courtesy Flickr user Egan Snow.

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As a freelance expert, should you jump in, or are you ringing your own industry’s death knell?

Having built an expert crowdsourcing site for the past year, I’m convinced these sites don’t have to commoditize expertise. Quite the opposite, I think they can give it direct value.

Freelance experts’ hourly rate typically includes three basic transaction costs: customer acquisition, customer retention and work performed. Take freelance graphic designers, for example. First they need to find customers, which requires sales and marketing investment and time. Once they have customers, they have to maintain them, whether it’s answering the phone, reporting on progress or dealing with billing and collections. Sometimes very little of a freelancers’ time is devoted to doing real design work. Typically, these people became freelancers because they love design, not because they love managing overhead.

The new expert crowdsourcing sites eliminate most of the overhead costs by bringing customers and experts together and automating service, support and billing. The freelancers perform work and get paid directly for their expertise. While the hourly earnings may appear lower than traditional freelance work, once the transactional costs of being a freelancer are removed, the hourly fees for direct work can be about the same. The upside is that the time freelancers spend finding and managing clients can now be applied to actually doing the work they love.

The critical issue for freelancers is to find sites that allow them to earn more for their work than they could on their own. Some crowdsourcing sites are approaching this point, especially sites that offer a collaborative compensation model. One such example is uTest, where top software testers are earning as much as $5,000 per month — many while working primarily during evenings and weekends. uTest has had a number of testers from the U.S., the UK, Russia and India report that they are currently earning more from uTest than their full-time jobs as testers.

The collaborative model is an evolution of crowdsourcing incentive systems. In the early days of crowdsourcing, companies issued requests for submissions. Potentially, hundreds of participants could respond, but only the one or two “winners” collected any prize money. Considering all the work the “losers” did, this model heavily favored the project sponsor over the people doing the work. More recently, crowdsourcing companies have adjusted to models that pick multiple winners (with payment distributed among them) or have moved to collaborative models in which each contributor to a final result is compensated.

When uTest’s testing experts work on a new software release, they each get paid for every bug they find. Some find many bugs, some only a few. Chances are high that most earn something but those who do excellent work earn more. uTest is built upon a meritocratic reputation system: Testers who get rated highly by customers get paid more, get invited to more projects, and get paid more for their work. Conversely, testers who don’t satisfy customers earn a poor reputation, and don’t get invited to future projects. True expertise is rewarded.

The per-bug payout rates uTest experts earn can rival the effective earning rate they would make freelancing on their own. In this model, project sponsors win as well because they get exactly what they want: a comprehensive and collaborative testing result from many participants, and a payment system that is based solely on performance. With software, “more is better” applies, and uTest’s ability is to provide multiple test engineers provides better coverage than any one individual.

While it’s moving fast, the crowdsourcing industry is still young and the underlying models are evolving quickly. The industry is stratifying into two distinct types of crowds: curated crowds of experts and general crowds that enjoy participating. In the participation model, the crowd may accept limited or no monetary compensation as reward, participating is reward enough. For expert crowdsourcing sites, the long-term sustainability test is simple: “can a freelance expert make a better living being part of my crowd than on their own?”

I believe that expert crowdsourcing does not by definition commoditize expertise. In fact, if done right, it focuses everyone on what matters most: the results of expertise.

Niel Robertson is a three-time entrepreneur and CEO of Trada Paid Search, a crowdsourced paid search marketplace. You can find Niel on Twitter at @nielr1. He will be talking about “The Human Cloud: The Elastic Workforce in the Enterprise,” at our Net:Work conference in San Francisco on Dec. 9.

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Of the top 25 requested skills on the DoNanza network, three of those that climbed the rankings were specifically related to design: graphic design, website design, and logo design. JavaScript, E-commerce and content writing jobs rose, as did positions requiring Internet marketing and link building skills.

For mobile app developers, iPhone skills, remained steady at rank 21, while iPad climbed 12 spots to come in at rank 40, while Android positions climbed a whopping 20 spots, becoming the 41st most-requested skill for the quarter.

If you’re a freelancer, or you’re considering freelancing, it probably isn’t a bad idea to check out this compact report to see if it can provide some insight into where the market is heading. And if you’re a developer specializing on content management systems, you’ll get extra value from the detailed analysis the report provides on jobs in these technologies.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m skeptical of most statistics. To gauge how well the DoNanza report may actually reflect the industry’s evolution, I decided to analyze my own niche to see whether it tallies with my experience.

Analysis: The Freelance Writing Market

I’m a writer, so I honed in on writing-related jobs. Here’s the information I pulled out on this market.

The top 50 skills in-demand freelance skills included several that involved writing (I’ve also included the change in position from the previous quarter):

• position 13 Article Writing (-3)
• position 18 Copywriting (-3)
• position 24 Content Writing (2)
• position 34 Ghostwriting (1)
• position 37 Academic Writing (-1)
• position 42 Technical Writing (-5)

There were other skills that could involve or be tied to writing tasks — Research, SEO, Internet Marketing, and Advertising, for example — but as a content creator I decided to focus on the jobs that specifically required writing.

Six writing-specific skillsets in the top 50? Even if we disregard the more specialized academic and technical writing listings, writers seem to be doing pretty well, with 8 percent of the 50 most requested freelance skillsets, and 12 percent of the top 25. Overall, of course, it seems that freelance writing jobs made up a smaller proportion of the market last quarter than in the quarter before.

The category descriptions seem to overlap — article and content writing in particular, as well as ghostwriting — but there does seem to be a trend away from using copywriters and article writers in a freelancer capacity. On the other hand, content writing and ghostwriting roles represent a larger share of the total job count than they did last quarter, and my own experience reflects this: I’m doing less copywriting, and more content/article writing.

Social media may be contributing to the perceived need for content development as organizations want information to promote via these channels. While companies might commission professional web copy as a one-off, the company blog is likely to require regular updates: content, rather than copy.

The rise in ghostwriting positions may have similar causes. Ghostwriting has well and truly expanded beyond the domain of the celebrity biography; ghost writers work in blogging and business writing, and the continuing explosion of the information product market seems to be creating more opportunities for ghostwriters all the time. For example, as web personalities cement their online presences, and get busier managing and developing their personal brands and businesses, more of them are turning to ghost writers to prepare content for them, at least on a basic level.

The Verdict

In the case of my own experience as a freelance writer, the DoNanza stats seem to reflect reality, and also suggest some changes in my field that I may need to watch in the future. Check out the report here.

(Editor’s note: If you’re interested in learning more about how the Internet has shaped the freelance job market, and the opportunities presented by a 24/7 global workforce powered by technology, check out our Net:Work conference, coming to San Francisco in December)

How well do you feel this report reflects the developments in your industry?

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• Report: The Real-Time Enterprise
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But it can be extremely valuable to promote conversations about your remote working arrangements with clients yourself. By taking the lead in initiating discussions, you can:

• Communicate your enthusiasm for their project.
• Raise — and propose answers to — questions the client hadn’t even thought of.
• Identify your preferred working arrangements, technologies, and so on, and have a good chance of having them adopted.
• Set expectations early, and make sure everyone’s on the same page.

Recently, a client asked me to send me an outline of my rate for a project. Ordinarily, I’d have done just that — and only that. But this time, I decided to take a different approach: along with that information, I explained some of the thoughts I’d had about the way we might work together, and asked a few questions.

There was nothing unprecedented in my message — I included information on the standard hurdles remote web workers need to cross when they start a new gig — but raising these topics up-front, before the project’s terms had even been finalized, helped to set a certain expectation between myself and the client.

First, let’s look at the topics I raised, in addition to the rate question the client had asked.

Time

The rate I provided was based on a certain number of hours’ work each week, so I explained my weekly availability and capacity to take on extra work as required.

Technologies

The discussion of time lead me to consider workflow, and how we’d manage that in a remote, yet close working situation.

I outlined a few of the technologies we could take advantage of, and explained how I thought they could fit together to help the work progress smoothly. The brands weren’t important; the main thing was the capabilities they had and how I thought they might support the project.

Payment

In outlining a proposed invoicing schedule and payment terms, I explained that my time-tracking tool would allow me to provide an account of all the time I spent on the project.

This lead to a quick outline of my invoicing timeframes and terms, and allowed us to agree on a payment frequency and method that suited us both. This client is located in my country, and will be paying me in local currency; otherwise we’d have needed to decide that too.

This information prompted questions from my client about tax, benefits and other aspects that I hadn’t considered to be a part of the deal. The answers to these questions tend to vary with the freelancer’s, or client’s, locations, so it’s important to address them early on.

Other Questions

By putting my cards on the table so openly, I encouraged my client to do the same: he sent back a few questions about whether I could meet with him every few weeks, how might fit in with other team members’ schedules, and the kinds of additional tasks he might ask me to participate in.

Again, this expanded the scope of our discussions and the potential for our relationship up-front. By discussing these questions in advance, I’ve made clear my enthusiasm for the project, and helped speed up the decision-making process. Now the client’s in the process of working out where and how I might fit in with his plans.

Setting Strong Foundations

Clearly, being up-front is a good idea when it comes to establishing boundaries — and scoping out the possibilities — with remote clients. It achieves all the points I outlined above, but it also sets one other crucial expectation: that my time, and my contribution, are valuable.

This is something beginning freelancers often struggle with, especially if they’re remote, and the approach I’ve outlined here is a good way to imply a sense of partnership, and avoid winding up in the standard employer-freelancer (or tyrant-slave!) kind of arrangement. By showing respect for the client’s project, the client, and yourself, you can help to ensure you’re seen as a valued ally. And in the world of web freelancing, that’s exactly the kind of reputation you want to build.

What kinds of issues do you try to anticipate, and questions do you try to answer, to set the right tone with your clients at the beginning of a working relationship?

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Recently, a client from which I needed input for a project was having just this kind of trouble. Though it seemed difficult to do from a distance, I worked with her to solve the problem, calm my client, and save the entire project. Here’s how.

The Warning Signs of a Client in Trouble

First of all, let me say that my client was doing everything in her power to get the information I needed. She was in regular touch with me, our professional rapport was developing — it was all good. Except for the fact that she wasn’t sending me the information I needed.

As time progressed, I began to see several warning signs that things were getting tough for her.

• A string of unanswered messages. When my client emailed the contacts from whom she was expecting to obtain information, she would CC me. Often, she’d forward a string of unanswered emails she’d sent these contacts, without receiving any reply. In those emails, she’d mention to her contacts that she’d called and left messages for them, that she was following up her most recent email, and so on. It was clear that she wasn’t getting any love from her contacts, and that was why she had no information from me.
• Half-baked answers. When her clients did reply, she would sometimes CC me in her response to them. This made it abundantly clear to me that they weren’t being at all helpful. Their half-baked, barely relevant responses frequently missed the point of her requests.
• Frequent absences. My client’s contacts seemed to be on the road a lot. They obviously weren’t online all the time, or at the same time she was. Of course, my client had other fish to fry, too — she was frequently out at conferences and industry events, so most of the communication between herself and her contacts seemed to take place over email or voicemail.

Time marched on, and the large blanks in my project remained unfilled. Eventually it became clear that I’d have to make a decision.

Your Two Choices

In this kind of situation, the remote worker has two choices.

1. Decide that you can’t proceed without the information. This may actually be true — you may need the input before you can proceed — in which case you’ll need to speak to your client or colleague to negotiate a plan of attack that will help you get what you need. Alternatively, you may just be stuck in a mindset that says you can’t proceed without the input in question. But is that really the case?
2. Negotiate a workaround. Rarely do we actually need completely perfect information before we can act. Of course, we want to produce a quality outcome for our colleagues or clients, but operating in an imperfect world means that sometimes actually getting things done wins out over the endless search for perfection. Yes, you can let your client or colleague’s trouble stall the project, drag out the timelines, and give you more space to finish whatever you’re working on in the meantime. Or you can work with your colleague to try to negotiate a solution that will let you progress the project regardless of the missing information.

Negotiating a Workaround

Negotiating a workaround is a great opportunity to strengthen your relationship with your remote client or colleague. In the case I mentioned, it was clear that my colleague was struggling, and that her contacts weren’t going to give her the specific information she’d asked for.

So I formulated a plan and gave her a call. She was glad to hear from me — she’d obviously been concerned that she might wind up looking like the bottleneck in this process — and to talk through the list of outstanding pieces of information we needed.

Through our conversation, I was able to obtain some anecdotal information that gave me enough to flesh out key parts of the project. This was a huge relief — after all, my workaround was a compromise. So even the smallest piece of information translated to a better outcome for my client.

Finally, when I proposed my workaround, my client was extremely relieved. I explained that it was clear she’d been fighting an uphill battle to get the information I’d asked for, and she appreciated my awareness of the situation. She was ecstatic that we would be able to proceed as per the original timeframe without her having to hassle the unhelpful contacts any further. In short, the workaround would make her look good, which made me her favorite contractor.

Although it can be difficult to identify the signs of a flailing client from your position as a remote colleague, it’s the best way to help support them, build your relationship, and keep the project on track.

When was the last time you solved the problem, calmed the client — and saved the entire project?

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However, it isn’t all rainbows and unicorns. There are a number of downsides associated with freelancing, which is why I’ve made the decision to go back to a full-time corporate job as a community manager. I’ll still be a web worker, collaborating with people around the world online, but I’ll be doing it as a full-time employee.

Turning Hobbies Into Paying Gigs

When I began freelancing, I was excited that I could turn things that I was passionate about and doing for fun as hobbies into something that people would pay me to do. I could do fun work and earn money! This worked for me for quite a while, and maybe it continues to work for some people over long periods of time. For me, those things that I used to do for fun all became work, and they became less fun as they started to feel like work. I also realized that I really didn’t have hobbies anymore, and I was just spending all of my time working, which left me burned out, tired and grouchy.

Pressure

On a related note, I used to enjoy speaking at conferences, blogging and attending events when I used to do them mostly out of a passion for the topic, and because they were fun. As a freelancer, these became business development opportunities. I started feeling a big weight on my shoulders and pressure to speak or write only about topics that were directly related to my consulting practice so that I could use them to get more business. Attending events shifted from hanging out with my friends and meeting new people with interesting ideas to meeting people who might need my consulting services. All of these activities became less fun as a freelancer.

Logistics

Anyone who has ever freelanced full-time knows that the logistics can be complex, painful, time consuming and sometimes expensive. Taxes are much more complicated and time consuming even when you have an accountant do them for you because there are so many things you need to track. Independent health care plans are expensive and not nearly as good as when you get them through your employer. Retirement savings is also more difficult, and you can’t save nearly as much in an IRA as you can with a corporate 401k, especially since most employers match at least a portion of your contribution. I can be very detail-oriented when I need to be, so I was able to manage all of the logistics without any big issues, but it was just one more thing that I didn’t enjoy doing.

Could I have made changes in my working style to make all of this manageable and still be happy while maintaining my sanity at the same time? Maybe. For now, the best choice for me was to go back to working for a company. I’ll still continue blogging and playing with cool technologies, but I’ll go back to doing this evenings and weekends in the hope that they start to feel less like work and more like hobbies again. If not, I’ll just have to find some new hobbies. Bridge, anyone?

What is your least favorite part of freelancing, and how do you overcome the dark side of freelancing?

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