I’m sure you’re itching to know some legitimate work from home sites you can use. This post will be about one of them and it happens to be the site that propelled me into full-time freelance work. I encountered this site when I was checking out the Facebook profile of a person who used to send me writing assignments. She wrote all her writing affiliations in her profile, which prompted me to do research on some of them. That was when I got acquainted with Freelancer.
When I first visited the site, I was surprised. There were a lot of projects posted for bidding. After a great deal of exploration of the site, I decided to sign up for it. Signing up for Freelancer.com is easy and free. During the sign up process, I was asked to fill in my profile and the project category which I have the skills for. I chose copywriting, market research, and data entry. You can choose as many skills as you wish, but you should only choose those you are capable of doing.
After completing the sign up process, I immediately browsed through the many copywriting projects available. If you are interested in web design, audio transcription, java, or any other forms of specialized work-from-home jobs, there are also categories for your field of expertise. For this review, I’ll use the copywriting category as an example, but the process of getting jobs through Freelancer is very much the same for the other categories.
Moving on, I selected the projects that I wanted to work on and placed my bid for the completion of those projects. When bidding, you will be asked to enter your bid amount, the number of days it will take you to finish the project, and a message for the service buyer. You can also expound your offer in the site’s private message board so other bidders will not see it. Sometimes, service buyers will hide bids for privacy purposes.
There is a limit on the number of bids you can place each month, although this can be increased when you upgrade to Gold status or have won some projects in the past. This is why you should choose the projects you want to bid on before bidding on them. Remember, each bid is one step closer to getting the work from home job you’ve always wanted. And yeah, don’t get intimidated by those service providers who have hundreds of positive reviews, because some service buyers prefer newbies who want to breakthrough in the freelance industry. So, place that bid nevertheless.
After placing your bid, all you have to do is wait for a response from the service buyer. If he finds your bid interesting, he will let you know about it and you’ll have a greater chance of being selected as a service provider. By the way, you might get charged for winning a project (I think it is $5 now for a normal project) but that’s how the site is making money so no big deal there.
Just like anything else on the Internet, you can encounter scammers on Freelancer. Thankfully, though, I have not been a victim of one on this site. To avoid being scammed, don’t give more than one work sample to the service buyer and always ask for a written agreement before starting work. Don’t be surprised if you have placed bids which remain unanswered for many days as there are a lot of users who come and go.
Another way to protect yourself on freelance sites is by using the escrow service. This is where you require the service buyer to put money in escrow with the site until the job is completed. Only you can release the money back to the client and only the client can release the money to you. It’s a good way to protect both parties. Here is a link if you’d like to sign up: Freelancer
Definitely, Freelancer is one of the legitimate work from home sites. I’ve made a living out of the projects I’m getting at GAF and some of them are for the long term. As they say on the site – Happy Bidding!
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