Welcome!

Welcome!
My name is David Vecchio, and I am a 3D Artist from Argentina. My dream was always working independently, not having to answer to anybody, to be able to manage my own schedule, and taking vacations whenever I felt I needed them. I wasn't born to have an office job. I tried that for about a year and a half when I was in college and it certainly didn't work out for me. What do you get from an office job? You wake up at 7 AM, you go from one end of the city to the opposite, putting up with the daily chaos of a metropolis, you waste 8 hours of your life with stuff you don't even care about, making money for someone else, and then you get back home late and too tired to do the things you really enjoy.
I like travelling a lot, and the only way I can afford this is by working as a freelance. It doesn't matter if I'm at home, or at a hostel in New Delhi, I can always work as long as I have my notebook, an internet connection, and a comfortable place to work.
I took me a while to establish myself as a freelance 3D Artist, but it was all worth it. This is not just a secondary job to make extra cash. I can now actually make a living out of this.
How did I achieve this? Well first, I did have to get an office job, because when you're working as a freelancer, you might not have a fixed monthly income. But after a couple of years of working on an average of one project a month, I began to build myself a list of clients that are constantly hiring me for different assignments. Having a list of semi-regular clients, and working on several other small projects per month can be enough to make a living out of freelance work.
I started this blog to save you all from the frustration of signing up to a freelance work site and never getting hired. I mean, it CAN be frustrating at first, but once you get your first job, it will all be a lot easier, believe me!I won't give you obvious generic tips that will apply to any site. I have an established profile with 400 logged hours of work on Odesk (plus several fixed price jobs) and several completed jobs on Elance, and I will guide you through the process of getting hired on these two sites, which, from personal experience, are the best places to start working as a freelancer (considering they're highly trustworthy, and have a wide variety of ways to get your money out).

Getting Started

So, you can start now by reading a little bit about the two platforms that I use the most to get freelance work: Odesk.com and Elance.com. Please note that these sites are not just for design jobs. They have a wide variety of categories like Web design, programming, engineering, writing and translation, etc.


Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Withdrawing your money through Payoneer

What's Payoneer? Basically, it's a prepaid Mastercard debit card that works just as any other Mastercard. This is how it works: You may transfer money from a list of companies directly to your card (including Odesk, Elance, Freelancer.com, Google, etc.), and, as long as it's loaded, you can use it to buy stuff or
even withdraw money from ATMs. You can use it anywhere in the world where Mastercard is accepted. I succesfully used it in many different countries.
I found this is the best way of getting your money out of freelancer sites like Odesk and Elance (you can even use it with your earnings from Amazon and Google adsense).
The costs for this card are very low, there's a monthly fee of U$ 3 (which lowers to U$ 1 if you use it more than three times a month). Transferring your funds from Elance is free of charge, and of course, you don't have to pay a commision whenever you use it to buy stuff. But you do have to pay a small fee when you withdraw money from an ATM.
But there's more! This is not only to receive payments from a limited number of companies, you can also receive payments from any credit card holder (it doesn't have to be from Payoneer). So, if you work for someone that's not using Odesk or Elance, you can still get paid directly to your Payoneer Mastercard (there's a comission though, about 7%).
After you've used the card for a few months, you can also apply for the US Payment service, which broadens the list of companies you can receive money from (including Paypal!).
So, if you work a lot with freelance sites, and you prefer this to a bank account (specially if you're not from the US, since the fees for international bank transfers are limited to a number of countries, and are VERY expensive), go ahead and try it!
I invite you to join to Payoneer and give it a try. If you join using my referral link, you and I will receive a U$ 25 bonus after you've received your first U$100!
So here's the link: JOIN! http://tracking.payoneer.com/aff_c?offer_id=350&aff_id=11099

Good luck, and write me if you have any questions!

3 comments:

  1. David, yo tambien soy Argentino y 3d generalista, estoy interesado en empezar a trabajar con clientes del extranjenro pero el tema bancario que tenemos en el pais me lo complica mucho, vos pudiste sacar la payoneer desde Argentina, fue muy engorroso? si me podes dar una poco mas de data al respecto te lo voy a agradecer mucho.
    Saludos
    Luis María

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hola, Luis, voy a escribir un tutorial específicamente para argentinos, se que esto que escribí no entra mucho en detalle, así que dentro de los próximos días voy a escribir paso por paso el proceso, y las ventajas y desventajas que este sistema tiene para nosotros.
      Saludos!

      Delete
  2. Thank you for all this informations.
    Muchas Gracias.
    Gulyas Patricia

    ReplyDelete