Is the economy hurting your business?

It's a fact that the economy is affecting our online money as well as our offline money. There aren't quite as many jobs available and some of the ones that are out there are looking to pay as little as possible. Not everyone that works online has been affected but many have.

So what do we do to survive? There are a couple of things you can do.

• One tactic I've always used was to think outside of the box in terms of how we usually proceed to find work online. If you haven't noticed, many sites have an "employment" or "jobs" link on their page where they may be looking for people to fill positions. Be sure you keep your eyes open for these when you're surfing the web.

• Even if a site doesn't have a "jobs" page, if you think you can offer a valuable skill to them, email them and let them know what you can do for them. If you see some mistakes on their page or things that you believe could be improved upon, let them know! Be very diplomatic when approaching them but take that chance. You never know where it might lead. You may have many that don't respond or respond saying "thanks but no thanks" but if you don't try you may miss an opportunity.

• On bidding sites, you might consider knocking down your regular hourly rate for a little while or offering your services initially at a lower rate; offer incentives like a percentage off for new clients and/or a percentage off for every xxx invoice paid by an employer. Think in the mindset of still making money but making your offer more attractive to employers. Realize that your competition is probably trying to utilize similar methods to land that same employer. Things are different right now and you have to get into a more competitive mindset.

• Expand where you look for work. If you usually use one or two sites to find work, look in some other places. See what other sites and resources are out there. You may have to work a little harder and spend a bit more time than usual trying to land projects but you have to put food on your plate.

• You might even consider hitting up local employers. A lot of local employers are laying people off, not hiring, etc. because they are trying to save money. Offer to do work for them as an Independent Contractor and let them know how they still save: they don't have to pay benefits, you only get paid for actual work you do, not an 8 hour day where an employee might not be working that entire time (on breaks, lunch, hanging around the water cooler, just being present, etc.); no overhead costs, etc.

• Consider picking up projects you might not normally be interested in. At this time, we may have to consider work outside of our industry (as long as you have the skills to complete the work properly and timely). Right now isn't necessarily the time to be too picky

• Look at other ways to make money online. Freelancing isn't the only way to make money. Some sites pay you to write articles or write reviews and other stuff. They may not pay the best, but it's a little something extra on the side. Again, if the work isn't coming in like usual, don't be too picky. Do what you have to do to get through the gap.

Put your best foot forward and become even more motivated to survive this downturn in jobs. Maybe even think about adding some new skills to your resume; learn something new that can broaden your potential.

Dispute Resolution

Have you ever had a dispute with an employer over payment? How did you handle it?

I used to work for a nightmare employer who refused to pay one of her contractors because she didn't like the work he returned. I was the liaison (not mediator) in the matter and quite frankly, I think she could have better handled it. She didn't want to pay him a penny. The work wasn't that bad and it was pretty unfair for him to spend all the time he did working on it to end up having someone not want to pay him at all.

He was performing the duties of a writer/editor for her digital documents about a certain business. He was on board before I came on board so I'm not sure the procedure for getting the project she put him through but there were procedures/tests in place for me and others so I'm assuming he did undergo some sort of procedure/test or show some of his past work for her to hire him. She wasn't the type to just hire anyone without checking them out.

With that said, she had to have felt his work would be satisfactory. He had written for her prior to this dispute and she kept him on board so, to me, it made it even more unfair/shady of her to pull what she did on him.

It's not that he did the work incorrectly, she just, apparently, wasn't thrilled with it or would have done it differently if she had been doing it.

Quite frankly, the whole project was a huge mess in the first place. Everything was unorganized, so many had come and go that there was confusion about whether or not things had been done, if this or that had been edited, which version was the up-to-date version, etc.

She was a nit picky employer who wanted to consume as much free time from people as possible - which I quickly learned. I felt she handled the situation with him unfairly and later learned of similar situations in which she had done similar things to others. Plus, I was undergoing my own terrible experience with her.

Long story short, we all went back and forth for a good week or two and he ended up not getting paid a penny. He was mad and I don't blame him. Worst case scenario, I think she should have at least paid him a negotiated fee for the work he did. She just didn't want to. So he worked for free, like many others unwillingly ended up doing for her.

Sometimes you're just going to get one of these unsavory employers but thankfully, for the most part, they seem to be few and far between. She's the only one I've had like that and I terminated our relationship pretty quickly.

In order to try to avoid these types of problems, it's best to have a dispute resolution solution in place. It doesn't necessarily have to be anything fancy; just something outlined of how disputes will be handled. This way there are already courses of action laid out in the event there is a dispute. This can be done in several ways.

A few things to consider:

• There are third parties that will act as mediators for disputes - designate someone to mediate disputes. Designate who will pay for the mediator (i.e. split the fees or the losing party, etc.)
  

• Determine which state's laws will have jurisdiction - use the state you reside in, where the work will be performed.
  

• Determine the method of notification and the amount of time in which an employer must give notification of a dispute and the amount of time in which you must respond. (i.e., if the employer is unsatisfied with something they must give written notice within xxx days of receipt of the work and you must respond within xxx days. If on the xxx day there is no agreement, it will go to the mediator.)
  

• Indicate that the two of you must make a valiant effort to resolve the dispute before taking other action.
  

• Consider using escrow accounts so that the money is in an account that neither of you can touch until the work is complete or the dispute is resolved if there is a dispute.

Working online is a real business and it must be handled as so. It can seem like there is no need for having things like this in place or it may seem like a hassle but you need to cover your butt or you could end up like the guy I was talking about - getting no money for a week or two's worth of work. Had there been a dispute resolution process in place, maybe he could have gotten something.

A lot of ICs don't have any contracts in place. While, luckily, there frequently doesn't end up being a need for one there are times that one finds themself wishing there were contracts in place. Not only for disputes either but we'll talk about other contracts in separate posts.

Til later!