A draft from the first project which I had ever gotten paid for. (Feb 2012)

The cold-call that kick-started my freelance career

I used to work on graphic design projects but they used to be freebies and paid in “exposure.” Only until early 2012 did I start seeking paid opportunities/ commissions (junior year for my Bachelors). With a lot of motivation and push from my university counterparts, I created accounts on the gig economy/ freelancing websites like Fiverr, Freelancer, oDesk and Elance etc.

The foundation of these platforms are based on bids, which are very similar to cold calls (commonly known via sales people who call around strangers in an attempt to sell things). The only difference being that employers post projects which act as triggers for getting flooded with bids.

Things have definitely changed around the gig economy since then (2012); ranking algorithms have gotten smarter and improved the overall quality of the platforms to deter spammers from flooding their bids. Some of the pointers which I share might have changed over the years, but the gist of them still applies.

The market is still extremely competitive, but having said that, I have learnt a few tricks which seemed to have worked and thought it would be good to write about them.

There’s always a meme for everything! (source: Google images/ quickmeme)

Bid factories

All of these platforms have what I refer to as bid factories, which are whole companies disguised as a single individual who appears to have superhuman capabilities, and would apply to all projects within a domain. To give some context, here’s a simplified sequence of how the general bid factories worked:

1. A person creates an account
2. They opt for the premium account (for ~ $25 you would get 50 times more bids and other perks)
3. They hire X full time salaried employees to work for them
4. Their job would be to mass-produce ‘designs’ daily, in return for a guaranteed stable income
5. A dedicated person from their team would bid / cold-call to all incoming projects

I’m not rallying against the above business model, but the fact was that as an individual you’d see their presence in just about any project you’d plan to apply to. With scale though, they had their own issues to solve for. The remaining article would elaborate one way to get somewhat of a head-start.

Breaking through the clutter

This is what my bid/ ‘cold-call’ usually looked like

Screenshot from one of the projects which I had won in 2013 (links blurred)

Hey, ive read and understood the project description and would like to work with you and help you with your design! Please inbox me for relevant samples, as i can not upload copyrighted material on my portfolio online.

Please check the links below and the portfolio in my profile for quality assurance. I guarantee you proper communication regardless of possible time differences (if any).

You can check my repeat hire rate and reviews for consistency. I’m reputed for providing high quality work even under strict deadlines.

Thus, the extra time is to ensure room for trial and error. Ill do infinite revisions as long as they are justified. Please contact right away or whenever you have a question!

Profile / Portfolio link 1

Gfx Design Portfolio link 2

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Best Regards,

Arsalan.

Breaking it down

If you read the above, you’d get a sense of me trying to get the potential employers attention and trying to stand out. Do note that naturally, this would vary from project to project.

A relevant review which I think is a great TL;DR of my freelance life

Besides the now obvious grammatical and punctuation issues which stood out, the structure was as follows:

1. Intro
   The usual greeting. Using the person’s name is definitely a plus as it ensures the employer you took out the time to view their project and profile.
2. Invitation to get a portfolio/ job samples customized for the gig
   Always helped with my case as I didn’t have an expansive portfolio in the beginning. This ensured I created something specialized for this bid, and only send the relevant information which is helpful to the client.
3. Promise to communicate
   With hundreds of other members applying for the same project, the average employer has faced a LOT of issues with communication, language barrier being just one of it. This is an acknowledgement of that issue and ensure you’re not just another cog in the machine.
4. Invitation to audit profile and authenticity
   Official bragging rights if you have 5 star reviews in your profile. It’s always good to invite the employer to your (complete/ beefed up) profile to prove that you’re the real deal.
5. Promise to be honest with deliverables
   Part of the reason why this existed was the confession by employers: in a low price and what seems to be a perfectly competitive market, they have had their share of dumped projects, which would show in various forms of inactivity. The re-assurance always got an employer to consider the bid and that you would be fair with your requests and would co-operate.
6. Generic portfolio links
   Chances are not every employer is interested to read paragraphs and just want to ensure if the person can get the job done or not. It’s always good to have portfolio links available which they can access to. Brownie points if your portfolio is online and available on a personal website.
7. Closing
   Always good to be courteous and thank people for their time, as well as your chance to express anticipation if indeed you do get the project.

Is all of this still relevant?

I might no longer be active, but those I know who are still starting out or deep into it, express similar concerns of competing in a market with bid factories.

The key takeaway is to stick to your niche, and spend some extra time to work on your proposal or bid or offer or whatever the name your platform packages this process as.

The pointers above I think have helped me and wish you all the best! Let me know if you took away a nugget or two away from this article. Thanks for reading.