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.

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.

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.

1. What is a Virtual Assistant?

• Virtual Assistant is a person hired by an individual or a company to provide assistance in numerous work and activities.
• VAs provide diverse categories of services ranging from administrative, technical and even designing and assistance for creative work.
• Virtual Assistants work as ‘VA to Individuals’ and ‘VA to Companies’.

2. Why the employers hire VAs?

• Saving time on unproductive administrative activities.
• Saving money on the salaries and long term and recurring operational costs and overhead expenses of temporary or permanent employees.
• Employers can devote more time for expanding their business and doing more creative and productive work.
• Hiring a VA is the most cost-effective way instead of hiring temps or permanent employees.
• Above all, VAs are independent contractors and hence the persons hiring VAs do not have to bother about employee insurance, sick leaves, vacations of employees and employment taxes, among other.

3. What are the advantages to VAs?

• VAs can work from cozy comforts of home and from anywhere even if they are traveling.
• VAs can simultaneously work for multiple employers.
• Overall, a VA ends up earning much better packages instead of working as a full-time employee with a company.

In Conclusion

As most of the employers and their clients are from USA, Indians and Asians wanting to work as VAs must remain available during normal USA business hours. Generally, the offers as VAs are allotted on short-term basis spanning from 3-6 months. However, sometimes the opportunities could also be available for pretty long durations, maybe from 12-months to 2-3 years. Read another article on this website to learn more about how much you can earn as VA.

Checkout for Virtual Assistants Jobs at freelancing sites like GetAFreelancer, ScriptLance and Elance.

E Book is the digital or electronic equivalent of a printed book. Initially, most of the electronic books were targeted to a very small group of interested people and mainly written for technical manuals and brochures. However, with the burgeoning popularity of Internet over other media, E Books have become the easiest methods of reaching to the masses. Over the years, the formats of electronic books have changed drastically with some supported by major software companies and some supported by independent and open-source programmers.

Unlike conventional hard copies or print books, E Book is relatively shorter in the content, being more oriented towards ‘to the point’ approach. Electronic books on the Internet generally tend to feature numerous web links for further informations and cross-reference. As compared to the conventional books, you can quickly finish writing an electronic book. Nevertheless, you are required to allocate almost equal amount of efforts, research and resources to make it compelling and well structured. You can write on a wide range of categories such as arts, music, photography, spiritual, psychology, health and fitness, alternative medicines and therapies, crafts, hobbies, law and legal, science, engineering, nature, politics, global warming, biographies, self-help, and many more.

If you are toying with an idea to write E Books on your own or for any client, it is necessary that you must possess an in-depth subject knowledge besides being aware about what goes into the publishing aspects of e books. There are many success stories of people making four and five figure incomes just by freelance writing, copywriting and writing E Books.

1. First of all, make sure that you have the flair for writing and the basic skills to become a freelance writer.
2. You need not possess any literary skills or prior experience as a writer; however, knowledge in the specific fields would be an added advantage.
3. For the beginners, I would suggest to start looking out for online freelance writing work rather than offline writing assignments for magazines, newspapers and journals.
4. Initially, you might as well start with writing very short reviews, opinions etc (not more than 150 words – about two paragraphs, each of 5 lines) on forums and blog posting. Although it would fetch negligible rewards but it will give you an idea about where you stand and provide you the necessary experience before you make it big.
5. Freelance writing is all about ‘easy to read and understand’ style, ‘to the point’ and factual contents and little awareness about keywords and search engine optimization techniques.
6. The online readers generally tend to move away fast and therefore whatever you write must be lucid and effective.
7. Teamwork is one of the best ways to ensure steady flow of work.
8. You can join teams through your friends or through freelancing platforms such as GAF, where you can find regular job postings for inviting people to join the teams.
9. Advantages of working in teams far outweigh its minus points.

Summing Up

Freelance writing and copywriting might not always provide consistent workflow, feast and famine type of cycle being the common feature. You might find yourself sitting idle at some occasions and sometimes you might pass through a phase when you are overloaded with work, which you would have to refuse or pass away to others.

Get started with these two freelancing sites: GetAFreelancer and ScriptLance

Rates for writing fresh and well-researched articles are generally decided on the basis of per 100-words. For instance, an article with 500-words (around one full A4 size page) should easily pay anywhere ranging from $3-5 on the most popular freelancing sites GetAFreelancer and ScriptLance, which works out to a rate of $0.6-1 per 100 words. Nevertheless, due to acute competitions, writers are often willing to work at the rates as low as $0.75-1 for a 500-word article. It is generally difficult to get higher rates of the order $8-10 per article on GAF and ScriptLance. However, on Elance, the rates are relatively more, which start from $5 upward and exceptionally good stuff could easily fetch $10+ per article.

Rates for Rewriting Articles

In rewriting jobs, you are expected to rewrite an existing article in your own words without changing the meaning of the original article. Rewriting jobs are treated one-step lower than original writing jobs. Generally, the rates are about 50-60% of the rates for original and fresh contents. In dollar terms, the rates are $1.5-3 for an article of 500-words.

Scenario for Indian Writers

Presuming a lower rate of $3 for a 500-word article, for Indian writers, it works out to around Rs. 125-150 per article (at the present exchange rate of Rs.50 to a Dollar). Average writers can manage to write about 6-8 articles by doing 8-hours work per day, which pays about Rs.1000 per day. Even if you do not work on weekends, you could easily make approximately Rs.20,000 per month. Above average and experienced writers can make more than Rs.30,000-40,000 per month. Earning an income of Rs.50,000+ per month is a piece of cake for exceptionally good writers.

Get started with these two freelancing sites: GetAFreelancer and ScriptLance

Freelance writing and copywriting not only offers few extra bucks but it also has a potential to be taken up as a full-time vocation. Internet is probably the only medium where there is an extensive free flow of information and content. Millions of people all over the world have said goodbye to the print media for their daily dose of what is happening around the globe. Community of online news and information seekers is increasing by leaps and bounds. Viewers keep on visiting the websites that regularly upload fresh contents. This is where you can play a great role as freelance writers. There are tons of opportunities for creative writers seeking to grab a small pie of multi-million dollar freelance writing industry on the Internet.

Freelance writing is not necessarily restricted to web content development, web journalism or any other content writing. Freelance writing encompasses diverse varieties of writing jobs including article writing and rewriting, blog posting, E-Book writing, E-Magazines (such as Ezine Articles), E-Greeting Cards, Resume and CV writing, Newsletters, press releases for companies, ghostwriting, Sales Letters, Marketing Emails and web content development, among others.

Multitudes of freelance writing and copywriting jobs are available on the Internet that can provide attractive remunerations. If you have the flair for writing and the required skills, you can make it big on the fastest growing niche on the Internet. As a writer, you can find more number of opportunities, consistent workflow and better paying jobs on the Internet as compared to offline writing.

Here’s a list of few freelance platforms where you can try to get online home based works.

1. GetAFreelancer.com
2. Scriptlance.com
3. GetACoder.com
4. EUFreelance.com
5. RentaCoder.com