Freelancing Part 1, making money online by working

In this series I will explain how I make a fair bit of cash online. First I will show you several sites that allow those with various skills and talents to offer their services and bid on projects. Later in this series I will provide tips on how to make your profile effective, pleasing clients and more.

oDesk
One of my favorite freelancing sites is oDesk. oDesk handles most projects on an hourly basis. They provide a huge number of ways to build your profile and help you stand out in your area(s) of expertise. Your profile includes not just a resume but allows you to take certification/ability tests on subjects ranging from English skills to PHP skills. If you are looking for longer term projects oDesk is a great place to look. They have tons of projects but their testing system makes it easier to prove your ability. You can view my profile on oDesk. You can read more about oDesk and a trend that Business Week calls homeshoring in this article. Because one of the biggest differences with oDesk is that they pay on an hourly basis for most projects you'll see several things that you won't see with other freelance sites. The largest is that they require you to install a program on your system to track your hours. This program not only tracks what you are working on based on what you tell it, it also takes screenshots of your desktop every few minutes so that the company you're working for can ensure that you really are working on their projects. Many projects on oDesk involve more than one freelancer and so they use a version tracking system for the code called Subversion or SVN.

Stay tuned for more reviews of freelancing sites and my tips.