About me
My daughter
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Blog moved to http://thefreelancerstory.blogspot.com/My name is Cristina, fondly known by families and friends as Aishah. I am 28 years old Romanian married to a Malaysian and living in Nilai, a developing township on the outskirt of Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur. I have 2 daughters and been working as a freelancer since 2006. And I would like to assure you, it is tough, juggling my time between work, even though freelancing, and two growing up toddlers. Kuala Lumpur – Nilai – Kuala Lumpur International Airport
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My first experience with freelancer.com
As I mentioned, the year was 2006. Got married in May in my suburb hometown in Rasnov, Romania and relocated to Malaysia in July the same year. And it was the same time I discovered that I was a month in my pregnancy for my first daughter.
Having the visa restrictions which prohibited me from working in my first few years in Malaysia, and being alone and bored at home while my husband was at worked, has prompted me to start looking for online opportunities to contribute to the family’s coffer.
Having learned the ‘hard way’ by trying out some ‘spam’ email offering work from home stuffs and while searching for opportunities online, I found freelancer.com and decided to give it a shot. Got myself registered, took a few days to familiarize myself with the site and getting things done in it. As the Chinese proverb says “A man removes a mountain by taking stone pebbles at a time”. I started bidding for projects with the things I have skills for… data entry, data mining, compilation and so on. I started learning web designing on Dreamweaver, image editing on Photoshop and Illustrator and started bidding for other related projects advertised in freelancer.com.
Patience
You can’t forget your first love, and you can’t forget your first freelancer.com project which I recall, adding in sizes carts for a fashion eCommerce site. I started out with small tasks due to my limited capability and skills and consequently taking up tougher tasks to improve my experience and skills. With the help of my husband my English has improved. Yes, as you might be wondering, I was having only basic conversational and writing of English equivalent to a fifth grader but today, I can be proud of the accomplishments that I have so far achieved.
And today, I have added a few more clicks on my skills. To name a few, I am confident in data entry tasks, market research, Magento back-ends, Excel and Web Research. Patience has its virtue. I was getting great feedbacks and strong recommendations from the projects that I have completed and submitted.
A Day in My Life as a Freelancer.com
A quick run-through of what happens in my daily routine. Well of course, subject to things happening every day. You’ll never know what is in store for you…
What am I getting from Freelancer.com?
I would be lying if I tell you that I make millions by using freelancer.com. I would be lying if I tell you that I can fully support the family just by freelancing in freelancer.com (though I certainly believe that it is possible given the right resources, skills and time). But here, I would like to share with you the things that I benefitted, that has ushered me to continue to subscribe to freelancer.com to experience more opportunities, to learn new things and to share my knowledge, and to support those who are in need of a freelancer.
I. Enough For A Decent Lifestyle,
When I say a ‘decent lifestyle’ I was referring to the basic needs. With the fees that I am getting from my freelancer.com projects, I am able to manage my own money, purchase the basic things that I need such as clothing, accessories and all sorts of others women thingy, without being overly dependent on my husband.
II. Basic Family Needs,
Apart from personal purchases above, I am able to extend the spending to my children as well, without having to come up with a list of things to justify ‘additional fund’ requests to my husband.
III. House Chores and Needs,
All the things above, including the house chores needs, are done if not all, mostly using the payment I received from the freelancer.com. This has managed to save quite a sum of money usually allocated by my husband for it. In short, we have surpluses to add up to the coffer, which can be used at times of emergencies and urgent matters.
IV. Be My Own Boss and Manage My Own Time,
One good thing about working as a freelancer is that, you manage your own tasks. You manage your own time according to the deadlines. You are able to reduce the extra pressures and expectations having someone else supervising you apart from your freelancing clients.
V. Your Own Setting and Working Environment
What more could you ask for, other than having a conducive and comfortable working environment where everything that would cater to your personal needs are within your reach? And having no one breathing over your shoulder checking on what you are working on, and having to hide your social networking sites and chats every now and then? It is not what usually happens, but the idea of working alone and on your own really sums up this last two benefits.
A Shoulder to Cry On
Certainly not the song by Tommy Page, but generally gives the idea of a story I am about to tell you here.
All this while, my husband is the sole breadwinner in the family. Daily expenses, monthly allocations are depending on his salary. What I received as payments from the freelancer.com would be translated into savings or additional expenditures be it in the form of my own personal needs or the household.
It was sometime ago, when due to some unresolved issues pertaining to my husband employment contracts, he was out of job, unemployed and no monthly income. We had to rely on what savings we had and excess funds that we have in the insurance investments. Things were getting tight, with cautious and prudent expenditures. But lucky enough, I was drawing quite a steady sum of income, though not much, from my freelancing jobs in freelancer.com. That has helped us a lot by not totally depending on the little savings that we have and drain up the coffers.
8 months down the road, thank God, my husband managed to secure a permanent job. Getting paid a little lesser than what he previously had, freelancer.com proves once again to be the supporting income to the family. We truly appreciate that we actually had involved with freelancer.com. It proves to be something that we can rely on, it proves to be a ‘shoulder for us to cry on’ at times of adversity.
Lessons Learned
A brief outlook on what we can learn, to expect and what to be gained by engaging in freelancer.com:
I. Patience – the number of freelancers online are countless. With patience and continuous effort, you will surely secure your first task.
II. Quality – Do it with additional focus on a quality deliverables and you will get good feedbacks to secure you future jobs, at least a weighted preferences will be given to those with excellent job or freelancing history,
III. New Skills – once a while you will discover that you are lacking certain skills to bid or to perform certain tasks. Automatically, at least for me, this would be a catalyst for you to start learning the skills that you don’t have. This was proven true for me in learning to use Dreamweaver and Adobe Photoshop,
IV. Networking – the last but not least, this is the key to your establishment in the freelancing world in freelancer.com. Once you have enough positive, excellent feedbacks, the possibilities of future engagement would be close to endless. You could be ‘hired’ permanently by some to contribute to their ongoing or recurring projects or tasks. The words of mouth even written endorsement directly to your work would be priceless to the opportunities that may arise.
The freelancer`s family
If you are looking for help, someone to complete some of the tasks that you have… in short a freelancer for your work, please do not hesitate to write me. You can find me here or search for aishah in the freelancer.com website.
Thanks for dropping by. Hope to hear from you soon.
The freelancer story 