No honey, you’ll never look so glam working outta home. You will most prolly spend the entire day in your PJs and brushing your hair will be a herculean effort. Making good money working online is tough. But, lets take small baby steps towards it.
I’ve been talking about oDesk right from the day I started this blog. Although there are other portals out there like Elacne and Freelacner but somehow I am biased towards oDesk. Maybe coz it has a simpler, easy-to-use interface. Maybe because its where I got my first contract. Dunno! If you read my blog and you don’t already have a profile on it, GO DIE! No wait! Don’t die just yet. Keep your lazy behinds where they are, holler out to someone to hand you the laptop, and SIGN UP!
1. Once you go to www.oDesk.com, simply click on the ‘Sign Up’ button on the top right of the page as seen below.
2. You will then be given two choices:
a. I need a contractor: Find, hire, manage and pay for help, on-demand. And,
b. I need a job: Find work, earn money, and grow your career.
3. Sign up with the “I need a job” option, which will lead you to the next step. You can choose whichever option is suitable for you. If you are looking to hire people, the first option will be better suited to your requirements. However, if you are looking for a freelance job, you should go on to select the second option.
There is an option of signing up with your Facebook username, this makes things extremely simple and easy if you have an existing Facebook account. Simply follow the instructions to signing up with your Facebook and you will have an oDesk profile in no time!
4. Creating a new profile is a little different but equally easy. You will need to enter your name, email address, city, country, username and password, how you heard about oDesk and lastly you have to enter the code given. Just fill in the relevant details to the best of your abilities and click “Create an Account.
5. You will be asked to verify the email address you submitted with the rest of your information.
You will have to go to your inbox and click on the link sent by oDesk which will redirect you to the next step of the procedure. Ideally you should not face any problems during this step as it is fairly simple. However, if you are experiencing any difficulties, paste the URL into your web browser instead of clicking on it.
6. The following step is fairly simple; you click on “Create your Profile” which will take you on to the next page where you can fill out more information which will help you land jobs related to your field of work and experience.
7. Picking out your areas of interest and expertise is very simple; just check the relevant boxes as seen below.
Fill in your address, zip code and phone number and click ‘Save Profile and Continue.”
9. An email will be sent out to you by oDesk after you have saved your profile with the basic information. You will be given tips on how to improve your profile further and get the best out of your oDesk profile.
10. As far as making your profile goes, you are finished. You will be asked to either
Complete your profile by
a. Take a test to show your skills or,
b. Take the oDesk readiness test.
My dear peeps, I hate cheating on these things and really believe taking the readiness test on your own is a good practice in learning how oDesk works. However, if you are really impatient to get started, you can find a cheat-sheet to the readiness test online.
Happy oDesk-ing. Don’t forget to share your profiles in the comments below. Will be fun to see what you put in there. I might even feature the best of the lot and interview you for me blog. 😉
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This blogpost was written by my lovely assistant, Hanifa Tareen. I tweaked here and there but all credit goes to her.