Prepare for your Skilled Independent Visa 175 application

Fillout the online form weeks or months ahead before your preferred lodgement date. (Link)

Make sure all information are correct. To be very sure, ask a person you trust to review your entries.

From the checklist, prepare the necessary documents that you need to submit as attachment. Make sure non-colored official documents are properly certified. Scan these documents and name them accordingly.  This link should show you how to attach documents to an online application.

One thing I learned by doing, is that there's always a tricky part: First, be careful when you declare both migrating and nonmigrating dependents. If you do, additional requirements will be asked from them like police and birth certificates, etc, so be careful.  Second, you will be required to declare countries where you and your dependents have stayed for at least 12 months or more.  The 12 months can be made up of shorter periods.  As such, if you or your dependents have stayed for more than 12 months in a country, a police certificate shall be required.  See link on how to claim character and penal requirements.

After lodging my application online, I was surprised that there are additional requirements not on the checklist.  Like the need for the scanned page of the applicant's passport biopage. In the checklist, this will be only needed if a birth certificate is not available. The applicant's passport sized photo is required as well. Again' not on the checklist and surprised me, good thing I found one in my files.  If you have a picture kept in your computer but not sized correctly, idphoto4you.com can resize a picture based on passport size for any country.. 

Prepare a credit card with sufficient balance. A 175 visa costs 2960 AUD as of this writing, around 127k pesos through a Philippine bank.  Get the updated rates here.

When submitting your application online. Click the submit button once only. Pressing it several times might double or triple the application as with the charge of 2960 AUD. So be careful.

Always, always read the form and follow instructions. If things are not clear, you can always contact the department. (How to contact the department)