I get a lot of questions everyday but one question that I get asked almost every single day is: How do I start working online? What’s the first step? How do I do what you’re doing? So today I’m going to attempt to answer that question.

For most people working online means earning a few bucks, or doing something for zero or little effort. That’s not what I’m about or what I teach. I can’t help you get started working online by clicking on ads, or by filling surveys and questionnaires, or by mailing envelopes, or whatever else kind of menial work is being advertised to make you millions.

When someone asks me how to start working online, I assume that they are asking me for a viable sustainable online business that they’d like to start. It could be a part time business, it could be weekends only, but you have to be serious about it. If you don’t ask me seriously then no matter what advice I give, you will not be able to earn money online.

So assuming that you are serious about making money online, here’s what I would say are the first few steps in this order:

Step 1: Know what kind of work you’d like to do online

Example #1: Perhaps you’re a musician with extensive knowledge about learning to play an instrument (or various instruments) – you could perhaps start a website that gives guitar tutorials. Or maybe you’re a singer songwriter who wants to compose music for international clients – you could become a music producer on a freelance website.

Example #2: Maybe you’re a graphic designer fresh out of school and looking for online work. Maybe you could advertise your design services online and start to get work through the internet.

Example #3: What if you’re a doctor. Can you work online? Well, yes, but that depends on what kind of work you want to do. There are many reputable publications in the health, nutrition and fitness fields that require content for their websites, newsletters, advice columns, etc and would maybe want to hire you as an expert. Alternative therapy and natural medicines is also a fast growing field with not a lot of qualified practitioners; you could maybe get work with them as a side income project.

Example #4: You have an existing t-shirt designing business and would like to find a market for your products online. Can you do that? Yes, and it will depend on finding international buyers ready to stock your products at agreed upon rates. You can do that through various online companies such as www.alibaba.com that specialize in providing physical products via an online medium.

Example #5: You are a journalist, looking for ways to earn some extra money. Perhaps you can start a blog, or write a book, or look for a gig writing for an international column.

These are just five examples; basically you can work online in just about any capacity that doesn’t require your physical presence and you’ll be surprised how few those are. Are you an engineer? You can find work online as a contract manufacturer. Are you a housewife? You can find work online leveraging your expertise in cooking, designing, parenting, etc. There’s online work awaiting you in almost every conceivable field from financial to legal to engineering to writing to design to web programming.

So do you know what you want to do? Figure that out first and then move to step 2.

Step 2: Find your market

The assumption here is that you have a skill or a product that you’d like to make money from. Once you have identified that skill or product, you must find a market that will buy your services/products.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

1. You can sell your existing products using affiliates. Affiliates are people that sell your product on your behalf for a small commission. You can join an affiliate network and get your product listed for sale. Examples of affiliate networks are www.clickbank.com, www.commissionjunction.com, www.amazon.com/associates and plenty more – just do a search for affiliate networks to get a more comprehensive list.
2. You can sell your services in a freelance marketplace such as www.elance.com, www.guru.com, www.odesk.com etc.
3. You can get your products sold globally through international vendors and drop-shippers such as www.alibaba.com, www.wordwidebrands.com, www.thomasnet.com, www.housewares.org, www.expoeast.com and www.expowest.com.
4. You can start your own WordPress website by registering a domain name through www.namecheap.com, buying hosting from www.godaddy.com and installing WordPress through www.wordpress.org. If you don’t feel confident you can do this on your own, you can start with a free www.WordPress.com account which just requires a username and password to use. Else, you can hire a company such as www.customsocialpages.com to set it up for you.
5. You can use social media to find prospective buyers and clients, although that is a less direct way and you will have to invest some time in it. It is recommended if you are not in a hurry and are good at having online conversations. Social sites that would be a good fit for finding leads include www.linkedin.com, www.twitter.com, niche forums (search for your niche + “forum” on google), and www.facebook.com (pages and ads).

Step 3: Determine how you’ll get paid

Once you have found your market, you need to sort out payment details. There’s a comprehensive list of payment processors that you can work with here, but only some of these are compatible with Pakistan. Those that work in Pakistan include www.payoneer.com, www.alertpay.com, www.2checkout.com, www.westernunion.com, www.moneybookers.com, and sites that pay you via direct deposits and through checks (such as most freelance sites do).

Payment processors help you determine how you will charge prospective customers and how the money will get transferred into your bank account.

So, I hope this list has given you a starting point. Essentially there’s just a few ways to run an online business, such as you can see in this online business info-graphic. You just need to find the tools and resources that will help you and chart a path that is unique to your skills, products and abilities.

Questions? Mail me at ask@wordpl.net with your very specific question or just write it out in the comments below so that your question and my answer benefits lots of people. Good luck!

p.s. For more in-depth information, check out my presentation How to Start an Online Business (from Pakistan).

This is the first in a 6-part series of posts on How to Write Winning Bids and Proposals.

While I will be giving specific examples of bid writing techniques from Elance, the information in these posts is relevant and applicable to all freelance proposals in any online medium.

I hope you’ll be able to use this information to bid smarter and significantly reduce your proposal writing time in the long term as well as attain a higher award ratio.

One of the first things you need to do as freelancers is to look for projects that match your skill set. The way I see it, if you don’t care much for the topic you’re writing on, you won’t write with enthusiasm, passion or dedication. Although good writers can research and write on just about anything, great writers write about what they’re genuinely interested in.

Your passion for your topic will come through in your bid. And that’s what clients are looking for: someone to treat their project with the same (or more) care and attention than they themselves would treat it.

If you’re an established freelancer who already knows his niche, then that’s great! But if you’re a beginner who’s unsure about what topics and what kind of projects to handle, then read on.

Why it’s Important to Have a Niche

A niche is a specialty area. The logic behind having a niche market is simple: it’s easier to excel in one dedicated area than be average in several different areas. In others words, be a specialist rather than a jack of all trades.

If you have a finance background, start off with financial writing; if you’re a mommy blogger, start off with parenting articles; if you’re into cooking, write about that.

Find what your passion is and channel it with your writing. Don’t yet know what niche market you’d like to claim? No problem. Read on.

Step 1: Identify your Skills

The first step in determining your niche is to make a list of all the things you either love to do (or talk about) or that you have experience in.

Fill out the table below as honestly as possible. There may be some overlap, but that’s okay. So long as you can clearly identify the stuff that gets your motor running, you’re on the right track to finding your passion.

Your past or current work experience: ____________________________________

Education: ­­­­­­­­­­_________________________________________________________

Hobbies: __________________________________________________________

Passions in life: _____________________________________________________

Things you’re interested in: ___________________________________________

Stuff you have unique insights on: ______________________________________

Awards won or recognition received: ____________________________________

When filling this out, think about what you like to do, think about what people say you do well, think about what past jobs you’ve enjoyed the most.

Here’s what a sample filled out table might look like:

Although this is just an example, you can see that a typical person has many varied interests in life. How then do you determine what your niche is to be?

My advice is to pick 2 or 3 topics from the above and experiment with them, carefully analyzing what you have the most success with. It could be that while your three passions in life are parenting, cooking and tennis, you’re only good at the first two as a business opportunity and prefer actually playing the third.

It’s OK to have more than one passion. You can experiment with different niches and see what you have the most success with. But know this: chances are that you will have the highest success rate doing what you’re most passionate about.

Step 2: Match your Skills with a Project’s Requirements

Next up, identify how well you fit in with the project’s requirements. Use the following checklist:

-      Do you have the experience needed for the project and can you prove it?

-      Do you have the expertise needed for the project and can you prove it?

-      Do you have the passion needed for your proposal to stand out amongst many?

One of the most important things you can do to demonstrate your passion, ability and experience is to have relevant samples. It’s so important a point that I’m going to give it its own blog post when we come to section 4 of this series.

Step 3: Set up Alerts for New Projects in your Niche

Setting up alerts is a great way to receive info whenever a project is posted in the niche area that you’d like to work in. Alerts also help you be more productive by cutting down your freelance job search time and replacing it with qualified leads to follow up on.

• How to Receive RSS alerts

On Elance simply sign up to receive the RSS feed of the topic areas you’d want to receive new job posting info on. Just click on any Elance page, click the orange RSS icon on the top of that page and subscribe using your favorite RSS reader (mine’s Google Reader).

• How to Receive Twitter Alerts

Simply set up a twitter alert using your key terms and prefacing them with hashtags. So if you’re a graphic designer looking for logo design jobs, those could be your search terms. If you’re using TweetDeck, which I use, simple add a column for your search term (e.g. #logo #design #freelance #jobs) and the software will automatically update and notify you when those terms are used by anyone in twitterverse.

• How to Sign Up For Google Alerts

Perhaps the most widely-used alert service, Google alerts, is accurate, free and easy to use. Simply go to http://www.google.com/alerts and fill in the search criteria in the box. Remember to put your search query in “__” (double quotes) to get accurate results otherwise you might be inundated with trivia and irrelevant items. An example alert query could be “technical writing jobs” or “freelance technical writers”. Google will send you an email when it finds results that meet your criteria.

Well, that’s it. The easy way to identify your passion, carve out a niche from it and start bidding ferociously in it. Once you find projects that speak to you, you’ll be racing to write that proposal for them and your words will flow with enthusiasm at finding something that resonates with you. Your mind will be full of creative ideas on how best to tackle the project and your heart will be racing to see if you got the job or not. That is the best kind of work to do. And really, isn’t that why you became a freelancer in the first place?

If you liked this article and want to know more about writing effective bids and proposals, please read Part II: How to Investigate Buyers.