Tag: freelancer

Real Ways To Earn Money Online

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Are you looking for real ways to earn money online? Working from home is a great opportunity for every mom, whether you choose it as your part-time or full-time job. The benefits in my work includes a chance to earn a greater income, freedom to express my work habits and more importantly, manageable time to between my work and family.

At first, it will be difficult to find a promising web career that fits your ability and skills. But that’s the thing, you must focus on your strengths and expertise. This is the reason why I have shared here the different means in making money through the use of Internet; to help everyone find the niche that they belong to and grow their online careers from home.

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Here are the examples of real ways to earn money online:

IT Specialists. This career consists of information and technology professionals such as computer software engineers, specialists, programmers, analyst, administers, designers and many more. It requires specific IT knowledge and skills in order to work as a freelancer. You have the option to work with an agency or company – as long as they operate online. After all, the goal here is to build your career from home. In this category, the level of knowledge and skills about the Internet and all the technical aspects of it is very important. If you are proficient in the field of Information Technology, then you can find work in this niche.

Blogger/writer. Freelance blogging and writing belong in the same category. In this job, you must have the ability and skills in writing and communicating to readers through text. You can look for a specific client who is seeking for a blogger/writer for his/her business. Nowadays, many sites require a writer to build up their content. Just like a window display will attract customers in a mall boutique, the content in a website will encourage visitors to explore the business even further. If you are passionate in writing (like me!) and you want to earn more money, then I highly encourage you to pursue this online career.

SEO Specialist. Search engine optimization is another way to earn more income through the Net. The whole idea is to make sure the website you are working on will rank high in major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. In this field, you must be knowledgeable in linkbuilding, social media marketing, content writing, video submission, bookmarking, etc. The only requirement for this strategy is to follow the portal updates like Google Update, to remain on the top of the (SERP) Search Engine Results Page. There are many agencies or companies that contracts SEO jobs for the freelancers and even for the SEO companies.

Tutors/Teachers/Translators. In this work, the demand is to be an expert on different languages, especially in English, which is a common language in most countries. Tutorial and teaching language is possible through services like Skype. In translation, you must be knowledgeable of one or more languages to translate audio files or documents of your customer. Business companies and even individual students from other countries hire tutors and teachers who work remotely from home.

Customer Service Support. Today, business companies hire customer service representatives to help handle direct customer relationships. You can be a freelance customer service representative if you have the experience in the field. You can remotely provide customer service support for clients and their business products and services. This work can transpire through phone calls, emails and live chats. You have to be equipped with the necessary data of the website and the products of services being offered. If you are a great communicator, have a charming personality and blessed with superhuman patience (for irate customers!) then this is a great career opportunity for you.

Anywhere in the world wide web, you can search for real ways to earn money online. But, always remember that there are many scammers in the net who are looking for victims. Some of them will just leave without giving payments or exploit your skills for their own profit. If you don’t want that to happen, you need to be wise and smart. References such as blogs, articles and discussion forums are examples of citations for the information about scammers.

I hope that this list of professions will help you build up your work from home career.

Important Qualities of a Successful Writer Part 2: Flexibility

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In part one of this article series, we talked about how your stamina plays an important role in your freelancing career. Even if you are just sitting in front of your laptop and working your fingers to type your ideas, you need to physically command yourself to be in top writing form when you need to.

Now that we’ve talked about that let us go on to the second trait that Rebecca Garland mentioned in her article.

Important Qualities of a Successful Writer Part 2 Flexibility

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The second trait that was mentioned is flexibility. She stated that this career changes over time. You need to be able to ride all those changes and be ready to adapt if you have to. I started with just my writing skills but now I can manage websites, publish articles, research data and upload graphs. I still have a lot of things to learn and I need to continue adding to my skills so that I have something new to offer clients. If you want to grow in this field, you need to grow your skills as well.

I can also say that this flexibility includes the type of niches that you will choose to write about. Freelance writing, especially online, is quite a competitive career to be in. You have to be flexible enough to be able to write about any niche – regardless if you believe in it or not. It’s not really a matter of how knowledgeable you are about it because you can always do your research. There was this time when I had to write about hypnosis – which is personally, I find to be quite absurd (no offense to those who have been helped by it). But I was pretty new and I wanted to grow my portfolio so I still took the job. That was a bit tough to accomplish – writing a piece that would convince others to believe in a topic when you don’t even believe in it yourself. But I did it anyway and just focused on the facts and did a lot of research about it. These are the times when your talent will really come into play.

Ms. Garland also mentioned being able to marketing your skills as a writer. Since you are a freelance writer, you are probably working alone. You need to advertise what you can do so clients will come to you. I have written an article about how you can market yourself as a writer. You may want to check it out here: How to Market Services Online.

Find out if you have both stamina and flexibility and you should have what you need to succeed in this career.

Best of luck!

Difference of Working at Home and in the Office

Difference of Working at Home and in the Office

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There is certainly a lot of differences in working at home and in the office.

Landing a 9-5 job after college is the most logical thing to aim for. Most graduates are aching to prove themselves in the real world. But truth of the matter is, not everyone is able to practice and apply what their courses were in college. There is one key difference unemployed and under-employed. Unemployed is not having a job at all. Underemployed is having a job but not exactly in connection with your college degree. These are real world scenarios because office jobs are coming in too far in between. And landing a job that is directly related to your degree makes it even more difficult.

Difference of Working at Home and in the Office

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Working from home, on the other hand, gives you the flexibility to choose the job you want to pursue. There are a lot of options to choose from. You can harness and improve your writing skills, dabble on your talent of putting together visual presentations. You can even make use of your ability in keeping everything in order and on track. The online possibilities are endless. The upside of this working scenario is that you get to work at your own time and pace. The more hours you put in, the more you get paid. You can also bring work with you wherever you go. Working from home also gives you the ability to be mobile. All you need is your laptop and an excellent internet connection and you’re all set! With the introduction of LTE technology, internet connections are at blazing speeds.

These are some of the key differences of getting a day job as against pursuing a career from home. Working from home offers more advantages so you can live a fuller life with more time for the things that matters most to you.

But at the end of the day, the choice solely depends on your personal preference. There are people built for working at home while others who thrive better working with others in an office environment.

What about you? How do you want to do your work?

Online Unemployment Part 2

Online Unemployment: Tips (Part 2)

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I always call my online job a real test of faith sometimes – at least when I am faced with online unemployment.

Of course I needed the earnings to help my husband support our way of living. So I needed a continuous job. However, given the instability of the arrangement between online employers and contractors, you can only hope that you get hired just after one lets go of you.

While it is a stressful situation to be in, this something that all freelancers – whether in the real world or online, should be prepared to face.

Online Unemployment Part 2

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3 Tips for Online Unemployment

So here are some tips that I have for people like me who rely on online freelancing jobs to get by financially.

1. Don’t Panic. This may be your first reaction and its natural. But try not to let it get to you. It’s not like you are fired. You probably just did a really good job that your employer ran out of things for you to do. I think this is practically the third time this happened to me. While it can be stressful, you need to be relaxed so you keep a clear head while applying. Which brings us to tip number 2.

2. Update your Profile. Time to update your profile with your latest achievements and endeavors. Since I have this blog now, applying seemed easier because I direct my employers to this site for a sample of my writing. At least they can also see what I have done with the site and check out what skills I have other than writing.

3. Choose your Employers Wisely. Though it may be tempting to jump from one contract to the other – don’t! I got into a situation once when I accepted the first employer that gave me an offer. It was actually a really crappy offer but I was so desperate for a job that I jumped on it. A few days later, a great employer came by offering me a job but I wasn’t available anymore. Don’t EVER be tempted to lower your rate just because you badly need a job.

One of the greatest lesson I learned is to trust my gut instinct. It lets me override my fears about online unemployment. Somehow and someway, I always get a job to replace what I have lost.

While I’d like to think that I am just truly blessed and fortunate, I also want to credit the job history and reputation that I have built for myself online. I keep it a  point to impress my employers so they give me a good feedback once our contract is over. It helps me land another job right after we part ways.

Online unemployment may be scary but think about it. You can use it as an ongoing challenge to always stay in your best behavior and to keep your skills honed. That is the only way you keep yourself a hot commodity for employers to come hire you immediately.

Top Outsourcing Sites - How to Choose

Top Outsourcing Sites – How to Choose

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I assume that you are researching on top outsourcing sites because you want to explore the possibility of earning from home. It really is something that you can venture into.

Well I have good news for you! There are several sites out there that can help you. Some of them cater to a particular profession, like writing or web development, while there are bigger sites that cater to any kind of career that can be remotely done.

When you begin working online, there is one thing that you should be most concerned about: security. It is not even the job opportunity.

Online, the demand for quality talent is endless – believe me. Even when my employer suddenly decides to end our contract, I realized that I can find a replacement immediately. Some of you may think that I have good luck on my side, but I say it is proof that there really is a need for good and talented people online.

So setting aside the demand problem, you are faced with security issues. This issue refers to the assurance that you will be paid for your work.

This is where top outsourcing sites come in.

There may be a lot of sites that will help you get a job but the problem is, are the employers honest enough to pay you once you turn over the finished output?

Choosing the Right Outsourcing SitesTop Outsourcing Sites - How to Choose

I have come across several forums and comments wherein contractors (and even employers) are complaining about not getting what is rightfully due to them. Even the top outsourcing sites have their own share of complaints.

As great as my experience is online, it would be dishonest of me to paint you a picture of green meadows here. There are scammers out there and outsourcing sites are not immune to them. There are contractors being scammed out of their hard work without getting paid. The same is true for employers paying contractors in advance without getting the quality output they are expecting.

The key is to search for the top outsourcing sites that will give you security and a great work platform online. I believe, the best candidate for that are the top 3 outsourcing sites namely: Elance, oDesk and Freelancer.

These three, based on reviews are considered to be the best platform for remote work to happen. This is where both contractors and employers can transact safely.

I will give you a detailed review of oDesk.com as I have been working with this outsourcing website for almost a year now. For the other two, I want to work with them first so I can give you a review of how they operate and how beneficial they are for contractors. At the very least, I will research on reviews about them and I will post it on this site. Nevertheless, I’ve done enough research to assure you that these two (together with oDesk) are really worth checking out.

Of course, you need to trust your judgement when you are transacting through these top outsourcing sites. Some scammers can still penetrate these sites, but they have the best verification systems in place that will assure you that you are protected. These verification systems will be discussed extensively with each outsourcing site review.

That gives me an idea actually. I should probably write about how I stayed away from scammers all this time.

Keep posted!