I hope everyone is having a great week writing and expanding your freelance client list. One great source for adding to that list is the company I’m reviewing here. DoNanza is a fantastic opportunity for freelancers of all persuasions but especially for writers.
DoNanza is one of those sites that will give you back what you put into it and then some. If you understand and work the site you can make a great many contacts as well as land some fantastic writing assignments. This is a site where top paying clients are plentiful. Be ready to start making a nice income here. I know some people who make $2,000 a month using Donanza, and another person I know makes over $5,000 a month.
What is DoNanza?
DoNanza has been around for a while and is aggressively working to establish itself as the top site on the Internet for freelancers looking for work. It’s doing a great job at promoting both itself and it’s freelancers, which it lists as its primary goal. DoNanza wants you to succeed because if you are successful then so are they.
DoNanza is a freelance platform that serves a dual purpose. It allows freelancers to advertise their services and it also has a jobs board. It’s a one stop shopping for both freelancers and those looking to hire them.
More than one stop shopping; DoNanza actively works to find you more business. This is done through a job board, a job search engine and even through advertising your services if you have a premium account. No other writing site that I’ve come across works as hard as this one to lead you to top paying long term clients.
Getting Started with DoNanza
This is one of the easy sites to set yourself up on quickly. You simply create an account at DoNanza.com. From there you have the choice of using a basic or premium account. Start with the basic account until you are familiar with the site and then you can make the decision about paying for more features and access.
As soon as you create your account, you will be automatically taken to a page that allows you to select the kinds of freelance jobs you want. There are options for freelancers outside the field of writing and each specialty within the writing field has an option. You can also select language options here if you speak more than one language. This allows you to tap into the wellspring of foreign language jobs. You can change these selections at any time.
The purpose of selecting the various options here is so that DoNanza can send you an email informing you of new job opportunities in these areas. You will be sent only one email per day and all compatible jobs will be listed in the email. You can change the email option to be notified immediately when a job fitting your skills is posted.
Your Dashboard
After creating your account you will be taken to your Dashboard. The Dashboard has your profile and a list of the current jobs available in your specified categories. Click on the edit button to create your profile.
You can link your profile to your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. You will also want to add a photo or your brand logo here. Then fill in a catchy tagline and the ‘about me’ section to complete the profile.
You will probably notice that at the top of your profile it lists several of your writing specialties. You can change which ones are most prominently listed. You will also want to be sure that you are listed in each category.
Many of the categories have subcategories so be sure to check each one individually. You can be as specific or as general as you like with this. If your skills are wide ranging in a particular area, leave it general. If there are specific to one aspect, say Travel writing but only in Japan, then you might want to be more specific.
Being Hired Through DoNanza
There are two ways to get work through the DoNanza site: Being hired directly and through the Job Finder board. Direct hiring is when a client sees your profile and hires you through the DoNanza site. When the job is complete, you get paid.
The Job Finder Board
The DoNanza Job Finder board is one of the best in the business. Instead of you spending a lot of time searching for writing gigs, DoNanza has done it for you. They scour the Internet constantly to bring you jobs in every writing area as well as at every skill level. When you find a job that looks good, click on it and hit the apply button. Because these jobs are not listed through DoNanza, they will each have their own criteria and payment methods.
One huge benefit of the Job Board is your ability to find new clients as well as new places to search for clients. It’s not unusual for writers to write for a client once and then have the client keep contacting them with more work.
One word of caution here: DoNanza lists thousands of fantastic writing jobs a day. That said, they do not control the job. You are responsible for contacting the client, arranging payment and getting paid. Much of this is pure freelance; DoNanza is just helping you find clients. However, if you should have a problem, notify DoNanza. While they can do nothing to help you, they can blacklist bad clients. I’ve never actually known anyone who had a problem with a client, which is an incredible testimony to how good DoNanza is at keeping the bad clients out of their system.
Searching for Jobs
The search function on DoNanza is about as close to perfect as I have found on any website. You can set up a specific search to find new jobs and even save that search as an RSS feed. Just click the RSS icon at the top of the search and you’ll immediately start getting the jobs that fit the search criteria through via RSS.
Premium Account
The benefits of a premium account include more jobs on the job board as well as more advertising of your profile. It can be quite lucrative to have your profile as one of those promoted on the site as this puts you right in front of potential clients.
A premium account also means that you will have faster access to more jobs on the jobs board. While I know several people who are making $2000 or more a month with the basic account, I also know several people who make more than $5000 a month using a premium account. I generally suggest that people get used to the site on their basic account and then switch to a premium account if the basic one is working for them.
One of the best benefits to the premium account is the 1 click work. Once you have registered for your premium account, DoNanza starts advertising your services all over the Internet. You will be listed on Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. This will help generate private leads that are not available to anyone else. Introducing you to clients in this way makes it possible to immediately get work and start a long term relationship with top paying clients.
Getting Paid
There are actually a few ways to get paid with DoNanza. Freelancers need to understand that the jobs offered on the Job Board are not listed on or paid through DoNanza. You are contracting with those clients directly. DoNanza gets nothing from those jobs and have nothing to do with them beyond the initial listing. Because of this, you will be following the payment settings and rules that either you make with the clients directly or with a specific site that the job is listed through.
When you have been directly hired through DoNanza then you can choose from several payment options including checks as well as Paypal.
A Unique Additional Income Stream
If you have a website you can even sign up and put the DoNanza jobs board on your own website. You get a commission based on several criteria including people who join DoNanza, new jobs offered via your website and when freelancers get jobs via the job board on your site. This can add up to a nice amount of additional income.
DoNanza Tips
- Join DoNanza on Twitter. There are several specific Twitter feeds based on the specific type of work you are trying to find. The ones for writers are:
- SEO – @dnzSEO
- Writing – @dnzWriting
- Blog Writing – @BlogWriting
The Twitter feeds will keep you updated with any news or information pertaining to the writing aspects of DoNanza. This is also a great way to network with other freelancers.
- Put together good searches on the job board and save them as RSS feeds. This is an unbelievably fast and easy way to have a constant source of new work on a daily basis. You can tweak the search until you have it sending you exactly what you are looking for in several categories.
- Seriously consider the premium account. While I rarely suggest that people upgrade on writing sites, this is an exception because it is actually one that is actively advertising your writing services.
That’s the lowdown on DoNanza. This is a great company to use for finding plenty of freelance writing work and meeting clients for long term working relationships. Try it out for a week or two before making a decision on whether or not to go premium and whether or not to stay.
Happy Writing!