Now that you have landed that all critical first gig, you need to ensure that you are meeting your clients expectations. Some projects are simple, for example you may need to simply create a page of content for a website. Other projects however are more involved than this and may involve several pages of content, marketing and other aspects. For projects that require multiple tasks to be done over a period of time, it may be helpful to have a checklist that you can use to follow your progress and to allow your client to monitor your progress. You can certainly use tools like Google Spreadsheets for this, but it might be better to consider a system like Ta-Da Lists.
Advantages of Ta-Da Lists
There are some very distinct advantages to using Ta-Da Lists to manage your freelance contracts. The first is that you can share the list with your clients and they can add/remove tasks from the lists. The biggest benefit of this is that your clients get to see exactly the level of completeness of each project they have assigned to you. Ta-Da Lists helps you stay organized, helps you stay on task and more importantly, keeps your client updated on your progress.
Ta-Da Lists more importantly helps you ensure that you understand the full scope of the project you have undertaken. Another distinct advantage of this is that if you use this from the day you accept a contract, there is no question about work that is scheduled to be completed under that contract.
Finally, it’s free. Yes, it’s completely free to use and you can share it with as many people as you elect to. What could be better?
Tracking Time
Freelancers need to make a decision between hourly work and fixed rate work. In some cases, (especially for writers) hourly work may not be the best option. In fact, you may actually wind up making more money working on fixed rate assignments (provided of course you do the proper negotiations and set up milestone payments). The challenge of course is that sometimes it is easier to be paid by the hour. Either way, it’s a freelancers choice. If you are working through a freelance site like oDesk or Elance, you have certain guarantees on hourly assignments (make sure you know the difference between oDesk and Elance). This won’t apply to you in this case. If you are working with a client outside of a freelance site, you might want to track the amount of time you work for billing purposes or if you are working on a fixed rate assignment you may want to see how long it takes you. In this instance, Anuko Time Tracker can be beneficial to you. Simply set up your tasks and your accounts and track the time to each of them. This is also a great “motivator” and can help you learn how you are wasting time! This system also has a built in system for sending invoices.
Summary
There are thousands of tools available to help you manage your time better. These are just a couple of them. As you build up your freelance business, you’ll find out which ones work best for you.
About Doreen Martel
Well-rounded freelance writer who contributes to various blogs, paid to write sites and revenue sharing sites. Doreen is legally blind and has worked at home for more than 10 years. She uses the lessons learned from this experience to enhance her writing and share information with others.
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