If you are a freelance writer or a freelancer looking out for steady flow of work from home assignments, you must be exploring all the possible resources including GAF, ScriptLance and GAC and many other freelancing sites. However, out there on the Internet, there is another excellent resource known as “Craigslist“, which can help freelances like you and I in several ways. For those of you that have never tried out Craigslist, here is a small article that could inspire them to look out for alternative sources for work at home job and freelance writing jobs.

What is Craigslist?

Craigslist is one of the largest centralized network for free online classified advertisements on numerous categories including jobs, careers, work from home, resume services, communities, pets, housing, sale/wanted, personal, dating and internship, among other. Founded by Craig Newmark in 1995 and headquartered at San Fransisco Bay Area, USA, Craigslist has established in 570 cities in 50 countries. The website craigslist.org serves 20+ billion page views and publishes over 40 million new classified advertisements every month.

How Freelancers can benefit from Craigslist?

• Craigslist is one of the best and easiest and a free source for people to find freelance writers and freelancers for various work at home niches.
• If you are member on Craigslist website, your task of hunting the jobs becomes extremely simple.
• Daily, Craigslist compiles a list of tens of thousands of freelance writing and other freelancing jobs posted online. Besides, it also emails the list to thousands of registered members.
• Freelance writing firms and teams often prefer to post their requirements on Craigslist for individual freelance writers and fresh writers.
• Aside from several freelance writing jobs for articles, business plans, E-Books, brochures, newsletters, proofreading and rewriting, you can also search for very small article writing and Craigslist advertisement writing jobs.
• With its presence in 570 cities all over the world, you can find lots of employers even from the place where you are located.

In Conclusion:

Regardless of whether you are just starting your freelance career or you are little experienced, you should keep on looking out for freelance opportunities on Craigslist to ensure a steady flow of work at home assignments.

You must have read and learned a lot about freelancing career, most of the stuff being in the nature of motivating you to take up part-time/full-time living by doing freelance work at home. Majority of the articles including the ones on this very site speak only about the advantages and benefits of working from home.

Very few people might have told you the dark sides or realities of online work at home opportunities. Well, I don’t intend to discourage you nor do I wish you to forget the idea of work from home. Nevertheless, if you are a newbie and toying with the idea of freelancing career, I sincerely feel that it makes sense to be familiar with the real world before you make up your mind to live the life of a freelancer.

1. Freedom to do whatever you want is a rather overly stated truth. In reality, you will have to get along with many unpleasant activities, which in normal course, you might find it boring. Nevertheless, for being a successful freelancer, you cannot overlook anything.
2. Being your own boss is no doubt the most attractive perk of being a freelancer. However, when you are working as a freelancer, nobody will tell you what you have to do. Your customers will not guide you on how to do your job. On the contrary, they would be sitting on your head dictating deadlines and payment terms.
3. Enjoying life and spending quality time with family having fun and relaxation may sound tantalizing. However, managing time from writing proposals, business plans, sending inquiries, searching jobs on freelancing platforms, and follow up about payments, among other is not as easy as it sounds.
4. You might have some fancy ideas of doing only those work that you love. Mind you, your favorite work will not always be available at your doorsteps and hence you have to be mentally prepared to accept whatever comes along.
5. If you were a creative writer or software professional, you would surely find it tough to play role as a ‘business person’, managing clerical and administrative activities, handling customers, billing clients and writing business reports. Besides being not comfortable handling business part, you could as well find it boring. You may not be able to spend more time for productive and creative work.

Summing Up:

With unrealistic expectations, you might be disappointed and frustrated too fast too soon and which could as well put an early full stop to a potentially lucrative career. Entrepreneurial skills and business parts are the most challenging aspects for becoming successful freelancers.

If you have the right skills and the willingness to work hard, you can comfortably take home an attractive paycheck by working as a Virtual Assistant Work at Home Opportunities. Find out more whether you have the required skills for becoming a VA and how much you can earn as VA.

1. What are the essential and preferable skills?

• Besides possessing a PC or a laptop and high speed broadband connection, VAs must be fluent in English.
• VA should ideally have the skills and knowledge in office and general administration.
• VA must have hands-on experience in handling Microsoft-Office Suit (excel, word, outlook, power point and access).
• VA should be able to do online web research, data entry work and handle emails.
• VAs must have the willingness to work as per USA local timings.
• Chat through Skype, MSN, Yahoo or Google.
• Fluency in spoken English with USA and UK accents.
• Basic knowledge of software and programming and web designing.
• Database management.
• Creating mail-merge files.
• Link submissions.
• Image editing.

2. What type of jobs are required to be done?

• Data entry, office and general administration work
• Travel planning and handling financial information
• Development and management of mailing list
• Transcription of recorded interviews and minutes of the meetings from audio files
• Occasional or regular telecommunication through Skype or Internet enabled overseas calls
• Contacting clients and follow up with clients
• Collecting email addresses from websites and sending pre-written sales letters

3. What are the compensations?

• VAs are generally paid hourly compensation, which might range from minimum $5 per hour and up to even $10-20 per hour depending upon the type of work handled and the employer.
• Usually, VAs are expected to put in minimum 20 hours per week.
• On an average, an Indian VA can easily earn $500-1000 (Rs.20,000 to 40,000 at current exchange rates) per month per employer.

4. Where to find the opportunities for VA?

GetAFreelancer, and Elance are the best places to look out for hundreds of well-paying opportunities as Virtual Assistants.