The term freelancing is a very broad term as far as the type of work that it actually involves. As a freelancer, you will generally be bidding or quoting a price to do a specific amount of work. With existing clients or long-term contracts you can sometimes obtain an hourly rate or even a salary, whether part-time or full-time. The type of work that you are doing is entirely up to you, because you’ll be able to choose from hundreds of projects in quite a few different areas. Generally, the type of work that you do will determine the amount of money that you are making on an hourly basis. No matter what your specialty is, if it can be done on a computer then you can probably find freelance work doing it. Some general categories of work available are web design, programming, design, multimedia, sales, marketing, writing, translation, administrative support, engineering, manufacturing, legal, finance and management. There are thousands of specific special skills, types of work and computer software that have freelancing work available online. The best way to find out if your specific skills may be in demand is to check out some of the freelancing websites found within this information and browse through some of their category or job listings.

Unskilled Work
I use the term ‘unskilled’ here in a loose sense because there can certainly be skill, knowledge and experience involved in these fields. However, these fields of work tend to be view as cheap labor jobs in the freelancing world, although I am sure exceptions to the rule can apply. Jobs such as data entry, blog & forum posting, writing, myspace & facebook friend gathering and other similar natured jobs can often be done by a decent majority of people who have enough knowledge to get on the internet and have a good typing speed. If you have a special gift in something like writing, I would not waste too much time trying to write articles or website content because the pay will likely not be what your talents are worth. If you truly have something to say that people would pay money to know, try writing your own e-book or even a real book. If you decide to do jobs like these, definitely start with something small and work your way up as you get more comfortable. It is not uncommon for people looking to pay $1 for 500-1000 words to have people write articles or pennies for forum postings. You can sometimes obtain decent pay for myspace and face book friends, but they are often desired is vast quantities of hundreds or even thousands. Places such as Scriptlance are not very good places to find work for professional writers. If you are educated and/or truly skilled at something but cannot find a decent pay rate, try some of the more professional freelance websites such as elance.com or guru.com.

Skilled Work
I use the term ‘skilled work’ in a somewhat loose sense as well, because there can be educated and uneducated skilled workers. Depending on which category you may fall into, pay close attention to the ‘How to Find New Clients’ chapter to figure out where best to find work. Skilled work available can involve a large number of fields of work including website design, website programming in a large number of different programming languages, graphic design, flash and other multimedia work, general application programming for computers and mobile devices, and nearly any other skill that can be accomplished on a computer. Depending on the client, their budget and project requirements, they may or may not be looking for an educated worker to perform these jobs. I personally made a living for numerous years as a self taught php/mysql programmer, so don’t think that you can’t get paid to do this work just because you never went to college to do it. Rates of pay for skilled work can greatly vary depending on what type of work you are doing, your experience and education. Uneducated freelancers that do not have a lot of experience will often work for $5-10/hour while a more experienced worker can make $20-30/hr or maybe even more. Educated freelancers can make very comfortable livings on the internet as long as they are looking for work in the right place and taking/winning the right jobs for the right clients. Often, your hourly rate will depend on how quickly you can work at a quality level since you will be bidding a price to do a set amount of work. Educated freelancers can often get a set hourly or salary rate, although that can always depend on the client.