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The Online Freelancing Guide  >  Finding and Evaluating Online Freelancing Projects

Special Considerations for Working with Clients New to Freelancing 1 Clarity and Quality of the Project Description

Much of the decision about whether or not to bid on an online freelancing project will be based on the particular characteristics of the job, as expressed in the project description. This encompasses both the objective quality attributes of the job—how good a project it is for any freelancer—and subjective suitability considerations—how well the project matches you and your needs.

In this section I’ll review some of these important quality and suitability factors. They include the clarity of the listing, how well the project fits your capabilities, the project’s estimated budget, and non-monetary benefits such as how interesting the work is. I’ll also discuss project duration and how your schedule can impact the suitability of a project, and also why it is important to look at how many bids a job has before deciding whether or not to bid. I conclude with a discussion of intuition, and its role in helping “keep you honest” about how you really feel about a job.

If you’re new to online freelancing, lengthy lists of assessment factors might seem imprac­tical, or even overwhelming. The truth is that I don’t know any freelancers who actually go down a long checklist of attributes each time they evaluate a project: it would be too time-consuming—and boring. The purpose of this section is simply to remind you of what to keep in mind when you’re assessing a project. As you gain experience in searching for work, you’ll get faster at doing it. In time, you’ll learn to evaluate and balance all of these consider­ations automatically, typically without even exerting any conscious effort to review each factor individually.

Be sure to also check the section following this one, which complements the general discussion here with a look at specific danger signs to watch out for when evaluating projects.

Special Considerations for Working with Clients New to Freelancing 1 Clarity and Quality of the Project Description