Turning a Hobby Into a Business with Project4Hire.com

Rating: 3/5 stars

What makes a great freelance web site a great freelance web site? Is it the quality of projects? The quality of work providers? The interface? The ease of us? The pricing structure?

Okay, you might imagine me looking like this as I ponder these questions, but in the case of Project4Hire.com, the rhetorical nature of my opening paragraph will start to make a little more sense.

Why? Because Project4Hire.com is an excellent case study for us to ponder what makes a good freelancing site. For example, there will probably be differing opinions about Project4Hire’s pricing structure, including an odd little twist that I’ll detail in greater depth later. Does this pricing structure bring Project4Hire down a peg or two, or is it something that’s really spit in the ocean as long as it can deliver plenty of well-paying, quality clients?

I’ve got my conclusions for this Project4Hire.com review – let’s see what yours are.

The Twist: Pricing Gone Mad

Before we get to anything else, I don’t want to leave you waiting for the aforementioned “odd little twist” like this is an M. Night Shyamalan movie or something. Instead, let’s get it all out in the open quickly. In fact, I’ll just let Project4Hire explain itself:

Once a project is awarded to a freelancer, the freelancer must pay 5% of his winning bid in order to accept the project, receive the client’s contact information and begin working on the project. Note that the Project Acceptance Fee must be paid BEFORE the project can be accepted. No exceptions.

Until a project is accepted and the commission fee is paid, the project will remain “frozen”.

Huh? The freelancer has to pay money upon someone hiring them? That sounds exactly like the type of scheme people use at online job sites as they spam the living guts out of everyone within a fifteen-mile radius. This is the first freelance site I’ve encountered that has such a pricing structure in place, and it’s going to be a very difficult obstacle for the rest of the Project4Hire.com experience to hurdle, for sure.

Oh, and by the way: if you pay a project acceptance fee and the client disappears, you have to contact Project4Hire to get your money back. Just sayin’.

Sure, you do pay a portion of your project over to freelance sites in most cases, but doing this upfront – before you ever get paid – is the twist. And it’s a twist I imagine very few beginning freelancers would be comfortable with. Maybe it filters these freelancers out and leaves the veterans to deliver the quality work, but it’s not good news for everybody.

The good news about the pricing structure is that Project4Hire does very little else to get in your way as you look around for the best projects to bid on. Still, I’d rather only pay my fees upon getting paid myself rather than take a leap of faith.

The Deliverables: Does Project4Hire Stack Up Otherwise?

The upfront fees notwithstanding, there is still plenty to like about Project4Hire that I imagine many freelancers could be excited about. Here are a few basic features I’ve come to know and love:

• Escrow payments


• Easy registration and sign-up


• Low commitment of money


• Highly varying projects with room for plenty of freelancers

Don’t believe me on that last one? Take a look at all of the project categories yourself:

You might need your glasses to view all of the types of projects available at Project4Hire, but at least that's good news.

In other words, there’s plenty to occupy yourself with should you become a freelancer over at Project4Hire. And if you’re someone who’s looking for a freelancer, you should have no problem finding people to submit bids and ultimately win your affections. In this regard, Project4Hire doesn’t vary much from the other freelancing job sites in delivering it to you straight. After all, that’s what these sites are here for: to allow people to meet.

There are a few interface problems that I’m still not comfortable with. For one, you can’t set a flat fee for a project – instead, you have to estimate how much time it will take for you to complete a project and then come up with an overall fee based on that time. Huh? What’s wrong with a flat fee? Charging a flat fee is fundamental to the basic pricing structure of many a project all across the Internet. To leave this option out seems unnecessary and even a little amateur.

If you’re going to have a restrictive price plan that requires upfront investment, you should be able to have more options on how you handle things on the back end. Besides, the 5% fee you pay over to Project4Hire.com seems flat enough – it’s not as if they can’t handle it.

Again, this all comes back to the questions I asked at the beginning of this review: what exactly makes a good freelancing site good? Depending on your own qualifications, Project4Hire.com might be a steal – or it might be a major inconvenience. It seems a little too black-and-white to call it either/or.

Conclusions

Project4Hire.com does do a good job of bringing projects and people together, the basic function of any site like this. But that’s not saying a whole lot. While the pricing structure does allow for low prices, it also makes for some inconveniences and means you’ll have to adhere to a rather rigid way of doing business. If you can handle that, you could be in for a bargain. If you can’t, you’ll probably want to focus your freelancing efforts elsewhere.

Building a business off of Project4Hire.com exclusively is probably not a good idea. Instead, you’ll just want to sign up for a free account and keep your options open. It doesn’t hurt to have another tool in the shed, even if that tool is a little one-dimensional. That is, unless, you can find another tool that does the same thing – but has other options, as well. I just wish Project4Hire was a tool with more options.

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AOL Launches Professional Social Media

AOL is creating a Professional Social Media Segment tied to the industry in an attempt to link directly to advertisement revenue source.

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The GoToMeeting Review: Why the Internet Just Works

I’ll admit: if I’m going to cite GoToMeeting as a reason why the Internet works in the title of a GoToMeeting Review, then I’m probably revealing my cards a little too early. But who cares? GoToMeeting is not only a fine service, but it’s one of those mainstream revolutionary platforms that has altered the landscape for how we do business across the world. If it weren’t for companies like Citrix Online, the Internet wouldn’t be quite so easy to use as it already is. And I’m going to give it its proper recognition; if that means a glowing review, so be it.

So, yes, this is going to be a flattering review. I may sound like I’m channeling my inner poet as I list the litany of reasons you should consider acquiring GoToMeeting for yourself. But as always, I’ll make an honest appraisal of the software and let you know if there are any reasons GoToMeeting might not be right for you, the individual consumer. Hey, not everything that works well is the right fit for anyone. And sometimes, the price isn’t right. But there’s plenty right about GoToMeeting: let’s find out what it is.

Look how interested she is in my meeting!

First Things First: The Definition

GoToMeeting, for all of its quality functions, strikes me as the type of platform that still vexes some people’s computer-scared sensibilities. “How do you go to an Internet meeting, anyhow? Someone teach me how to use this Meetingkabob!”

If you find yourself falling into that category, it’s probably best to take some time and explain what GoToMeeting is all about. First, you download the GoToMeeting software – and make the people you’re meeting with do the same. (Hey, it helps if you’re the boss, but being the boss makes a lot of things easier.) You can host meetings online with people who don’t have GoToMeeting, so don’t let that concern you. People can receive your invitations electronically or can enter in a meeting ID you give them in person.

When you’ve invited people to a meeting, you are then connected in a couple of ways: via computer and via audio. People will be able to see what you’re doing on your computer and then chime in with their own thoughts via said audio. You’ll also be able to switch control of the meeting to other people and let them “sit at the keyboard,” in a sense. If that doesn’t feel like a legitimate meeting, I don’t know what does.

Of course, there are about a zillion features you can use while you’re in the meeting. You’ll be able to see who’s attending, first of all. You’ll be able to record the meeting and post it so that people who missed it can catch up on the latest information and people who attended can go back and take notes.

In other words, it can be the kind of software that makes you wonder why you rent all that conference room space in the first place.

Using GoToMeeting

Once you have the basics down, you’ll start to realize that there are a number of ways you can use GoToMeeting. You can use it amongst employees, give demonstrations to clients, keep in touch when you’re on the road, and host webinars on your blog or web site. If that isn’t considered essential business software, I don’t know what is.

The features and interface are simple and easy-to-use. Simply opening the GoToMeeting options and selecting “Meet Now…” is enough to get the ball rolling. As you learn to use the software, you’ll find out the other ways you can employ a GoToMeeting meeting, like creating a seminar and training a number of employees remotely. Just don’t get too tempted to disappear off the face of the Earth entirely and run your business via GoToMeeting alone. Unless, of course, that’s exactly what you intend to do.

You can schedule one-time or recurring meetings using this software, and given the amount of tools you’ll be able to use during an actual GoToMeeting, you shouldn’t have any problems not being there in person. Since you can still chat with people in real-time and even draw things out for them, there’s listen you’re able to do in person but won’t be able to do via GoToMeeting.

All of these features should have no problem interchanging between Apples and PCs – you can also run a meeting from your iPad, which will at least give you a way of passing the time if you’re stuck in a blizzard at the airport.

Are There Any Downsides?

Hey, I warned you that I wouldn’t have many bad things to say about this service. GoToMeeting delivers the goods and keeps things as simple as possible. Even if the meeting screen is a little intimidating for you the first try, it won’t take long before you pick every bit of it up. You might have to keep poking around and trying out all the features, but eventually you’ll get the hang of it.

Good software like this does have a few potential downsides, but nothing ever that serious. After all, if one downside is that you become too reliant on GoToMeeting for running your business, is that really such a bad thing? That’s like saying you used to rely on conference rooms to hold meetings. Well, of course you rely on these things! You are a business, after all.

The truth is that GoToMeeting is the exact kind of tool you’ll want to have in your arsenal. One real downside is that the price can be pretty steep – the first tier of pricing will run you $49 per month or $468 per year, and this only allows you to host meetings including up to 15 people. But if you’re the kind of person who’s able to organize big-time seminars for hundreds of people, then you should have no problem affording the steeper prices of the more expensive plans.

If you run a business and you find yourself needing to reach employees in a variety of ways, GoToMeeting can be one way of solidifying all of your meeting time into one efficient strategy. It’s great software – just hope you can build a business that is strong enough to need it!

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The Dissection of a Twitter Account: 10 Ways I’ve Used Twitter This Month

A few weeks ago I learned that I was chosen as one of the “Top 25 Online Marketers to Follow on Twitter” by David Vogelpohl over at Marketing Pilgrim. (I’d like to thank my family, my 2nd grade teacher…) While it was cool to be chosen, more interesting to me was how David characterized my [...]

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Doing Multilingual Keyword Research that Works

So you’ve got your new websites ready to go in dozens of different languages, and it’s time to get down to SEO business…

Anyone with a website knows how crucial SEO is to see that all-important traffic, and it’s no different on the multilingual internet. What is different, however, is the research you will have to undertake to get the right keywords.

Unfortunately it’s not always as simple just translating your current keywords into your target language, word-for-word – different languages use different ways to search for their needs, and unless you’re aware of this, your hits will stay depressingly low.

If you’re optimising your website for a foreign language, follow these tips to make sure you get the traffic you need, whatever language your users speak.

1. Know what your target user is searching for

Don’t assume your foreign language audience is looking for the same things as an English language user. Abbreviations, slang terms and language-specific phrases are all to be taken into account. It happens in English—consider an American’s ‘sneakers’ to a Briton’s ‘trainers’—but one of the only ways to know these nuances is to be a speaker of the language you’re translating into (a human translation service can help you with this one). On top of this, multilingual sites are also multicultural sites, so pick out the best foreign-language keywords according to your target’s cultural interests.

2. Treat translation software and websites carefully

While software and websites such as Google Translate can be a very cost-effective solution to your translation needs, most of them are not up to par. Only a few will give you a comprehensive breakdown of precise sentence structure, and most are basic direct translations. If you do decide to go down this route, however, the best sites will put the word into a sentence so you can ensure the meaning corresponds with what you intend. Indeed, Google SEO guru, Matt Cutts, advises against using Google Translate to do the hard work for you, pointing out that you could find your finely-crafted website ending up as web spam.

3. Use a reliable source to do your translation

The best way to get an accurate translation is undoubtedly a human service. But don’t immediately dismiss this as being a pricey solution – there are many students or keen foreign language learners who can provide translation at competitive prices. A post on Craigslist is bound to attract plenty of candidates, but make sure you get proof of their previously published work to guarantee they are up to the job. The very best translation service, however, will be produced by a human living in the country of the language you wish to translate into. They can help you to brainstorm ideas and point out useful words and phrases known only to a native speaker.

4. Consider a targeted URL

One way to ensure you’ll be targeting people from the right countries is to invest in a country code top-level domain (ccTLD). For example, www.mysite.es for Spain or www.mysite.pl for Poland. Not only will it help your site(s) to appear in search engines within that country, if potential customers think you’re a local company, it’ll automatically help them to put more trust in you and your business. This can be expensive, however, so if this isn’t an option for you, then consider going down the subdirectory route. This fairly easy option involves adding another directory for your chosen country/language onto the end of your English language site (e.g. www.mysite.com/es). However, it holds no real benefit for search engine rankings, so should be used only as a last resort.

5. Keep it simple and use your keywords wisely

Over-complicating your keywords and phrases means you will only have more chance of getting it wrong and losing credibility. Certainly avoid branded keywords when fresh on the market – if prospective users are unfamiliar with your brand and your services then they won’t be searching for you. And you’ll need a good range; overusing too few keywords will inevitably frustrate the reader who won’t want to stick around to read the rest of your site, even if it is in their language. You can check you have the right amount of keywords on any URL using a keyword density tool.

6. Don’t forget about key phrases

As well as a good selection of primary keywords, you should also include some phrases/long tail keywords to bring in extra traffic, but proceed with caution. Dealing with more than just a single word makes correct sentence construction and word order highly important to avoid garbled ‘Spanglish’ text. Do remember to take a look at the kind of keyword phrases your (successful!) foreign competitors are using and tailor your text accordingly—you need to be aiming for the highest number of clicks against the lowest competition from others on the web.

7. Test, test and test again

Using tests and tools to see which foreign language phrases work best for you could really help get your website off the ground, particularly if it’s in a niche area, a complicated language or is a fledgling brand. There are plenty out there to see how many search results your keywords get – there’s no need to rely just on Google AdWords—the  Keyword Discovery is a great resource. Tracking the success of your multilingual keyword campaign is similar to your English language strategy—you’ll still need to take into account the click-throughs and conversions from search engines, but you’ll need to do it on a larger scale and across several search engines. While Google may reign supreme in the USA, Yandex is the search engine of choice in Russia.

Above all, remember that one slip-up in translating a phrase or main keyword could mean disappointing results. So don’t trip over your translations – with the right approach, a multilingual website can bring in all the clicks you need to boost your rankings.

About the author

Christian Arno is the founder of professional translation agency Lingo24. Launched in 2001, Lingo24 now has over 150 employees spanning three continents and clients in over sixty countries. In the past twelve months, they have translated over sixty million words for businesses in every industry sector. Follow Christian (@l24ca) and Lingo24 (@Lingo24) on Twitter.

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Google, FB To Talk Web Censorship with Sarkozy after sex scandals

Zuckerberg and Eric Schmidt are attending Nicholas Sarkozy's technology forum meet this week at Paris where the French President wants to discuss regulatory controls on the internet. Will they bite?

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How to Repurpose Your Content Online

How can you leverage your content online?

The following is an excerpt from Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed (2011, Wiley) by Patrick Schwerdtfeger. The book has 80 chapters covering dozens of online marketing tactics that deliver results, especially for small business owners and self-employed professionals. The book is being released on June 7th, 2011. Learn more at 80shortcuts.com.

If you’re smart about content creation, you can create it once … and then repurpose it seven different ways! You can literally flood the Internet with your expertise and work less than most of your competition.

Think about your content as either beginner, intermediate, and advanced. The idea is to give the beginner content away for free to demonstrate your expertise and build trust with your audience. Your beginner content becomes your blog posts, your articles, your podcasts and your videos. The intermediate content is free as well, but only in exchange for their email address. Your intermediate content is used to build your list. And your advanced content is what you’re actually selling; it’s where you drive revenue.

Well, your website or blog is the perfect place for some of that beginner content. Try to organize your beginner content into a series of “lessons” and then write an article about each one. Always make sure your articles are at least 500 words long. If you write an article that’s longer than 1,500 words, break it into two separate articles. Are you ready? We’ll be using your articles in seven different ways, maximizing the bang you get for your buck.

If you don’t have your website built yet, don’t worry. The important thing is to realize how your content can be repurposed on the Internet. Knowing this process will help you deploy your online strategy once you start building.

Step 1 – publish on your blog

First, publish your article as a post on your blog. Easy enough. Your blog is the center of your online identity and any content you publish should also be published (or at least summarized) on your blog.

Step 2 – social bookmarking

Second, ask some of your friends to bookmark your new blog post on a few of the large social bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. Doing so will introduce your content to a huge audience who then have an opportunity to endorse it and pass it along to others.

Step 3 – blog carnivals

Third, visit BlogCarnival.com and submit your new blog post to a bunch of upcoming blog carnivals. Carnivals are like online magazines. There are large prominent bloggers on the internet who host “carnivals” about one topic or another, and they can feature your blog post within their carnival, exposing your content to their readership in the process.

Step 4 – article directories

Fourth, modify your article slightly and publish it on EzineArticles.com and some of the other article directories on the Internet. You could even use a distribution platform like iSnare.com to get it on hundreds of article directories within days. Each directory will allow you to include a link back to your website so this strategy will result in hundreds of one-way inbound links to your website.

Step 5 – ebook directories

Fifth, summarize your article into a punchy bullet-point PDF file and make sure it includes plenty of links to your website. Upload your new PDF to the many free e-book directories such as ebookdirectory.com or ebook2u.com. Yes, it’s true. There are dozens of e-book directories and their visitors are searching for information. They can find your information . . . but only if you upload it.

Step 6 – audio podcasts

Sixth, read your article into a microphone and record it. Now you have a podcast that you can register on iTunes and dozens of ‘‘podcast directories.’’ Podcasts accumulate incredibly loyal listeners over time with 90% of them listening to your podcasts at the gym, commuting to work or walking their dog. Not only that but audio content does a great job of inspiring trust among listeners.

Step 7 – YouTube videos

Seventh, get a Flip digital video recorder (about $200) and record yourself as you explain the topic you wrote about in your article. Don’t worry. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Just speak about the concept as if you were explaining it to a friend. Once you’re done, add your website address to the video and upload it to YouTube. Video inspires trust better than any other type of content. And besides, YouTube is the third highest traffic website on the internet (after Google and Facebook).

These seven effective ways to get your beginner content out into the world will cost you next to nothing (except perhaps if you need to invest in the Flip recorder). Yet very few people take advantage of these opportunities to spread their message across the Internet. By following these steps, you can take one piece of beginner content – one lesson – and use it in seven different formats, populating multiple platforms with your expertise.

This is powerful stuff. It’s extremely efficient and caters to the different ways people use the Internet. Don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be. Most people think they need to create new content for every platform. No way! That’s too much work. You could write one lesson every week or two and end up with a massive online identity within a few months.

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