I am a new Sketchup enthusiast with very limited skills and realize the best way to proceed on my projects is find someone who I can hire to produce sketches. Right now my needs are architectural rendering sketches. There must forums or websites that lists job offerings. Can you folks at the bar share some information about this with me? Any tips that you can give on protocol and/or guidelines when offering a small job?
Thanks ~
There is a Commercial and Collaboration forum here in the Community which would be a good place to post your request. Give as much info as possible about the project and provide your contact information. You’ll surely hear from a number of members.
You can hire freelancers or open small ‘contests’ for your job via this website: www.freelancer.com
Check ‘how it works’ section for more info. (Note that they take commission -of course-)
Advantage of using this kind of websites as ‘middleman’ is that it protects both you and freelancer (with milestone payments etc.). Also you don’t pay/release money unless you’re satisfied with the work.
I haven’t used it much since payment methods for my country is not quite suitable but maybe it works for you.
I think @DaveR’s suggestion is going to be your best bet because most participants in this Community are well grounded in SU.
You may want to require a proposal to document the exact services being offered so there is no doubt about what is being agreed to, including cost & schedule for deliverables. Also, it would be wise to establish a PayPal (or equivalant) account to keep the process of paying invoices clean and simple. Because the contract would involve only the consultant and you, no commission fees would exist. The invoice account can be set up so that the recipient of the payment covers the nominal service fee…usually this is much less than standard commission rates.
I have used this process for soliciting work and it has always been a positive experience.
Dave, I checked out the CandC forum. That looks good. In writing my request, do you recommend uploading jpg images to the forum, which will serve to illustrate what I am looking for, or should I hold off and send those images to only those that are interested?
Thank you ~
I would suggest uploading whatever you can. Since this is a visual thing, images would be great. Whatever you can supply that will give folks an idea of what you are looking to get will be helpful.
JV- I appreciate your suggestions for nailing down the particulars to the agreement. Are there any “boiler plate” type agreement models that the agreement could be based upon so that all the pertinent points are included?
Because the contract would involve only the consultant and you, no commission fees would exist.<
Could you clarify under what conditions there could be commission fees?
The invoice account can be set up so that the recipient of the payment covers the nominal service fee…usually this is much less than standard commission rates.<
What nominal service fee are you referring to? Is this the Paypal fee? I am not familiar with doing personal transactions, just using it for online purchases, etc.
Though I haven’t used it yet, I signed up with something called POPmoney with my bank that allows me to pay transactions by sending to a phone or email address. I don’t believe there are any fees associated with this payment system.
Your reply has been really helpful. Thank you.
filibis, I visited the freelancer website. Yes, very interesting. Though it’s not specific for CAD, architectural drawing, Sketchup- I suppose it could yield results. I do like the format that has the buyer/seller protocols all in place. That is a real advantage.
I haven’t used it much since payment methods for my country is not quite suitable . . . <
If that means the currency cannot be converted by the freelancer website, there should be a solution that would allow payment to a source that could exchange the currency, perhaps like PayPal or similar.
Thanks for your reply. I appreciate it.
Typically a proposal for providing services and a contract to perform services are submitted by the consultant for a client’s review. I am now semi-retired (architects rarely retire completely). I usually write my own contracts (having the past experience of using agreements developed under the hand of my attorney). I will try to locate a feasible example of a boilerplate agreement for professional services online or, failing that attempt, I would be willing to send one of my standard agreement forms as an example via PM. If you want me to do this, just send me a Private Message including your personal or business email with that request.
The fee for using the PayPal service was being referred to. In my case as the consultant, I would invoice clients through PayPal and a small percentage of the invoice amount was retained by PayPal and the balance was electronically transferred to my bank account. My records indicate that I have never expended more than $15.00 USD to PayPal and the individual invoices have maxed out at about $3,500.00 USD. You should confirm the precise fees on the PayPal website. There are other providers offering a similar service at reasonable rates as well.
This is a small job; a couple of pencil-type sketches is what I am looking for. Scaling need not be perfect. It’s for a website that I am building to illustrate what could be done with a rundown house in need of a few architectural improvements .
A simple agreement that concisely covers all of the pertinent points is all that I need. If your standard agreement would cover that, I would be most grateful for you to send it.
I have to run now but later will figure out how the Private Message thing works.
Thank you, jv-
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