Last Jan-2007 one of my clients had complained he cannot send me any money through iKobo some how my account got blocked. I thought man … that was the first time since May-2005 that happens to me. Guess there is something wrong I should contact their support. They have that lovely chat support (instead of emails, boards and waiting around).
I have studied iKobo's rules quite well I know them by the heart and I repeat them all over to all my friends freelancers (and here on the blog). Out of a sudden a hidden rules come out.
What made my day even darker is the customer support; I don't think they are that busy to be deaf. Also, I have a clean and long history with them that their help desk should have displayed for the support guy/gal to help me through. Further more when I read the following script over and over again I feel like I am talking to some AI bot, I have interacted with these types of bots before and they where nice and friendly although they seemed deaf and that's how they don't deceive me.
Conversation Started (Names are removed for privacy)[Support]: Hi, my name is [Support]. How may I help you? Please feel free to send any comments about me or our service to feedback@ikobo.net.
[Me]: Hi Support ... I have reached my limit of senders ... and one of my customers cannot send me any more ... here is what that support had told him
[Me]: You can only have 3 ‘unassigned’ senders, then you need to start assigning senders to ‘slots’. They call these ‘assigned senders’. You can only have 3 of these too. So you need to contact iKobo and get me assigned as an ‘assigned sender’. Then I can send you the funds You can do this by calling or from Live Chat or Email from your account.
[Me]: now what should I do?
[Support]: One moment while I review your account.
[Support]: Please answer the following security questions. What is the name of your high school? What is your favorite city?
[Me]: Ibrahimia ... my favorite city ... Manyal ... I am not sure of the answers ... can I got to my account and change them and get back to you ...
[Support]: Thank you.
[Support]: You need to assign 3 senders to your account that you want to continue receiving funds from.
[Support]: Do you know the names of the 3 senders?
[Me]: [Customer1] (I need to keep him), [Customer2] (Can be removed) ... I am not sure of the third one but could get the name for you ...
[Support]: You have no assigned senders on your account now.
[Support]: So you can assign 3 now, or just 1 now and assign the other 2 at a later date.
[Me]: I got the following recommendation from the support
[Me]: Their ‘unofficial’ recommendation – do not ‘assign’ any of your current unassigned senders. You only get 3 assigned slots, and you cannot recover unassigned slots
[Me]: so I want to still be flexible as I could ... so since I don't have 3 senders ... how is my customer cannot send me any more?
[Support]: You have to assign at least 1 sender now before you account can be unblocked.
[Support]: So which sender would you like to assign now?
[Me]: why it was blocked in the first place ... to avoid having it blocked later on ...
[Support]: Your account is automatically blocked by the system once your 4th sender tries to transfer funds to you.
[Me]: can I just delete 2 of the old senders (I am not sure whom the two ... but I don't want [Customer1] to be deleted as he is still a current paying customer of mine) ...
[Support]: I have added [Customer1] as the 1st assigned sender on your account.
[Support]: Your account has been unblocked and limits restored.
[Me]: thanks ... now one final question .. how many customers can send my right now?
[Support]: [Customer1] is the only person that can transfer money to you.
[Support]: If you want someone other than him, you will need to assign them as your 2nd sender.
[Me]: I see ... and that means I am stuck with only those 2 senders until I assign the third ... right?
[Support]: That is correct.
[Me]: and once I have assigned the third ... I cannot remove any of the 3 and I am stuck with them !!!!
[Support]: That is absolutely correct.
[Me]: so ... what should I do by then? Close the account and open another one?
[Support]: No. You are not allowed to do that.
[Me]: sorry ... ikobo has been in work with me since 2005 ... now I am getting stuck ... I think these rules are new ... as I didn't find me anywhere in the help and I am sure I have read it well ...
[Me]: aren't these rules new?
[Support]: You have to follow the policies and rules.
[Support]: And we have a 3 sender rule for recipient's.
[Support]: I cannot change the rules and you must follow them if you want to use our service.
[Me]: Thanks Support ... I have been following the rules *I have read in the help* for 2 years ... I appreciate you put this new rules in the help ... also I appreciate your help in unblocking my card ...
[Support]: Is there anything else I can help you with?
[Me]: nope ... thanks
[Support]: Thank you for choosing iKobo and have a nice day.
[Support] Has Disconnected
End of conversation
Now do you think I have been talking to a bot? But they should have trained him more than that !!!
Morals of the Story
I am not using iKobo anymore :), let's see what we can do with MoneyBookers.
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This post is about comments on Mohamed ElZahaby's blog entry titled "To Freelance or Not". The article is a good detailed view of software freelancing. It is kind of long article but a must read for a wannabe software freelancer. So let's go on commenting.
Direction of the Article
To clear things out, this article is about *Software* freelancing, not any other career such as writing or translation. This article (and the whole site) is a bout *fulltime* freelancer, not just now and then projects to increase the corporate steady income a little bit.
Freelancing Definition
Alas, the copied definition is a little bit fancy. I think this was due to how broad the definition is, and I think the writer was imagining a writer or translator as the freelancer. The definition reads
"Freelancing is making your skills work for you in a way that accommodates your work/life balance; it opens up the potential for you to steer your career in a direction that suits you. It's about working at your own pace, taking responsibility for your own future, being captain of your own destiny..."
1. Actually, your skills should grow up exponentially with time so you can survive the competition. So if you are not hard worker freelancing is a dead end. Your corporate grown up skills will not avail you, so get ready for a *lot* of learning. This is a good point if you want to get back to corporate life for any reason you can seduce any corporate HR to hire you.
2. Work/Life balance is very hard to maintain as a freelancer. Yet your deep subconscious should keep "work supports life". This will help you a little bit in swinging between Work/Life extremes.
3. Yes you have the *chance* to direct your career, yet it is only a chance. Also it is absolutely not at your *own* pace. For a software developer it is at *Technology* pace.
4. Future and destiny control is fancy as you cannot control any of them. Rather you keep open eyes for great opportunities to exploit for your full benefit. These opportunities comes in the form of what we call *Class A* customers which I will cover in another post on how to classify customers.
Shall I take such step?
What the most suitable time to take such move?
So I will be a freelancer to make my life easier?
All these questions entail "What are my chances of success?". To answer this you will need little understanding of the market dynamics of software freelancing. So visualize with me a 2D plane on the x-axis you have different countries of the world, say US, UK, Egypt, India, China etc in ascending order of how much a fresh grad makes annually. On the y-axis you have international expertise rating. Now, the dynamics is as follow, a UK based expert is likely to take more than an Indian expert with the same expertise level. So chances of success for a UK expert in software freelancing is lower than the same level Indian expert. So you need to compare your local salary range for your expertise level and compare it to your target market. Of course there are other dynamics in the work, for example a US based customer might prefer a lower expertise with higher rate US freelancer.
So your definition of success will be governed by your local average salary and the expected increase that you can call it by then a success. At the same time the chance of success will be governed by the expected increase on when you call it success and the average salary in the target market.
What are the things I have to consider?
Do you think you will be a significant, useful and constructive person while you are acting as a freelancer?
Answers for these questions go in too much details, my point of view is simple. You have to consider and assess yourself based on "Do I make a value for my customers?" The equation is simple value=money period. So create a value for your customer and rip the results.
My question to answer now - How to pursue?
1. I didn't like corporate world so much, I create low or no value thus my expertise has downgraded significantly.
2. I was taking on external projects locally but I felt I need to tackle more
3. RentACoder was my first place, I started with very low rate to build *both* my profile and expertise
4. I though *try before you buy*, so I gave myself a period of 6 months to assess the experiment, that can be extended to another 6 months if come out with the same salary I was taking.
5. Results where good, only a slight increase, so I decided to extend to anther 6 months.
6. During the fist 6 month I started to raise my rate based on the value expected to add to the customer's project – different projects needs different expertise of course.
5. Here I am after 2 years; I still don't like the idea of going back to the corporate world.
Now your turn, tells how you pursued your freelancing life or preventing your from such a step?
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As a software freelancer, you need to study the deep traits of different pricing models you can use. Some say that maximizing profits is the sole goal, while I see that thinking win-win (mutual benefit) has proved to be the best attitude for developing healthy relation with a customer for as long time as you need. Win-win attitude leads to high profit for reasonably long time. Generally, win-win relation is hard to build, especially when money comes into play, you should learn to dance on two high wires First, DONOT cannibalize your customer; second, DONOT sacrifice yourself.
Achieving mutual benefit is closely related to the pricing model, as some pricing models maximizes the benefit both sides and keep them balanced while other models run the risk of loosing the balance. Here are the models I have used, as usual please share your experiences through comments.
1. Project based pricing and/or bidding.
Simply, customer communicates a set of requirements to you. You decide on price—based on experience and assessment of the project—possibly a price negotiation takes place to the final project and price acceptance or refusal. As simple as it gets, yet as hard to come up with a balanced win-win formula as it could be.
a) Price/workload estimation is largely affected by the experience of both sides (you and your customer).
b) The deep programmer inside of you always say 'Hay I have done this before' which deludes you from the well known lesson *each project has it is own caveats*
c) Software development inherent bug generation. Of course you cannot build a bug free system, and how twisted the bugs are (or will be due to some software update during project development) is out of your hands.
These factors are central in the overpricing (usually you), underestimation (usually customer) or vice versa that leads to imbalanced price/workload hence a difficult mutual benefit target. What makes things worst, customer running on tight budget or you bidding with other competitors. Many online business sites (www.rentacoder.com) use the bidding system; which deflects the balance for the customer favor, so I don't recommend using this model for large projects posted there, my experience tells me; you will not have a fair balance.
Compared to other models, I can argue of the low efficiency of this model. Yet you can or should use it in some well known cases
a) New customer; usually you will not have what it takes to convince him of other models. So you will use this model as a trust builder.
b) The project is relatively small – around 20 man/hour – so estimation should be accurate to %95.
c) You are building your profile on some freelancing websites, so you don't bother some loses for the possible gains (yes I did this myself).
2. Hourly based pricing
Three words, yet very hard to attain. This model requires a hell of trust between you and the customer. It also needs open minded customer, with willingness to conduct the business to the end—not just building a prototypes (for toy projects customers you would better detect them and fire them quite early, they are not going to appreciate your hard work).
First, you have to discuss the idea with your customer. S/he might be suspicious at first so you have to sound convincing, you can suggest trying it out for a week and see how you will do (I hardly pass the 80 hours a week).
Second, you have to count the hours you have worked. Forget about looking at your OS clock, and write it down, believe me you will be cheating yourself and your customer. I suggest www.allnetic.com – this is no ad – the program looks ugly, has some quirks but does an excellent job counting accurately to the second.
This is the best model in terms of maximizing the mutual benefit between you and your customer. Not just win-win that is boasted but also the personal relation which might grant you new projects from the customer – actually the customers I have worked with in hour rate always been a returning customers. Yet there are factors that you should be aware of.
a) Your expertise in the project you undergo is the main gauge for your hour rate price; so don't ask for high rates for projects you are still beginner with just because you are expertise in other projects not related to the customer.
b) The customer should be of the type appreciating quality, some don't even know how to assess quality.
c) The customer should have some technical background so he can appreciate the hardships you might undergo; which is converted to more worked hours for some task. Also, you need to warn him for such tasks, he might not be welling to invest that much time -> money for this specific design and may use a work around design to lower cost.
3. Salary based Pricing
I am not sure if this is a method for software freelancers, but I thought to use it a couple of times and I don't mind if some customer puts good terms on my table. The problem with this approach is that you will have to commit certain hours a month, which is ok, while the customer will be committed to keep you busy to lower his looses because of your idle states. So this model plays in your favor and will affect the mutual benefit largely especially for unwary customers, whom you might lose at the end. This model main advantage for the customer is that s/he will have your full attention in certain times a day and you will have to comply to requests instantly as if you are setting next room. This might be important for customers preparing for launch or having big customers base that they are serving. Thus, I suggest before using this model that you discuss all the implications with the customer.
So what do you think of these 3 models, do you have experience with other models for software freelancing?
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'my' ways to get paid for software freelancing
These days the business of software freelancing is flourishing. This is regarded to the advent of the internet in many countries worldwide. Now you can reach a professional software developer overseas at much reduced cost, or find an entrepreneur in a niche industry that happen to be your profession. This blog focus is on software freelancing from – somehow – successful software freelancer.
I remember the first question asked when I decided to get into freelancing and leave the cozy employee suite "How am I get paid", of course software development is a dear activity, but professionals are those who get paid for their work. Since this was the first question I thought it will make good first article.
1. iKobo (Monthly around $1,000 USD), limitation of payment processors, specially those like iKobo and Moneybookers (for Europeans), is the monthly transfer limits (send and/or receive). Which starts for iKobo with $500 USD, of course you can increase limits but it takes some lengthy procedures. iKobo sends the payee an ATM card to be used for money withdrawal only, no purchasing with that card allowed. iKobo charges both parties of the transaction, payer is charged $5 + %3 and receiver is charged monthly $.99 USD plus $1.99 for each money withdrawal. Also there is the problem of exchange rates which might not be exactly what you find in your local newspaper (a policy of Visa itself not iKobo). So in a nutshell, iKobo is fine with limit around $1,000 USD in countries with many ATMs. My rating to this services is excellent (didn't have any problems for nearly 1+ year).
2. Wire Transfer (Monthly around $1,500 USD), this is optimal method in terms of very low overhead (around $25 to $50 per wire). Problem is long delay (big international banks like HSBC doesn't suffer this delay much) and the need for high level of *trust* between both parties when they are offshore with loose contracts, which for new freelancers is a target to be nailed down in first place – <extend>building trust </extend>.
3. Western Union, this is the worst transfer method that you may use, charges are very high at low ends and low at high ends (or this is how it goes in Egypt, how about your country?). Transfer usually takes around 3 days, further more based on some reports (InformationClearingHouse – I think) if your name is like Mohamed it will be delayed much for the war on terror.
There are many payment processors out there to name but a few CCNow, 2Checkout, PayPal, ProPay, Authorize.net Moneybookers. So to make a good choice 3 points you need to consider:
1. Is it working in the countries of both parties, chances that one service is not working in your country, like PayPal is not working in Egypt?
2. Charges at both sides, and it is a good practice to decide who of both parties will pay these charges, you may compensate your entrepreneur for charges s/he suffers.
3. How fast you will get hands on cash.
What payment processors did you use and prefer and why or what's your experience with these three methods, would like to hear you back.
- Nader Soliman
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