1. Watch your price tag.

One of the most influential factors that will affect your bid or proposal is your freelance fee. For some obvious reasons, (which I’m sure you know) that service buyers hire freelancers because of the savings they can actually get. And there’s just one carnal rule for this, “Don’t let your price tag skyrocket that buyers can no longer reach it nor give it at rock bottom price that even Paypal would be ashamed of charging a fee for it.”
Remember, you are a freelancer, you need work but you have bills to pay and needs to suffice, so charge accordingly. Think of the trending that the other bidders are offering and make it as competitive as possible. You can either go down a bit, (tolerable range) or raise a bit higher but still at a reasonable price. And if you would charge higher, make sure that your resume or proposal would also show why you are worthy of a higher fee.

2. Don’t be afraid to bid, but bid wisely

There are jobs that require a certain set of skill depending on the service buyer’s preference. And there will be times that you will not be able to meet all of them. Does that mean that you shouldn’t try and bid at all? Not necessarily. You must consider if the skill needed is really a requirement. They will indicate if its the main skill needed or just an additional factor that may help you in getting a more favorable standing. If the job posted is article writing and sometimes they may indicate that knowledge of HTML would be an advantage, you can still try it out. That is of course at your discretion, which brings me to my next point.
GetAFreelancer gives 15 bids per month to its regular members and would increase by one every month, Odesk gives a maximum of 20 bid allotment for a member who have passed the Odesk Readiness Test, while Elance provides 3 connects only for a free membership. You can purchase additional if your bid runs out.
Considering these details, bidding for a project should therefore be thought wisely. Bid on a project that you think will give you the highest probability of being hired. You might just end up losing a good opportunity because of an unwise choice. So bid wisely, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to spend for another bill while you are still looking for a source of income. Unless you plan on getting an upgraded membership that would cost $12/mo for GAF and $9.95/mo for Elance then using the free membership is still preferable option.

3. Be an early bird

If you are looking for a job, procrastinating or any other form of delay will make your job search miserable. Much the same with a freelancing. So, bid early. Keep yourself up-to-date. Subscribe to an RSS or anything that will keep you informed as soon as jobs are posted. The earlier you bid, the greater the chance that you can get the job especially if there is a sense of urgency for the position being offered.

4. Make your Proposal Stand Out

For about six months that I’ve been working for a recruitment agency, I probably have seen thousands upon thousands of curriculum vitae, both the good and the not so good ones. Not all of them caught my attention. Some have just passed liked an ordinary letter, but others stood among the pack. It’s like separating the colored from the black and white. But if you really want to get a job, make an effort to make it stand out. There are resume’s that are being sold from Resume Planet or you can also visit free-resume-tips.com to give you the basic concept of a simple but attention grabbing curriculum vitae.

5. Maximize the interview part

This portion will actually make or break all the efforts you have made from the previous tips. So don’t ruin what you have started, build it even stronger. Remember, this is not your usual person to person interview where you can be intimidated by the person’s looks. It will either be on your regular regular or through some VOIP service. So get out of the chicken coop or the garage and head to some quiet place where you can understand each other clearly. Relax, that is probably the best thing you can do. If you anticipate too much of the technical side you might end up failing on the simple ones. As what Brian Lamb said, “My basic approach to interviewing is to ask the basic questions that might even sound naive, or not intellectual. Sometimes when you ask the simple questions like ‘Who are you?’ or ‘What do you do?’ you learn the most.”

6. Build your reputation

Publilius Syrus said:
“A good reputation is more valuable than money”.
In freelancing if you want to earn a lot of money, nail a bid easier, a good reputation is one of the keys you should have. Every interaction with a client or prospective employer is an opportunity to build a good reputation. Maximize that opportunity and never missed out on it. Protect your job by protecting your reputation. Build your authority by banking on reputation. That is how important reputation is. Feedbacks will reflect what kind of character you have. And getting a bad feedback will kill your freelance career. Guard it with your life. As a final thought, Warren Bufftett has summarized it in his words:
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently”.

I did enjoy the short talk, which obviously made me feel nervous because it was my first time to do an interview. But the most important part is I’ve learned a great new lesson about working, finding a job and keeping it. And more importantly, I earned a new sense of pride as a Filipino.
I hope tha you will also find this helpful, not only because you are a Filipino, but generally if you are a kind of person who is still in doubt and hesitant about the legitimacy of online jobs or freelance works.

Hi John, can you please tell us something about yourself.

I am 31 I have a wife and 3 kids. I do internet business for a living. That’s all I do. I run internet businesses. I outsource most of my work to full time people in the Philippines. I have a great relationship with them and I love them. I’ve been doing it for about 4 years and been teaching other people how to do it for about 2 years. This is kind of a shocking number but I’ve probably created 15,000 jobs in the Philippines over the last 2 years for Filipinos through teaching what I teach. It’s kind of big impact and I hope it would continue to grow even more.

How did you discover the Filipino talent and the people that you are working with?

Here’s a quick story. A couple of years ago, I mean it was 4 years ago I was talking with a good a friend of mine. And it was brand new at that time, And he said, “You know what John, if you are ready to outsource some of the stuff, make sure to go to the Philippines. Because in India, when they hear you say something and they say yes, that means, yes I heard something come out of your mouth not, yes I understood what you said.” That was pretty interesting to me. I love the Indian people they’re fine, but that was a real eye opening experience. Because here in the US when you think of outsourcing most people think India. And they also think communication problems, headache, and bad work and I thought, I’d try it. This friend of mine had given me some good advice. And what I found was that Filipino people in general are amazing. Really good hard workers, honest, loyal and it’s been really good for me.

What was the first job that you outsourced to the Philippines?

The first time I ever did it, I used the company called, Agents of Value . They are an American company and they have office in the Philippines and they recruit and hire locally and they let that person work for me for full time. The kind of work they do for me is writing, English writing, building and managing and maintaining some of my websites. Which is kind of funny, the first guy that I ever hired he told me recently, “When you hired me I knew nothing” He just learned as he went on how he went how to do this things. He certainly had some knowledge but he ended up learning WordPress really well and his writing got better over time which was only okay when I hired him. You know he is doing some social media for me, social bookmarking, articles and videos and blogs and link building and stuff like that, lots of stuff that they are doing for me.

What is the most essential quality that made the Filipinos as your outsourcing partner of choice?

In general, you guys are honest, loyal, hard working, and your well educated, computers and internet access. That’s not the biggest thing. The really biggest thing that makes this work is the way that the Filipino culture looks up to the American culture. And when I say looks up to, I mean, you guys watch American movies. Other cultures don’t do that. Your billboards are in English, your street signs are in English but obviously there’s Filipino all over the place. But I’ve never, never been to a country that wasn’t England or Canada and I haven’t been to Australia where English is so prevalent. The fact that English is so prevalent and that you guys look up to America it makes us so. You think like we do which is different than other outsourcing that goes on in the world. Where the cultures are so different and the people think differently. So for me what it was, when I ask my guys to do something, they do it right the first time and if they don’t do it the first time, they do a good job. That is very different than other places. You talk to any American who tried this in India or Pakistan, Eastern Europe, or South America or wherever they’ve tried it, they basically hire themselves a babysitting job where the people that they hire, they don’t do it right. They don’t speak great English. They don’t understand, they don’t understand what you said. So those are the really big things. You guys think like we do, your brains work the same way and so it makes for a really good relationship.

What’s your reaction about the comments in Yaro Starak’s post that outsourcing to the Philippines was all hype and unrealistic?

I’ve been doing this for about 4 years. This is not a short term temporary thing. Hiring Filipinos is growing right now and it’s going to continue to grow. It’s not going away and it’s not going anywhere, for Americans. I would say my team is better now than they were 4 months ago. I have hired another person in those four months. I have to my staff and yeah… I can never imagine myself again not having people working for me in the Philippines.

Is there any particular expertise/niche that you think Filipinos are more inclined to excel?

In my experience you are really good at link building; you’re good at writing content. Certainly some Filipinos are good at writing any content. I’ve had some amazing stuff written. I have some very good workers who are capable of writing anything and you are also very good at programming and webmaster work. Skills that I would say Filipinos could acquire to help them in terms of getting a job with an American company would be webmaster work, learning some HTML, learning WordPress or learning to write better. Probably reading an American newspaper or reading American books that would improve your grammar. A lot of Filipinos speak really well, they speak shockingly well to what you would normally think, but then when you write there are just little grammatical mistakes that make a difference. Those are the areas where a lot of Filipinos could improve. Just getting use to our language style and reading American English so that when you write it its better and then simple web master stuff like HTML or FTP because those are big things that my customers look for.
Can you tell us something about Onlinejobs.ph
Onlinejobs.ph is my site and I started it because there wasn’t really great place to recruit Filipino workers for Americans. There were a couple of other places that were okay bestjobs.ph was one of them, it’s not anymore. And when I recognized this is a growing need and there’s not a great place to do it, that’s when and why we started onlinejobs.ph.

What’s the unique advantage that Onlinejobs.ph has over freelance sites like oDesk or Elance.

Probably the biggest advantage for you is that, you’re going to find a full time job on onlinejobs.ph Not many people on onlinejobs are looking to hire freelancer. If they are looking for a freelancer they know where to go. They know how to go to oDesk or Elance. At onlinejobs.ph they’re looking to hire some permanent worker which is a big deal. You are not at the end of this project, you’re not out of work. It’s an ongoing thing. I have never let someone go that has started working for me. If you are a good employee I would say there’s like 2 percent chance of ever being let go by an American company. Once you start working for them and you’re good, because we recognize the value of what you are doing. And it’s not contract work, it’s permanent full time work.

What will be your parting words for those who wants to work online.

I know that a lot of people don’t have any idea this exist. They have no idea that you could work online doing online task. I know that because I’ve talked to a couple of the guys that work for me and I asked this question “What do your friends think of what you do?” And I think he was a little bit surprised at the question he said: “They don’t even know what I do. They don’t understand what I do. They don’t have any idea. They don’t have any idea that this is even possible.

The first things that I would have you understand, if you speak English, you are of value. You can get a job. Second thing is, you need to understand that really all we want is for you to work with us. Here’s the reason I say that. A lot of times Filipinos will start a job and then they’ll find something that they don’t understand or they get embarrassed about or the situation is less than perfect so they quit or they just will never talk to their employer again. That’s the worst thing that you can do. I know that you get embarrassed or you’re shy because of the situation. I had this situation happen to me this week actually where I was trying to hold training meetings at a certain time and one of the people just couldn’t make it. So she told another one of my employees she was going to quit because she couldn’t make it to her training meetings. And she hadn’t said anything to me about it. So that’s really the biggest piece of advice that I can give you is don’t get shy or just run away. Go talk to the person you are working for and see what they say about it. I get the idea that often you guys feel inferior to us. And I really don’t feel that way. And I don’t think most Americans feel that way. I don’t feel superior. If you have a problem I want you to come talk to me. I want you to come and tell me so I can work it out. That’s the biggest piece of advice that I can give: “When you do find a job, keep the job! Don’t just disappear because you’re embarrassed or shy.”