₦airaland Forum

For a true lover of books, the electronic age has come to breathe new life into our reading culture.

Hundreds or thousands of titles can be saved on your e-reader device. Imagine going on a trip and needing to take 20 books with you for your holiday I enjoy reading on my iPad, and have great e-reading apps that make it easier and safer to reader via the screen.

Once in a while though, I like to curl up with a good paperback. The feel of paper as you turn the pages and the smell of the print and leaves of each page has its own appeal. But if it's this versus that, I'd say the digital age has come to stay. Audio is fabulous too if the person narrating it does it right.

Ladywriter thanks for the shout out. I must commend you for starting this thread. Apparently things have changed up a lot since I joined that site because I realized most employers require bidders to have done a test before they can apply. This was not the case before. I've slowed down on my activities there since I now have a steady flow of repeat employers who set up projects for me without me having to bid. So much as I'd like to contribute more to this thread I will have to do more of observing and chip in when I can so as not to give outdated info. Kudos to you and keep up the good work. If I too have questions I will ask since I'm still coming up myself

Hello and thank you Ladywriter for your kind words.

My contribution today will be to supply tips and common mistakes I made as a beginner on the site.

Common Mistakes
- Don't waste your bids.
As a beginner you have a very limited amount of bids per month. Carefully check out projects before using your precious bids on them. Are you likely to win? Is it a project you're sure you can start/complete? At the start I was bidding at will, and before long I ran out of bids. By then good projects will be coming up and will have no bids. Always save a few bids in case of a nice project that can come up any time.

- Don't overbid or underbid yourself.
Don't bid too high and don't bid too low. If you have no experience on the site and you bid higher than the top freelancer on the same project, that's a waste of time. But also don't bid too low all the time so you don't look too desperate. For example, in writing articles there are people who will bid as low as $1 per 500 words. That will be OK for your first project but for upcoming projects go for average like $2 or $3 per 500 word articles. This is hard work so you don't need to do them at slavery rates lol. Have a standard.

- Don't bid on Asian projects
Not to be racist but this is for real. 80 per cent of them don't create milestones or deposits first. So they can refuse to pay and say they didn't use the articles you supplied. For now avoid them. I only knew one Indian who was nice and paid on time. Others will take weeks or even a month to pay you for a job you did under one or two days. These indians work for others and subcontract the work to you. So only when their main employer pays them can they pay you. This reduces your ration and if the employer rejects the articles you lose your time and effort.

Some nice tips:

- Milestones
Like Ladywriter pointed out, request for milestones and don't even start a job without it. Here's how: you apply for the project and the employer contacts you. When you reach an agreement as to how much, inform him/her that before you accept the project they need to set up a milestone or deposit. If the project costs $50 you can demand a 100 per cent milestone which means the employer will deposit $50 in escrow. Neither of you can touch it but at least you know the person has the money to pay you. Also, if the employer defaults in releasing funds when you submit the work, the milestone means Freelancer can enter a Dispute on your behalf. No milestone means you have no rights.

- Learn from the Top freelancers
In making bids I soon learned how to follow-follow the top freelancers in my section. Any project they bid on, I will bid too at a lower rate. They know how to pick out genuine employers willing to pay well. So I go to their profiles to check which jobs they recently bid on and follow suit. Soon you will know how to make your own judgements and choices.

- Do the free tests
Some tests/exams are free and doing them will look good on your profile. When you have been paid for any project, invest in a small exam in English proficiency and make sure you pass well well! You can do them again if you don't like your score.

Well guys more to come when I can. Trust me it will take a couple months or so to know your way around the site. Noone to show me the ropes then so I learned by trial and error. Lost some money too by doing work for aimless employers. But if you keep up with it you can earn a decent amount of money soon. Before you apply for your Payoneer card make sure you've made some good money from jobs and even good reviews and feedback. They will check this to know how bona fide you are. I got mine within 2-3 weeks or so. Take care for now.

I commend you Ladywriter for all this free info. Some would have charged for just a fraction of this. That said, I joined this site over a year ago and I must say it's cool. Once I learned how to avoid time wasters, like those Indian and Paki projects (sorry ) I started rolling in good experiences. I started from the bottom, bid very low, won projects and upped my rep. Soon I began earning top dollars in my niche. Time consuming but worth it. My advice? Pick jobs carefully. I only bid in projects set up by employers from US, UK, Australia, Canada etc. If the employer can't express himself or herself in correct grammar as you correspond, you'll know it's an indian using fake flag.