1. Web Development Tutorials

2. Web Design Tutorials

3. Free Web or Blog Hosting

4. Payment systems

5. Freelance sites

6. Communication

7. Script resources

7. Web Directories

Web Development Tutorials

W3 Schools
W3 Schools contains mostly basic, but very well written and easy to understand tutorials. On the site you will also find full references of all popular programming languages and technologies. There are also quizzes, examples and validators. It is really an awesome resource

Developer Tutorials
A large depository of developer tutorials, some of them quite advanced

Skye Tutorials
A small site containing few good tutorials on various topics

Web Design Tutorials

Good Tutorials
The best resource for Photoshop tutorials. Organized in categories, with user ratings, pictures and screenshots.

The Site Wizard
The site wizard has a lot to offer and their design section is not bad too

Free Web or Blog Hosting

Blogger
The best free blog hosting service. You can create you blog, resume or portfolio completely free and get it spydered by the search engines fast

BlogEasy
Another very well set place for free blog hosting

Absolutely Free Hosting
The free hosting are not reliable and often change. That’s why I selected for you a whole directory of them

Payment Systems

PayPal
Unfortunately not available for many countries. There are some ways to use paypal even if you are not in a listed country, but they may be costly and not always 100% legal

MoneyBookers
An excellent service, but unfortunately they are too particular in accepting credit cards (which makes them not so good for your potential buyers)

E-Gold
Again a very cool service with very low prices. But funding your e-gold account is expensive which will put off your clients, unless they already use e-gold

2Checkout
The most respected CC processor accepting worldwide clients. One time fee of $59 and you are ready to go

Freelance Sites

Check Freelance Site Reviews for more details.

Communication

GMail
Free and reliable e-mail system. Allows also chatting, sending files and more

Miranda
Open source program supporting all the popular instant messengers – ICQ, YIM, AIM, Jabber, IRC

Skype
Free internet telephony, allows holding conference calls. You can also call standard phone numbers for a small fee

Script Resources

HotScripts
The most popular and one of the best places for free and paid scripts – php, javascript, perl, asp, everything

Script Search
Another very good portal for scripts

PHP Resource Index
A lot of PHP scripts

CGI Resource Index
And a lot of CGI scripts

Web Directories

Free Web Directory
Including General and Freelance Resources, Offer automatic, instant and free directory submissions.

about home business

All Freelance
A large directory of freelance related stuff

Web directory | MaxLinks

Link Management – Webmasters helping webmasters develop high value relevant links. Promoting ethical web-marketing using the time trusted pillars of relevance and popularity.

A Real Home Business: Work at Home Ideas from HomeBizTools.com
Home business ideas, tools, and training to help you start, grow, and expand your own home business or search for the work at home job right for you.

Here is the full story in short. I was contacted by an old customer who was happy with my work on a project we’ve done through RentACoder. He asked why should I pay 15% fee, we already know each other, let us do the work outside. I agreed, we started the project and completed it successfully. It was a small project for $100.

The payment time came, but… I realized there is no good way to receive $100 from USA to Bulgaria. He wanted to pay me with Paypal, but Paypal does not work here. I was not able to accept his credit card either. He was too busy to go out and search for Western Union office. So we ended up with online bank wire which costed me about $35. That was 35% of my payment – I felt robbed!

Of course your customer can always find a way to pay you. But sending money over the world can be a real pain, especially for small amounts and especially in some countries.

I have been researching better payment methods all the years I work as a freelancer. There is not an ideal solution, but below you will find my impressions and conclusions about some payment systems. Hopefully you will find the one that suits you and your location best.

Paypal – Good, but not available for everyone

Paypal is most preferred from the customers from USA and Western Europe. It is easy to use for them and cheap. It costs either nothing or 4.2% to receive money with them – depending on your account type. You can accumulate your earnings and withdraw to your bank account or you can use the funds to purchase things online.

Almost everything is great with Paypal, except that they don’t work in many countries. The full list of countries which can use Paypal is available here. If you don’t see yours, you’ll have to forget about this payment option.

Credit Cards – work almost everywhere, but costly

Another convenient method of payment is accepting credit cards. If you want your customers to pay for your freelance work with credit cards, you need to set up an account with credit card processor company.

However, many of these companies charge monthly or yearly fees on your account in addition to the commission which they take. There are also many online scams, so you should be very careful when choosing such a company. Being scammed won’t be nice neither for you nor for your customer.

One of the very few reputable credit card processors, which don’t charge monthly fees is 2CheckOut. The other fees are not low however – you will have to pay $59 registration fee. Then, there is 5.2% commission on each payment you receive. Then, after you accumulate enough funds in your account, you will have to pay bank wire fees.

Bank wire – the universal solution for large payments

For your relief, there is a secure payment method which work for any freelancer in any country. The international bank wire is the most professional and secure way to receive a payment. There are no “wrong” wires – in 99% of the cases even if you give a wrong account number, the money won’t be lost, because the receiving banks compare both the account number and the beneficient’s name provided.

The problem with the wires is their cost. An international wire will cost you about $30 – $50, depending on the correspondent bank, your bank and the sender bank fees. If you have to receive only $50 you may end up getting just a couple of bucks in your account.

On the other hand the bank wires are very cost effective way of payment if you are receiving $500 or more, because the fees are increasing very little for larger sums.

Checks/Cheques – cheap but sloooooooow

The bank checks (cheques) are probably the oldest way of sending money domestic and worldwide. Presumable every bank in the world should be able to accept and pay checks. Unfortunately, many banks in Europe (and probably in the rest of the World) do not find this profitable and refuse to clear checks. So, you may have a bit of trouble before you find a bank near you which to accept checks.

The checks are usually cheap – it costs $1-$3 to be sent with snail mail. You may eventually pay more if you want to be sure that your checks will be delivered or if you want them faster (the snail mail may take up to 3-4 weeks). With DHL or other courier service the cost of sending a check will be about $35.

Then, the banks will charge you some bucks to clear the check. This varies a lot in the different banks so make sure you ask first! In most cases it will be $10 – $15 regardless of the check amount. But the first time I cleared a check I ended up charged with $52.

The bigger issue with the checks is the long time you need to wait. 2-3 weeks for snail mail and then most banks will require from 2 to 4 weeks to clear it. So in fact it may take 2 months before you can use your money.

Moneybookers – cheap for some, boring for all

Moneybookers is a service similar to Paypal. They have some very tempting features like very low comission (only 1% and never exceeds EUR 1) and domestic wires in many countries. So basically, if you reside in a place where domestic wires are available for Moneybookers you can get any amount of money for just 3-4 EUR total.

There are some negative things with them however. They have very strict policies and may block your account for whatever reason they decide. They are very picky to credit cards – to deposit funds with credit card you’ll have to pass a very boring verification procedure. You may don’t need to deposit funds, but your customers will.

Similar boring procedure is in place for withdrawals. You need to verify your bank account by receiving a small wire with a special code. You will have to ask for full statement from your bank in order to see this code.

IKobo – convenient but risky

IKobo is another similar to paypal service where one account holder can send money to another account holder. Their fees are also low – around 4%-5% (it seems to depend on the amount). They can be funded with credit card and bank wire.

The advantage of IKobo is that they send you a free debit card and you can withdraw your funds in any ATM worldwide. Basically IKobo works great… for some freelancers.

Word of warning: Ikobo ripped me off. I signed up, received a payment and the debit card arrived. The first day I withdrew just a small part of the money. The second day it did not worked and I received email from them asking me to send ID scans and utility bill. I did it and received an automated response that they couldn’t serve me anymore. The funds were returned to the payer without asking (fortunately that buyer was serious and sent me the money again in another way). So be cautious with them!

E-gold – costly but works almost everywhere

E-gold is a bit weird system. The money which sit in your account there are calculated in weight of gold or other precious metal. So when you receive money, you in fact receive grams of gold. Therefore the dollar amount of the funds is changing all the time with the price of the gold.

The internal fees of e-gold are very low – only 1% and never exceed $1 total, even if you receive thousands. Sounds super, but there is one big disadvantage. E-gold does not send you out real cash. You must use a third party exchange service (You can find a list of such services here. I can personally recommend IceGold) which will usually charge you 2% + the cost of international bank wire. So unless you accumulate several payments in your e-gold account before turning it into real cash, you’ll only lose money.

There are various debit cards working with e-gold, but you should be very careful. Since e-gold is non-rechargeable service there are a lot of scam debit card and scam exchange services. Always choose only reputable ones (with long history and good feedback on the Net).

Users in Russia and Ukraine can use Webmoney and exchange their e-gold there and receive domestic bank wire. The same is available in some Asian countries.

Users from India and Iran may not be able to use E-gold (there were problems at the time of writing this article).

Western Union or Money Gram – probably the best solution but costly too

Western Union is probably my favorite payment method when I have at least $100 to receive. It happens almost immediately – 5 minutes after sending, the money are here. It is 100% secure and reliable.

Like with all payment systems there are some disadvantages. Receiving money by Western Union is costly. They charge $15 for amount up to $100, $22 for amounts between $100 and $200, $28 for amounts between $200 and $300 etc. Commission does not go much lower than 10% even for large sums.

Another issue of course is that you have to physically go to Western Union office to collect your money. It can’t be sent to your bank account.

MoneyGram is a very similar service. Their fees are slightly lower (see their fee calculator), but they are a bit less popular and you may need to look for an office more.

Whatever you choose, make sure you don’t fall for “too good to be true” systems. Sending and receiving money worldwide is costly, regardless what method exactly are you using. Always try to understand all hidden fees and surcharges which may be added. By having proper money management you can afford to collect multiple payments in some online account and withdraw them at once. This way you can save a lot of fees.

Overall Impressions

Guru.com is by no doubt a huge site. By their own words it is “The world’s largest online marketplace for freelance talent”. I don’t know this it is the truth, but even if it is not, it’s pretty close to the truth.

Guru.com contains more than hundred job categories of all business areas. This is what makes it unique – all the sites I have seen are concentrated mostly on computer related jobs. Guru.com has categories on everything that can be done per freelance contract – from the well known computer stuff, to legal advice, business consulting, engineering, interior design and marketing.

I have never felt too comfortably on Guru.com however, most probably because of it’s a bit strange member’s area, bidding system and messaging. For me it is a bit weird, quite different from the control panels on the other sites and a bit confusing.

The free members on Guru.com have quite limited access, which has its advantages and disadvantages of course. You still can use the site as a free member – just like I have always done. But if you find the service good for you and like to work there a lot, better to upgrade your account.

Guru.com pays your earnings with Check, Bank wire or Paypal. Freelancers from India can also use Remit2India payment method. They charge 10% commissions for free members and 5% on the two paid account types.

Positives

- huge site with a lot of projects
- a lot of categories covering every kind of work
- excellent support and help
- limited competition because of the limited bids on free members
- overall good quality of the projects posted
- good protection against dishonest buyers

Negatives

- a bit confusing and not as easy to use as the other sites.
- high fees (10%) for free members
- not too many payment options
- absolutely no information about other’s bids

Additional Information

One of the things which frustrated me on Guru is that the other’s offers are completely hidden. You won’t understand the bids of the other competitors neither before, neither after the project is done. You won’t even know the number of bidders or the amount of average bid. Absolutely no guideline about the price you should offer.

I know this makes Guru.com closer to the reality. When you approach a client in the real world, usually you can’t ask them for the other offers or even if they have any. So it is a positive thing and forces you to give fair offer, instead of “outsmarting” the market.

On the other hand, especially if you are new in freelancing, you need some ways to learn – and Guru.com is not appropriate for that. Guru is excellent site for the experienced freelancers but a bit raw to the newbies.

If you create a Basic account (free), you will be allowed only 10 bids per 30 days. This option obviously is appropriate only if you just want to try Guru – or you diversify there, but it is not your main freelance site. If you want to use it more, you’ll have to pick a paid account type.

The first paid account type called “Guru” gives you 100 bids per 30 days, only 5% project fee and costs $30 – $100 per quarter depending on your profile category. This is the perfect account type if you want to work seriously on this site. The only advantage of paying more for the next level – “Guru Vendor” (costs $39 – $130 per quarter) is that you’ll have access to “vendor only” projects. And they are not that many.

Some do that better, some do it worse

Some charge you more, some less. Some will allow you to join free, while other will charge you a sign up fee. It is very important to choose 2-3 freelance sites where to put your efforts for getting projects. A bad decision may cost you money and for sure will cost you time and broken nerves.

In this article I’ll review my favorite freelance sites – each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages. I’ll show you which they are and help you choose – but the final decision is yours.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

Try to get freelance projects from at least two of these sites – this will help you diversify your income streams and will give you base for comparison.

On the other hand, don’t sign up in every freelance site you see on the Net. Being in too many of them, you will lose a lot of time checking them all and bidding everywhere. Most of the sites have minimum payouts and they’ll be even higher if you receive payments by check or bank wire. You won’t make much progress if you have $50 in each of 15 freelance sites and you can’t get them out because of the high bank fees. On the other hand, having let’s say $500 in each of 3 sites is much easier to maintain.

Now, onto the topic. Here are the best startup points for your freelance career:

Scriptlance Review: The easiest freelance site to start

RentACoder Review: Serious site for serious freelancers

GetAFreelancer Review: A Promissing Venture

Guru.com Review – Maybe the largest, maybe the strangest freelance site

Expect more reviews soon!

Overall impressions of Scriptlance

One of the most popular and most active freelance sites. Registration is free. There are hundreds of projects published every day and thousands of freelancers competing for them. You can withdraw your earnings via Check, Paypal, E-gold or Bank Wire. The support is overally good and there is a forum where you can receive other member’s feedback. The site is very easy to use. Your bids on ScriptLance are visible to the other members, unless the buyer has explicitly chosen otherwise.

Positives

- Very low commissions – only 5% of the project amount (minimal fee $5)
- Several withdrawal options including E-gold
- Good support and forum
- A lot of projects available every day
- Very user-friendly site
- Free registration, no monthly fees (unless for certified programmers)

Negatives

- Too much competition
- Often the projects are of low quality or not well paid
- Not very good protection against malicious buyers
- the commissions are taken when the project is accepted and before you get paid – thus you can have negative balance.

Additional information

There is a private message board on ScriptLance where you can communicate privately with the buyers. Many users use the boards to give private offers just like if they have placed bids. So you can’t entirely rely on the visible bids on the site to know the prices of your competitors.

Do not post contact information in your bids! You can be banned from the site for doing this. If you want to give a link to your portfolio, you must do it in the private message board.

Be careful not to end up with negative balance on ScriptLance. How is this possible? Well, they charge their fee at the time you accept to work on a project (after your bid is selected of course). So if this is your first project, or you have withdrawn all the funds from your account, now your account will be negative. You will have 30 days to pay the fee – either by getting paid from the buyer or by depositing money yourself. If you fail to do it you’ll get your account frozen until you do it. This is not so scary, because you don’t lose your account – you are just unable to place bids. But it is not a nice situation, so better avoid it.

ScriptLance does not automatically calculate commissions on additional payments made to your account – say bonuses or payments for extra work. But you must report them yourself – use the “contact us” link and then navigate to the appropriate form. If you don’t do it, you’ll be charged 10% instead of 5% on these extra payments.

If you conform to these small specialities in ScriptLance you will see that it is one of the best freelance sites available. And yes, you will be earning a good money thru them.

Overall impressions

A very professional and business-looking freelance website. Don’t get fooled by the site’s look, it is not “for the big fish” or something like that. It is just a good site available for everyone. The registration is free and this site also lists hundreds of new projects every day.

Rentacoder.com charges the highest commission fees among the sites I have used. You will have to pay 15% of your earnings. Well, in some occasions you will pay “only” 12.5% (this happens on one-to-one private projects). But the service and fraud protection that you get for this price are very good. Rentacoder.com sends your money via Check, Western Union or Paypal.

Positives

- very good protection against fraudiend buyers. Their escrow system makes you 100% secured
- excellent support, they will always listen to your needs
- excellent rating system
- cool top-coders competition giving you more exposure – once you become a “top coder” of course
- malicious rating protection – you can ask for arbitration if you are not happy with the rating you have received
- ability to publicly rebut a bad rating

Negatives

- very high commission fees – 15%
- the arbitrations are usually awarded to the buyers
- very strict on the timings – you can lose the payment if you don’t meet the deadline
- you have to submit annoying weekly reports on projects which are over $150

Additional information

The bidding on Rentacoder.com is hidden. This means that you can’t view the other coder’s bids and adjust yours accordingly. This can be good or bad, depending on how you see it.

Fortunately once the project is awarded to someone, the other’s bids are available to see. You can learn a lot by reading them and estimating why someone’s bid won and other’s bid lost. It’s not always the price which matters the most (in fact in less than 50% of the projects the lowest bid is chosen).

In RentACoder.com you don’t request a withdrawal from your account when you want. They send it on 1st or 15th each month only if it exceeds a limit, set by you. Make sure to set this limit high enough, so lower % of your money goes to bank or Western Union fees. If you use Paypal you don’t have to worry about this.

Try to get into the “top coders” list. It is not that hard – you need 3 projects completed, $500 or more earned, average rating 9 or more, and no failed projects. Being a “top coder” you get a “medal” attached to your profile and earn a lot more credibility.

Never ever allow to lose a project and receive a rating 3 or lower. This will throw you off the top coders ranking forever. If some job goes nowhere, try to arrange mutual agreement with the buyer so he gets his money back, but you don’t receive a bad rating.

Rentacoder.com has quite picky system and is good for self disciplined freelancers. If you are not in this category, better choose some of the other sites.

At the time I was looking to find freelance programming jobs I was using several very good websites and techniques which keep working today. My advice is not to approach all of them at once. Choose 2-3 and put some effort into winning a project. Work on them, gain some experience and try building good reputation. Maybe you won’t like some freelance website or some message board, but even then the experience will be of use. Don’t try to diversify your time between all of them – this way you won’t have a chance to present yourself good enough in any of the sites.

Freelance websites

These are marketplaces whose purpose is especially to help you find freelance jobs. Here are my top 4 choices:

Scriptlance is one of the best places to start on. There are really over 100 projects posted every day and most of them are freelance programming jobs. The bidding on Scriptlance is public, i.e. your bid will be visible to the others. This makes it excellent for you, because you can learn from others bids. Note that there is a private message board where you can communicate with the client.

The commissions which Scriplance takes are fairly low – only 5% of the project amount (minimum $5). They offer several payment options which makes them appropriate regardless of where you live – Check, Bank wire, Paypal or E-gold. The registration is free and you don’t have to pay anything up-front

GetAFreelancer is another super active freelance site with more than 100 projects posted per day. More than half of them are for programming. On this site you can also see the average bid yet on the page with project listing and the bidding is also public. The commissions they take is higher – 10% of the project amount (with minimum $5). Just like on Scriptlance nothing will have to be paid on the featured projects.

There is an option to be a Gold Member which costs $10 per month and provides you with some benefits, but the basic level is free. GetAFreelancer is a champion in providing methods of payment – they can issue your earnings thru PayPal, E-Gold, Bank Wire, Check, Moneybookers and Western Union.

RentACoder used to be my favorite and I still like it a lot, although their rules for freelancers are a bit too strict. You should definitely deliver the projects on time and communicate with the clients, otherwise you get heavy penalties (bad ratings etc) on your profile which can put the potential new buyers off.

There are a lot of categories, but again finding freelance programming jobs is the easiest among them. Its is also very active – not less than Scriptlance or GetAFreelancer and there are a lot of options to search and filter the bid requests. The bidding on this site is private, i.e. you won’t see other’s bid amounts before the winner is selected.

The registration and using the site is free. The commissions on RentACoder are the highest – 15% of the project amount, but once you sign up in the site you’ll understand what you pay for. A lot of educational articles, professional staff which is always ready to help you and excellent protection from unfair buyers – their escrow system perfectly protects you from not being paid.

RentACoder pays your earnings thru Check, Paypal or Western Union.

Guru is one of the largest freelance websites which includes categories for almost everything that you can think about. When I first visited it I found it a bit strange and really, you’ll need to spend some time reading until you get used to the interface. The site has a an excellent profile/resume builder which allows you really impress the potential buyers of your programming services.

There are free and paid accounts on Guru. As a free member you’ll have to pay 10% commissions and will have limited access to the projects and limited amounts of bids per month. Of course the paid members are not limited in this way and pay only 5% of their earnings. (there are actually 2 types of paid accounts offering different conditions).

The bids on Guru are hidden and you won’t see the other’s offers even after the project is over.

Message Boards

Some freelancers do very well in finding programming jobs thru message boards. I have rare used this method, but have some good impressions from the following boards:

Looking to hire section at Sitepoint.com has 2-3 requests for programming help per day. The competition between the providers is much lower, so your chances to get a job are pretty good.

On Help Wanted in Domain Names Forum you’ll also find 2-3 projects posted every day and in general the buyers are genuine and honest.

Basically the forums can’t be your main source for finding freelance jobs, but they are also a way to start or get additional business.

Overall Impressions

GetAFreelancer(GAF) is a bit newer than the mastodons Scriptlance and RentACoder, but it managed to take a large pie in the market very fast. The site is very nice and easy to use. You can see all projects at a glance, just like in Scriptlance (the layouts of both sites are similar). You will find more than 100 new projects posted every day.

GetAFreelancer takes higher commission – 10% of the project amount or $5 (whichever is higher). The Gold members pay NO commission fee though and you can be a Gold member very easy – just pay $12 per month. If you do a lot of work there, it is pretty small fee. There is a minimum bid amount of $20, which takes out the $5-per-project guys.

GetAFreelancer really takes care about your money and will allow you to withdraw in six ways – PayPal, E-Gold, Bank Wire, Check, Moneybookers and Western Union.

Positives

- Very easy to use, excellent navigation and explanations
- You can work without paying commission fees as a Gold member – for just $12 per month
- Very popular – a lot of new projects posted every day
- Many withdrawal options, including MoneyBookers and E-gold
- RSS feeds with the projects available
- $20 minimum bid – no cheap competitors who work for $5

Negatives

- Too much competition, just like in Scriptlance
- Higher fees unless you are Gold member
- Not very good protection against malicious buyers

Additional Information

GetAFreelancer just recently implemented some interesting new features. The free members are now allowed to place only 15 bids per month and Gold members – 150 bids per month. Don’t think this is bad. I think it is quite good. Are you serious about building a freelance career? I am sure you are, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this site.

Limiting the bids is good thing, because it limits the low quality bids and cheap workers. It limits your competition and increases the chances for your bid to win. Yes, you will have to be more careful when choosing a project to bid on, but this can be only positive for you. This way you will rarely end up winning a project which you can’t complete. And if 15 bids per month are not enough, for only $12 your limit will be raised to 150 bids monthly.

In general I like GetAFreelancer a lot and think that they will be one of the biggest players in the future.

So you have spent few months studying various technologies – probably PHP/MySQL, CGI or Java – and now you want to put that in action. Or are you already working as a web developer for a company? This experience can help you, but it is not needed.

When I was starting as a freelance developer, I had zero professional experience. I was a prepress expert in an advertising company and in my free time was working on 2-3 open source projects with PHP. None of them was too complicated, neither I was too good in what I was doing – I only know I really wanted to be a freelancer.

The experience is not so important. The most important is your passion to do it and that you are ready to struggle for success as a freelance developer. Don’t expect the beginning to be easy – in fact the beginning is where most freelancers fail. The first projects will be hard to win, to do, and to get paid.

Are you ready to start?

1. Prepare a portfolio

You have very little chance to win your first project if you have nothing to show. You desperately need a portfolio. Here is a catch 22 – to win your first project you must show some past work. But how to have it if you have never worked on a project? Here are to possible ways to resolve this issue:

- create a project yourself. Don’t do it too fancy or too complex – you don’t want to lose months doing it or lose your motivation. For example if you are web developer, create a simple forum or a guestbook. If you are C++ or Java programmer create a simple text editor. All you need is something bug free which to show to your potential customers

- join open source project at SourceForge. This site allows you to search projects which need help based on the preferred technology or software type. Although the project owners also have some requirements, it is not so hard to be accepted – finally, the jobs are unpaid.

2. Build a resume and a website

Now it is time to build your resume. It should be as professional and tidy as if you were adopting a regular job. See this article on how to write a resume. The only difference is that this time you should put more weight on your skills and portfolio rather than your education. In most cases the high school and diploma won’t be known from the potential buyers (unless you have studied in Oxford – so don’t expect them to hire you because of it.

Put your resume and portfolio on a website. You can even use free webhosting or create it as a blog at Blogger. At this moment do not put contact details there – the freelance sites will ban you for doing this, and being a beginner you can’t expect that some random visitor on your site will contact you for a project. The purpose of your website at this stage is only to be shown to the potential buyers on the freelance websites.

3. Join 1-2 freelance sites

If you have never seen a freelance site, you may be a bit confused at the beginning. But in general they have similar requirement and structure. [See this article about freelance sites]
My personal preferences are to Scriptlance and RentACoder, but I can also recommend you Guru and GetAFreelancer.

For the beginning you’d better choose a site with free registration (like the ones above). Thus you won’t risk anything except your time.

When joining the site, don’t forget to carefully complete your profile. You can use the same information that you have put in your resume and website. If the site allows that, put a picture of yourself – it builds trust and breaks the ice of the first contact.

Don’t pretend to be a team. I have seen many developers presenting themselves as teams with many programmers and designers. This is not impressing the buyers – most often it puts them off. They are usually small business owners and webmasters or outsourcing companies who are looking for individuals and not teams – and you will even see this as a requirement in many projects.

4. Bid on 5-10 projects per day

Unless you are incredibly lucky, you will not win your first project. Quite possible you’ll not even win within your first 10 bids. It took me more than 20 bids on RAC and more than 10 on Scriptlance before I won the first. You need the lost bids to gain experience. See who won and why. See why your bid was rejected. Was it because the price or the language you used? Was it because your skills were inappropriate or your portfolio weak?

Because of this you have to be consistent and keep bidding every day. Don’t overdo it – 5-10 bids per day are enough. You need to know what you are bidding on, to be sure that you can complete it and to estimate your bid well.

5. Win your first freelance project

Sooner or later you will win your first project. Don’t give up and keep doing it until you win it. The feeling is really great even if it is a small job for $5. You will feel like a real winner – and this pays for all the efforts put so far.

But don’t let the emotions put you away from the target – stay concentrated and put all your power into doing your first freelance project perfectly. Don’t think that you are doing too much for the price you have given. Your first project will not be accurate for your financial calculations. Its purpose is not to make you money – it is to start making your image.

Do it perfectly, on time and if possible overdo it. Communicate often with the buyer, be kind and helpful. This will bring you the first testimonial and rating and boost your freelance career from then on.

6. Update your portfolio

Once completed the first project, immediately place it in your portfolio. If you have received a testimonial, create a testimonials page and put it there. Use every further project you win to grow your portfolio and improve your profile. The more you do, the more your profile and feedback grows and the easier it becomes to win projects and complete them.

This tutorial is where you should start, but don’t end with it. Keep improving yourself and working on your skills and freelancer profile. The other articles from this site will help you to master your skills as a freelance developer.

Some clarifications: /these are for you, DO NOT include such in you CV /

1. Did you notice the picture? What, did you think that you must put a photo with suite and a tie? Nothing wrong if you do it, but you don’t NEED to be official. You are a freelancer, you are creative and free – and it’s perfectly fine if you place your photo with a t-shirt and sunglasses (well, better without sunglasses – keep your eyes visible)
2. Notice some differences – instead of giving birth date and physical address I’ve given timezone and availability. This information is much more useful for someone who searches for a freelancer!
3. The education is so short – who cares to know the names of my schools? Ok, if you are Ph.D. feel free to write it, but don’t bother your potential customers with too much details about it
4. Same on the work experience – who cares about the names of the companies I worked in?
5. The languages are important. Yes, English is used everywhere, but sometimes the clients will be much happier if you can also speak Spanish or French.
6. In this sample resume my portfolio contains only one item – because you are not here to know about me, but just to get the idea. If you have few projects done, list all of them. If you have many, list the best 10
7. The publications are also only two for the sample, but if you have more, list them – sorted by years. Start from the most recent and go back in time. You can list 20 or more as they won’t take too much screen space.