Hi guys, it’s Alston!
In this guide, we are going to learn how you can start working as a freelancer in Freelancer.com. I’m going to give you a full in-depth Freelancer.com tutorial as well as explanation on how to do it.
Step-by-step instructions from learning about freelancing:
- How you can create an account
- How you can set up a profile
- How you can find projects and contests to work in
- How you can place a bid
- How you can submit an entry
- How you can manage your finances and get help and support
So everything you need to learn, the video will be in a step-by-step categorized format.
If you are a beginner or you want to learn everything, I would encourage you to watch the video from start to beginning. However, if you are only interested in certain parts of the video, I will leave a times tab with the chapters in the description so you can click on that to follow only the interested sections for you.
Freelancer.com Tutorial Course
What is Freelancing?
So without further ado, let me go into first, what is freelancing? That is the most important one to just give you an introduction.
If you are seeing this video, you would already know it. But just for explanation, freelancing is a type of work where you are not based on one company or a business shop or something like that. It is where you choose what you want to work on.
So the concept works like this: A client or business posts a job. You read through the job and you say, “This is the payment I require. This is the time I will take. These are my request criteria and everything.”
And if the client wishes to agree on that project and accepts your bid, the project automatically starts, and you can start working on that project.
So you define what you want to work, whom you want to work for, and what are the criteria for the work. That is the main concept of freelancing.
Freelancing Benefits
And the next one is, let’s look at the benefits of freelancing because just to get an idea of why freelancing is important to you.
Work From Home
First, the main concept is work from home or work from anywhere where you have the basic laptop or the tools you need to do the job. So that is the main thing.
You are not fixed to a schedule; you are not fixed to a location. You can work from anywhere you want.
So this can be ideal for part-time students or even someone who’s looking to stay at home and looking for some additional part-time work or just to have a project.
Independence
You are your own boss when it comes to freelancing. Even though you accept clients, they are not controlling you.
You decide on what you are working, you decide on what you want to work on and everything. So it gives you a sense of independence for you.
Variety of Work
With freelancing, you are not just limited to the daily projects you get. For example, if you are working in a company, you might do the same thing again and again every single day.
But with freelancing, the different requirements, the work you do will be different from each client to client or each project to project. So you will get something unique out of each different project or from each different client.
Income Potential
Income potential also, you’re not just limited to something fixed by a salary from a company or something like that.
With freelancing, the income will depend on how many projects you complete, the quality of your project, or the rate you set by you and accepted by the client.
Your skills, your talent as a salesperson, your talent as the work you can complete, that will influence how much income you can earn as a freelancer.
Global Opportunities
Again, if you’re just providing a service within a city or a location or just for a group of people, you might not discover all the demand you can get worldwide.
But with online freelancing platforms, you can find work pretty much from global opportunities. You can find work from different countries, different geographical locations, and everything.
So you’re not just limited to one location, but you can get jobs from worldwide. Those are the main advantages of freelancing.
Types of Freelance Jobs
Let’s discuss the different types of freelancing jobs. This is also just an overview summary, but you are not just limited to these jobs, to be honest, because these are some of the most popular.
But as long as you can offer your work to a client and it can be done in a freelancing nature, you can find pretty much freelancing for your job as well.
So here I have listed out some of the common ones. So if you are not new to freelancing or you don’t have a specific profession, but you’re just wondering, what are the things I could get into? This could be something you can look into as a starting point for you.
- Web Development & Programming
- Graphic Design & Creative Services
- Content Writing & Copywriting
- Digital Marketing & SEO
- Data Entry & Virtual Assistance
- Translation & Language Services
- Video & Audio Editing
- Accounting & Finance
- Mobile App Development
- Social Media Management
What is Freelancer.com?
We now learned what is freelancing, what are the benefits of it, what are the types of jobs, but what is Freelancer.com?
Freelancer.com is a website which allows individuals finding freelance work and enables individuals and businesses to connect and collaborate on projects.
Basically, I have explained in freelancing, I have explained the benefits. The main problem comes into play where we can go about it. We know the concept, it sounds good. We know it is really good to work from home and everything.
But how do I go about it? What is the website I will work with? How can I find projects to work on? How can I find contests to submit my entries? So that is the problem we realize.
That is where Freelancer.com comes into it. It is not the only freelancing site – there are so many available on the internet, like Upwork and everything. But Freelancer.com is one of the biggest websites currently available as a platform to work as a marketplace, as a freelancing concept where you can find workers or you can find work. They manage everything through their platform.
So that is what Freelancer.com means.
Freelancer.com Benefits
Now, let us take a look into some of the benefits Freelancer.com offers to you, so you can get an idea of what it provides for you.
Big Marketplace
First, it is a big marketplace – that is the main important point of it. The freelancing concept only works when there is a lot of individuals and a lot of clients, designers, a lot of workers connected to one single marketplace.
That’s how you can find, if you are a client, you can find a lot of potential employees for your project. If you are an employee, you need to find a lot of clients or a lot of projects for you to work on. So that is what Freelancer brings to the table. It is a big marketplace.
And as I’m creating this video, you can see the number of total accounts within Freelancer, and they are coming from over 247 countries.
Pro Networking
Not only does it enable freelancers to connect, it enables them to create partnerships. It enables them to create relationships between all these things. So it comes as a pro networking place where you can not only find work, but also create a network like a freelancer community.
Extensive Job Categories
And the next benefit is a lot of job categories. As I mentioned when I was explaining the job slides for you, it’s not just a couple of jobs you need to cater yourself as a freelancer.
But when it comes to Freelancer.com, they have done an extensive categorization into different jobs or different skill areas. So you can find a freelancing opportunity for your career or your particular profession very easily with Freelancer.com. So there are a lot of job categories available for you.
Secure Payment
This is one of the most important benefits of Freelancer.com, because when you are in the nature of freelancing work, the big problem that comes to you is how the payments are going to be handled.
So how can we trust the client? How can we make sure that the client pays on time? How can we make sure that he won’t scam me? How can we make sure that the workers are good? How will we know the past reputation of that person? How do we know the reviews of the past milestones or past work, past clients and everything?
What Freelancer does is they provide a secure payment interface for you. They handle the payments, they handle all the payments to be paid to you, the pending payments, milestone payments. They do provide a secure payment option for you to handle the payment from client to you and vice versa.
Skill Development
The next benefit: Freelancer started as just finding the work, you’ve done, you do the work, you get paid. As it progressed, they realized the need to educate and provide support to freelancers. They know what are the things they need to improve on themselves to keep on improving their job as a profession.
That’s where the skill development comes into play. They started providing feedback mechanisms, the review process, educational courses, and learning, improving guides and everything. So you’re not just doing the work, you’re also keeping on improving as a freelancer when you’re working and learning with Freelancer.com.
Those are the main benefits of Freelancer.com.
Freelancer.com Projects vs Contests
Now, let us take a look into different types of work you can find within Freelancer.com. This is very important because in Freelancer, you are not just going to get projects, but you’re also going to get contest projects also. So let’s learn about the differences between both of these.
Freelance Projects
First, project. Project is where a client places the requirement for something he wishes to be done. He posts a project in Freelancer.com.
Now the freelancers who are matching that particular project category or skills are able to place a bid. So when they place a bid, they mention that “this is my rate going forward, I can finish this project with this particular money and this time needed. And these are my past work, these are my skills,” and you just sell yourself to the client on why they should choose you and start working on the project.
So the bidding process is there. And once the client gets all the bids, he goes through all the bids and chooses one particular person to work with and accepts that bid. And he starts working on the project with that particular person from there onwards. And when the work is finished, he pays to that person. And the final result of that particular project completed, it’s given to the particular client.
So that is a project.
Freelance Contests
Contest is something different where clients come and post a particular project. It mainly works with graphic designing projects, but it posts the job with particular requirements.
And the designers or the freelancers who are interested in that particular contest, rather than placing bids or proposals, they are just submitting their final work for that project.
So example, if the client has posted something with a logo design need, the freelancers or the designers are going to be designing that particular logo, draft, or the final version, and going to submit that entry into the contest.
So now what is going to happen is rather than selecting a freelancer and choosing to work, he’s able to see all the designs which various freelancers have done. He can give feedback on the designs, and he can choose any number of comments and keep on giving feedback to all the different freelancers.
So he is not working with one freelancer, but multiple freelancers. And when he decides to choose a particular design, he really likes this particular submission or the particular entry, he simply awards that particular design the prize money.
Key Differences: Projects vs Contests
So here with projects, you choose the person, then you work with the particular person. But with contests, you work with all the freelancers and choose one particular design which interests you.
That is the major difference between both project and contest. And in Freelancer.com, both of these options are provided for you.
With projects:
- You choose only one freelancer and work with them
- Specific requirements, skill requirements
- Reviews and previous work are important
- Place a bid and if the bid interests the client, he will accept
- Longer start because the client reviews all available bids
- Works on all project types – coding, teaching, marketing, etc.
With contests:
- Multiple submissions to review from different freelancers
- You can start reviewing immediately
- Feedback and customization options available
- Mainly works on visual and design work preferences
- Freelancers can submit multiple entries for the contest
- Faster results and faster options
- Works mostly on graphics
Create a Freelancer.com Account
Now let me show you how you can start creating a freelance account:
First, you need to go into freelancer.com. You will see the homepage. Click on “Sign Up”.
When you click on Sign Up, it will open up a sign-up page for you. Here, what you need to do is provide an email address. You need to be making sure you have access to this email address because they will send all the communication through this email address and create a password.
It should have a minimum of six characters. You should include lowercase, uppercase, or a number and everything. And when you click on “Join Freelancer,” it will ask for a username.
It will give you some suggestions based on the email address you provided, or if you are not interested in any of these suggestions, you can type your own preferred username.
Once that is done, you want to click on “I want to work” because we are creating a freelancer working account to work with freelancers. So click on “I want to work.”
Select Your Freelance Skills
And when you click on that, it will take you into the next step where you can see now you need to select all the skills you want to assign yourself as a freelancer.
So depending on your profession, depending on your job skills, select all the skills. So it is really nicely organized with all the different criteria. Go into the category which interests you, and within that, go into the tags which interest you.
It also shows the number of current available jobs within all these categories. You can get an idea of what jobs are available currently within each of these categories. So if I click here, you can see it shows all the different ones.
When I click on that, it automatically adds to my skill. As a free account, I can choose up to 20 skills. When I click on each of the different skills, it also will keep on adding all the different jobs currently available on the market for each of these particular skills.
And it shows that, estimated, this much job is available for me to take a look into according to my skills which I have chosen. So it shows currently I have chosen three out of 20 skills for me. I’m going to click on “Next”.
Link Your Social Media Accounts (Optional)
Now it provides me an option to link accounts. So if you are not interested in manually filling your account details, you can link your social media account and profile picture, name, email address will be taken from your social media account and filled out in Freelancer.com.
So if you are interested in doing that, you can click on this and you can do it, or just click on skip. You can manually fill these details for you.
Set Your Profile Picture and Name
Here you can upload your profile image, and below that you can type in your first name and your last name for the account. Make sure to provide a real name close to your national ID and verification details because when they ask to verify your account, you can provide the name here itself, so make sure it matches you.
Write About Yourself
Now you need to give a bit more detail about yourself. First, you need to give a one-line description. Usually, this is shown in your profile and when you place a bid or something like that, the client is able to see these details. So make sure to type in something relevant to you or something attention-grabbing to your client to give you extra attention.
Here you can type in a whole about yourself. It enables up to 3,000 characters, so you can type in quite a lot. Make sure to explain yourself, the work you do, or something unique about yourself as a freelancer. Type everything you wish to share with your potential clients and click on “Next”.
Set Languages You Speak
Now you need to select the languages you speak. Currently, it has selected Hindi for me because I am operating the Freelancer from India, so it has automatically selected as Hindi.
But if you wish to change something you want, like I want to select English, I can do that. If you are interested in some specific language, you can try to search for it or click on it and scroll through it. And if it’s something relevant to you, you can select it. If the language is not there, it means it is not supported right now.
So choose the languages you want. Then you go and select the date of birth for you. This is also really important in verification of this account or verifying payment methods and such. So make sure to select the correct date of birth according to your national ID or national proof and click on “Next”.
Set Your Address, City & Country
Now it is asking where you are located. Here also try to submit your permanent address according to your ID verification, so you don’t have any differences between both of these.
As you start to type the address, it automatically will provide suggestions for you. When you see a suggestion which is correct to the address you typed in, you just simply need to press on that particular address.
When I press that, it automatically will fill my main address. It automatically will fill the province, zip code, and country for me.
Email Verification
And once I click on “Next,” all I need to do is now verify the account, and the “Next” button is blocked out because I can’t move further without verifying my email address.
I’m going into email and you can see I have received two different emails. The first email, “Welcome to Freelancer,” is automatically registered as soon as I create an account, but I’m not interested in that. I need to find the second email which says, “Verify your email address,” and I’m going to click on the button there.
And once I pressed on it, it will automatically show me that my email is verified and the “Next” button will be available for me. Now I need to just press on “Next”.
Payment Verification (Optional)
Now it’s asking whether I want to verify the payment method now itself. This is where if you verify the payment method, click on that, it will give you two different options to verify the payment: debit card and PayPal or credit card.
And it shows the benefits of it. It shows that a verified badge will be on the profile and it basically adds the payment method to your account. It shows some of the benefits like get paid faster, rank higher, and you will also get access to a free trial membership.
But note that this is not mandatory to be done now. You can skip here also if you want.
Freelancer Plus Membership
Now it gives you a pitch for the Plus membership, Freelancer Plus membership, and it shows all the benefits which I can get with this. Basically, in Indian money, it comes around 587 INR per month for the plus membership with one month trial for me.
It also shows what are the features. It’s like I can apply to up to 100 jobs per month. I can include 80 skills in my profile. Daily withdrawal money option is available. Some freelancer rewards also available. The free membership, like one month free access is available.
With free account, you get limited bids, limited skills and everything. They actually try to make you purchase the plus membership. But if you’re only interested in free, you can still try to get some work with free. You can get up to six bids, you get some 20 skills in your profile. It’s not like you can’t work. You don’t need to have a plus membership.
You can start with a free account itself. In case in the future, if you start getting your work and you wish to expand yourself, you can try plus membership.
They are also providing one month free trial, so you can test it out. If you like the plus membership, you don’t need to do anything else because it will automatically start charging you from that month onwards. But if you don’t wish to continue as a Plus member, you wish to cancel it, make sure to cancel the subscription either through Freelancer or through other mediums like PayPal.
So you see all these things. If you are interested in it, you can do it or just click on skip if you are not wanting to do it now.
So when I do that, it automatically creates a new account for me. You can see I can see the dashboard – that is how easy it is to create an account with Freelancer. But the job is not done. We are just getting started with Freelancer.com.
Setup Freelancer.com Profile
Now, let us see how we can start a profile setup with Freelancer. This is important within Freelancer because your profile is going to define you as a freelancer within Freelancer.com because there are thousands and thousands of individuals within Freelancer. So you need to have a really attractive, attention-grabbing and professional profile.
And now I will show you the ways you need to complete your profile to make complete use of your profile within Freelancer.
Go into username and there will be a link called “View Profile.” We need to click on it and it will show our profile right now within Freelancer.com. You can see all the different text I have provided, names and everything, all the live-action and everything. So this is how a profile will look to a client when it comes to Freelancer.
Preferred Freelancer Program
First, I want to explain about Preferred Freelancer. Preferred Freelancer is something like a unique specialty program within Freelancer. Not everyone can join the program.
I just wanted to introduce because this is something new. I want to give you an introduction of it. If you’re really good at some skills, you are really good at your job, as you keep on completing projects after projects, you can be eligible for this particular preferred freelancer program because it does bring you some additional benefits.
You get exclusive invitations to high-value projects and some other additional badges, qualifications and everything. When you click on that particular page button, you will get two links with applying and minimum requirements page. If you click on the minimum requirements link itself, you will see whether you can be approved for the preferred freelancer program or not.
It shows all the things which I have passed and not passed. So all these criteria are available for the preferred freelancer program. So it is not easy to get into this particular program. But if you do end up getting it, it does provide a really unique benefit for your freelance profile.
Account Verifications
So apart from that, you can verify all the different other stuff to make your profile complete, like phone, payment, email, and all these options are available.
Freelancer.com Exam Certifications
Apart from that, there is something called certifications. The main concept of certification is a person can come into Freelancer and list out all the different skills. For a free account, it provides 20 skills. For a paid account, it provides 80 skills.
So it can potentially put everything into a skill resume. And as a client, he does not know actually whether you are qualified, whether you have the knowledge you say, claiming to be. And also as a freelancer, you don’t know how you can prove to the client that I am good at that particular skill, I am good at that particular certification or something like that.
So that is where the certification exams come into play. This is where you will find a lot of exams within Freelancer.com in various skills, languages, all the different types. When you complete these exams, these will act as proof within your profile with badges saying that you completed this particular skill, you completed this particular exam with this amount of marks, and overall how much you scored.
These are really good to give the client a sense of confidence when they are picking out freelancers for their particular project.
So you can see this is how the exam badges will be shown. And when I scroll down, it shows all the recommended exams for me as a basic, and also according to my knowledge. And you can see from different categories, different exams are available for me.
So I need to search for something or click on the exam which I’m interested in. For example, US English. If I want to attract more English customers or customers who have English as their communication preference, by passing this particular exam, I prove to that particular customer that I have a basic US English Level 1 capacity.
So you know when he’s contacting me for communicating with the project or asking for requirements and everything, that this particular person has some English knowledge, because without that, you won’t be able to know whether you know how to communicate properly or not. This can work with other languages as well.
So you can purchase this exam with Freelancer. Purchasing does not guarantee you the top marks or the qualification. You are just getting access. You’re just getting a chance to attempt this exam. When you pass, based on your results, the badge will be displayed on your profile.
So when I purchase this exam, I will get 40 multiple-choice questions, five minutes time limit. I need to score at least 75% of marks to pass. And when I do all this automatically, that badge will be added to my particular profile.
So you’re not only limited to languages as you will get exams for specific skills. For example, I chose WordPress, so I’m also able to get WordPress exam. So you can complete as many exams you want according to your profession, and those certifications will be displayed here.
This is really good to get accepted on projects because the client will be able to see that you do have the knowledge on this.
Browse Similar Freelancers for Inspiration
The edit skill option is also available. For example, when you are creating an account, you selected a couple of skills for me. I selected three skills, but if I want to edit or add new skills, I can do that there.
And also the next way I can get is browse similar freelancers. Not only with Freelancer, I can design my own profile on my own, but I have the ability to see other profiles in the same space.
For example, if I click on banner designers, I am able to see all the banner designers within Freelancer.com, like other freelancers who also have listed the banner design as a skill within their profile.
I can go through each one of these people. Ideally, the option is to hire them for a client, but I can also reverse engineer their profile, like what they have written on their description, how they have provided their portfolio item, what certifications they have taken, what structure they are following, what things they are doing uniquely.
You can reverse engineer them and try to do it in your own profile as well. This is really good for you to make additional insight knowledge into all these works and apply that work within your profile also.
So the browse similar freelancers is available for you. And you also browse similar showcases also available by showing the works.
Add Portfolio Items to Your Profile
And if I come into this section now, I can add portfolio items. Portfolio item is something like, these are the items or works you want to wish to display within your particular profile. These are work which you are proud of. You want to wish to display to your potential client or lead.
It can be image, it can be article, it can be code, video, audio, other. Choose whichever the item you want. Give a title, description, upload a file, select the skills this particular portfolio matches, and click on Save, and it will be added to your portfolio.
This is also really good to showcase some of your past best work and everything to convince your potential clients. So you can add the portfolio items through here.
Profile Reviews, Experience, and Qualifications
Review section where you can see below the portfolio, it is not something you can add, but as you keep on starting to work for different clients, when you complete a particular project or contest, the client does have an option to review your work. Based on those reviews, those reviews will be displayed here.
Below that, you can add experiences. Like if you have experience in your profession, you can add various details here just to give you an idea. You can submit those details there.
You can add educational details like where you studied, which university, what degree you took, MBA, all these things. You can keep on adding education details.
If you want to add specific qualification certificates, award details, you can add there. If you want to include any publication details you have done, you publish something, you can list out those details here as well.
So you can add all those details there. And that is really important to completing your profile.
Freelancer.com Projects Jobs
Now, let us take a look into finding freelance project jobs. We have completed the profile section. We know how to complete the profile setup. Now, we will learn how we can search for freelance project jobs for us.
First, I need to go into browse and you can see there’s something called Projects. If I scroll down and when I click that, it will automatically load all the projects within Freelancer, which are matching my particular skills or the categories.
I can keep on refreshing to see the new jobs and it will provide me with all the projects with filters available for me to filter it because it provides me 2,000 projects.
I can filter with various rates, fixed price, the type of skills it’s included, or the listing type because there are various project types also available within Freelancer.
Whether it’s featured – the client wishes to feature the project prominently to see all the freelancer’s options. Sealed if you wish to seal the information of the project. NDA if the client wishes designers or the freelancers to sign a non-disclosure agreement before seeing the requirement. So you cannot share the details of the project. Urgent if the project is something very urgent for the client. Recruiter if he is recruiting through that agreement.
So all those different listing type filters are also available for you. So if you are interested only in those listings, you can click on it and see the details, or you can skip on that.
You can also filter it by location, languages, all those options are available for you. And you can finally sort the projects which are displayed also by latest, oldest, lowest price, highest price, lowest bid, most bid. Those options are also available for you.
Once you do that, you will see all the different projects available for you. And if some project is interested to you, just click on anywhere. Typically, try to click on the title, but you can pretty much click anywhere.
Project Details
When you click on that particular title, it will open up a more detailed page for you with the project details. You can bookmark the project if you want. You can come to a later state by clicking on it.
And once that is done, you can see the number of bids available within the project, how many freelancers have bid on this project. Average bid also shown. And if I go down, you can see the project details. These are the requirements given by this particular client on this particular project.
I can see that details, the average budget for the person, how many days the bidding will continue on this particular project.
On this right side, we will also be able to see the details of the client, like the name of the client, the rating for the client, what are the things he has verified. So these will give us a sense of confidence.
For example, this client does not have any past reviews. So I will be more cautious when handling this client, rather than a client which has like 5 or 20 reviews or something like that, where he has done past work with freelancers. So it gives me more confidence into that.
So I can have a rating through it. I can look through the reviews to the client as well. When a project or the contest is finished, the contest holder or the project client is able to review freelancers. Same way when the project or the contest is finished, freelancer is able to review the contest holders or the project client as well.
So we can see the data reviews, ratings from that particular buyer. And we also get several ways to stay safe, all those things.
Place Your Bid for Project
And to place a bid and start working on it, you can see it shows that I need to complete my profile because I still haven’t done anything. It shows how many free bids I have left. Since I’m a free member, I can only place six bids for a month.
And it also shows some tips on how I can start bidding really good to keep on that. So first I need to define our hourly rate, which I am charging, and upload a profile image in order to start bidding.
So I’m going to upload an image of mine as a profile picture. Just keep it as professional, something like that. And click on Save. And when I press Save, it automatically gives me an option to bid.
So these are the important fields. The first field shows the amount of bid you can place. You are placing this amount. It’s a prefilled amount, but you can fill any amount you wish to send a proposal to the client.
The below important information is when you place that particular bid, it will show you how much of that will be taken as a fee for Freelancer for this particular project. They are providing the platform, so they are going to take a fee on all the work you do. It shows how much fees they are taking and how much levy.
Levy is basically like tax. It shows all those details and it gives me a percentage. If I place a bid amount of 1,050, I am only going to be getting in net revenue as 779.
As you place the amount, it will be dynamically changing. According to the net revenue, you can place the bid you want for this particular project.
You can also say the timeline and give a description on your proposals, submit it, type as much detail which will convince the customer or the potential bidder, the client.
You can also get verified and submit video proposal also. This also adds more uniqueness to your particular bid. You can also suggest certain milestones if the project wishes milestones, or you can set this milestone for this payment and everything.
Also optional upgrades also available for you like sponsored, sealed, highlight, all those things.
If you place a sponsored upgrade, it will cost you $6 for you and it will automatically place that bid at the number 1 position. If there are 20 or 30 different bidding out there, if you place the bid normally, it won’t get ranked on the top position. Usually that is defined by the ratings and all those things, plus memberships and everything. But when you put a sponsor bid, rather than displaying at a bottom screen or in the middle, it will show on the first result itself.
Sealed option is where you have the option to block out the information or block out the proposal information from other freelancers. So only you and the client are able to see.
Highlight is the option where you have the option to add a border to your bidding. So this visual option adds some unique perspective for the client to be able to see your bid more prominently compared to others.
Those optional upgrades are available for you. You choose whatever the one interests you or you choose none and click on “Place Bid.” And accordingly it will place the bid for you.
Once the bid is placed, you can see the bid within the proposals. Here you can see your bid compared along with all the other competitor bids also.
So you can see these are the other people who have bid for this particular project with what budget or the charge they will charge and what time they will take in order to finish this particular project. You can get all the different ideas and other freelancers who are competing for this particular project. Those details are shown here.
Freelancer.com Contests Jobs
Now, let me show you how you can find freelance contests to work on. This is also important. This will really work good with design contests.
I can just click on the contest tab next to the project. There are several ways to get into this particular one. I can go through here or I can go into the homepage and go into the contest.
Now it shows all the contests available which are matching my selected skills. Here also, click on the title. It will open up the contest detail for me.
Here I can see the person who has given all the details for the contest. I can read through it and it also shows the submission type. It is a bit different here because you are not given an option to submit a bid. You can see there is no bidding process here.
When you read through the description, you see the supported submission rate. You are able to see entries and you have the option to submit my entry button. Those are the only options available for you.
When you click on entries, you automatically see not the proposals but the finished designs to be given to the client from various freelancers. The client now has the option to see their different designs and is able to choose a winner or give feedback until he finds something which he really likes.
You can also click on submit my entry and give an entry title, describe your entry, make sure to give permissions and set a sell price because in case if the client decided not to pick you as a winner, but if you wish to pick an extra winner or extra place, if you define something here, the client can purchase your design.
Even though he did not pick you as a winner, he’s still able to make a purchase for that particular one.
Here also, you can promote my entry by highlighting or sealing your entry. When you seal a design work, especially if you really want to make sure that your design does not get copied, by sealing that particular design entry, only you and the client will be able to see that particular design.
So choose what are the things you want and make sure to click on Add File and select the file and click on Submit Entry. When you do that, your entry also will be shown here for the client.
So that is how the contest project works. It’s similar with projects, but rather than bidding and proposals, it’s entry and submission with communication with the client.
Freelancer Account Management
Now, let us quickly take a look into all the ways of managing your account with messengers, notifications, and alerts. This is also important. When you find work, find contestants to work, you now need to have the option to communicate with the client.
Here you will see an icon. Here it will show you all the messages or chats you have with various clients and contest holders and everywhere. Here now it’s empty because it’s a brand new account.
But as you start to communicate with potential clients, placing bids or submitting contest entries, this section will get filled up fast. So you have a decentralized space to manage all your messages.
When you click on this particular icon, here you can see all the recent projects matching your skills you have selected, all those details within here. So you can see all the details of different projects with how much time and amount of budget.
You will see all the different ones, contests, and also it will show you projects as well. This is where recent notifications will be shown.
I can also click on Saved Alert and set up an alert for certain particular keywords. In order to do that, I need to click on Save Alert and make sure that notification is turned on for this device.
Click on Search Project and insert a specific keyword you wish to see on the project. For example, if I type eBook here and I want to make sure that I’m essentially saying to Freelancer, whenever you find this particular keyword within a newly posted project, send a notification to me.
When I search for it and said receive alert for this search and name a search to your personal identification and make sure to receive an alert and say, when a new project is now posted with Keyword Ebook in it, I will get alert for those projects from now on.
So that is how the alerts feature works. Notifications also, if I am getting any notification related to my work or account, those details will be shown there.
Now, let us see how we can start managing our freelance account. This is also important because we now know how to set up profile, find work. Now, let us see all the managing options available.
Types of Freelancer.com Memberships
First, membership. As a free member, you only get 6 bids per month. So obviously, if you are planning to work full-time as a freelancer, that might not be enough for you.
In that case, you have the option to upgrade your account to various levels. Basic, plus, professional, premiere options are available. For each of these options, you can see the number of limitations or number of unique features available for them.
So you can see you can upgrade away, you can have a read through it. What are the details available for you? For basic, you get 50 bids, 50 skills. You can see the monthly price or what is the price if you go for annual payment option as well.
So these details are shown here. For the plus membership only, you will get a start free trial option. For all other memberships, you can upgrade it directly if you want. Those details can be shown from membership.
Account Analytics and Statistics
When you click on account details, account analytics, it will show you the analytics for your particular freelancer account. That is the important thing. Currently, it is empty, but when you start working in it, it will show your total earnings, total earnings for the past days, job proficiency rates, completed jobs, on-time job budget, earnings over time graph, ratings per skill, earnings per skill, earnings per client, bid conversion. All those data will be shown here.
Market statistics is where you need to have a paid membership to access these details where rather than showing only your statistics, now it can show you marketplace statistics like what are the high-demand skills, what are trending skills, what are overall ranking, skill ranking, bids per milestone.
These data will be helpful for you as a freelancer to reverse engineer it or use these details to help yourself to get a better profile or win more projects for you. So you need to upgrade to see that.
Now when I go into Bid Insights, now it will show me all the data related to bidding state. It is also a professional member feature. You need to have professional membership or premium membership to access this feature. So I am unable to show in a free account.
Freelancer Finance Management
Now, if I go down, I will see finance details. I can add funds to my account. Like, if I’m going to upgrade or I’m going to do some optional upgrades when I’m placing bids and everything, I can use this money to use for that.
There are so many payment options available for you, basically giving all the different options from UPI to all the different… Even some of the payment methods, I don’t even know what they are. Those options are provided here.
Also, if I want to update my tax pin or GST pin, everything, or tax details, I can do that from the Financial and Payments screen. I can give the number or if I’m exempted from a tax reason, I can let the freelancer platform know what is the reason and save this reason.
Without setting this detail, you are unable to add funds or withdraw funds from your account.
So withdrawal fund option is shown here. It shows the benefits of plus membership with daily limit and what are the ways you can withdraw your funds.
So basically you win on a project, you complete a project, you complete a contest, you win some money. Now you can withdraw those money to your bank account through this option for you. So the Express Withdrawal is available, PayPal is available, Skrill is available, wire transfer is available, and it also shows the fees for each of this method and what are the things to consider with this.
Those details are shown here and when you start earning money, you can use this particular page to withdraw those money to your bank account.
Transaction history basically will show all the transactions related to your account. It will show here all transactions, invoices, milestones, pending funds. All those details will be showing here as well for you.
The next one is financial dashboard. This is something really interesting where Freelancer does not only provide a way to find projects and start working and completing payment and receiving the payment in your bank account, but it also provides a set of tools to manage your financials to give you a sense of all the details you need.
For example, if I scroll down on this page, I can manage, create my income statement, balance sheet so I know what are my earnings, what are my income, what are the cost of sales, so I can better manage my finances much more confidently.
Use this word counter tool to keep track of your writing projects.
Freelancer Help & Support
Freelancer not only provides you with all the tools, but it provides options to learn support and options. You click on the support from the menu here, and it will take you to a page where they have done extensive support documentation for you with necessary information and guides, step-by-step instructions.
So if I scroll down, you can see various different sections with load more categories and everything. When I am interested in something specific, when I click on that, it will provide me a detailed introduction on how to do that particular task or how you can improve yourself.
The help section of Freelancer or the support section of Freelancer also does provide a really good amount of information for me to keep on improving myself also.
All the learning and other options also available for me through the browse section also. So in the menu, if I come into the browse, you can see all the tools and all the learning materials through that.
Groups is also available for me with menu where not only you have the option to learn about it, you can participate in various communities which interest you. These are the other freelancers who have created this community as a way of networking, communicating with your fellow freelancers to keep on improving yourself, feedbacks, just giving you a professional relationship with your coworkers and everything.
So you can see all the different communities available for you. You can view more, you can talk about it. Search all the different groups which interest you, all the data’s here, and you can join anyone which interests you.
When you click on View, it will show you the feed, like what are the discussions happening through this particular group. You can see all the different sections happening through here, like how can improve everything. Depending on the group, you will find different discussions within the groups.
You can also see the files within the group members who are in this particular group. Details are available. About also will be shown here. Those are details available to you.
You can control the notification setting. You can also invite anyone you wish within this group here itself.
Also, the Freelancer homepage also does provide a lot of information for you. So in case if you are not looking to know what to learn, just scroll through your homepage itself because it does provide you good information and some interesting posts for you as well. These also will provide a good learning outcome for you.
Conclusion
I have shown you all the details related to Freelancer. Even I am a bit tired. If you are watching it, you would be tired too. I would recommend you to watch everything, set it up, don’t just watch it.
You watch the video, as you watch the video itself, start setting up your account and complete your profile.
Freelancer.com provides a really big marketplace for you to work as a freelancer. I hope this video has helped you on learning to do pretty much everything with Freelancer.
If you’re interested in some specific help or something, do let me know in the comments. I will reply you back, or if it requires a video, I will create a separate video for you itself.
So if you are interested in learning more about digital marketing, make online videos, digital tech, SaaS tools, and everything, subscribe to the channel. And if you find the video like and share with your friends also.
Once again, thank you so much for watching this video and I hope you have a great day. Cheers!