Hi! I recently held my first webinar to provide an introduction to my course Freelance with Elance. This webinar addresses some common questions (and misconceptions) that people have about freelancing in general and about Elance in particular. I’ve provided examples and screenshots in this presentation to show you how my course can benefit you. Its an approximately 40 min presentation, including audience questions. Watch here:

If you’re in Karachi, you can sign up to take the next course here: http://wordpl.net/index.php/freelance-with-elance/ Once you fill out the form, you will be emailed details about the date, time, venue and course outline.

Thank you!

“I get knocked down
But I get up again
You’re never going to keep me down”

- Chumbawamba – Tubthumping

(video below!!)

Recently I made the mistake of getting too comfortable in my zone. Of putting my eggs in one basket, albeit unintentionally. Of thinking that success could be fully automated. With the spark of a New Year’s firecracker, 90% of my work came to a screeching halt! All my regular clients suddenly postponed scheduled projects, delayed them or asked for more time to formulate them. The response was eerily similar across all channels – we love your work, we want to continue working with WordPL, but … our marketing budget has put a temporary freeze … our client has requested we wait a couple more weeks … we still haven’t received funding for this project.

It reminded me that I was still a very small fish in a very competitive pond. It reminded me that my business was still prone to the economic winds and that I was precariously balanced.

After a few days of near-panic like fear, I decided to get with the program. So okay, I thought to myself, I was planning to expand anyways. I was planning to hire more people, go after more clients in certain niches where I had established credibility. I was planning to delegate more work and more responsibility to key team players. All of this had been on the agenda anyways, so why not just go ahead and do all of it, even without the cushion of existing clients and a regular income?

Because the truth is, that’s how it is in the freelance world. Some days all your dream clients want to hire you on retainer and on other days they all appear to be directing polite smiles and *coughs* your way. If you can’t learn to bounce back and persevere through the good and the bad, then freelancing (or any other form of business) is probably not for you.

So how did I bounce back?

I went ahead with Plan B (and C and D):

• I went after companies I wanted to do business with
• I wrote pitches and proposals all day long, carefully communicating benefits
• I researched business models thoroughly and figured out what kinds of projects to market that matched my team’s skill set the most
• I delegated more responsibility and authority to a key players on my team and entrusted him with independent decision-making
• I hired 3 more people for the WordPL team

The result of all this aggressive marketing and delegation?

• 4 new clients in a month
• Over $4000 worth of bookings in a month
• More autonomy for my team and consequently less hand-holding for me
• More team members working with WordPL (expanded from 5 to 8 awesome folk!)
• More time for me to focus on my other projects (home renovation, social media firm, print magazine articles, freelance with Elance course, etc)

Lessons Learned

As Gill Fielding once said, once I realized I could make a million dollars even after being bankrupt, I was no longer scared. (I’m paraphrasing here, okay). Point being, if you have the skills to make it in business once, then setbacks may hold you back temporarily but never permanently. If you were successful before, you already possess the juice to re-build your success. You can stop being fearful, because if you did it once, you can do it again. You already have the building blocks in your mind. And you can do it better this time because you’ll have the learned from the mistakes of the past and plan accordingly.

Change is constant, right? So maybe this won’t last long either and I’ll find myself in another new set of problems. That’s okay though, I’ll be ready for them. Who was it that said it wasn’t about winning the game, it was the thrill of the chase!

p.s. Here’s the clincher: I actually wrote this post on Jan14th when none of the above plans had materialized. I didn’t have $4000 worth of booking and I only had a single new client, not 4. But I wrote it as a vision of where I want to be in a month and willed it to happen. You can say the above post was my way of egging myself on and laying out a path for me to follow. Doing it in a soon-to-be-published blog post style made it seem more public, urgent and action-worthy. Take what you will from this disclosure.

As promised, here’s the video. Rock out!

Many people write in to me claiming that they’ve been pitching their freelance services for a month (or more) without a bite. Upon closer inspection, they have the perfect profile, a healthy portfolio of work, some testimonials from past employers or clients, and education and skills to back their qualifications, the whole nine yards really! So what’s missing? Why aren’t they landing the hot jobs?

I’ll tell you what’s missing. What’s missing is their buyer radar!

All projects are not the same and all buyers are definitely not the same. Each proposal of yours must not only be tailored to how well you fit the project, but also how well you can work with a particular buyer.

The success or failure of procuring a freelance project depends on 1. your ability to execute a project based on your skills, talent, and drive and 2. your rapport with the buyer. The second point is also the basis for ensuring (or at least setting up the stage) for repeat business, positive referrals, and long term clients.

So how do you fine tune your buyer radar on Elance?

Practice, practice, practice!

Choose a few projects each day and determine whether this is the kind of person you’d like to work with. You might not have to share a cubicle space with a buyer and you may be sitting in geographic polar opposites, but if your ideology and outlook doesn’t match, trust me, it will feel as suffocating as sitting in a trapped elevator.

Recently I cancelled a project before even starting it because the buyer never made it on time to scheduled Skype conversations, expected free phone consultations throughout the duration of the project (which was over a month), and established bad pre-project vibes with me. I would rather not start such a project at all (and take the initial hit of my time and effort investment) than take on the project only to realize that this attitude would continue and keep derailing my project management schedule.

So, here’s my quick list of bad buyers characteristics to watch out for. These things will often raise a red flag with me.

1. The All for Nothing Buyer

This kind will demand the perfect project (perfect English, SEO’d, 150 articles, formatted to a tee, blah blah blah) at a laughable rate, like a dollar an article. Stay away from him because he’s the lowest of the low and will never respect you or your work.

2. The Scope Creep

This buyer will say stuff like “Oh and can you submit the article to directories too?” “Oh can you format my blog and add pictures as well.” “Btw, since you’re already writing my web content, can you just put the same information in a brochure for me – it’s just copy paste right?” Argggg! These buyers are penny pinchers – they know that this is extra work requiring a whole new definition of the project’s boundaries, yet they want to sneak it in so they don’t have to pay more for it. By making it sound like trivial work, they expect to get away with peanuts. Don’t fall for it.

3. The Donkey and Carrot Trickster

He’ll suck you right in with classic bait and switch tactics such as “there’s long term work to be had if you do this right”. Or worse “if you do this test article, then I may hire you for another one”. Look man, either commit to it or not. You can’t hire me and then choose not to pay me after I’ve already done the work!

4. The Internet Marketing Speaker

I’m an internet marketer, so don’t get me wrong, I think internet marketing and its terminologies are pretty neat. But unfortunately, there are a lot of spammers in this field. This kind of buyer hangs with the spammer and uses cheap tactics learned from them in his project descriptions. Phrases such as “this is easy work for someone who knows what they’re doing” or “you should be able to do this in no time at all” or “I would do this myself considering it’s so easy, but I just don’t have the time”. These are all code words for I don’t respect you and therefore will be-little your work and its complexity. I will determine how much time you need to do it because I am the specialist, not you. Don’t even bother bidding for projects with these phrases; you’re above that.

5. Mister Vague

This guy thinks that “I need an e-book about my life” constitutes a complete project description. Not only has he not bothered to define his project, he scares me because he doesn’t seem to know what his project should be. Even if I know nothing about logo design, I would do some research and surfing to find out how to write a complete project description for a logo designer. How else can you expect to attract the professionals? People who don’t put effort into their project descriptions, and worse, refuse to add/edit/comment on their projects just don’t care about them. I don’t want to work with someone who doesn’t care about his own project. Do you?

This was really just a starter list. There are so many other buyer red flags to look out for. Perhaps we’ll cover them in another blog post and perhaps you will respond in the comments below to your favorite type of buyer that induces your eye roll! C’mon share with us, you know you want to!

I get a lot of questions everyday but one question that I get asked almost every single day is: How do I start working online? What’s the first step? How do I do what you’re doing? So today I’m going to attempt to answer that question.

For most people working online means earning a few bucks, or doing something for zero or little effort. That’s not what I’m about or what I teach. I can’t help you get started working online by clicking on ads, or by filling surveys and questionnaires, or by mailing envelopes, or whatever else kind of menial work is being advertised to make you millions.

When someone asks me how to start working online, I assume that they are asking me for a viable sustainable online business that they’d like to start. It could be a part time business, it could be weekends only, but you have to be serious about it. If you don’t ask me seriously then no matter what advice I give, you will not be able to earn money online.

So assuming that you are serious about making money online, here’s what I would say are the first few steps in this order:

Step 1: Know what kind of work you’d like to do online

Example #1: Perhaps you’re a musician with extensive knowledge about learning to play an instrument (or various instruments) – you could perhaps start a website that gives guitar tutorials. Or maybe you’re a singer songwriter who wants to compose music for international clients – you could become a music producer on a freelance website.

Example #2: Maybe you’re a graphic designer fresh out of school and looking for online work. Maybe you could advertise your design services online and start to get work through the internet.

Example #3: What if you’re a doctor. Can you work online? Well, yes, but that depends on what kind of work you want to do. There are many reputable publications in the health, nutrition and fitness fields that require content for their websites, newsletters, advice columns, etc and would maybe want to hire you as an expert. Alternative therapy and natural medicines is also a fast growing field with not a lot of qualified practitioners; you could maybe get work with them as a side income project.

Example #4: You have an existing t-shirt designing business and would like to find a market for your products online. Can you do that? Yes, and it will depend on finding international buyers ready to stock your products at agreed upon rates. You can do that through various online companies such as www.alibaba.com that specialize in providing physical products via an online medium.

Example #5: You are a journalist, looking for ways to earn some extra money. Perhaps you can start a blog, or write a book, or look for a gig writing for an international column.

These are just five examples; basically you can work online in just about any capacity that doesn’t require your physical presence and you’ll be surprised how few those are. Are you an engineer? You can find work online as a contract manufacturer. Are you a housewife? You can find work online leveraging your expertise in cooking, designing, parenting, etc. There’s online work awaiting you in almost every conceivable field from financial to legal to engineering to writing to design to web programming.

So do you know what you want to do? Figure that out first and then move to step 2.

Step 2: Find your market

The assumption here is that you have a skill or a product that you’d like to make money from. Once you have identified that skill or product, you must find a market that will buy your services/products.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

1. You can sell your existing products using affiliates. Affiliates are people that sell your product on your behalf for a small commission. You can join an affiliate network and get your product listed for sale. Examples of affiliate networks are www.clickbank.com, www.commissionjunction.com, www.amazon.com/associates and plenty more – just do a search for affiliate networks to get a more comprehensive list.
2. You can sell your services in a freelance marketplace such as www.elance.com, www.guru.com, www.odesk.com etc.
3. You can get your products sold globally through international vendors and drop-shippers such as www.alibaba.com, www.wordwidebrands.com, www.thomasnet.com, www.housewares.org, www.expoeast.com and www.expowest.com.
4. You can start your own WordPress website by registering a domain name through www.namecheap.com, buying hosting from www.godaddy.com and installing WordPress through www.wordpress.org. If you don’t feel confident you can do this on your own, you can start with a free www.WordPress.com account which just requires a username and password to use. Else, you can hire a company such as www.customsocialpages.com to set it up for you.
5. You can use social media to find prospective buyers and clients, although that is a less direct way and you will have to invest some time in it. It is recommended if you are not in a hurry and are good at having online conversations. Social sites that would be a good fit for finding leads include www.linkedin.com, www.twitter.com, niche forums (search for your niche + “forum” on google), and www.facebook.com (pages and ads).

Step 3: Determine how you’ll get paid

Once you have found your market, you need to sort out payment details. There’s a comprehensive list of payment processors that you can work with here, but only some of these are compatible with Pakistan. Those that work in Pakistan include www.payoneer.com, www.alertpay.com, www.2checkout.com, www.westernunion.com, www.moneybookers.com, and sites that pay you via direct deposits and through checks (such as most freelance sites do).

Payment processors help you determine how you will charge prospective customers and how the money will get transferred into your bank account.

So, I hope this list has given you a starting point. Essentially there’s just a few ways to run an online business, such as you can see in this online business info-graphic. You just need to find the tools and resources that will help you and chart a path that is unique to your skills, products and abilities.

Questions? Mail me at ask@wordpl.net with your very specific question or just write it out in the comments below so that your question and my answer benefits lots of people. Good luck!

p.s. For more in-depth information, check out my presentation How to Start an Online Business (from Pakistan).

Last month (August 2010) I was invited by CNBC Pakistan for an interview on online business opportunities for people living in Pakistan. It was a great 1-hour session with live calls. At first I was apprehensive that the questions asked might be off-topic, or that I might not know the answers. But as it turned out, it was a really great interview largely because all the callers were so spot-on! I was genuinely pleased that every person had a valid question whose answer would be of interest to many more people watching. So armed with that enthusiasm I set about to answer the questions with the aim to help the maximum number of people watching.

Some of the topics covered in the interview were:

• What is an online business
• How to start freelancing from Pakistan
• How to market your freelance services to international clients
• How to make money blogging
• How to receive payments from international clients to your Pakistani bank account
• How to start if you have no prior freelance experience
• How to use Facebook to market your product or service in Pakistan
• How to use YouTube to market your product or service from Pakistan
• And more!

The interview is divided into two parts, which you can view on my YouTube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/salmajafri76

Here is Part 1 of my CNBC interview on making money online from Pakistan:

And here’s Part 2 of my CNBC interview on making money online from Pakistan:

Hope you enjoy the videos. Be sure to leave a comment below on the blog if you’d like to ask me a specific question about running an online business from Pakistan and I’ll be sure to reply!

If you’re just starting out in the quest to make money online, the world of online business can seem vast and confusing at first. You may not even know yet what kind of business you want to do on the net! To help you out in the key initial stages of this decision, I’ve put together a post with the basic money-making pathways on the internet.

Note: this post is for beginners so dont get disgruntled all you advanced gurus out there – your turn will come soon!

In this post I’m going to talk about:

• What is an online business
• What it means to build and run an online business
• What does an online business model look like
• What are the different ways you can generate an income online

While this topic is so vast that entire books may be (and have been) written about it, there’s very little starter info out there. So I’m going to cover these topics in the most basic, simplest way in an attempt to give a broad perspective so you can understand the big picture of running an online business.

First let’s define it.

An online or internet business is virtually any for-profit venture that you can run on the Internet. Some or all of the regular business activities – building a product, attracting visitors, product launches, marketing, selling, retaining customers, building brand loyalty, receiving payments – may be accomplished on the internet.

There are 2 different kinds of online biz models:

Sell your own products and services
or
Sell someone else’s products and services

Option #1: Selling your own products and services

Your own product may be a tangible good such as a book or a piece of furniture or an intangible service such as graphic design or web development. What you decide to sell obviously depends on your expertise and experience. To sell your own product or service, at minimum, you need:

• A virtual store a.k.a a website
• Customers a.k.a traffic to the website
• Money received a.k.a payment processors

We’ll go into more detail into what each of these three things mean in just a bit. First let’s take a look at option #2.

Option #2: Sell someone else’s products and services

This is called “affiliate marketing” and is simply based on the concept of commissions. To put it simply, the more you sell another person/company’s product or service, the more you rake in via commission sales. How? You simply employ all the techniques listed in option #1 to sell other people’s products versus your own. So to be a successful affiliate marketer, you still need the basic three:

• Website
• Traffic
• Money

So now that we know the basic formula for selling your own stuff versus other people’s stuff is the same, let’s delve deeper into what these three things (website, traffic, money) mean.

WEBSITE

Just as a regular brick and mortar shop has a physical venue, you too need a virtual store from which to sell your wares or services. This virtual store may be your own website or a third-party website, such as eBay or Amazon.

Some of the ways you can sell your own or someone else’s products and services are:

• Sell info products via a blog or website. Info products can be ebooks, software, podcasts, videos, site memberships, etc
• Sell physical products such as custom-designed t-shirts, jewelry, cakes, confectionary, etc
• Sell services such as freelance photography, design, copywriting, multimedia, coding, etc
• Sell information (in the form of informative articles or such) and earn from an ads-based model (Google AdSense, Chitika, Sponsored Ads, etc)

A professional website adds credibility and oomph to your online business model and is not optional anymore. If you’re using third-party websites (such as Amazon or Elance) to sell, you will still be taken more seriously as a reliable business if you can give a link out to your own website.

TRAFFIC

No matter how good a mousetrap you’ve built, no one will come unless you promote it well. Thankfully the days of expensive advertising are over and as an Internet business owner, all you really need to do is employ the free (albeit time-consuming) channels of online media marketing to promote your product or service.

Some of the ways to attract customers to buy your (or others’) products and services online is via online marketing. You can market using:

• Social media channels like Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube, Twitter, etc
• Online and offline referrals
• Network (visit other communities)
• Join like-minded communities (e.g. a photographer joining a photography membership site)
• Rank high in search results, either organic or paid. Organic ranking is when you appear on search results without spending money on advertising, but rather through use of excellent search-optimized content. Paid results are those you pay for and usually appear as “sponsored listings” on a search engine.

MONEY

What’s the point of all the hard work if there’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, right? One of the main benefits of an online business is that you can be location-independent. However, no matter where in the world you are, you need a fast, secure way to transfer money from sales into your local bank account.

Some of the ways to receive online payments are:

• Developing an e-commerce ready site, with a shopping cart and payment method
• Via PayPal, Moneybookers or other online payment processors
• Through direct deposits, wire transfers, pay orders or checks

Skills to Run an Online Business

• Clear focus and direction: you need a niche and you need to be passionate about that niche.
• Self-discipline and motivation: when you’re your own boss, the will to work comes from you and only you
• Jack-of-all: when you’re starting out chances are you’re a one-man show so you’ve got to learn to do everything from accounting to marketing.
• Delegate and automate: when you can expand your business, delegate or automate the routine tasks so you can concentrate on the life-giving entrepreneurial tasks of your business
• Adaptability and flexibility: the online world is constantly in flux; it’s also unforgiveable since what goes online usually stays online.
• Thought leadership: the more successful you are at branding yourself/your company and being unique, the more people will look upon you as an innovative thinker and leader.

Selling your Own Stuff vs Selling Other Peoples’ Stuff

So now you have a basic idea about the tools you need and the kinds of online businesses you could get into. However, how do you decide whether to go for Option #1 selling your own stuff or Option #2, selling other people’s stuff? Well, it need not be an either/or decision. You can actually do both. Here are the main advantages/disadvantages of both options:

InfoGraphic: How to Start an Online Business

Using the chart above (which encapsulates this post), you can plot a course of action for yourself. For example, you could decide, as I did, to sell your own service (content development) via a third party website (Elance.com in my case), market it via social media (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube) and receive payment via wire transfer. OR you could decide to sell your own service (e.g. web design) via your own website, publicize it on relevant forums and communities and receive payment via direct deposit. OR you could decide to sell other people’s products (affiliate marketing using say, Amazon.com’s products) by promoting it on your own blog and receiving payments via Western Union money transfer.

OR still you could choose to employ multiple strategies at the same time. For example, you could have a website where you sell your own product/service, as well as affiliate products/services as well as have adverts for monetization – a 3-in-one model – the possibilities are limited only by your business acumen.

So many choices, so many paths and permutations and combinations! There’s bound to be one that fits you!

Do let me know via comments below if this online business primer has helped you in any way and if you’d like to see actual tangible internet business ideas discussed here next!

Hi all! I’m excited to be starting a new (ok the first) series of posts on how to write winning bids and proposals. As freelancers, we spend as much time (sometimes more) marketing our services as we do actually working on gigs, so its essential to be able to sell yourself convincingly for online customers.

When you take up freelancing, it isn’t just about the next gig or the next paycheck (who’d want that hand-to-mouth lifestyle anyway?). No, it’s about building a business. And that means first building a professional reputation. Everyone has to start somewhere right?

So ladies and gentlemen, bloggers and writers, business owners and professionals, I present to you a comprehensive 6-part series on How to Write Winning Bids and Proposals, which will comprise the following sections:

1. How To Find your Niche and Bid Exclusively In It
2. How to Investigate the Buyer Thoroughly (yes there’s some detective work involved in this one!)
3. How to Write a Custom Proposal (24 carat gems inside this one)
4. Attach Relevant Samples and Other Information
5. Determine a Fair Price that you’re Confident the Buyer Can Pay (whether he WILL pay or not is an altogether different matter!)
6. How to Follow-up and Why it’s a Game Changer

And if I’m feeling generous, I might just throw in an additional post on the first things to do when you land that job. Kidding. I will actually do a series on this next.

So have I got you salivating yet?

What? You want more and you want it now? You want it all? Ok, Ok, I hear you. Instant gratification coming up…

So without further ado, head on over to read the first post in this series: How to Find your Niche and Bid Exclusively in It

Much has been said and written about low-balling in the freelance community. Essentially low-balling is used to describe the (unethical) practice of pricing a project way below its fair market value. It is done by both freelancers who wish to compete on price (although they just end up hurting themselves and their fellow freelancers) and by outsourcing clients (who want to get the lowest possible price for their project).

I recently had my first brush with low-balling on Elance from the client-side. But thanks to numerous freelancing sites discussing low-balling tactics, I knew exactly what I had to do and say to this buyer.

So here’s the thing: he came through a referral and wanted X number of articles. I placed a bid, quoted my price, delivery time, etc. I got back a response saying the price was too high and he has another writing service lined up (URL provided) that is willing to do the project for a third of the price and would I be willing to “close the gap”?

Well, thanks to the fact that I am now confident about my abilities and sure about the value of my services, I was able to compose (what I thought was) a fairly level-headed, professional response: (edited to exclude specific names and amounts).

I started by thanking him and letting him know right away that I was prepared to stand my ground and give a solid reasoning for doing so:

“Thank you for your response. I do understand your need for cost-effective articles and to that end wish to reassure you that my costs reflect both my experience (both on and off Elance) as well as expertise in completing a perfectly turned-out product.”

Next I regurgitated my excellent feedback and history with providing quality work:

“I started on Elance at [amount deleted] and have since then built up a reputation consisting of 100% satisfied clients in the past year and testimonials which state that ‘Wonderful provider and none of what she provided needed any tweaks at all. That is rare’ and ‘All of the articles were very well written and exactly what I was looking for.’ I have worked hard for these accolades and that is because each project I take on gets my individual and customized attention.”

Then I backed all that up with the fact that I have reached this price fairly and that it is an accurate estimation of my time and effort involved in the project. I ended by outlining the long-term benefits of the content to him.

“The money invested now in article marketing will generate long-term dividends over the months and years in directing targeted, relevant traffic to your business. Since I too, run my own business, I am familiar with the need for great SEO content, perfectly positioned articles and a focused marketing campaign. Hence my current rates reflect the above traits.”

I also offered him a way out of the deal gracefully, by letting him know that I would fully understand if he decided not to award me the project and scout the market further but that I hoped he made whatever decision worked best for his business needs.

At that point I had pretty much given up hearing again from this buyer. So imagine my pleasant surprise when I received a “Congratulations, you’ve been awarded…” notice a few hours later!

Essentially, the buyer (now a client) responded by saying that my confidence in my abilities (backed with facts) gave him confidence in me and that he would be willing to award me the project at my stated price.

I guess it just goes to show that there are genuine buyers out there on Elance and elsewhere who are willing to be convinced if you have the confidence in yourself to be able to convince them. I really dislike it when perfectly talented freelancers let themselves get sucked into accepting projects at lower than their fair market values simply because they don’t believe in themselves.

So my advice to a beginner freelancer (especially on bidding sites like Elance) would be to start with hard work, keep your nose down and build up an excellent case for yourself. Once you’ve become established in your field, make sure you respect yourself and your abilities. Others will respect you more because of that.

Have a low-balling story you’d like to share? Tell us how you got out of a low-balling pickle – would love to hear some interesting takes on this rather unfortunate aspect of freelancing.

Bidding sites – the very term causes some professional freelancers to frown in disdain. But I was introduced to the world of freelancing via Elance and so far have had nothing but great buyers and positive experiences on it. Yes it’s true that if you stay on long enough, there’s bound to be some bad apples in the mix and I’m sure my day of negative/neutral feedback will come (gasp!), but so far I’ve been lucky.

I first joined Elance as part of a company in May 2008. In January 2009 I formed my own account on Elance with a business partner and in July of the same year I went solo. Best decision I ever made! Since then I haven’t looked back. Granted I don’t have a humongous list of projects under my belt yet, but I’m building up my portfolio slowly and steadily, taking on as much work as I can handle at any given time and not over extending myself.

So, here’s in a nut shell, what a savvy freelance businessperson needs to know to start building an online business with Elance:

Invest In Your Freelance Business

There is really no point in wasting time with a free account if you are serious about your business. By all means start out with a free account to test the waters, but when you decide you want to make money at Elance, be willing to invest some first. Small business membership fee costs $20 per month which gives you 40 connects. Connects are used as barter for placing bids on projects. You must buy more connects (at $5 for 10 connects) if you want to place more bids in a given month.

Build A Solid, Credible Profile

Even if you have no or little experience in the marketplace, you can build up your profile page to reflect an honest impression of you as an ethical businessperson. Your profile should contain, at the very least, compelling facts about your expertise, experience, qualifications and skills. Take some skills tests in your designated area – these help you rank higher in search results when buyers are looking for a particular skill. Look into verifying your credentials as this adds some small measure of credibility, but there’s no rush to do this.

Scout Projects Carefully Before Considering Bidding On Them

You want to look at various factors such as: is the project in your specific area of expertise, is the budget appropriate, does the buyer have a good rate of awarding projects, does the buyer have positive feedback from other freelancers who’ve worked with him/her? If the answer to all of the these questions is yes, get to work drafting a proposal for the project.

Never Use Boilerplate Proposals

Write a well thought-out, customized proposal for each project. It’s okay to use a template so long as you customize it for each project. In your proposal, outline why you’re the best fit for the job, what you bring to the project (experience, enthusiasm, etc) and follow up with relevant samples and a closing statement outlining your course of action.

Address The Buyer’s Questions Directly

This shows that you have taken the time to read the project description. Answer both the buyer’s stated questions and his unstated questions by reading between the lines. Does the project require a certain task which he’s neglected to mention? Spell it out, let him know why the task is important, and if it’s menial, how you’d be wiling to do it for no extra charge (e.g. I offer SEO content to all my clients, since it’s easy for me to incorporate it – this way I can offer it up as a value-addition if I feel it will benefit their project)

Get Your Foot In The Door Any Way You Can

It can be really difficult to win that first project on Elance. Many people go months before they land their first project! Don’t let that happen to you. Slash your prices, offer more than you normally would, be extra courteous and extra accommodating to requests to not only snag your first project but also garner positive feedback on your first project. I started at $8/hour and am now up to $20/hour with future rate hikes as my experience (and portfolio) builds up. It’s possible to get well-paying jobs, but you have to be ready to start at the bottom rung of the ladder.

Follow Through

Make sure you do what you’ve written in your communication with the buyer. Make sure all communication is done with the private message boards (which Elance can view in the event of a dispute). Communication takes on magnified importance in a long-distance working relationship so be sure to keep your client informed of the project’s progress at all times.

This list is by no means exhaustive and I’ll be adding to it as my experience builds. What success have you attained using Elance? Do you have any advice to give to newcomers to the world of freelancing in general and Elance in particular? Or are you new to Elance and considering whether you should use it or not? Either way, share your views with a comment below; I’d love to read (and respond) to your thoughts!