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Freelancing as A Career Option
(by Lewis Low)

Home bound workers can either consider telecommuting or freelancing. While telecommuting may keep you out of your home for some hours a week, online freelancing is a good way to make money if you are forced to stay at home. For example, homemakers, part-time students, retired folk, or others who wish to supplement their income from jobs or businesses can all consider freelancing.

Freelance Skill Sets

You can start earning as a freelancer as long as you have skills that someone is willing to pay for. For example, writers, web designers, photographers, and programmers can earn a substantial income by creating articles, websites, portfolios and software from home. The Internet is a hot and viable source of income for freelancers from around the world. Your target customers can be webmasters, online business owners, blog owners etc. For example, blogs and wikis are hot sources of income for freelance writers nowadays, and there's no reason why you can't tap into this market if you possess good writing skills.

Freelance Income

On the flip, your income may fluctuate from one month to another. As with all businesses, freelancing does not guarantee a stable paycheck at the end of the month. So keep a small kitty reserve for dry days or have another source of income for which you can work part-time. Be prepared to accept boring, low-level work initially just to keep the cash flow strong. Once you get a good reputation for providing original, high-quality work at reasonable price, then clients will flock to you.

Freelance Advantages

Probably the best thing about freelancing is that you get to work at your pace, in your own hours, from home, and be your own boss. That means, your shop is open 24x7. And as long as you provide good quality work and meet deadlines, your clients will remain happy with you.

In order to be visible, you also need to be seen and heard in the right places, like forums, blogs, online groups, etc. Spend time everyday to visit such sites because they are invaluable repository of freelance gigs and email addresses of prospects. Alternatively you can sign up with freelance sites like Elance.com, GetAFreelancer.com and Scriptlance.com where you can start bidding on projects and snag a few as early as today!

To conclude, a freelance business is one of the best ways to earn money from home and to work for your own self. If you've got a fair amount of time on your hands, maybe you too should consider freelancing as your full-time career alternative or supplementary income source.

(Hint: While you can find plenty of lucrative freelance assignments on Elance, the other sites mentioned above generally tend to feature lesser-paid projects. However, if you're just starting out as a freelancer, the competition on Elance can prove to be really tough. So you might want to first try GAF and Scriptlance to build up your portfolio, and then go for Elance.)
(by Lewis Low)

About The Author

Lewis Low is the founding editor of OnlineBizPromo.com. For more Practical Online Business Ideas and Work-From-Home Opportunities, visit his Work-At-Home directory at www.onlinebizpromo.com