How To Get Started With Odesk

Today I want to share with your my experience on how to get started with Odesk.

Some words about what oDesk is. Odesk is a markertplace for freelancers who offer their services (they are called providers) and managers who buy services from freelances (they are called buyers). Both buyers and providers have their accounts, one account per person. Buyers offer jobs indicating what skills do they require and pay providers for the work done. Providers offer their services and are paid for the work done. Odesk has an outstading feature – Odesk tool that requires providers to be logged in while working – in that way provider will receive the money automatically – if you go with hourly-rate. Thought the job can be fixed-rate – a provider will be paid fixed amount despite how many hours he/she will spend on that job. Odesk does not quarantee the payment for fixed-price jobs.

Ok so now let’s see how can you benefit from Odesk.

If you are a provider you can:

1. Offer services (i.e. software development, web development, SEO, blog writing, translation, etc.)
2. Start your own company and invite other providers to join your team
3. Become Odesk certified developers by passing tests. Odesk offers wide range of tests from Delphi or C++ to email etiquette.
4. Build long-term business relationships and enchance your experience
5. Join a team of qualified providers

What you need to get started on Odesk

First of all you need to create an account. You will have to go through a simple process of registration: choose whether you going to buy or sell services, specify your account and personal details. You will receive a confirmation on your email address and here you are – you are a new Odesk user. Congrats!

That was the easiest part. You are a new member of odesk community. What exactly do you want to do? You want to make money. That is why you came here. I will tell you what you need to do to have a start making money as quickly as possible.

Let’s list these steps and then we will go through them in details. To quickly start on Odesk you should

1. Pass the Odesk readiness test
2. Complete your personal information
3. Complete your Odesk profile by specifying a nice title tag (it will appear along with your name when you apply for jobs) adding a picture of yourself (buyers would like to know who are they going to work with), specifying your primary role, weekly availability, years of experience and objective.
4. Also you should add your past experience, i.e. work, studying, etc., some words about yourself.
5. Add projects to your portfolio, specify whether you were the one responsible for the whole project or were you a part of the team and what was you responsible for. This point is very important as clients first of all would like to see what you can do and what you have already done  so far. If you don’t have any projects you could add in your portolio don’t worry! I started with as much as O projects in my potfolio and by now I have more than 16 and these are not the complete list.
6. Specify your hourly-rate that you are planning to charge your clients. Be honest to yourself and your clients. Think of that for a moment

• What my main skills are?
• How good am I at it?
• How fast can I do the work?
• Can I provide high quality?

You can write down those questions and answer them. It will help you to organize your mind. Take into your portfolio. Let’s say if you have no items in your portfolio no one will pay $ 20/hour even if you are a great man. I personally recommend to detect a certain range of possible horly rates. And take the golden mean or close.

1. Assuming you specified your hourly rate click add certifications if you have some that will add some polish to you provider profile and click on View my profile as others see it. If you don’t have any sertifications yet I recommend to take some Odesk test and make the result public on your portfolio page. There are a buch of tests available for you so you can pick a topic which you good at
2. You may join the community of Odesk providers. You will be able to communicate with your collegues, share experience, ask for help and get a lot of useful infomation. There is a possibility to build a strong long-term relationships
3. Start blogging! Come on, it will bring you to the next level. You can show the buyers what you have done so far, explain why are you the best employee they have ever worked with. It’s very important to write a nice relevant content. Remeber, content is king. For beginners it will be helpful to create a just a nice portfolio page to show some work. And don’t forget to add that link to your provider profile.

You will see what have you created so far. Do you like it? Is it attractive? If yes, my congratulations – first steps have been taken.

In the next articles I will show you how to apply for jobs, work with Odesk tool, set up Odesk payment methods and of course receive your payment. And a lot of tips and tricks for you to help you start on Odesk quickly and start making money.

Stay connected!

You may be interested in the following related posts:

1. Odesk Tips – Applying For Jobs
2. Odesk Tips – Increase Your Income
3. Odesk Tips – How To Withdraw Funds