Peopleperhour - PayPal or bank transfer?

untranslatable

Good morning, dear Moneysavers,

I have bagged my first freelance job - yippie! :j

The client is based in the UK and I wonder if I should use PayPal or request a bank transfer for the payment. I have searched the pph site but can't find any information about fees for bank transfers within the UK. Can anybody enlighten me please?

And one more question: When I bid for the job I failed to specify that the sum does not include VAT, as I am not VAT-registered. However, I clarified this later in a message to the client. Now I wonder if pph will automatically deduct 20% VAT.

JuniorDesigner

untranslatable wrote: »

Good morning, dear Moneysavers,

I have bagged my first freelance job - yippie! :j

The client is based in the UK and I wonder if I should use PayPal or request a bank transfer for the payment. I have searched the pph site but can't find any information about fees for bank transfers within the UK. Can anybody enlighten me please?

And one more question: When I bid for the job I failed to specify that the sum does not include VAT, as I am not VAT-registered. However, I clarified this later in a message to the client. Now I wonder if pph will automatically deduct 20% VAT.

I'm not sure to any of these questions so not much help but well done getting a job!!

I've found it so hard finding work through there, I only really apply for UK jobs now because some of the others seem to be worthless in terms of using up bids.

Well done anyway!!:money:

untranslatable

Hi JD,

thanks for your reply. I sent the pph-team an email and even got an answer: Bank transfers within the UK should be free unless the bank charges a fee. Now I have been too busy with my awfully important first freelance job to check if my bank takes a fee when I receive a transfer ... what a complicated little planet this is!

And the VAT problem is solved as well: Though I didn't specify in my bid that my price does not include VAT, I pointed it out to the client before we sealed the deal. And I am not VAT registerd, so I can't charge VAT anyway.

For how long have you been trying before you landed a freelance job? I have only just begun: I bid for five jobs in the last week, got two refusals, one hasn't answered yet, but the bidding is still open. Number four might or might not give me some work and number five is the bid I won. But there is no need to become green-eyed about my quick success: It's an awful lot of work for very, very little money - not even half of the National Minimum Wage if I count the hours. I only went for it because my priority is to get some real work experience on my portfolio. One single job and one review is better than nothing. After all, this is what those sites are for: getting experience ... by getting exploited, okay.

I got a few refusals as well and I tried to learn from it: One lesson is: Don't bid if the client has "invited" certain fellow freelancers to bid - it's a lost case. Second lesson: Stand out from the crowd. If you use freelancer.com, don't parrot that stupid "Please check your PM". Instead, write a nice little cover letter in the space for "details of your proposal".

I am sure there are more lessons to be learned. If you have some for me, please share.

JuniorDesigner

Hi, well I started bidding on jobs last year....am still yet to get one from PPH, for me iti's become a bit of a lost cause but I have had some luck with ELance, people actually get back to you on there!! QA few people are mulling over my bid along with some others but I only REALLY started to venture hard into this a few months ago.

Since looking at different places for work, Gumtree, Local Ads, Self Promotion, I finally got a job from a lady on here which was great, then I recieved another job from Gumtree and through the word of mouth of that one I got a paid job as I was doing them for free before to gain experience.

A lot of people instantly count out people who do stuff for free which I find annoying because sometimes it's the only way to get a start in things.

I've found with Elance that bidding on UK based work has proven A LOT better than oversea work. It's just about sifting through all the rubbish really and like you say 'standing out' which catches peoples eye often enough!

I wouldn't say the job I've done is for brilliant money but it's something that I can say was my first real 'job' so that was enough for me!

untranslatable

Have you tried vworker? That's where I have just landed my second job - yes, I did it again! The client said he liked my sample translation and decided to work with me although he had cheaper bids from more experienced translators ...

I don't like freelancer.com very much - the open bidding ruins the prices. Elance - don't know yet. In theory I like the fact that the minimum bid is $50. In practice, this ruins my chances to get one of the many small scale jobs, as I am not yet in the positioin to ask for $50 for one or two pages.

Odesk is still on my list. Do you know them?

JuniorDesigner

No ive not tried vworker, I will have to have a look at them! Are you predominantly web design? Do you mind me asking what amount of money the bids are your bidding? You don't have to answer that!

Not heard of Odesk either so will have to have a look-see at them!!

untranslatable

I'm a translator. The trouble with translations is that any Tom, !!!!!! or Harry who speaks a foreign language think they can do it. And employers think 100 pages can be translated in a day - that gives you an idea aboout the rates.
For the job I am doing now I get 1p per word; that's about £2,60 per hour after fees. I can manage between six and seven standard pages of 300 words per day - now, do the maths, if you like. But my second job pays already twice as much - a 100% increase in less than a week, that's not bad, eh?

At these places, pph and so on, I will probably never get more than 3p per word. But once I have a nice little portfolio with a pile of translations and a few reviews from happy clients, I will move on and try to get work with established translation agencies. And one day I might have enough clients who keep coming back and spread the word, and won't need any rip-off agency any more. At least, that's the plan.

A friend of mine recently suggested that I should contact companies and convince them that they needed their homepage translated if they want to remain competitive on an international level. Not the worst idea ... and you could contact them and tell them that their logo is sooo 20th century and it needs a revamp made by JD. :cool:

JuniorDesigner

untranslatable wrote: »

A friend of mine recently suggested that I should contact companies and convince them that they needed their homepage translated if they want to remain competitive on an international level. Not the worst idea ... and you could contact them and tell them that their logo is sooo 20th century and it needs a revamp made by JD. :cool:

Yeah I've given this a thought, I often see certain company names and start thinking about how a logo would look!!

Well all the best for future money earning and thanks for the tips!!:beer: