Becoming a freelancer

getmore4less

HappyGamer wrote: »

I was ideally hoping to advertise the service on such sites rather than make a pitch or bid for jobs. It is not a service most people think to ask for but one that is very useful especially for businesses.

What makes you think those that don't know they need this service will even be looking at these sites?

HappyGamer

getmore4less wrote: »

If these jobs are only getting £10-£20 that's less than an hours work.

Do you have some unique skill/experience that makes it worth while using you over just setting aside an hour and doing it themselves?

Yeah, it will not take me more than an hour for each job. Probably no more than 20-30 minutes.

Sort of. It is not something you can do yourself, it is something you need someone else to do (or in some cases multiple people to do).

There are sites based on what I want to do but I want to go it alone rather than just be apart of them as the sites have qualifying questions and I get disqualified from jobs I could do with no problem.

Prothet_of_Doom wrote: »

5 to 20 minutes ? That's not freelancing, that's erm....well it is freelancing, but not as I know it.

My current freelance job is quoted by the hour, and so far I'm upto £46K :rotfl:plus VAT

Ah yes VAT. Are your customers all VAT registered ? If so then definately look at the HMRC's Flat Rate Scheme.

20-30 at most.

That is a lot. The amount I am thinking of is just below some other sites offering the same sort of thing. There is no way I would get a high amount for such a job but the amount is fine by me.

Well I have no customers as of yet to say but how do I know? For my own site if I offer a service and someone just clicks a button and pays how does that affect VAT and so on?

getmore4less wrote: »

What makes you think those that don't know they need this service will even be looking at these sites?

Well I was planning on doing some advertising. People who want other jobs/projects done who are on the sites may see my advert for my service and realise that it would be a good idea. Obviously that only works if I can advertise my service on the sites.

imoneyop

HappyGamer wrote: »

Well I have no customers as of yet to say but how do I know? For my own site if I offer a service and someone just clicks a button and pays how does that affect VAT and so on?

If you are VAT registered then you have to charge all your customers VAT, then if they too are registered, they (assuming they are not on the flat rate scheme) can offset that VAT against the VAT they are due to pay HMRC. If you are just saying my service is £10 pay here, then if you are VAT registered, that £10 will be deemed to include the VAT, so you would owe £1.67 of it to HMRC.

To be honest though if you're charging 10 or 20 quid a project, unless you have some other large amount of trading income you're not going to get anywhere near the VAT registration threshold.

HappyGamer

imoneyop wrote: »

If you are VAT registered then you have to charge all your customers VAT, then if they too are registered, they (assuming they are not on the flat rate scheme) can offset that VAT against the VAT they are due to pay HMRC. If you are just saying my service is £10 pay here, then if you are VAT registered, that £10 will be deemed to include the VAT, so you would owe £1.67 of it to HMRC.

To be honest though if you're charging 10 or 20 quid a project, unless you have some other large amount of trading income you're not going to get anywhere near the VAT registration threshold.

Oh right. Thanks. I can not imagine that I will be making a lot but I shall keep that in mind.

getmore4less

HappyGamer wrote: »

Well I was planning on doing some advertising. People who want other jobs/projects done who are on the sites may see my advert for my service and realise that it would be a good idea. Obviously that only works if I can advertise my service on the sites.

But is this going to be the target companies just those looking for freelancers to do projects?


Where do these other places that "do it" advertise how do you tap into their customer base and new business

HappyGamer

My plan was to start off on the freelance websites and to do a few jobs and see how it goes so the target customers would not just be those looking for freelancers although it may start off that way. After that I planned to build a website, advertise in various ways and directly contact businesses and individuals who I believe may be interested.

I can not say that it is something I have seen advertisements for. I found out about them through forums and searching. It is most likely how others often find out about them too. There are plenty of potential customers out there worldwide so I would not have to tap into their customer base as such.

ejl20

I would suggest creating a blog site first (your own blog) before you start freelancing. What's good of having a blog is you can reference your profile and all other things in your resume to your site, so if clients will check for your portfolio, they can access your blog right away without going to a lot of pages.

HappyGamer

ejl20 wrote: »

I would suggest creating a blog site first (your own blog) before you start freelancing. What's good of having a blog is you can reference your profile and all other things in your resume to your site, so if clients will check for your portfolio, they can access your blog right away without going to a lot of pages.

I would normally agree that a blog is a good idea. However I do not have much I could put in a blog for this. I would rather just set up my own website and focus on that rather than worry about having to keep updating a blog and not knowing what content to write for it.