Some clarifications: /these are for you, DO NOT include such in you CV /

1. Did you notice the picture? What, did you think that you must put a photo with suite and a tie? Nothing wrong if you do it, but you don’t NEED to be official. You are a freelancer, you are creative and free – and it’s perfectly fine if you place your photo with a t-shirt and sunglasses (well, better without sunglasses – keep your eyes visible)
2. Notice some differences – instead of giving birth date and physical address I’ve given timezone and availability. This information is much more useful for someone who searches for a freelancer!
3. The education is so short – who cares to know the names of my schools? Ok, if you are Ph.D. feel free to write it, but don’t bother your potential customers with too much details about it
4. Same on the work experience – who cares about the names of the companies I worked in?
5. The languages are important. Yes, English is used everywhere, but sometimes the clients will be much happier if you can also speak Spanish or French.
6. In this sample resume my portfolio contains only one item – because you are not here to know about me, but just to get the idea. If you have few projects done, list all of them. If you have many, list the best 10
7. The publications are also only two for the sample, but if you have more, list them – sorted by years. Start from the most recent and go back in time. You can list 20 or more as they won’t take too much screen space.

Imagine you have to go to a dentists (yeah, it is never fun, I know) – and there are several in your area. Will you choose the one with a sign on the door “Dentist – $50 per hour” or you will prefer the one who lists what services they offer and where other people are going?

Without a resume and testimonials you would be like the first one. Your testimonials are like the patients who go to the dentists – if you see there are some, chances are he is good.

Your resume is a detailed description of your services, your talents and a proof that you have them.

Your resume is vital for your success as a freelancer

So how to write a good resume? For sure you have seen some resume templates and you know basically how to do it. But I am sure you want to make your resume g-r-e-a-t.

Think about what people are interested to read in your CV. When you go to the dentists you don’t want to know their personal life, their past or what music they like. You want to receive only relevant information – is that dentists good, is he qualified, does he work carefully. You need only relevant information and everything else may push you off.

The more relevant your resume is, the better impression it will make to the buyers. This is really important, so let me repeat:

The more relevant your resume is, the better impression it will make to the buyers.

So, you got the picture. Now, let’s see what your CV should contain:

1. Full name
2. Contact details – email and/or phone, website URL if any
3. Picture! – posting your picture builds credibility and increases client’s response. Don’t underestimate this
4. An objective – this is a short sentence describing what types of projects you would like to work on
5. Education – be very short – it does not matter too much in freelancing
6. Skills, grouped by categories and showing the years of experience. For example “Programming: PHP (5 years), Perl (2 years)”.
7. Past work experience if any – start from the latest, then go back in time. The oldest experience goes at the end
8. Portfolio with projects you have worked on – next to each project explain what part of the work you have done yourself
9. Any non profit work like participating in open source projects
10. Online publications and references (if any)

That’s it. You see, the freelancer’s resume is not much different than any other CV, but it should put more emphasis on the work experience and projects rather than the education.

Don’t underestimate this writing effort. One hour more spent in writing your CV can save you hundreds of hours contacting potential buyers, promoting yourself to them and explaining about your proffessionality. The resume can do a lot of this work for you. Read it several times, refine it, then repeat this process until you are satisfied.

You now know how to write resume. Put this into action and outline your first draft right now. See this sample resume to get even better idea.

Especially if you work thru the Net, there are thousands of other freelancers who compete with you for the customers. Many of them are good, others are not so good, but all of them want clients just like you do. How to outsmart them and attract the coolest and best paid projects? Simply, you just need to promote your skills.

Do you shudder at the word “promote”? Most web designers, programmers or other technical persons do. Well, the good news is that the promotion for freelancers is not so scary as it may sound. See these 9 promotional techniques which have proven to work:

1. Write your resume

It may look obvious and yet so many freelancers forget to do it. Put some effort into writing your resume and make it easyly accessible (usually by uploading it online). By doing this you are already ahead by most of the others. See how to write a resume

2. Create a portfolio

Creating a portfolio is essential for your success. Have you already worked on some projects? Either for previous clients or in a company you have worked, just summarize the work on them and put them in online portfolio. If you have not worked on any project so far, just create a project yourself or join an open source community. How do you expect to complete a task and be paid if you have never done it before? Having a good portfolio is the best promotion for freelancers.

3. Manage your testimonials

Already worked for someone? Ask them to give a testimonial! Don’t be shame, most people may miss doing it even if they are very satisfied with your job. Don’t afraid to ask them, explaining that you need this for your freelance promotion. Put a link to the client’s website or contact details – thus the potential customers will know that they can check and ensure the testimonial is real. Very few of them will do it, but still it builds a lot more confidence when they know that the previous clients can be contacted and the testimonial confirmed.

4. Build profile in freelance sites

The freelance sites are one of the easiest tools for freelance promotion. You don’t need to search for clients, because they are searching for you – by publishing their projects. Of course, it is not easy to win a project, because there is a lot of competition. Additionally, the jobs that can be find there are often lower paid than if you find your customer in some other way. But the freelance sites give you excellent way to start and allow you build profile and collect proven testimonials. In most of them, giving feedback at the end of project is highly recommended and the buyers are reminded to do it.

5. Create a website and do basic SEO

You can create a website where to put your resume, portfolio and testimonials in one place. You can write some more about you, your services, your plans and your ideas. Not only that you will impress the potential buyers more, but you can get clients from occasional visitors to the site. You need to do some basic search engine optimization (SEO) in order to get more traffic and better promotion

6. Meet people offline

Don’t underestimate the good old offline promotion – it works great for freelancers too. Meet people on various events, give them your visit card, speak about your job. Freelancing is just like any other business and meeting people offline you have a great chance to turn them into your happy customers.

7. Write articles

Promotion for freelancers by writing articles? Yes, it works perfect. Since you are a freelancer, you must be expert on something. Write an article about it! If you are a programmer, write some article about specific problem, if you a designer, write some Photoshop tutorial, if you are… well, you got the idea Write a good and useful article and submit it to article directories. You write it once and if it is good it keeps referring customers to you constantly. I often get requests for people who have read articles, published by me years ago.

8. Participate in discussion forums

Regardless what is the specific area of expertise you have, there is an online discussion forum for it. Just search Google for “your area of expertise”+ discussion forum and you are likely to find thousands of results. Choose the most popular ones (you can easy understand this by checking the number of posts and members and how active the discussions are) and start sharing your expertise for free. Give useful advices and don’t be frugal of giving away your knowledge. By doing this people will start knowing you as an expert and many of them may ask you for paid services. Additionally most forums allow creating a signature, where you can put a link to your website or resume and attract even more business.

9. Create freebies

Freebies has been one of the best promotional methods online since the Web first days. What freebies can you offer as a freelancer? If you are a programmer, you can create some free software. If you are designer, maybe a clipart or some models. A freelance writer may give some articles for free. The freebies attract a lot of web visitors – either to your complete website or just to your online resume. Many of them may be interesting in hiring your services especially if they have liked your freebie.