Freedom means “Being you without anyone’s permission” i.e why freelancing and freedom go hand in hand. We may say that freelancing and freedom are complementary in the world of IT. Doing freelance work generally implies that we are independent of every obligation and we are our own boss. It’s a total freedom for our workplace and our work style. Hence we don’t face the challenges that we may have while being an employee.

In Broadway English freelance also has a fancy name such as Independent contractor which itself suggest as freedom of doing whatever work you want to do without taking anyone’s permission. But every freedom has a price to pay and sometimes a price is very huge. From that point, it is quite impossible to turn back the clock.

So before considering the freelancing job for yourself here are some points which have to be taken into consideration and the consequences of going HAN SOLO for future preferences coz it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Listing below some reasons, backing my point.

We can put this occupational hazards consequences into two different sets which are related to our professional and personal life.

A. Professional Related
Whilst choosing to freelance as your chosen profession you must consider these subsequent consequences develop while working.

1. No safety net to fall back:-
“Rome doesn’t build in one day” and businesses don’t return your investment quickly. They take time to set up. So you have to be financially very strong if you are thinking about going solo coz you have to support you when yourself in dire need of money. There won’t be any benefits and allowances, that you were availing as an employee to any firm. You have to bear all the expenses yourself.

Plus you have no peers to help you when got creatively stuck. No one to help you when your imagination doesn’t go beyond reach and your clients need more variation. So think before you leap.

Recommended Reading: How to Start a Side Business without Leaving your Current Job

2. Irregularity in your lifestyle:-
As you are king of your own kingdom you work as you please. There are no foundations of any kind which lead to flexible hours of work. Due to this kind of working hours you can develop irregularities which ultimately leads to many personal, medical and professional crisis.

3. Overlapping in personal and professional life:-
As you become a freelancer you can work from wherever you are whether you are at home or in café. The gap between your private life and your professional life overlaps each other. You can’t decide when you are in professional shoes and when in your shoes. It leads to many family crisis and increment in the bank balance of a family counselor.

4. Always on a schedule:-
Due to the above-mentioned point, you never going to decide when you are in a break and when you are in a call. As a freelancer, you have to be available for your client 24*7 and the schedule becomes All work no play. It’s lead to many kinds of mental and health issues. You will find yourself struggling for some personal time, but you won’t get it. It’s all personal and it’s all professional.

5. No going back to yourself:-
Once you invest yourself fully to your freelancing business then there is no going back to old self. You have to fully concentrate on your work. You have to fully committed to it which results in no personal life. To become your own boss you have to sacrifice a great deal of your personal and financial worth. You are accountable for your work and clients. You must be working and developing someone’s dream, you can’t delay it or leave it in between.

6. Don’t like to be chained:-
Once you become your own boss you generate a tendency to work as your mind and time pleases and work from wherever you like. So it’s very difficult for anyone or even yourself to create a professional and regular schedule as a 9-5 employee has. You don’t like to be told how to do a work or when to do it. To create a very solitary environment for work. So you have to constantly reassure and explain them about your work. And a constant motivation to yourself as well that you need to keep going.

B. Personal related
As we see from the above points that freelancing can cause much professional haphazard in anyone’s life, there is also some personal crisis which is generated in this line of work.

1. Diverse yourself to every aspect:-
As you are the sole owner of our business you have to diversify yourself into every aspect of your business like PRO, caller, marketing etc. which divert you from your own work. This diversification causes you great trouble in delivering your projects on time and can also lower your quality. This will result in a loss of trust between you and your client. It just a question of a minute client will sense it.

2. You have to be a marketer, accountant, and developer at the same time:-
To start your business one should market themselves, get your presence registered. To stay in business one should have to use marketing skill and to gain the niche from your competitor you have to market yourself. So ultimately it’s all about marketing. And in this cutting-edge world, you have to be updated. This will put extra pressure on freelancers and their pockets. Sometimes it leads to mental frustrations and rivalries.

3. Keep analyzing yourself and your worth:-
To stay in the market you have to constantly analyze yourself and stay up-to-date in your ideas, technology, process, logistics etc. For not getting exploited by a client and your fellow competitor you have to know yourself and your work’s worth. Otherwise, you cannot survive this cut throat world. It is an added headache of this freelancing business. Always on toes. As time passes you become so detached with the work that you do it for the sake of income or become only duty bound. And that point only your mind would be involved in work, not the heart. It affects your creativity and production. So the profession which was chosen because you want to follow your heart, it left with brain and business only. This needs constant check and analysis.

4. Inconsistency in your income:-
One of the biggest problems in freelancing business is the uncertainty of income. It’s never predictable. Sometimes you can earn cash you can only imagine and sometimes it’s none. The success of your business depends on its cash flow. But in freelancing it is unpredictable. Sometimes you can get good business and sometimes you have to be dependent on your savings (if you have only).

5. Can’t be smug about your work:-
In order to sustain your freelancing business, you can’t afford to be complacent about your work. You have to be grounded. You do have to listen to your clients very carefully and politely. You don’t let your success or your disappointment goes to your head. If you became smug about your work then your downfall started. You can only afford to be rigid and irrational with your thought and process if you want to lose your business. You may be thought that what you think is correct, what you do is correct and what you say is correct. In this process, you completely ignore the preferences of the clients which ultimately makes him/her seek other choices in the market.

6. Lacks of inspiration:-
As you are the sole driver of your freelancing car and no one there to guide you then you may face the problem of writer’s block or suffer from lack of inspiration. At some point you may go through with this kind of problem and coz there is no one to help you out, your business will suffer. Through perseverance is the key to success but due to lack of guidance, you just want to quit the show. After all the brainstorming and checking the do’s and don’ts list it’s clear that if you don’t possess strength and safety then don’t opt the freelancing business. It’s true that every business has its risk but if you just want to be your own boss and answerable to no one then it’s a very wrong profession for you. Which makes me question your motive and purpose to be a FREELANCER. Do want to be a good businessman or just want to explore this field. Think about it.

These are the eye-opening things that will help you in taking the better decision about being a freelancer.
Freedom is the word that people can do anything to pursue it in their life. And freelancing offers you this freedom in bulk. It gives you:

1. Freedom to choose your work style
You can work at night or day at whatever time you would like too. You can work early in the morning along with coffee or may be in the night when there is no bug to disturb you. Isn’t it cool?

2. Freedom to choose your workplace
You can work from home or while traveling on the plane, maybe some time at the beach or maybe in the mountains. This freedom is huge. The quote “If traveling is free, you won’t see me again” is true in that case. “If I can earn while traveling You won’t see me again”. I can do anything to have that life. My favorite workplace would be mountains.

3. You can choose your work
I can work on the ideas which I love to. Freelancing gives you the freedom to work on the work that you love to work upon. The freedom to choose the work of your type is huge. No repetitive work and no project manager to force you to work on unwanted work.

4. You can be your own boss
Above all “You will be your own boss”. And believe me, I just imagine it. Freelancing allows being your boss, no need to apply for leave, no need to take permissions from project manager before going on a vacation with family and I can work according to me the comfort of time and place.

When so much is there in the bucket of freelancing, most importantly we can live the way we want along with good earning making a few sacrifices is worth. You just to need to disciplined with your work, accountable to your clients so that you will have more and more work. Freelancing gives you the freedom that others can only dream about. And if you put your heart in your work along with this freedom, that’s like icing on the cake. You will get more work may be from the same client again and again. Every client wants a team or freelancer that take the work responsibility and accountability. If you give these two things to him, he is not going anywhere.

Freelancing deserves all the above-mentioned discipline because the freedom it gives is priceless.

Recommended Read: 5 Steps to Pursue a Career in Freelancing

The post Reasons Not To Freelance appeared first on EngineerBabu Blog.

“If your business is not on the internet, then your business will be out of business”

– Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft

In this fast-moving world, websites and mobile applications hold the topmost pitch in the business growth. They help in conveying the products and services of the companies to their prospective clients in the most effective way. They are the face of any business and more often the heart. You cannot go about thinking to accost the best sales, users or clients without having the sound portfolio in the form of an excellent mobile application or website.

Similarly, the content plays a very crucial role in business expansion. You need to inform about your work to the right people in a persuasive way wherever they are. The content in your professional blogs, websites or any guest posts should convey your thoughts, ideas, insight, and knowledge in a simple yet compelling manner. Good content presented in a readable format does wonder.

But what if you have a highly sophisticated website designed and developed by the incredibly talented people and yet out of reach of targeted readers? Even with the innovative product, how do you justify no traffic?

What’s wrong here?

Can you guess?
Yes! The digital marketing is the ‘heroine’ of any growing business in the present scenario. It knows how to attract people. There is no chance a business can grow in a fully fledged manner without exploiting the complete potential of digital marketing tools. You have to have the access to the world-class SEOs and SMMs to bring the reach of your product to the larger crowd.
Otherwise, you know the fate of documentary movies. No matter how great the director, screenplay, actors are, it cannot come at par with commercial cinema in business because it lacks massive launching, promotions, teasers, marketing, and another such tact.
It is need of the hour. Even the conventional businesses are now adapting to these new
mediums to keep up with the cut-throat competition.

Thus, it becomes highly important to ensure that your websites and apps are designed and developed on the right platform using appropriate technologies with superior talents to pour ideas and market it.

Best Way to find Freelancers

Businesses and individuals often approach freelancers to outsource their IT needs.
Outsourcing projects help companies in many ways:
1) Cost Saving: Getting projects developed from freelancer/remote team is effectively cost saving than getting them designed by in-house team as then you have to provide them fully functional office looking after their refreshments, taxes, cash-on-leaves etc or via agency where huge commissions are involved with apparently more fees, lesser transparency and no direct involvement with the developer.
2) World Class Talent: You can easily access the top talent around the world without much effort and movement.
3) Flexibility: It is an easy and relieving experience to give charge of the work to the experts and forget about it as they will take care of the rest. Unlike in-house team where you need to keep them motivated and busy, freelancers keep themselves self-motivated and active.
Upwork is one big name in the freelance market that has been around for 10+ years.
Even if you are naïve in this domain, you still have heard the name at some point. With the growing irrelevant crowd on the website and ever-increasing unacknowledged issues, the site has recently lost its credibility both towards clients and developers.
As they say, you need to keep updating your product if you want to survive in the IT industry else you gradually disappear from the game.
Filtering desirable freelancers from websites like Upwork is a laborious job and highly unreliable way of getting work done. Here the success rate is not 100%.
You may succeed in finding the right developer for your idea but there are high chances you end up getting bluffed and betrayed. This often results in handing over your project to some other freelancer and having to pay extra charges thereafter.

Let us understand this problem in a more fundamental way:
1) Let’s say you post a project.
2) Some 30+ freelancers apply for it. Some of them do not even check the essentials required like skills, qualifications etc
3) The best freelancers still did not apply as they are already over-packed with the existing work.
4) People displaying false experiences and skills is a well-known phenomenon.
5) After 10 days of analysis to find the best developer, you select the one with the best score (someone who has the better ranking, good rates, and good reviews).
6) What if it is an agency which takes the work from you and again outsources to someone else? You would not be able to interact with the developer directly.
7) Most of the freelancers work full time in other companies. They take up extra work as a freelancer to earn some quick money.
They would never spend enough time checking the environment, understanding the client’s requirement and guiding them through the best-customized approach to get work done.
8) Finally, what if the developer does not pick your call or leave the project incomplete?
Yes, Upwork does have a rating system but there is no real way to confirm if the developer you hire is trustworthy and dedicated towards the work and also it does not assure the communication ease of the freelancer.
Even on investing 10-12 days in selecting the right candidate to accomplish your task, you could still choose the wrong person, not deliberately but by mere less awareness and transparency.
Websites like upwork are often criticized for this big downside. People become victims to these fraud profiles and end up spending more money than their initial budget.

What’s the solution?                
In the midst of this chaos, few companies worked hard to rectify issues faced with upwork and came up with the outstanding products.
EngineerBabu:
How about if you have someone who does all the analysis of your project and guides you find the expert developer to meet all the requirements and get the work done in the best possible way?
That’s EngineerBabu!

EngineerBabu is an Indian company that helps in connecting the perfect partner for all your IT needs with the aid of domain experts.
It basically reduces your days of efforts required in filtering the right candidate. It curates highly skilled people from all over the places and gets you handpicked experts to work for your dream.
Removing the wheat from the chaff is a work in itself.
Businesses opting to this website are often startups or SME’s looking to grow flexibly by hiring freelancers to handle projects rather than in-house or via agencies.
They operate as part of what has become “talent cloud” with hundreds of freelancers offering a range of skills in a flexible and efficient basis.
They also promote the benefits of freelancing and remote team as a means to allow people to work more freely in the environment that suits them best.
It provides resources for new and growing businesses and for those who are looking to build a career as a freelancer.
How EngineerBabu helps you to find the perfect IT partner

Here are the best alternatives we consider –

For the Freelancers or IT Company:

1. Create a profile and go through verification.
2. After you are verified, choose projects matching your skills.
3. If you are a paid plan user, you can directly apply and the client will get a notification.
4. We help clients choose a developer and connect them over email.
5. You can also work in-house.

For the client:

1) Engineerbabu team discusses the idea with the client taking down their requirements. (Technology, scope, budget etc)
2) It connects the developer with a client over email for further developments.
There is no bidding system as we provide the best options appropriate for the project. We avoid unnecessary time consumption with bidding process where large numbers of people send proposals and most of them are not even eligible.
3) The team takes follow-ups both from the client and developer from time to time to know the progress.
4) The client can keep the check on the development and progress of the project through our free project management tool “BaseCamp”.
5) Engineerbabu experts spend a lot of time in testing the product and further plan strategies for its promotion.
6) People seem happy and satisfied with the process.

Guru.com:

Based in the US, Guru.com is yet another global freelancing marketplace for freelance workers and employers to partner on a contract basis. It is fairly easy to use with around 1.5 million members worldwide.
How Guru.com helps you:

1) Guru offers a vast network of freelancers to help you accomplish your creative, technical or business projects.
2) Here you are allowed as a freelancer to bid for the certain number of projects for free. After a while, you will have to switch to a paid membership.
3) It is free for the employer, thus in favor of clients.
4) The portal charges a fee from freelancers in the form of transaction fee and membership fee which are quite hefty.
5) Like many other sites with plenty of freelancers, clients have to take the pain to filter the suitable candidate from a large number of proposals.
6) You select a freelancer by evaluating their profile on the basis of reviews, recommendations, testimonials etc.
7)  Guru has an inbuilt project management tool called “Work Room” where you can assign work to the freelancer, keep a check on the progress, share files, define milestones etc.
8) Another good part of this site is it uses the system called “SafePay” which makes sure that you do any payment only after you approve of the project.
PeoplePerHour:

PeoplePerHour is a UK based company that provides a platform for thousands of freelance experts in hundreds of different fields.
As a leading marketplace to find freelancers, jobs can be availed on an hourly basis and can be ramped up as needed to build the whole team online, thus this model is scalable up to the global enterprise.
How PeoplePerHour helps you:
1) Here you get a choice to select from entry-level experience to expert level freelancer.
The prices are fairly reasonable. It is advisable to pick expert freelancer every time as you would find quality skills set only with the experts here.
2) You have to use filters here to opt according to your parameters such as country, experience level, project type etc
It is advisable to wait for the good proposal to arrive. Due to the availability of plenty of freelancers, it happens that many of them apply without checking the details. Thus, it is advantageous to wait and get completely satisfied before handing over your project.
3) It offers various options to be in touch with a freelancer including an inbuilt video calling feature.
4) It has a little-complicated interface which might trouble you in the beginning.
5) Payment needs to be deposited in PeoplePerHour account right when you accept the proposal. Money is held in the escrow and is released as soon as you approve the project.
6) If for any reason, the client cancels the deal, he will be charged 10% of the fee.

Fiverr:

How Fiverr helps you:

1) Fiverr got its name from “five dollar” where every service and task accounts for $5 as their base price.
2) It is the global online market for freelancers and companies to provide their services at much cheaper prices.
3) As the prices are low, so is the quality. You can still get the simple tasks like business card designing, HTML website designing and others done.
4) It is good when you want the product to be developed without much complexity, innovation and quality.
5) It is suitable for very small businesses where work is required to be done very quickly without much detailing.
I hope you find a suitable freelancer according to the need of your project. Some tips that may come handy while taking your decision.
 
“The master has failed more times than the beginner has ever tried”
                                                                                                              – Stephen McCranie

1) Always choose experienced people over newbie, it definitely helps in the long-term relationship.
 
“Quality is the best business plan” – John Lasseter

2) All companies have a development budget, and it is understandable to work within that budget. However, you should never let price alone drive your choices. Let the product and the quality of the developer’s work determine who you hire. A quality product is a brand in itself and branding comes with a price.
3) Get NDA signed before sharing your idea. The NDA form is available in Google or you can ask your developer to share his NDA template.
NDA terms are;

• Not to share your code
• Reuse your code
• Can’t work on similar domain or idea for 2 years
• Can’t work with your competitor
• Company or the employees cannot start another company using your idea or its piece.

4) Ask for the portfolio before hiring anyone. In the samples provided, check for the user interface and evaluate the expertise of the developer and team.
5) You can also ask the contact numbers of previous clients of the concerned freelancer/developer. It will help you to know about the quality of work delivered, work ethics, time management etc.

A reliable and an intelligent freelancer is the ultimate requirement of any project.  I hope you find your desirable one keeping these points in mind.

The post What are the best alternatives to find freelancers? appeared first on EngineerBabu Blog.

People can live without food but not without their soulmate – Their Smartphone. App developers have become invaluable to entrepreneurs and business owners. Fortunately, there are many app developers in the market and finding one to hire ain’t hard these days. However, the problem is to find the right fit for your specific business need. The entire process requires careful thought and consideration.
So, how do you find the one who’ll add value to your idea?
Here are 8 useful steps to assist you,

1.  A newbie Barber can cut your Ear – Don’t hire a rookie
When looking for app developers to hire, you should look for a professional. Someone who takes care of the development and also gives input to make a product better. Ask whether he has worked on a similar domain? any previous experience. If he is new to the development industry then don’t take the risk. Old is Gold and New is silver.

2. Nothing comes easy in life, even Santa comes with clauses – Get an NDA Signed
It is important to choose someone you can trust and build a long-term business relationship. Get an NDA signed before sharing your ideas; you can find an NDA format in Google or Ask the developer to share his NDA Template.
The common NDA terms are,

• Not to share your code,
• Reuse your code,
• Can’t work on similar domain or idea for two years,
• Can’t work with your competitor,
• Company or his employees cannot start a company using your idea, or it’s a piece.

3. The customer is King & Kings choose the best – Don’t look for a cheap alternative
All companies have a development budget, and it is understandable to work within that budget. However, you should never let price alone drive your choice for an app developer. Let the product and the quality of the developer’s work determine who you hire. In some cases, the cheaper option may turn out to be a waste of money, and they could become more expensive in the long run. The extra costs may apply if the app does not turn out the way you expected it to, and you have to pay another developer to build a new one for you.
4.Geeks don’t lie – Show me your portfolio
There are many talented developers out there, but their style may be different from what you want for your app. It is important to ask for their portfolio before hiring him. When going through his samples, check out the type of user interfaces and their expertise. The portfolio can always help you to determine who is the best according to your need.
5. When I write code – Only God can understand it
Ask the developer to give you the contact information of some of his past clients. Contact his previous customers to get feedback on the quality of his work. Talking to former customers can help you understand the app developer’s work ethics, time management skills, and communication skills. Tell him your future plans like the weather you would be setting an in-house team after funding or doing in-house development later. Does he write a proper comment and whether he had helped previous clients to hand over the code?
6.If you do it right, it will last forever – A poor Design doesn’t last
While the functionality of an app is critical, businesses should not ignore the design. It is important for the app to serve its purpose while being easy to use.
Work with developers who put an effort into making the app more interactive and easy to use. It is also important to hire a designer or a team with the designer who considers the whole package and not just the coding aspect of the app development.

1. Write your idea in doc, use “Requirement Docs” sample format
2. Do a few rough designs; it’s ok to have just a pencil sketch rather than nothing
3. Share samples of designs or look for a competitive or similar app
4. Do a bit of research and share the links of websites and Apps that you like. So that your designers can have a better understanding of your likes and dislikes.

7. Communication is key
How well the developer communicates with you during the hiring process can give you a glimpse of the future. If they do not return your emails on time or respond to your calls or messages, look for someone else. It is important for the developers to give you a weekly work progress report. You should have frequent calls initially; later weekly meetings are enough.

8. Multitasking improves productivity and slows Delivery
Some app developers are very talented in what they do, but they may have many orders on their plate. Such developers may not be able to deliver your work on time. They may also not have the time to update or tweak your app in the future. Before hiring the developer, have an honest conversation with him about your expectations. Ask them about their schedule, the number of projects they are currently working on, and how available they are to concentrate on your project. Give them your timeline and deadlines, and ask them whether they can be able to deliver within the set time. No one can give you the exact time, but approximate estimates are ok.

Summing-up

It is easy to find and hire different app developers for different domains. However, it is important that you have a clear vision of what you want, and then choose an app designer who can help build your dream.
This Article was originally published at Entrepreneur Magazine by Mayank Pratap Singh, co-founder EngineerBabu.

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The post 8 Steps to Hire Best Freelance App Developers appeared first on EngineerBabu Blog.