So many people today have the desire to work from home making money, and many have found that they can turn this desire into a reality through the website Elance.com. In fact, this is a freelance or independent contractor website that has several hundred thousand workers already established with them and finding work through their site on a regular basis. Of course, before you make any bold moves such as quitting your current job to work from home, you do want to take a closer look at what this site is all about and what it’s like to really work for them.

The Different Types of Work

Elance.com is so popular in large part because it does cater to so many different types of people. It offers unskilled workers with the ability to work from home on tasks like data entry and administrative support positions, and there are far more skilled projects available as well such as those pertaining to engineering, finance, law, web development, computer programming, and more. These jobs are available in one-off projects that can take anywhere from a few hours to several months to complete, and there are also recurring or repeat work opportunities, too.

Getting Started

Getting started working with Elance.com is fairly easy. You do have to set up a profile page, which generally equates to your own online resume. Potential clients may view this profile page when you place bids on assignments, and they can also search through the profile pages to find workers who they may want to directly request to work on assignments. So you do want to put in some thought and effort into developing a great profile page. You can view other profile pages to get some creative inspiration, but you do want to develop a unique page that is all your own.

Finding Work

When you initially get started working through Elance.com, you will have to pay a small fee to join their site. You pay for how many bid opportunities you to each month, and you can start with the lowest number and then add on if you need more bid opportunities on any given month. This bid system is designed to keep everyone from bidding randomly on assignments and helps to ensure people bid on only those assignments they are most interested in and most capable of winning. You can easily search through the job options available and place your bid for these tasks. If a potential employer is interested in working with you, they will respond to your bid often very quickly. The other possibility is that a client may find you by searching through profiles, and they may request you for their project based on your skills and experience.

Getting Paid

Elance.com excels over other freelancer websites in their payment procedures. They have an escrow feature that, if you choose to use it, ensures that the client has deposited your money into the Elance.com escrow account before you start working. The client generally does have to release the funds from escrow once they are satisfied with your work. However, in the rare event that you completed the work and the client has not released the funds from escrow, you can start a dispute process. In this case, Elance.com will research the issue, and they do have the ability to release the funds for you. Essentially, this ensures that you will get paid for your services, and this takes away a lot of the fear may contract workers have over getting paid in a timely manner.

The bottom line is that Elance.com is one of the most popular freelance worker and contract worker websites today, and for good reason. They have the infrastructure and customer service capabilities in place to really match up clients and workers together and to safeguard both clients and workers to ensure both are satisfied with their experiences.