Top mistakes freelancers make

01.09.202121.04.2022 Sam

Freelancing is a little different from other areas of human activity. Each area tends to have some features and nuances. Freelancing beginners sometimes make some mistakes that waste their time, and sometimes even money and nerves. What are these mistakes and can they be avoided?

Is it possible not to make mistakes?

As in any profession or field, mistakes are a source of knowledge. To learn something, sometimes you need to do it. This is how you can understand how it is right and why it was necessary to do it that way. However, some basic mistakes can be avoided. You can learn not only from your own bitter experience, but also from the experience of other people. So what are the main misconceptions and mistakes of novice freelancers?

Freelancing misconceptions

Freelancing gives anyone the opportunity to quickly earn big money without much effort. This is not true. In order to earn good money here, you need to work hard. Your earnings depend on the quantity and quality of your work.
It’s very easy to work here. You need to have good skills and deep knowledge of your field of activity in order to work here easily. Otherwise, you will have to make an effort in order to learn.
Here you can immediately start earning. Very often, a freelancer’s path to the first order is not as easy as we would like. To get it, sometimes you need to make a lot of effort, develop a portfolio, communicate with many customers.

What mistakes do freelancers make?

Beginning freelancers, due to their inexperience, very often make mistakes that could have been avoided. Let’s look at the main and most common ones.

Significant reduction in the cost of their work. Very often on freelance exchanges there are people who are ready to do a lot of work for a penny or even for free, for a review. It is difficult to get the first order, but this does not mean that you should devalue yourself and give into slavery. You need to respect yourself. Moreover, as practice shows, such proposals are very rarely accepted by the customer, as he is embarrassed by such dubious dedication of the performer.
Trust. In pursuit of the first order, a freelancer may not pay attention to the lack of reputation of the customer, not take an advance payment, and, following the results of the transaction, simply be “thrown”. You should not blindly trust the person who offers you a job, read reviews about him, check whether he is really solvent. Work on a prepaid basis, ask for payment in installments or cooperate through a guarantor. This will help you avoid losing money.
Repetitive work. By doing the same routine tasks every day, you can stop developing. And this is very important for a specialist, especially a freelancer. To stop developing means to lose your price in the labor market. The more you know, the more you can earn. Do not forget about it, learn something new, strive to develop.
Fear of big projects. Many freelancers prefer to do small and inexpensive projects in large numbers instead of doing a few large and expensive ones. To start working with a project, you need to understand something, tune in to a specific project. If there are fewer of them, even if they are more difficult, it will still be easier for you to tune in.
Inability to evaluate one’s own work. If the customer asks to offer his price for the implementation of the project, very often a novice freelancer enters into a stupor. How much to offer, how not to overcharge, why others offer less. You need to be able to realistically assess for what money you are ready to work, and for what you are not. It is not necessary to focus on the prices of others and set the lowest one, the price is not always important for the customer, sometimes the quality is much more important.
Inability to estimate deadlines. It is very important to correctly estimate the timing for the project. It makes no sense to offer to do the job in one day if you have to work all night for it. Not all customers are in a hurry to complete projects, very often quality work is more important for them. Estimate the deadlines with a margin, in case unforeseen circumstances arise.
Desire to quit everything to start making money here. If you’re serious about freelancing, you don’t have to quit your job right away to freelance all the time. You may not succeed, or you may not start earning as much as you would like right away, you may simply get sick or receive unexpected expenses, and you will not have money.

Freelancing is a special and unique field. Not everyone will be able to work in it, but only a few can earn money right away. Before the first good money, it is sometimes necessary to go for long weeks, or even months. This is also one of the reasons why you should not quit your main job right away.

If you decide to change your office job to freelancing, get ready for it. Build a portfolio that you can show your customers, think about how much your services cost. Start looking for your first project in the evenings after work. As practice shows, freelance work can be combined with the main job, especially at the initial stages. And only if everything works out for you, you will be offered projects that require more time than you have free time and you can earn at least the same level as in your main job, you can think about quitting your main job. Before that, it is also important to develop a client base and have several positive reviews, which will attract new customers to you and allow you to earn more and get projects easier. And only when the most difficult is over, you will have some capital and experience behind you, it will be possible to quit your main job.

When, after many sleepless nights, the diploma is finally ready, I want to pass it and forget it. But the university will not lag behind the student so easily. After all, the full text of the diploma was read only by the supervisor, and a whole commission will gather to evaluate it. Therefore, in many respects, his assessment depends on how the student defends his diploma.

So what is a successful defense?

Competent protection text
positive diploma review
confident answers to commission questions

In the introduction to the course it is necessary to indicate many important points. One of them is methodology. The student is required to indicate what methods he will use in the study of the topic. This is not the easiest task, and often students cannot cope with this task themselves. In this case, you can contact us. Our specialists will write you a paper of any complexity, and you can discuss the price with them personally.

Speech structure

Of course, what exactly to say in the defense depends mainly on the topic of the thesis and on what exactly is written in it, but there are general recommendations that are suitable for everyone.

First of all, we need to greet the members of the evaluation committee. (“Dear members of the attestation commission! Your attention is presented to the final qualifying work on the topic …”)
Introductory part. Here you need to reveal the topic and identify the issues that are raised in the work.
Relevance of the topic. At this stage, it is important to prove the relevance of the chosen topic and the degree of its development in other people’s works. Indicate the subject, object, objectives and purpose of the study.
Theme disclosure structure. Here you just need to list the paragraphs that are in the work and briefly describe them.
Problem statement. To confirm the relevance of the topic, it is necessary to state the problem and indicate the debatable opinions on this matter.
Conclusions. At the end of the speech, the commission should hear the conclusions that the student came to in the course of writing the diploma, in which there are ways and methods for solving the stated problems.

On the one hand, it seems that it is much easier to write a graduation speech than the diploma itself. However, high-quality speech is a skillful squeeze out of the work, as well as its competent presentation. And it often happens that a diploma is written with the highest score, and a student gets a worse grade. Therefore, if there is a lack of self-confidence, you can order a speech on our website. And then the probability of failure due to bad speech will disappear. After all, we give a twenty-day guarantee for the work, and if something does not suit you, you can demand that the author finalize the order for free. We make sure that students are satisfied, so if the final version of the work does not meet the stated requirements, you will get your money back.

Formal requirements

When writing a speech for a thesis, you must also take into account that there are purely formal requirements.

Time. Do not forget that there are many students, but the commission is one. Therefore, the time for a defensive speech is regulated and ranges from 5 to 7 minutes. At the same time, you should remember about the time that will be spent on commission questions.
Intonation. Where, no matter how on the defense of a diploma, is it important to win over listeners? Therefore, it is better not to read the speech monotonously, making accents with intonation.
Style. When presenting a speech, it should be remembered that the main goal is understanding on the part of the commission. Therefore, you should not be too smart, but you can’t switch to colloquial speech either. In this matter, you need to observe the golden mean.
Pronouns. As in the diploma itself, it is important to remember during the defense that although the author of the diploma is clearly spelled out, there are a lot of true owners of knowledge reflected in the work (the authors of all the sources the student relied on plus the supervisor), so first-person pronouns are not appropriate here.
Questions. After the end of the speech, questions from the commission will inevitably follow, and you need to be ready for them. Suggested questions should be written down in the course of writing the thesis, work through all the questions that arose during the pre-defense, and you can also look at the questions at the end of chapters from textbooks on this topic.
Pre-protection. In such a matter as defending a diploma, it is better not to be presumptuous and neglect pre-defense. On it, you can practice giving a speech and write down possible questions from the audience. This will allow you to feel more confident in the official defense.

Of course, these are only recommendations, and no one forces you to strictly follow them. However, the rejection of some positions during the defense will create additional questions from the certification committee, which is not always loyal. Therefore, it is best to think through all possible questions and answer them in advance in a defensive speech. Then the teachers will have a minimum of questions, and they will be grateful for the saved time.