Protect you self from buyers, defend your freedom and financial independence.
Rule number one:
Buyers have advantage in the oDesk system (Don't wanna to compare other just fixed price systems). Remember this. You are building your profile and feedback with hard work, tests,constant learning.... Buyer can wait until you have crashed yourself bidding, could blackmail you and ruin your feedback(*) in second without harm with just creating himself other profile. You could create new account too but is futile cos you spent so much time and effort to build it and you can just hope of better feedback system. They could have no skills in the area and can evaluate your skills and code quality, and can forbid to show any information that you have been worked on that project(even screenshot)
(*)Use oDesk Feedback Policy
"Manipulating or coercing another User to perform a given task by threatening to leave negative feedback..."
Rule number two:
Avoid fixed price projects
You will get often into trap. First fixed projects aren't guaranteed by Odesk system nether have dispute option. Percentages of buyer who would agree to pay 100% in front no matter what feedback and experience you have is minimal. So request very good specification of request at front, with good defined development/payment phases and resolve all misunderstanding as soon as possible. Spoken language isn't invented for precise specification so buyer would take advantage of any doubtful statement to increase the requests and you can finished in the loop of new requests/bad feedack blackmail.
Rule number three:
Avoid buyers who send you decompiled code, ask hacking, cracking or request selling your already developed application protected by NDA.
You will have problems with law soon or later.
Rule number four:
Remember that most of the buyers are "wanna banna" people and "what they see what they think". Use this to present to your profile the best looking things(best put movie clips in your profile). You could developed most complex system and if you don't have 100$ makeup it worth 0 in your profile for them. So during development thru things to look good not run only for functionality they can't evaluate that.
Rule number five:
Never return on provocation("You have spent so much"),insults("f*** you","thief"...) and bad attitude. Record every conversation and try to finish the project as soon as possible. Records might help you with oDesk team to intervene changing your feedback.
Rule number six:
Use polite language(use could,should...) when want to complain or disagree with buyer's crazy requests like work outside oDesk, not logging hours, work 9-5(what is free(lance) in this chain???) .
Rule number seven:
Remember that to be constant with you work,availability and attitude. One error mean one star less to most of the buyers. They actually don't know what every feedback category consist of and didn't care. Your bad communication would reflect on your skill feedback category and your skill will reflect your communication feedback category.
Rule number eight:
Try to avoid other freelancers as customers. Dont get in chain first hand -> hand second hand ----> tenth hand -> You. They will request more and for less money and less time.
Rule number nine:
Don't get to close with the customer and don't involve emotion to relation. Remember on what is this relation based. You are earning for decent live and they to double,triple their fortune a.k.a interests so no friends,dudes,pals,morale,chivalry.... Play smart, understand how the capitalism function,keep professional distance and you wont be hurt.
Rule number ten:
Better with one eye then bad word about you.Better refund money (if you refund and cost of the project goes below 1$ => oDesk system would remove the project/feedback from your portfolio) then keep bad feedback.
Rule number eleven:
Don't beleave in charity,church and so on organizations or paying in stocks or percentage of profit especially when you are not US or EU citizen and don't have court signed agreement.
Rule number twelve:
Inform the customer/s what you were doing and how that leads to his goal and on the technical level consumable by them. They often not read all Memos and don't understand what is involved and even you don't have fancy system like CampFire, Unfuddle,Bugzilla... email on regular base will do.
More to come...
No comments:
Post a Comment