Some types of data entry projects usually posted are:

• Convert hard copy to soft copy: Clients will usually send the print / manuscript copy to be converted into say, MS Word/ MS Excel etc. It can be as simple as a multiple page essay or book to tabulated data in MS Excel. Sometimes you may need to do this by typing manually (e.g. when the copy is manuscript) or you can use OCR software to first obtain the data and then do the corrections.
• Data Extraction from Files: A client may want only certain data e.g. email addresses of those businesses residing in New York with net worth more than  US$ 300,000. If the data is huge and has some structure, you can even use a software solution to extract this data.
• Data Extraction from the Web: Also known as online data extraction or web scraping or copy-paste from web, which indicates that it is as easy as copying data from websites and pasting it into MS Word / MS Excel etc. The most common sub-type for this project is extraction of contact info from websites. e.g.  obtain contact info (including mailing address, phone, fax, email and web address) of all realtors in California. Manual copy-paste in this case is tedious and time consuming. So there are a range of software / scripts available for web extraction.
• Proof-Reading: Proof-Reading simply put is correction of data; spelling mistakes or typos, grammatical errors etc for a book are the easy ones. Some jobs may involve basic knowledge of the field e.g. proof-reading of a contract requires familiarity with legal terminology, medical journal requires knowledge of medical terms.
• Transcription: Medical / legal transcription was the beginning of data entry outsourcing. It involves listening to audio / video recordings and transcribe the conversation in a prescribed format. Transcription today is not just limited to medical or legal fields but also to others like business owners who require a Virtual Assistant to transcribe their thoughts for the day. Its best to invest in a good headset and software for these kinds of jobs.

Often, I see many freelancers (even designers and programmers) begin their freelancing career by taking up data entry projects and build up their ratings – this is especially applicable to sites like Rentacoder.com. Many would argue against this approach as it is unrelated to your actual expertise. But I would suggest taking them up as good ratings reflect not only your ability to complete a project, but also your attitude to a job. Moreover, you get to understand the intricacies of a bidding process before you begin to bid on projects that are specific to your skillset.

A Word of Caution: Look for projects on freelance marketspaces like Guru.com, elance.com etc and don’t bother about the vast multitudes of work from home and earn $6000 for data entry scams. The reality is that no single person has EVER made millions doing data entry (a company with 100s of data entry operators perhaps).

My advice is to use Data Entry as a stepping stone to win projects of a different category – yes, you will need to upgrade your skills for that – if you stick with freelancing, I guarantee that you will find a skillset that you love within a year. If you don’t find it or if you need help, I am just an email away.

So here’s the thing for all those experts who are called by friends and family to click photos – get those cameras out more often and click away. There are many websites which will sell those photographs for you. Some of the best ones are:

• iStockPhoto
• Shutterstock
• DPhotoJournal
• KeyImagery
• BigStockPhoto
• FotoLibra
• CitizenSide (To sell News images)

You just need to register on these stock photo exchanges and upload your images. These websites pay anything between 20% to as high as 70% of the selling price. And the selling price ranges from US$ 1.5 for a small (about 150 px) image to US$ 15 for large images. This amount seems small, but once you multiply the number of photos by number of downloads, it is considerable – yes, I can wager that if you don’t suck at clicking images, the money from here will pay for a nice Canon SLR. Many successful photographers upload many good AND related (note this down) images thus increasing the chances of a multiple sale.

TIP: Look for what kind of images are sold most and get them. What kind of background (white?), subject (business or corporate?) and so on are the questions you may want to ask.

Perhaps you think that your images are way better than most to be sold at such a low price. Then, setup your own website, and add a photo gallery with shopping cart using web services and tools that are available. Some of them are:

Web Services

• Flickr. Host your images and just add readily available scripts to embed the slideshow of your galleries and tags
• PhotoBucket. Nice alternative to Flickr
• SmugMug. They also have selling services like shopping cart etc

Scripts. These are scripts ranging from simple Javascript to PHP/MySQL scripts. A big list is at http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/05/18/30-best-solutions-for-image-galleries-slideshows-lightboxes/

So go and click those images away. Who knows you will get money as well as rave reviews for them.

Keep watching this space for more on freelancing as a photographer

• Ruthlessly cut down on 80% of exising clients who are a drag on you. Say no to that difficult client who always pays late, shortchanges you or extracts lot of work for less. Ofcourse you must exercise discretion in this e.g. some projects may be low paying (say, for a non-profit), but it might provide you a wide exposure.
• Concentrate on the top 20%. These are the ones who provide 80% of business either directly or indirectly (references etc). Don’t miss deadlines, avoid being too friendly, provide regular feedback and yes, greet them on festivals. I usually email each of my clients on say, Xmas or Thanksgiving.
• Don’t spam clients. Infact, you must ask for permission before including their email address in your mailing list. And never ever refer anyone else to your client before you ask them. It will also be a good idea to seek permission before you post your client’s name for your portfolio.
• Provide them value added service. Give them more than what any other pro would. Those extras will delight them in hitting a gold mine (in terms of a valuable freelancer). Point them to information that is relevant to their business. e.g. Has your client heard of that new accounting software which will help them in their business? Who knows, it might just open another business avenue for you.
• Consider yourself a stakeholder in their business. Unless you do that, you will fail to see what is required to help the business. e.g Is the website good enough to meet the required sales target? How will my copywriting position the brand? Consider this – all my big clients have asked for past references and projects done. They want to know what my contribution was to the business.

So go ahead and fire those pesky clients and greet your favorite clients – if you have a contrarian view, I would love to hear it.

Guru Search Leverages Work Samples to Filter Candidates and Guide Contract Hiring Decisions

Pittsburgh, PA – September 28, 2009 – Guru.com – the world’s largest online marketplace for freelance talent – launched a new ‘Search for Freelancers’ tool Sunday, enabling businesses to more quickly and efficiently find Freelancers for project needs using any combination of keyword, skill, location, industry and budget range criteria.  The new Guru Search features quick access to indexed work samples – viewable as images or as websites – to create a more “browse and shop”-like experience when comparing, screening and hiring freelance professionals.

The power of the Guru Search lies in its ability to quickly and simply filter through the world’s largest freelance talent pool to identify manageable subsets of only the most highly qualified and relevant Freelancer Profiles for a given project need. With advanced search refinement features to assist businesses in defining a narrower niche of candidates, hiring options become less cumbersome while quality improves.  The new Guru Search aids Employers in identifying only the precise service providers that match all of the business’s combined project requirements.

“The new Guru Search creates quick, logical sense out of millions of potential hiring options to ease candidate screening and selection,” said Inder Guglani, CEO and Founder for Guru.com.  “Freelancers also gain greater opportunity and visibility within those specific market segments where a focus in specialized skills, prior work experience and core locale is apparent.”

Screening Candidates with Work Samples Search

The new Guru Search integrates seamlessly with Guru.com’s patent-pending approach to Freelancer Ranking to provide Employers with the best information for protecting their freelance investments.  The Guru Search resolves questions about quality and credibility – issues long associated with freelancing – by aligning work samples with performance data.  With access to searchable images and websites that demonstrate capability, Employers can better assess the work product potential of Freelancers available for hire. Employers can compare work samples against Guru.com’s Quality Score Rank which orders the service providers appearing in Search results by a calculation of proven service excellence.  The Rank algorithm reports business performance measured by customer acquisition, earnings and retention rates. As an integrated system, the new Guru Search affords Employers the most comprehensive information for approximating the likely outcome and success of Freelance hiring decisions.

“A core component of the Guru.com platform, the new Guru Search complements our focus on helping Employers to better gauge the quality and authenticity of individual service providers before contract,” said Guglani.  “The ability to visualize probable results saves Employers time, boosts their success, and improves the overall satisfaction of business services outsourcing for everyone. With this approach, too, Freelancers can best leverage their work credentials, experience and professionalism so that their talent will truly speak for itself.”

Advanced Search Dimensions in the Guru Search

The new Guru Search was engineered to offer improved performance and speed over its predecessor by allowing Employers to sequentially layer in refinement dimension options such as location, industry, and budget – for a more cumulative, filtering effect. Businesses benefit from additional functionality to:

· Improve candidate selection decisions with the guidance of Guru’s proprietary Rank and Quality Score data;

· View work samples as thumbnails and see other decision-making data prior to click-through;

· View the number of active, available Freelancers in main skill categories, areas of expertise and other sub-level refinements prior to click-through;

· Sort Search results based on rate, budget, or yearly earnings;

· Save profiles to a Favorites folder for future reference; and,

· Invite a Freelancer to place a quote on a project directly from the Search results.

Skill categories remain a central feature.  Guru.com recently expanded its available skill categories from 160 to 222 offerings that span technical, creative and professional business services.  The company plans to overhaul its industry offerings later this year.  In August, Guru.com added an alphabetical Freelancer Directory to streamline access to known Freelancers; an automated optimization feature was also introduced to allow Freelancers extended marketing and visibility for their Guru Profiles within major search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.

The Guru Search affords businesses the ability to review thousands of qualified professionals virtually — anytime, anywhere. Freelancers in more than 220 countries and 4,800 metro areas are included in the new Guru Search.  With more than one million Freelancers registered, Guru.com is a resource for strategic talent management and provides access to the world’s largest online freelance talent pool.

About Guru

Guru.com (www.guru.com) is the world’s largest online marketplace for freelance talent. Founded in 1998, Guru.com connects businesses with freelancers specializing in over 220 professional categories including: website design, programming, graphic design, business consulting, and administrative support. Employers seeking professional expertise locally, nationally, or globally get quotes from freelancers on their contract work for free. Guru.com’s proprietary Rank captures and reports objective performance data about the quality of freelancers to help facilitate hiring decisions based on service excellence.

Contacts:

Kristen Sabol, Communications Specialist, Guru.com, 412-687-2228 x837; pr@guru.com

Are you a freelancer who has a bit of work, seems to have jobs or things to do all the time, but just isn’t making enough money? It’s quite common, and I’ve identified the two reasons it happens.

1. You don’t charge enough
2. You don’t have solid systems in place

The first reason deals with giving you more time, the second reason deals with the money issue.

Lets look at them in detail.

1. You don’t charge enough

Pretty simple really. Charge more, and fire the clients that don’t want to pay more. This frees up time to chase after newer clients. If you can’t do that, you either have poor self esteem (fix it), or you don’t have solid systems.

1. You don’t have solid systems in place

You don’t have enough time in the day to write long proposals, go to sales meetings, send out invoices and follow up payments, and all the other things you have to do to be a successful freelancer. The reason you don’t have time, especially if you bill by the hour, is that you need to spend your time doing work, and adding value for your client.

So how do you cut back on the time you spend on business tasks? The answer is to have systems that take care of things.

When a call comes in, you need to have a system for converting that lead into a sale. You need to have a basic idea of the information you need to get and what you should put in the proposal and so on.

When a project starts, you need to have a system (especially if you’re outsourcing), that makes sure that work gets done by the due date, and to a high quality.

When a project finishes, you need to have a system that sends out invoices and follows up payments.

To give you an example, one of my systems is a support policy. I used to not have a support policy – existing clients would come to me with a small amount of work, and I didn’t know how to quote for it, and sometimes I felt pressured by the client. Now I have a documented support policy. I send it to my client (it’s on my website), and the client is given an option to either purchase a block of prepaid support, or they can be billed at an hourly rate in 15 minute blocks. The support policy helps me because it means every bit of work I do is billed – it means nothing is slipping through the cracks. I’m not doing 2 minute jobs for a client for free. Secondly, it helps the client because they know where they stand, and they also get an optional discount if they want to pay up front.

If you count all the times I used to do 2 minute jobs for free, that are billed now because of having a clear system, it would add up into thousands. This one system has made me thousands.

Think of things that get through cracks in your business. Are you collecting your payments on time? Are you missing deadlines? These are symptoms of poor systems.

To create these systems, firstly, you need to think about your business, and what is the best way of doing things. Secondly, you need to document your systems – write down what they are, and make up the supporting materials for them. Thirdly, you need to enact these systems. This means, you have to make sure they are working. Without those three elements, you will be stuck under a huge pile of emails and before you know it, its 5pm and you have 3 deadlines still to meet, and you’ve billed an hour and a half for the day.

Nobody but yourself can help you with the first two. You need to dedicate time to grow your business and set some goals for yourself.

You can use software to help you implement these systems. I’m the founder of Freelance Total and I made Freelance Total for this very reason. I had created systems, they were good systems, but I couldn’t make them happen! I remember at one point I had lost track of what I had invoiced and what I hadn’t – I simply had too much stuff going on. Freelance Total helped me reign it in, and make sure I was getting paid for what I did. I recommend you check it out.

About the Author

Luke van de Paverd is the founder of “Freelance Total” – a complete business management system for Freelancers.

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