What Skills Do You Possess?

First you must write down a list of your marketable skills. For example: Are you a fast and accurate typist? Are you great at designing logos? Are you a good website designer? These are just a few. Keeping in mind that you really need to know the ins and outs of the area you are marketing yourself in. For instance, I can design a website in Frontpage, I can throw some text on there, create a flash banner, put my links and text and even do some affiliate marketing. However, I am not experienced with creating an ecommerce site or even making sure the site is viewable in the different internet browsers. Therefore, I would not market myself as a website designer. If by chance I see someone wanting a simple website design then I don’t hesitate to offer my services.

Choose The Skill

After listing your marketable skills then you must do a self evaluation. During this evaluation you must decide what skills you are comfortable with selling. Once again you want to make sure that you can perform whatever skill you are selling on a professional basis. If you don’t provide a professional service then word quickly gets around. If you can type but hate typing, then by all means do not market your typing skills. Reason being that you want to perform work that you enjoy doing. Only by doing this will you ensure that you provide your clients with a top notch job.

Prepare The Marketing

Now that you have chosen your skill, you must now decide how and where you are going to market yourself. There are quite a few freelance sites available on the internet. One of the main ones is Craig’s List. There is a service section that you can usually post your services for free. There is another called Elance. Elance does charge you a fee to join and allows you to bid on a number of jobs depending upon your membership level. Another great one is Odesk. Odesk is a great freelance site that is free to join, you do pay a portion of your commission to Odesk upon completion of the job. The more information you provide on your profile, the more jobs you can bid on. You are also able to take test to display your knowledge to buyers who are looking for freelancers. Don’t worry if you don’t pass a test with flying colors. You have the option to not display the results. There are many sites available and these are just a few.

Get The Job And Get Paid

Once you are chosen to perform a job you must ensure that you are going to get paid once the work is completed. Elance and Odesk have processes in place to ensure this happens. However, in some cases the buyer may have the choice not to put the money into escrow. This opens you up to the possibility of not getting paid. For this reason sometimes it is wise to ask for a portion upfront with the remainder to be paid at the time the job is completed.

Get The Feedback

This is a very important step. On these freelance sites they let people you have completed jobs for rate you. (All the more reason to do a professional job.) When you finish the job make sure they rate you. The more great ratings you have the more jobs you will get.