First of all, let me start with the how. To venture anywhere online for a job, you need to make sure you have all the basic requirements before you start. These things can be simple things like email or phone number or even a PayPal account. It is very important that you do this if you ever want to get a job, get paid and receive your money wherever you are in the world.
I have written down some simple steps here that can help you get started, even if you are a newbie. If you are new to online freelancing, be sure to read what I have explained below. These things you should have in place before you begin your search.
Email address to send and receive emails
You need to have an email address, having two may be better. At least have one in Gmail (Google Gmail) and have the other in Yahoo (Yahoo Mail). They are all free to set up or sign up. But if you have any problem doing this because somehow your internet skill is very low, I will advise you to go to any cafe around you and ask the operator for help. However, most will ask you for a small fee to do so.
Open a PAYPAL account
PayPal is a payment solution, it is an account you can have online to receive and pay money to people online and it is the most acceptable and fastest way to get paid for work done online. It is also free to sign up with them. It is important that you also note that some of these networks can also pay via check (cheque). An alternative to PayPal is AlertPay. PayPal is the most acceptable solution but they still have some problems and one of them is that they don’t accept people in some countries to use their services. Nigeria is one of those countries.
The way to find out if your country is not blacklisted is to go to their site at http://www.paypal.com and check the list of blacklisted countries. Now if you have done that and it happens that your country gets blacklisted. So do this: contact me through my email, I can help you. Feel free to contact me if you live in one of those countries and you really need PayPal. My email is: danlord4u-at-yahoo.com (please replace with @ when you email me).
have a phone line
Although this is optional for a beginner, however, it is a very important asset if you want to work as a professional online freelancer. It makes it much easier for your clients to contact you when they need new work done quickly.
The ability and zeal to work.
By skill I mean both communication skills and experience in the type of job(s) you feel comfortable doing. You must be able to communicate in English both verbally and in writing.
If you have all this and much more or let’s say you have number 1 and number 4, you’re good to go. Now that you want to start earning money online as a freelancer, the next thing you need to do is sign up for the list of freelance jobs/service provider websites below. Try as much as possible to read all of their policies, their rules and regulations, their pros and cons. Once you get the hang of them, go ahead and sign up with them. Some of them will require you to undergo a short test before you are allowed to start bidding for jobs on their network. Once you’re familiar with all of that, go ahead and start bidding.
Below is a list of the best freelance job sites online. These are places where you can do jobs online and get paid. The list is short, but if you want more, go to search engines like Google, Yahoo, Ask, MSN and type in the keyword: freelance jobs, then click search. You will get many of them. While some of the freelance job providers will ask you to pay a small fee to upgrade your account so you can have full access to all your jobs, most will not ask you to pay before signing up.
– eLance.com
– Freelancer.com
– RentACoder.com
