Freelance Work For Geeks

A brief introduction on making money using your web skillz.

I plan on adding a lot more to this later, but here's the very basics you need to start making money using those skills you picked up at media college.

1. The Sites

For those who want to dive in these are my favorite auction sites for programming/design work.

Scriptlance Freelance work for Programmers, Designers, Flash, Graphics, Developpers etc
Scriptlance is the first site I started making money on and it's one of the best. It's free to join and free to use and you get unlimited bids. Just sign up and start bidding on projects. I'll be writing articles here later on how to pollish your bidding style. For now just make sure you don't post your contact info before having a your bid accepted as this is against scriptlance rules. The hardest thing with these sites is getting your foot in the door. Start by bidding on small projects and low bids. Tell the buyer that you are giving them a wicked low price because you are new to the website and trying to get established with some positive feedback. The more feedback you accumulate the easier and easier it becomes to get larger, better paying jobs. I was making money within 3 days of joining Scriptlance, and had no prior experience in getting work this way.
I've just started using E-lance recently but it's quickly become my 3rd favorite freelance site, and believe me I've tried many at this point. E-lance is the site that proves it takes money to make money. You can create an account for free on E-lance but you are only given 10 'connects' per month with a free account, you can also only bid in one category, as projects on E-lance are borken up into several different categories. Upgrading costs upwards of $10/month and even then you only get 15 bids per month and have to pay for additional ones. However, the minimum bid on E-lance is $50, much higher than other sites, and for some reason the bids in general just seem to be 4x higher on average on E-lance than on the other freelance sites. It's like the richman's freelance site, and cashing in can be sweet. I would recommend making a free account on E-lance right away and carefully use your 10 connects a month to land a project and get some positive feedback, and upgrade your account as soon as that happens, if not sooner.

2. Getting Started

Getting started can be hard. But not if you're smart about it. I landed my first project on Scriptlance within three days of joining, and I had no clue what I was doing. Now you can benefit from my years of experience (and several mistakes) with the cold hard facts about how to be a successful freelance coder.
Priority one at the start is to get reviewed positively. Nowadays there are so many established freelance coders on most of these sites, with so many positive reviews that most buyers don’t want to take a risk on someone with zero feedback . Read every single project posted. Look for small jobs that you can do. Anything that’s in your skillset and won’t take more than 2-3 days then bid on it. And bid cheap. Here’s an example of how such a bid could look:
Hi, I have read your project details and reviewed the example site (or carefully reviewed the attached documents or whatever applies, buyers like it when you let them know that your bid is tailored to their project and not just some generic cut and paste).  I have over x number of years working with applicable technologies (replace applicable technologies with the actual platform ie: Flash, PHP, whatever) and am clear on your requirements and ready to start.
Please note that the low price I am offering is not a reflection of the quality of work, but simply because I am new to this community and trying to get myself established with some positive feedback.
Please let me know if you require any additional information.
Cheers,
Lyndon Perry  (buyers love it when you identify yourself as an actual person, rather than d3signBoi39.
If you have examples of applicable work that you’ve done that you think will help you get the project then for sure include those as well but when sending work examples it’s usually best to just send your three best at most.