How I started Making Money Online

Do you want to earn money online but find it just too confusing? There are thousands of people who are earning even more than their full time job by working from home. Internet is the next biggest workplace and it does bring you a lot of cash. But how? How can you start making money online?

My friends have been asking me this question a lot many times these days (and I thought they always found me and my work crazy). Yes, they did find it unbelievable and stupid. But when I decided not to go for any MNC that offered me a job through campus placements, they knew I was serious about what I do on the internet. And that’s when my status changed from a girl with a crazy hobby to a useful resource that can teach them how to make money online.

Don’t worry! I haven’t planned a series of blog posts or a course to teach you this. I am just going to share how I started making money online. Weird things happened with me but that did help me to earn extra cash for two years and now I am surviving on my own income without a day job. Isn’t that good?

How Did I start Making Money Online?

First thing I would like to mention here is none of what I did to make money then involved blogging. I did have a blog but that was just for fun. I wasn’t earning anything from that. So, how did I start making money online?

I was crazy about earning some part time income. I hated to ask for pocket money from my parents (even when they loved to spend money on me). So, I started looking on Google with keywords “How to earn money online”. I did a lot of digging, a lot of reading. I tried a number of sites that pay you money for data entry, visiting websites, clicking on ads but all of those seemed more of a spam. So, I still tried all of those until I came across Freelancer.com

Freelancer is like an online workplace which allows people looking for earning money online and people looking for workers to interact on a safe platform. There are a number of jobs already posted on the Freelancer and a person like you or I just have to browse through the projects and find a one that is suitable with our skill set. Then you need to apply for the appropriate work and tdaaa! you can earn money.

What if you don’t know anything or have nothing in your skill set?

I think this is the unique point in my post for no one answers this question. Everyone assumes that a person would have something good enough to be added to his/her skill set. But when it comes to students like me who spent all their times mugging up the course material provided to us by the school, we literally have nothing to write in our skill set. Basically, we know nothing.

Don’t worry! You can still earn money. All you need to do is trying and learn. If you are like me, who don’t know anything, data entry and content writing are the best jobs for you. How do you think I ended up being a content writer? (Yes, I just told you how unintelligent I am). Everything is available on internet. How to write good articles and so on. You would improve as you work. Of course, people say writing is something you are gifted with but when it comes to content writing, you can easily learn.

In case, you already know something you’re good at – be it photoshop, gaming, programming, drawing etc, you can look for jobs that match your skills. You would find plenty of them. Just look!

How to apply for a job on Freelancer?

Once you find a job that you think you can do, you need to apply for it. On Freelancer.com, they ask you to bid on the project. Basically, you will be telling a person that you are ready to work on this task and specify how much money you would take for that.

There is already a set budget of the job and you have to specify an amount within that limit. Then you just need to wait and hope for the best. It is just like giving an interview for a job. You give your best in the interview and then just wait. Right?

Some Useful Tips That Can Get You Work

• Make sure you cite the lowest possible price. In the beginning, you won’t have any kind of experience and no one wants a novice for work unless you’re doing the job at rock bottom price. So, keep your attitude and stubbornness away and work like you’re there to work for free. Once you get some jobs and you complete them, you would get reviews from clients that would act as references for more projects. Then you can start asking for more money.
• When you bid, you’re allowed to write a short pitch that would be sent to the employer. Make sure you spend good time on preparing that. It is like a 1 minute speech that can either lead to your selection or rejection. It all depends upon your skills to persuade someone. It is like answering the question – “Why should we hire you” in the interview.
• There is a feature that lets you create milestones to take advance payments on Freelancer.com Make sure you use that. If you won’t, you would end up meeting the worst people on the internet – fraudsters who would just run away with the work and pay you no money. And because you’re working on internet, you would never be able to catch those people and take the money you deserve. I lost $80 like this and I know how horrible it feels when it is your first project ever.
• Your profile would make a lot of difference. With your real profile picture and lots of details of what you do, what do you intend to do, why do you do it etc can help you land on the project you applied for. Make sure you don’t miss this.                             

How do they pay you money?

You will be wondering how you get money in this process. I told you about ‘milestones’. Right? Once you get a project, the person would be able to send you money. You should create milestones which act as small goals that would signify that you have completed this amount of work and you deserve this amount of payment.

For example, say I have taken a project of writing 100 articles for $100. I would create 10 milestones (the number and amount varies on your choice). Each milestone would be of 10 articles and $10. This means, once I am done with 10 articles, I would ask for the first payment that would be of $10. Once I receive that, only then I would do more work.

You always create milestones in advance. You must make sure that your client has accepted the milestone before you start working on the project. How does that make a difference? When your client accepts a milestone, he pays the money to Freelancer.com. In the above case, the client would give $10 to Freelancer.com that would be released and given to me once I finish 10 articles and client confirms it. This prevents frauds. The client won’t run with your money because he has already given it to Freelancer.com.

I have explained everything that came to mind at the time of writing this post. In case, there is some doubt, feel free to comment below or mail me at admin@finixpost.com What you ask might be a question that a number of people also want to know about and I would be happy to edit this article to add more information. Just ask!

Also, Freelancer.com might not be the best site to work on for there are better competitors like elance and oDesk but this is the one that worked for me for it is too simple to work on. It is easier to get jobs on Freelancer as a newbie.