Freelancing is a great way to work from home. Freelancers do anything from writing to graphic design to computer programming. They are often hired by businesses (small and large) for a particular project.
The small business owner gets his website up and running, or his press release written without having to create a new position in his company to get the job done.
The Freelancer gets to do whatthey love in an enviroment that suits thme best. The big question is how do the business owner and freelancer find each other? They do it through one of the freelance sites below.
On all five of these sites projects are posted and freelancers bid on how much they would charge for the work. It is up to the company / person posting the job to choose which freelancer they would like to work with.
The following are five great websites that I have found for freelance work. This is for mostly programming/development, which includes PHP and many other languages.
Freelancer is good place to find small to mid-sized projects for earning extra money. It also offers a rating system which can hurt or help you depending on your work. It is free for the buyer to post a project on freelancer.com. The successful freelance bidder is charged $5 USD for being accepted for a project, and a further $1 for withdrawing funds to PayPal. Its an Australian company with over 1,00,000 verified users.
Odesk is a little bit different than the rest of the sites listed here. Instead of bidding on projects, you bid on hours. Employers can list the amount of hours/week and # of weeks they need out of a potential freelancer.
Guru is another biggest freelancing site, with more than 1,00,000+ freelancers, Guru boasts of patent pending rating system which provides proper rating. It also boasts of escrow integration which is obviously an added + for both providors and jobposters. This site also has both free and premium membership based on categories of work which you’re willing to do. This is also one of the place you must try.
Rentacoder is good place to find small to mid-sized projects for earning extra money. It also offers a rating system which can hurt or help you depending on your work.
Craigslist is great because there is no barrier to entry for either the employer or the potential freelancer/employee (it is also among the top sites on the Internet). This can also be a detriment because anyone with a computer can post a job listing.
Most of these types of sites will only appeal to people living in third world countries.
If you take odesk as an example, most people there are willing to bid on work which pays somewhere between $2 and $10 per hour. Which makes it totally impossible for skilled people in more advanced countries to compete.
Not to mention the potential damage to your reputation, once you get “recognised” as one of these cheapskate designers, developers, testers, etc.