Over the years I have dabbled in all kinds of side hustle ideas, but freelance writing has always been one of my favourites. I love reading and writing, it’s been a passion of mine since I was a child and the realisation that I could monetise it was life changing.
Unfortunately, some bad careers advise deterred me from studying it at university, but finding a website that helped me to professionalise my writing was vital.
I’ve used People Per Hour on-and-off for several years, and overall, it’s a fairly good source of income.
In this blog post, I’m going to share some tips, tricks and advise for using the website. And, more importantly, how to land your very first task.
What is People Per Hour?
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
What kind of skills sell?
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
How do I join?
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
Watch for scams
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
The qualification period
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
Sample pitch for People Per Hour jobs
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
Tips to help you get started…
This tip relates to the signing up process and I’m sure People Per Hour won’t appreciate me saying this, but what the heck. When you first join you are given two choices, you can either wait up to seven days for your profile to be approved OR you can pay for it to be sped up.
To date, I have had several People Per Hour accounts, I’ve never paid the upgrade fee and I have always had my account opened within 3-4 hours. And that’s on the worst-case end of the spectrum. In most cases, it’s taken less than 2 hours for it all to be approved.
I would suggest NOT paying for the upgraded application process because it doesn’t feel as if it is worth the money.
To find work on People Per Hour, freelancers have to submit a bid in response to postings. When you’re first starting out – particularly if you’re entirely new to the industry – it can be tricky to know what to charge.
When it comes to People Per Hour, it can be beneficial to know roughly where other people’s bids lending are. And I have a tip for how you can do this.
Click on any job page and scroll to the bidding part. There you will see a large box where you can type your bid information, underneath there are boxes that will contain a currently symbol.
In the box directly under the headline ‘AMOUNT’, type the number one. An orange triangle will appear alongside the box directly beneath it, the one that reads TOTAL. Click on the triangle and it will tell you the average amount that other freelancers are quoting.
This is the usually the lowest amount that you can offer because People Per Hour is trying to avoid the undercutting of other freelancers. And it’s helpful because it gives you an idea of what you should be charging.
In my experience, there comes a point in time when bidding on certain jobs becomes pointless. The reason? The sheer number of people who have bid on the job.
I don’t bid on any jobs that have over 10 existing bids, because I very rarely secure those opportunities. When jobs reach this kind of number, I think a kind of fatigue sets in and often users tend to select proposals that came in earlier in the process.
That’s not a rule, of course, but it’s just something that has tended to be correct for me. Don’t forget that you only get 15 credits a month on your basic profile and once they’re gone, you then must purchase even more. When you’re first starting out, you don’t want to be wasting money on something that might not be for you anyway.
Use the credits that you have wisely and personally, I would suggest trying to be one of the first to bid.
How do you do this?
Tip one. Always have the People Per Hour website open because you’ll receive an invite for projects that are suited to your skillset. When you are, People Per Hour well send you a notification on the website and by email. However, the email tends to be rather slow and oftentimes the posted job already has 10-20 listings at that point. If you click on the invite as soon as it pings on the website, you’re far more likely to be in the earlier batch of bidders.
Tip two. Refresh the website regularly. Personally, I tend to find most of my successful projects that way. I refresh the website every 30-40mins while I am at my desk and instantly bid for anything that comes through.
Tip three. Try to work within the time zones within which you are living. Speaking as someone who lives in the United Kingdom, I tend to have the website open and ready between 9am and 5pm. These are the hours within which most British businesses operate and it’s when most related jobs are posted.
