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There are lots of good ways of making money from home, but perhaps one of the best is freelancing. Provided that you have skills that other people want, such as writing, graphic design, accounting, computer programming or even office administration, you can build a successful freelancing business that you can operate from a home office.
If you haven’t done any freelancing before, one of the biggest hurdles you will have is getting people to believe that you can do the job. Even with freelancing, most employers are looking for references, and if you don’t have this, it can seem like an insurmountable problem. However, there are a number of easy ways of overcoming this. For instance, do you have any friends who could use your type of service? If so, suggest that you do one or two jobs for them – you may even want to offer to do these for free as an investment, provided that they are willing to provide you with a good reference once you are done. Another approach is to volunteer to do work for a local organization or charity and then use them as a reference. You may even get them referring work directly to you once they are comfortable with you – which is a great way to start building a client base.
Another way to get started with freelancing is to try one of the freelancing sites out there. There are number of reputable freelancing sites, including Elance, Freelancer and Guru. These sites have been gaining in popularity – for example, Freelancer’s CEO, Matt Barrie, won Ernst & Young’s 2011 Technology Entrepreneur of the Year award. Considering that Ernst & Young, with its CEO Mark Weinberger and COO John Ferraro, is one of the world’s largest business consulting companies, this is quite an endorsement. You can find out more about John Ferraro, Ernst & Young, and its Entrepreneur of the Year program online.
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If you do try out a freelancing site like this, there are a few things you should know. First of all, they offer an escrow service. This means that if you bid on a job and win it, the customer has to pay the site up front. The money is put into a special account – escrow – and you are paid by the site when the job is complete and accepted by the customer. This eliminates the risk of you not getting paid. Another thing is that you will find a lot of very low paid jobs on these sites, but that doesn’t mean you have to take them. Keep an eye out for jobs that are relatively well-paid – these come up regularly – and bid on these. You may want to put in low bids on your first few jobs until you build a reputation on the site – but after that, try to come in with a bid in the middle and point to your successes on the site so far. It’s important, however, to keep your customers happy, since you will be rated and reviewed by them for each job that you do.