Freelance to Work at Home

Freelance to Work at Home There are hundreds of freelance jobs you can find online. Some of them, such as IT programmer, web developer, web designer, product designer, label designer, medical transcription and copywriter require special skills. But some other jobs, such as data entry, data converter, book reviewer and bulk eMailer, are very simple to do. Basically, working freelance is the same as working at a regular job. The differences are that you can work at home, manage your own deadline and you are free to choose which jobs you like. The down side is that you have to hunt for the projects.

How to find a freelance job. Nowadays, there are many websites that act as marketplaces (places where buyer/project owner meet the freelancer). They usually charge 5—10 percent transaction fees. Three of the biggest marketplaces are elance, guru and rentacoder. Elance (www.enetsc.com/elance.htm) as the biggest marketplace has hundreds of new projects every month, their project price is the highest, and its membership fee is also the most expensive ($11 – $199 per month). Guru (www.guru.com) and rentacoder (www.rentacoder.com) charge lower membership fees but their project prices are lower than elance.

Some freelancers recommend sticking with employment sites like www.Craigslist.com, www.Careerbuilder.com and www.Monster.com. In the search box use keywords like virtual employee, freelance, virtual call center, work-at-home call center, or remote employee.

Risks for the freelancer.. Every business has its own risks. Working as a freelancer is no different. Here are some of those risks:

• Buyer disappears soon after you completed his project.


• Not every buyer is trustworthy. So please be careful if you meet a client who likes to change his project scopes, ask for the lowest price (but demands the best service) and keeps delaying to pay (even after you have completed the project). It is better if you ask them to pay 20—30 percent soon after you have completed 75—80 percent of the total project.


• Buyer cancels his project. This is a very common case. Usually it's because the buyer doesn't trust his freelancer anymore. Almost all of the buyers ask their freelancer to give progress report every week or even every three days. If they are unsatisfied with these reports, they can suddenly cancel their project. So please be careful.


• You never win any projects. You must understand that it's not easy to win a project. There is bloody competition out there, especially from the third world freelancer who likes to bid a very low price. If you don’t win projects and you have joined a “paid service” then you are not making any money and in fact you are losing money.

Writing Content for an Informational Website

Website owners will often hire writers to provide the text for their informational website. Sometimes they are “ghost writers” for the webmaster or they may be “guides” or “experts.” To qualify you must enjoy writing, have good grammar and spelling skills. You should be comfortable surfing the web, looking out constantly for writing job opportunities in forums, freelance sites or writers’ websites.

Go to http://beaguide.about.com/ where you’ll find opportunities to write articles or reviews in your area of expertise. Also try www.Chacha.com, a new search engine similar to Google and Yahoo, and click on “Become a Guide” for more information. At www.JustAnswer.com , users agree to pay for the answers to their questions. Guides are paid a percentage of the pre-negotiated price per answer and the number of accepted answers received. Go to “Become an Expert.”