projects

This guide by Deskmag.com gives some really great advice on how to negotiate your contract as a freelancer. Setting your rates as a freelancer can be a tough decision. Ultimately, you have to determine what your work is worth. How much do you need to cover your overhead costs and make a little profit? What is your client willing to pay? Pricing can really be a challenge for freelancers as it can make or break a deal. However, there are some basic factors that influence your rate including:

• time – How long will the project take? How busy are you with other work?
• costs – How much are the costs for tools and equipment to complete the project? Will you incur travel expenses? How about healthcare insurance bills, vacation savings, pension payments and taxes?
• skill level – How experienced are you on these types of projects?
• type of client - How well do you know the client? How valuable is the client / project to you? How likely are you to get future work from them?
• industry standards – How high is the market demand for your type of work?

These are just some of the questions you can ask when determining prices for your work as a freelancer – surely there are many more. Nevertheless, this guide to pricing gives some good tips on how to approach the task.

Teams are the typical building blocks of an organization: They provide companies with the means to combine the various skills, talents and perspectives of a group of individuals to achieve corporate goals. In the past, managers used to colocate team members because of the high levels of interdependencies that are inherent in group work. Today, though, more and more companies organize projects over distance, with teams increasingly consisting of people who are scattered over various offices and locations. While virtual teams provide a number of benefits, it can be quite challenging to manage them efficiently. Following the five- step program on Inc.com will help you manage a decentralized workforce.

1. Clear Understanding of Project Objectives – One of the greatest challenges facing any virtual team is a clear understanding of what they need to accomplish.

2. Communication – While communication is imperative for any project to be completed, it is of even greater importance when you have a decentralized team.

3. Clearly Defined Roles and Responsibilities – Problems are sure to arise when members of the team are unsure about the role they play and what is expected of them.

4. Don’t Rely on Nonverbal Communication – Oftentimes managers become over-reliant on emailing, texting or other forms of written communication.

5. Flexibility – Because virtual teams don’t have the same access to managers from afar, it is advisable to be lenient regarding work hours, deliverables, and timelines.

Building your freelance brand starts with putting a price tag on your services. But how exactly do you do that? Determining a price for your services is probably one of the biggest challenges freelancers face. This post on freelanceswitch discusses some factors to take into consideration when pricing your services:

• Your costs
• Your profit
• Market demand
• Industry standards
• Skill level
• Experience
• Your business strategy
• Your service
• Your client

The new projektwerk project archive now provides a better overview for multiple project postings on a single user account.

Last year we released the new status “archived” for expired projects. This means that a past project is still publicly visible for anyone interested; however, it does no longer appear in the drafts.

The new folder „archive“ can now be found in the menu tab „projects”, where it is possible to archive a project manually in its editing-modus. Expired projects will now be moved into the new “archive” folder automatically and not, as previously, saved as a draft.

Attention: The re-publishing of archived projects is only possible within four weeks after archiving. If a project is to be re-published at any later time, it has to be saved as a draft manually before its automatic archiving. Of course, all projects can be deleted permanently – if so desired. Although projects are visible only in an anonymized form, the archive is public and therefore accessible to everyone.

We’ve built a great widget that has been released and is now available. We would like to take a moment and describe some of the features our widget has and how you might take advantage of it.

Do you offer employment services and solutions, human resource consulting or manage a database for recruitment and permanent placement?

As one of the leading online  project marketplaces in Germany, we’ve been connecting freelance professionals and innovative businesses on our specialized industry platforms since 1999. Benefit from co-branding with projektwerk.

The widget enables you to offer your website visitors a customized project marketplace with valuable, daily updated content. By utilizing the projektwerk widget, you can provide your website visitors with interesting, sector-specific freelance work on individual project basis and simultaneously provide access to the best database for excellent freelance professionals. The widget can easily be added to your website and is totally integrated into the look and feel of your corporate design. No updating or editing necessary – the information is pulled automatically and syndicated over to your site.

Have a look at the widget on two of our partner sites:

For more information please contact:

Daniela Chikato

Mail: d.chikato@projektwerk.de

Phone: 040-43 21 30-36

Since the beginning of the year projektwerk has consistently worked on improving the quality requirements for publishing projects and profiles.

To ensure certain quality standards and further finetune matching results, projects and profiles are required to include at least two skills and a description text of minimum 150 signs in order to be approved and published. With these improvements in place, projektwerk wants to filter out uninformative and incomplete project and profile descriptions.

For projektwerk freelance users this means better matching results and a more comprehensive overview of potential project providers. For project providers this means finding the perfect freelance professional faster: So all in all it is a win-win situation for both sides.

“This interesting post, published by TechCrunch on February 4^th 2012, does not only remind us of how one of the greatest inventions of our generation has already changed the way we communicate, share information, or shop but also gives us a taste of what is still to come: The Internet is changing the way we work – the web is disrupting labor and transforming the definition of employment as we know it!

The post discusses the rise of the “independent worker”, who is one that operates independently and flexibly in today’s work environment – unattached to any particular company. The author, Nick Cronin, summarizes what he believes are the main factors contributing to this development, how these changes are affecting companies’ hiring processes, and the increasing importance of labor efficiency for maintaining a competitive edge.

“The era of the lean, flexible workforce is here and guess where both companies and independents are increasingly locating each other. Yep: The Internet.”

Read the full post “Labor Efficiency: The next great Internet Disruption” on TechCrunch

In that sense, check out the leading online project marketplace for freelancers and businesses in Germany:

projektwerk

This week we present you another profile/project feature:

You will find this feature when creating a new profile or project. The first part of the sentence means that your profile or project will be visible on the public welcome page – a really eye-catching position:

The second part of the sentence means that your profile / project can be found by search engines like Google.

Here is a small example: Peter´s profile title is : “Java developer”. John D. enters “java developer” at google.com. In his result-list, John receives a direct link to Peter´s profile on projektwerk.

Please notice:

• Of course you can change this setting at any time.
• Your contact data are never visible for basic-members or non-members, including people who found you via google.
• If you do not place the checkmark, your profile / project will not appear on the „All profiles / all projects“-page in the public area of projektwerk.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

This tip of the week will present the projektwerk interface to you. The interface offers the possibility of posting your projects automatically.

This is how it works: You simply publish a project on your own website and a few seconds later it will be also published on the projektwerk platform. Due to this your project can be found by freelancers immediately – and will not have to wait until the next day when you find time to log in and post it by manually. Also you will receive an e-mail including suggestions for matching project partners instantly. With a click on the links in the e-mail you will be able to check out your matching results.

The instant posting as well as the direct feedback including your matches are the main distinguishing features of the projektwerk interface.

Additionally there is another great benefit for interface users:
Through opting for an interface account you will have the possibility of posting an unlimited amount of projects and have access to all projektwerk platforms. Here are the different projektwerk platforms in the overview:  IT, consulting, creative, engineering, fashion and medical.

You regularly publish projects on your website? You would like to save time and do not like to post your projects manually? Then, we recommend our interface with best regards.

You would like to get some more information?
Don’t hesitate to contact:

Daniela Chikato
+49 (0) 4321 30 – 40
d.chikato@projektwerk.de

Hamburg, February 25, 2011. projektwerk, the easiest project marketplace on the web for freelancers and companies, turns 12 – and celebrates this event with presents for its users instead of a big birthday bash.
Everybody who books a premium membership on projektwerk.com between February 24 and March 3, 2011, receives a festive 12% discount. And because a birthday with two presents is twice as nice as a birthday with just one present, projektwerk ups the ante: For every annual membership subscription in this period the thirteenth month is free.

The twelfth year of existence was a year of major steps. Not only has the project marketplace projektwerk successfully launched the specialised platforms it, creative, consulting, engineering and fashion and thus made customized industry solutions accessible to its users. It has also developed an innovative matching technology that facilitates a fast and efficient recruiting of projects and freelancers.

To benefit from the birthday discount, please use the promotional code bday12pw.