Announcing PeoplePerHour’s Female Freelancer of the Year on International Women’s Day
International Women’s Day
Every year on March 8th, the world celebrates International Women’s Day. IWD is a day of significance, embedded into the history books, with the first celebrations happening in 1911 across Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. IWD isn’t country-specific and has no political agenda. It’s a day that calls for action to accelerate gender parity around the world, and for the global community to celebrate the social, economic and cultural achievements of women everywhere.
PeoplePerHour’s Female Freelancer of the Year, 2019
You couldn’t have failed to notice the hive of activity happening at PeoplePerHour HQ during February, as we threw open the voting for our very first Female Freelancer of the Year competition. What better way to celebrate International Women’s Day than to honour the incredible women that work tirelessly on their own businesses and careers via the PeoplePerHour platform?
These amazing women are truly living their work dreams!
With huge congratulations and thanks to our nominees: Anna, Bushra, Karin, Shelley, Maria and Kelly — it really was a race to the finish line!
However, there can only be one winner.
The title of PeoplePerHour’s Female Freelancer of the Year for 2019 goes to:
Anna Kryzhanivska!
“We are incredibly lucky to have an abundance of talented female freelancers on the PeoplePerHour platform. I’m grateful that we have the opportunity to celebrate this talent today on International Women’s Day. After following our very first Female Freelancer of the Year campaign keenly, I want to say a huge congratulations to Anna and also to all of our nominees. Individually, they have all stood out in their fields, and are perfect examples of how you can live your work dream through PeoplePerHour!”
Xenios Thrasyvoulou, CEO, PeoplePerHour
We caught up with Anna to find out more about how she found success on PeoplePerHour.
What does winning the PeoplePerHour Female Freelancer of the Year competition mean to you?
Being chosen as the Female Freelancer of the Year is the biggest proof that hard work always pays off. This competition has also shown me how much people really care about me — they voted and asked their friends, family and colleagues to support me. Even my buyers involved all their friends to support their favourite freelancer.
I’m so thankful to everyone who supported me!
What is it that you do/what services or products do you provide as a freelancer?
I work as a freelancer and a team lead. A few years ago I established a small team of retouchers and cutout specialists so we could handle bigger tasks and provide our service to corporate clients as well as to individuals.
The main service I provide is photo editing, retouching and cutouts. The scope of tasks doesn’t matter, I accept private tasks like editing of a selfie and I also provide ongoing retouching support for a big clothing brand with thousands of photos, four times a year.
Another thing I can help to do is simple graphic design for Facebook covers, business cards, Instagram and Facebook ad banners. And, the most unexpected service I can provide in addition to my main specialty, is translation between English, Ukrainian and Russian as I have a professional translator on my team.
How did you get started as a freelancer?
One day I was searching for a remote job in my country but didn’t find anything attractive, so tried googling internationally and found lots of freelancing platforms. I registered everywhere but decided to focus on PeoplePerhour and put all my efforts into building a brilliant profile here.
What was your previous job before freelancing? Why did you leave it?
I’m quite lucky as I have never had a boss, so my first job was also freelance. I started my career when I was 16 and I worked as a freelance photographer locally for seven years before switching to remote work on PeoplePerHour.
What does a typical working day look like for you?
Every day is different, so I don’t have strict scripts. But in general, if it’s a working day, I’m going to check my inbox in the morning and sort it out depending on priority. Then I check my working to-do list. Then I assign tasks for everyone in my team. I then open my Photoshop and start working!
When the working day is over, I fill in progress tables and turn my computer off. By the way, I prefer old-school paper notebooks instead of digital task tracking! And of course, I communicate with buyers all the time if I’m not occupied with a very urgent task.
What is the strangest freelance assignment that you’ve ever been asked to do?
I can’t share precise details of most tasks I receive as I chose to protect the privacy of all my clients, but there still were some weird requests. For example, someone sent a picture to be edited like changing the clothes on a model, and after that, I received a revision request to change clothes again. The strange thing was that the client asked to bring clothes back to original and after I did this, he was very happy and said that the job was completed to his satisfaction.
I’ve also received some job offers asking to fake ID documents, bills and college marks. I decline and report all of these.
What has been your favourite moment as a freelancer so far?
Obviously freedom! Freedom and feeling that everything I do mostly depends on me and my own decisions. I’m a very organized and responsible person, and this maximizes my efficiency in freelancing.
Another thing I enjoy is the way clients’ treat me. Most of my buyers talk to me as to a professional and expert so I feel their respect. This helps me to build a strong and friendly business relationship. There are some unpleasant exceptions, but most of the people I communicate with were very nice and polite.
Do you think you have come across any barriers in your career because you’re a female freelancer?
Honestly, I don’t think so. I can’t remember any buyers at PeoplePerHour treating me worse just because I’m a woman.
What does your freelance future hold? Where would you like to take your freelance career?
My main professional goal is to scale my business, to establish an additional team, and to win more projects. I would really like to give business opportunities to even more people and to make more buyers or business owners happy with my services.
If you could give one piece of advice to a new freelancer on PeoplePerHour, what would it be?
There is more than one piece of advice so I’ll share three of them: be polite, be patient, be honest.
Communication is half of success. You must be polite and responsive, no one wants to deal with a rude person, right?
You must be patient as business owners are really busy people, plus they probably don’t have enough knowledge about your field so they can miss some brief details. They can also reply later than you expect, and they can ask for more revisions than you think. If some things are obvious to you it doesn’t mean they are obvious to your buyer.
You must be honest as a buyer will never come back to a freelancer who was caught out on lies or delivered a low-quality project while promising the highest results. It means that you shouldn’t take the task you are unable to handle well, and if something happens in process, just tell your client, explain what’s happening so they are aware and won’t be negatively surprised later.
How did you achieve your leaderboard status on PeoplePerHour?
There are four key things that worked out in my own PeoplePerHour story: profile, proposal writing, communication, and quality.
You need to:
- Make your profile look good and fill out as much as possible, providing maximum information about you, your service and your experience.
- Write high-quality proposals.
- Be helpful and polite in communication.
- Deliver your tasks with high quality to get to the TOP.
It took me around two months to win the first small job, then a few more months to reach the CERT 5, and about six more months to get to the TOP. Of course, you have to work hard to keep your TOP rank.
What’s your spirit animal and how does this suit your personality?
I would recommend to never give up. Sometimes you can be met with negativity, even in this friendly community. You might face some difficulties, barriers and your own mistakes but don’t give up. There are lots of good things happening, and hard work always pays off!
We wish Anna and all of our nominees every future success in their freelance careers.
This year’s theme for International Women’s Day is ‘Balance for Better’; building a gender-balanced world. You can find out more, and how to get involved on the International Women’s Day website.
