Freelancer Tip #1: Even those with years of freelancing behind them can get in a deadline bind, and the more clients you juggle, the harder it gets. Missed deadlines are a fact of life: it is timely communication that can make missed deadlines okay (or at least not so bad).
I don’t love Basecamp, but my team does, so that makes it my tool of choice with this team. Here is an overview of how we use it.
Everyone knows that project slips are sometimes unavoidable and so the agencies plan for this, but major schedule delays cause a ripple effect of problems for the freelancers and other resources on your project.
No matter how great you are at planning, we all get hit with rush projects sometimes. Having a great working relationship with an agency is your first step toward being able to pull of small miracles when you need to do a rush project. Be aware of the risks, look at where you can simplify what you need, and be sure to let your agency know you appreciate their work.
An accurate estimate requires takes time, which costs an agency money to develop and pulls resources from other projects. Give them time to get you the right estimate, and respect their time, and you’ll have gone a long way toward developing a good relationship with them.
I wanted a good way to track projects that was also easy for my team to share and my client to see. MS Project was overkill, and I didn’t want to keep emailing spreadsheets around. I looked at 5 tools, and am very happy with the one I ended up using.
Rolling up feedback is more important than you think. Not rolling up your feedback can add hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars to the cost of your project, add extra rounds of revisions, and increase the risk that important feedback will be missed.
They say that to start a project off on the right foot you should hold an effective kickoff meeting. I think that you can start it off on an even better foot by starting out with an effective request for quote (RFQ).
