Find Freelance or Work From Home Jobs

Whether you've been idling around, you are staring at your computer too often, playing social games, and Facebooking, you are assured that you get paid for an 8-hour job in an office. That is the best part of working in a corporate world: the pay. However, some people (like me) choose a freelance career—it’s a career choice. Some freelancers just don’t want to work in an environment where they have bosses; in freelancing you can be your own boss. Some freelancers hate doing routine work; freelance jobs give them opportunities to choose what kind of projects or jobs they wish to take. And the pay? While some are getting paid per hour (from $3 to $10 per hour), some choose to get fixed-price or project-based payment.

credit: workingjobsfromhome.co.uk

Freelancers tend to overwork. Instead of working 8-10 hours, some of them would work more than that—12 to 16 hours? That's just normal.

Unlike employed people, freelancers are always looking for opportunities. Seasoned freelancers who are experts in certain skills receive proposals or invitations. For novices or for those who are planning a freelance career, I listed some websites to help you get started or to help you look for freelance projects or jobs. Some of these sites require you to take a qualification tests.

1. Odesk – this is where I started. You can choose to get hourly jobs or fixed-price jobs. Hourly jobs are guaranteed for payment, fixed-price jobs can be a bit risky. Tip: read the freelancer's feedback, review the profile, and do a quick search in Google. This will help you assess if the employer is reliable and financially able.

You can filter the search results by ticking the criteria—the job category of your choice (Web Development, Software Development, Networking & Information Systems, Writing & Translation etc.), job type (hourly vs fixed price), workload (as needed, part time, full time), duration, employer rating, and number of hires.

2. Freelancer – The homepage shows the list of job categories and features the latest projects. By clicking any of the job categories, it will take you to the list of jobs or projects available. To apply for a job, you need to bid for your price.

Freelancer hosts design contests for an employer who is looking for the best design.

3. Elance - Very neat-looking site. For non-US based freelancer you need to verify your address by sending a scanned document before you can start applying for online jobs. Browsing jobs can be very easy, you can simply search by clicking the specific category, the job type, budget, and among other criteria.

The site has great resource for both clients and contractors.

4. People Per Hour - You can signed in with your Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. The site is user-friendly. Let you create a neat-looking profile with your personal assessment of your skills.

The homepage features the list of available skill-based jobs or projects and let you search for jobs from a category list.

5. Donanza - is a great online resource of  home-based or work from home-jobs. It gathers job information from different sites like Odesk, Freelancer, and Elance.

For those who are not interested in pursuing a freelance career, but are interested to know about some writing gigs, I wrote a short blog about it in Money Talks Over Coffee.

If there are other sites that are good resource for freelance jobs or work from home jobs, please feel free to share it.