Becoming a Freelance Web Worker: Part 4, The Working Day

The web worker has a very different kind of working day. Clients are lined up and liaised with through email, payments come in via PayPal and Facebook trumps the television when procrastination time comes around.

To be efficient and effective as a web worker you’ll need to come to grips with a few important tools and change some rusted-on behaviours. In part 3 of the Becoming a Freelance Web Worker series I’ll describe exactly what you need to make it through your first working day (and every day after that) as a wired freelancer.

Equipment
Computer — if you want to go mobile a laptop is essential, but if you’re content working from home any half-decent computer will do. Some web workers swear by Macs, others swear by Linux, others are PC devotees. My advice is to go for the operating system you find easiest to use — or the one you can afford. The Web 2.0 hipsters might have their preference, but they’re not doing your work for you, are they?

Fast internet connection — while it’s possible to be a dial-up web worker (I’m doing it at the moment, but only out of financial necessity!), it’s not very cool — or very productive. If a fast connection allows you to do a day’s extra work each year, it pays for itself.

USB thumb drive — I’d suggest getting a USB thumb drive big enough to store your current project on it. If you’re a freelance writer you’ll be storing mainly documents and text files, so you can get something really cheap. If you’re a web developer or designer you’ll need a more heavy-duty option — but you’re also probably a technophile, so I don’t need to tell you that.

Optional: Scanner – sometimes nothing beats a pen and paper for getting an idea across, sketching and brainstorming. A scanner will allow you to share your pen and paper sketches with clients instantly. You can also make digital copies of paperwork (if you need it). If you’re an illustrator or animator, a scanner is a must-have.

Client liaison
Email — the only option for me, I’ve had no troubles working with clients over email. It encourages a kind of professionalism that’s hard to capture through other mediums. The relatively slow response time means you’ll soon learn to ask the right questions from the outset.

That being said, I’m a freelance web writer and that gives me a lot of autonomy. If you’re working closely with a client on a design, for example, you’ll probably need to make heavier use of more immediate options.

(For many web workers, there’s email, and then there’s Gmail. You can use a different email client, but prepare to be mildly teased/socially ostracized).

Skype — if you’re missing the sound of your clients’ voices over the phone (or just feeling lonely), Skype is the liaising option for you. It can take 5 minutes to work out something that would take three days via email. That being said, a call through Skype is a bigger interruption than a new email in your inbox — particularly if you’ve started working online to finally escape the sound of forever ringing phones…

Instant Messenger — if you’re searching for the immediacy of Skype without the awkward silences, IM could be the client liaison option for you.

Just remember not to LOL in the wrong places.

Getting paid
PayPal — corporate clients will often want to pay you old-school style, but individuals will favor PayPal. You lose a few dollars in the transfer process, but the immediacy and control is worth it. You can invoice and get paid within minutes if your client is online. PayPal will also handle the conversion of foreign dollars into your home currency for you.

If you’re one of those people who’ve been somehow wronged by PayPal and don’t want to use it, there are alternatives (but clients happily using PayPal might be a bit grumpy about the inconvenience).

Time management
Resisting temptation — I’ve always thought freelance ink illustrators would be masters of productivity, because none of the tools of their trade actively encourage procrastination — unless doodling counts?

If you thought the temptations of traditional freelancing were bad, for a web worker, they’re just one click away. We’re also good at convincing ourselves that procrastination is work. Reading feeds is “research”. Facebook is “networking”. StumbleUpon is for “inspiration”.

I can’t really think of a solution for this. I’m too busy writing an update on Twitter.

Anti-procrastination charms and pendants — usually called ‘Web Apps’ and ‘Firefox extensions’, a common piece of advice given to web workers can be summed up like this: more web apps and extensions = more productivity — though the sources of this advice wouldn’t like it being so brutally paraphrased.

I’m going to be a luddite here and say this equation is wrong. Technology won’t magically make you more productive. In fact, I think a lot of web workers fall into the trap of spending more time reading about productivity and learning to use new productivity tools than they do actually being productive!

My rule: if it’s faster than doing the same thing with pen and paper, keep it. If not, scrap it, be old-school and proud of it (and more productive).

Having said that, keeping your paperwork to a minimum is essential if you want to work anywhere in the world… something I’ll be covering in the last part of the series, Part 5 — coming soon.

For more info mail info@firstlincoln.net